An important part of the high school experience might soon be disappearing while the homework policy swings into full effect.

Homework is an expectation for students of all ages, not just because it refreshes the content they learn in class, but because it teaches them other valuable skills.

Practice makes perfect, when students go home and practice the skills they are learning in school, math classes in particular, they are building the foundation for their memory of the content for when they are tested on it. It’s important that they are introduced to the material multiple times, both in the classroom and outside of it. By seeing the information multiple times before being tested on it, students have a greater chance of doing better on their exams.

Additionally, being able to balance homework, sports, and jobs throughout high school helps instill time management skills that will carry over with students throughout the course of their lives. While the school board sees weekends as a “homework free” period, for many students, it’s actually beneficial to assign more homework over the weekend. This is when they have more free time to spend on assignments rather than staying up all hours of the night to finish homework after sports and work.

This extra time on the weekends allows them to catch up on any school work they missed during the week and then get a head start on any assignments that might be due in the coming week.

Contrary to the policy approved by the school board, it would be more beneficial to students to  assign homework for the upcoming week on a Friday that way they can get a jumpstart on completing those assignments before the week starts. That way, students can divide up their homework throughout the weekend depending on how many after-school commitments they have coming up that week.

More commitments during the week means that those students should spend more time finishing their homework on the weekends to ensure they don’t fall behind or have to stay up all night to complete their work.

This is especially true for students enrolled in dual enrollment and AP classes, where the workload is supposed to be heavier than that of the regular level classes. It’s expected for them to have an average of an hour of homework each night and the students in those classes are aware of that when signing up for those classes. Most students sign up for these higher level classes in order to prepare themselves for the workload and intensity of college classes, but the restriction on assignments over the weekends gives them a false idea of what it’s really like to be overwhelmed with the authentic amount of work in college.

While it IS important that students are receiving homework, it’s just as important that they aren’t being assigned too much homework. Only 15 percent of teenagers are getting the right amount of sleep each night, and although that can be attributed to a multitude of different causes, there’s no denying that an overwhelming amount of homework during the week is partially to blame.

Homework assignments should be meaningful and assigned in moderation, but that doesn’t mean they should be restricted during the weekends. Is this policy  best for our students?