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Supporting kids with math homework is a common afterschool activity. But beyond the basics, new curricula and teaching strategies are making it harder for parents to help and it's taking a serious toll on children's confidence and learning. In a study from the University of South Australia, researchers have found that mathematics homework can sometimes cause more harm than good. Exploring how homework policies and practices affect families, researchers found that mathematics homework could inadvertently affect a child when it often: was too difficult for a child to complete independently, and/or with the support of a parent required significant support...

An alleged intruder was shot and killed Saturday at about 5:00 a.m. by a Granada Hills, California, homeowner. FOX 11 reported that police were called to a home “in the 11400 block of Swinton Avenue.” CBS News noted that the dispatch call regarded a “hot prowler.” When officers arrived the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene, according to ABC7.

Whenever "Gina," a fifth grader at a suburban public school on the East Coast, did her math homework, she never had to worry about whether she could get help from her mom. "I help her a lot with homework," Gina's mother, a married, mid-level manager for a health care company, explained to us during an interview for a study we did about how teachers view students who complete their homework versus those who do not. "I try to maybe re-explain things, like, things she might not understand," Gina's mom continued. "Like, if she's struggling, I try to teach her a...

A new study being promoted by the mass media claims that working from home makes people more “racist” because they are less exposed to ‘diversity’ in the workplace. The survey, conducted by polling company Survation for the Woolf Institute, “warns that without alternative settings to offices being set up, opportunities for social mixing between different religious and ethnic groups will be greatly reduced,” according to the BBC. 76 percent of those who work in shared offices in the UK are exposed to ethnic diversity, meaning those who work from home are isolated from such a setting and as a result...

A question about rape ends up on a biology homework assignment for ninth graders at a Houston-area high school. Klein Independent School District confirms a teacher at Klein Collins High School sent home what the district calls an “inappropriate homework question” on a take-home assignment Friday. The question was part of a biology DNA assignment and reads: “Suzy was assaulted in an alley and is a victim of rape. The police collected a sample of sperm that was left at the crime scene and now have three suspects in custody. Which of the suspects rape (sic) Suzy?” Parents along with...

GALLITZIN, Pa. - A homework assignment at a Cambria County middle school involving President Donald Trump had some parents upset Wednesday. The assignment that was sent home from a teacher at Penn Cambria asked students to pretend they were refugees as the president tried "to take control of the United States" as "there are fights in the streets." Students were asked to have a parent time them for 10 minutes as they packed their bags, in the belief that they will never return to their home.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Should students get half credit for an assignment they didn’t even turn in? A former St. Lucie County teacher doesn’t think so. That’s why she wrote a goodbye message to her eighth graders on a white board saying, "Bye Kids, Mrs. Tirado loves you and wishes you the best in life! I have been fired for refusing to give you a 50% for not handing anything in. 💓 Mrs. Tirado" Diane Tirado has been a teacher for years, but she started at West Gate K-8 School in Port St. Lucie in August as an eighth...

Democratic congressional aides made unauthorized access to a House server 5,400 times and funneled “massive” amounts of data off of it. But there’s nothing to see here, Democrats told The Washington Post: They were just storing and then re-downloading homework assignments for Imran Awan’s elementary-school aged kids and family pictures. A congressional source with direct knowledge of the incident contradicted the Post’s account, saying that now-indicted IT aide Imran Awan and his associates “were moving terabytes off-site so they could quote ‘work on the files'” and that they desperately tried to hide what was on the server when caught, providing...

Here’s another bizarre school assignment to add to the pile, courtesy of Wisconsin-based talk show host Vicki McKenna. Students are asked to work in groups to choose seven people to save from a shipwreck. To help in their decision, they are given some rudimentary information about each passenger, such as race and religious views. Mr. Blake, for example, is a Mormon who “sympathizes with anti-black views,” while Mr. Newton is a “black power advocated” [sic] who is “suspected of homosexual activity.” You can see the educational value, especially when you take into account Father Frans, a priest who is “often...

