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Like Shari, our DD (who is also accelerated 4+ yrs) has an "outside of class time" workload which is at times vastly inappropriate to her chronological development and also grossly... er... useless, pedagogically speaking.

So sure, do 40 minutes of Algebra II problems. Not the same four problems ten times each.

The open-ended stuff is, IMO, much more appropriate for GT kids, or maybe it's just better for mine in particular. It's the mind-numbing and completely pointless stuff that she resents and drags her heels on.

OMG yes! I can't stand the homework. It's like... be weary of what you ask for.
It's such a catch 22 right? Ask for acceleration and it comes with so much HW. It's part of the package.
I feel like it's robbing time from them.
Yesterday DD came home and ran outside to play because the winter has been so mild. But of course had to come in early to do her homework.
Most 8yos would be able to play outside afterschool and not have to come in and do at least an hour or more of math HW. But she asked for radical acceleration so what else can we do, but deal with the added HW?

This is the stage where a scanner/copier becomes your friend.

Not around here. Both gt and non-gt parents complain about the volume of homework at our school. We have the same deal as many others. Mind-numbing worksheets, weekly spelling/vocab packets with an activity every day, daily reading commitments and long term projects mean that most kids at our school have had 1-2 hours of homework per night since first grade.

I made my oldest do everything and demanded high quality work. Over the years, my mindset has shifted dramatically. For meaningful, homework, I still have high standards. If a homework assignment seems repetitive and asinine, I've told my kids that these assignments merit "good enough" work. It has led to conversations about determining what work is important/relevant and what work is busy work that you can hustle through.

And in the meantime, my DS8's highly academically successful school gives no written homework at all. His school day does run until 6pm, but there's more than an hour of free time every day for clubs, play etc. in there, and more than an hour of sports every day.

(In earlier years, the school day finished at 3pm and he did have some reading and spelling revision to do at home; now even that fits into school hours if he wants it to. Later - the school takes children up to 13yos - he'll have revision that won't fit into school hours, but they retain a no-compulsory-written-homework policy all the way.)

IMO, tidying his room and fitting in music practice gives him all the practice he needs at time management, and this is a policy more schools should copy! (Of course, when I was at school it was standard policy, but that's another story...)

Hmm--no homework sounds good, but school till 6pm does not! Doesn't sound like enough unstructured time for me. And my DD is not at all into team sports (apple doth not fall far from the tree) but loves to play actively outside...

It's important to distinguish two (alleged) purposes of homework: 1) improving learning, and 2) teaching work ethic and organizational skills.

I personally think the second one is a weak argument, until kids are into their teens and learning to organize an open-ended, long-term assignment. For an elementary school kid, I think a much more meaningful lesson is imparted if the kid has to do things they don't like that are ACTUALLY USEFUL, like chores around the house. Doing pedagogically useless homework purely to teach them to do things they don't like seems like an insane distortion of the values it's supposed to impart. Not to mention an egregious intrusion of the schools into the family's role in teaching values.

So, what about the pedagogical value of homework? The 2004 report from Queensland that Val linked is actually wrong when it says that research supports the 10-minutes-per-grade-level rule. That report cites the work of Harris Cooper (Duke University) on this point, and Cooper's own work shows that the evidence for any benefit of homework at all in the elementary grades is exceedingly weak. (In fact, Cooper is more sanguine about the literature than I am. He finds that every single study on this question has flawed methods, but he thinks that on aggregate they add up to something. In fact, you can stack up as many seives as you want, but they're still seives, and the stack is not going to hold water. In particular, not a single study has shown a CAUSAL relationship between homework and performance. Studies do attempt to account for mediator variables -- motivation, parental involvement, socio-economic status, quality of school, quality of teacher, etc. -- but as Cooper says, all of them are flawed. In short, better-prepared students are probably given more homework. The homework is the stone in the stone soup.)

In short, the idea that 10 minutes of homework is the magic right amount for first graders, and 20 minutes for second graders, and so on, is simply pulled out of thin air. It has no empirical support.

I'm so glad someone started this thread... we have been having major homework angst here as well. dd6 is accelerated to 3rd grade. She should be getting about an hour of homework (per her teacher) but it is more like 4. I will say this is more dd6's issue than the schools. The homework seems challenging and appropriate (hooray!) and when I look at the homework - I think -not so bad - this will not take so long - but it takes her absolutely forever! Lots of whining, tantrums, tears. I don't get it. For a kid who generally has excellent focus, she is completely unable to focus on her homework - I think that after 7 hours of school she is just pretty cooked mentally. Also, I think she just hasn't learned the art of just getting it done. So for example the other day she had to make a list of 10 questions for George Washington. She came up with three - and then the frustration began. She just could not think of any more... I offered suggestions and she would say, "well I am just not so curious about that" or "that is not interesting"... uggh! I felt like saying just write anything - it does not matter if you really care what George's favorite color was - just get it done! It literally took her three hours. On another day she had to respond to a writing prompt - the teacher said they had to "fill a page" with the answer. After about an hour I went to check in and see that dd6 is writing microscopically. Ugh - I mean really- she is a smart kid - to me "fill the page" would automatically translate into "write big"... so here she is after an hour and only 1/3 of the page filled and completely tapped out as to what she wants to say. Other things take her forever because everything has to be perfectly neat - she will erase the answer 24 three times and re-write it so that all of the columns line up perfectly. It is tough because I know I probably send her mixed messages, "just try your best" and "just get it done"...for her trying her best really means going way overboard.
Wow, I had a lot to say.

Yes, I think I'd prefer him to get more unstructured time, too. Still, at least this way he gets some at school with his friends, the whole weekend with us, and, with no stress about getting stuff done at home, maximal use of what he has. Compared with many children I know here who have school until 3 or 4, then have to be in after-school care till 5.30 or 6 because their parents work full time, and then still have homework to do when they eventually get home (because it needed support not available at the after-school care place) it's definitely good. Also, although I used the word "sports", "physical activity" might have been a better choice - it isn't all team games, and they get increasing choice about what they do as they get older.

Yep, I have one of those too (when he took I don't remember which assessment test the psych had to confiscate the pencil with the eraser).

Let me know if you find the magic answer...