To say that some people dislike Donald Trump may well be the understatement of the year. It's hard to imagine any duly elected president seeing so many protests in his first two months in office, yet here we are. It's so bad that now an 11-year-old in Annadale, New York, was docked 15 points on a homework assignment because she failed to answer a question demanding students bash Trump: Vincent Ungro, a dad from Annadale, New York, has an 11-year-old daughter who attends I.S. (Intermediate School) 75. She asked him for help with her vocabulary homework last Friday night because...

From a post below, a Texas teacher is not assigning homework http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3462049/posts She claims they are unable to prove homework improves performance. This is hard to believe. Repetition and further study doesn't improve performance? Somebody better tell major league athletes and professional musicians. Just because you can perform something right once does not mean that performance is ingrained or repeatable. I know professional musicians who are studying, practicing, refining 8-14 hours a day, same with athletes. Why would my friend earning his pro card drive bucket after bucket of balls down range if homework did not help? Why would actors...

A teacher in Fort Worth has gone viral after she sent home a note to parents outlining her new homework policy for the year. In the note, Mrs. Brandy Young says, "After much research this summer, I am trying something new. Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year." [Snip] The note ends: "Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success....

SALEM, Utah -- Students in 9th grade at Salem Junior High School were given a homework assignment where they were told to draw a propaganda poster for a terrorist organization. After parents complained, the assignment was canceled. However, many students had already completed it, leaving some parents concerned about what they had been exposed to in the process. Annie Langston couldn't believe her 14-year-old daughter Mikalia was given the assignment. "My initial response was, 'there's no way you're going to do this assignment,'" Langston said.

(CNN)—Nothing quite stresses out students and parents about the beginning of the school year as the return to homework, which for many households means nightly battles centered around completing after-school assignments. Now a new study may help explain some of that stress. The study, published Wednesday in The American Journal of Family Therapy, found students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended. The standard, endorsed by the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association, is the so-called...

Mackenzie Fraiser may be a sixth grader, but she knows more about her constitutional rights than Somerset Academy. The Las Vegas school took a big gamble when it told a 12-year-old girl to drop God from a paper for leadership class — despite the Education Department’s own rules allowing it. For a project on self-esteem, Mackenzie wanted to use John 3:16 to explain how her faith affects her identity. Since she was required to include an “inspirational statement,” Mackenzie turned to what inspired her most: the Bible. Before she could finish, the teachers ordered her to strip any reference to...

OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) - According to a "U.S. News and World Report" around 75 percent of college students admit to cheating. And ever since the age of the Internet, cheating has gone high-tech. But now a website that is quickly gaining popularity makes it even easier to type in a URL, sit back and get an “A.” “It cost me about $20 to create the website and after my first week of launching the website I had already made $3000,” said the creator of paymetodoyourhomework.com, Jessica Mott. New York native Jessica Mott went from making $30 an hour tutoring, to...

TENAFLY — Pressured by parents, school district officials are considering lowering the stress of homework with such measures as homework-free nights and vacations, and giving students more information about the demands they will face in choosing courses. The district also will organize workshops for parents on reducing children's stress. The measures are being taken after a group of high school parents confronted the school board, arguing that homework is wreaking havoc on their children's lives.

A growing number of schools across the country are banning after-school assignments to lessen stress on children and families. Some educators and parents say homework has become too time-consuming and support the lighter workload, but others are concerned it might hurt kids in the long run. …

Coming soon to a classroom near you… nazi jew homework A new Common Core writing assignment asks students to think like a Nazi and explain why Jews are evil. This story first broke back in April: The Times Union reported, via Poor Richard’s News: Think like a Nazi, the assignment required students. Argue why Jews are evil. Students in some Albany High School English classes were asked this week as part of a persuasive writing assignment to make an abhorrent argument: “You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your...

If you think back to your school days, teachers often spent a lot of time grading your tests. What could they do if they weren’t consumed with this task? XEROX, the well-known company famous for its document management technologies, has unleashed software that can actually hand-grade student tests, homework, and even essays. This technology goes way beyond the fill-in-the-bubble tests you may already be familiar with. When confronted with developing a technological solution that would help increase the amount of individual attention teachers could give their students (especially with tight budgets and large class sizes), researchers at the XEROX Research Center Webster...