Learning Life’s Lessons Young : Homework: It starts small in kindergarten, with an emphasis on fun. But increased assignments are seen as a key part of educational reform.

It is 6:30 p.m. and 5-year-old Tracy Tarlow has just finished dinner.

But the kindergartner at Roosevelt Elementary School in Santa Monica does not dash off for her toys or the television set. She helps clear off the dining table and settles in for her daily dose of--EEK!-- homeworkn!

Similar scenes are played out across the Westside. Alex Finerman, a fourth-grader at El Rodeo Elementary in Beverly Hills, spent the recent Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend writing a report on the slain civil rights leader. Kamellia Leckie, whose son, Chris, attends fourth grade at El Rincon Elementary in Culver City, lets her son take sanity breaks to get through long assignments.

“If the homework goes on for more than an hour, I let him go play and come back and finish,” she said.

The afternoon school bell used to signal the end of the work day for most primary grade schoolchildren. But these days, homework assignments are encroaching into a time of day many parents remember as being unfettered by anything more serious than dinner and a bath.

From the time they enter kindergarten, children in the Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Culver City and Los Angeles unified school districts are expected to do homework. Backpacks, once reserved for high school and college, are standard equipment. By first and second grade, students routinely get long-term projects that span weekends and holidays.

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Educators say the trend toward more homework is part of the reform movement that began in the early 1980s, as evidence mounted that children were emerging from the U.S. public school system ill-prepared for a globally competitive job market. Meanwhile, students, parents and teachers are grappling with the growing workload.

Before 1980, most Westside school districts had informal homework policies, if any, especially when applied to early grades such as kindergarten, first, second and third.

In Culver City, for example, a homework policy was not established until 1985. Before then, homework was inconsistent; some kids got some and others didn’t, Assistant Supt. Vera Jashni said.

The districtwide policy was developed, Jashni said, because “we felt there needed to be more structure to assigning homework and that every child should be receiving homework, from kindergarten to the 12th grade.”

All four Westside districts now have formal policies. In general, they say that homework should be appropriate in length and difficulty and should pertain to what is taught in class. For early grades, homework should be a pleasant experience that establishes good study habits and builds a positive relationship with parents.

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Most of the policies recommend 15 minutes of homework a day for kindergarten children, and gradually increase the workload to an hour a day for fifth-graders.

But ultimately, it is up to the teacher to choose what kind and how much homework to give. Teachers and parents say district recommendations are routinely exceeded.

Melissa Delgado, a third-grader at Edison Elementary School in Santa Monica, learned to do her homework in the car in order to make time for an after-school gymnastics class, according to her mother, Donna Delgado. Melissa would study on the way to class, on the way back, and would still have to study at home--sometimes staying up past bedtime to finish.

“I’m not against homework,” Donna Delgado said. “It’s just the amount. I mean, what are they doing in school if they have to come home and do it also? Homework is fine but to sit and do two to three hours of homework is ridiculous.”

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Delgado said she and other parents complained about the amount, and the teacher has decreased the workload slightly since Christmas.

Overall, however, parents and even many students appear to welcome a heavy load. Parents feel their children are receiving a better education than they did, and students say they feel proud of what they accomplish on their own.

Tracy Tarlow said if she had a choice, she would take homework over no homework. She particularly likes the assigned task of keeping a journal, in which she writes about any subject she chooses several times a week, and then illustrates the stories.

“I like when I have to think about things that I like to do,” she said. “I have to think about a story, or something, and how I have to draw it . . . It’s pretty fun.”

Teachers say that they are reluctant to load up their students with homework--after all, the teachers have to review and grade it all. It is, however, a necessary tool for keeping up with increasingly high academic standards, they say.

First-grade teacher Nikki Fiske said she wishes she could lighten the homework assignments she gives her students at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica.

“Kindergarten used to mean playing with blocks and painting on the easel,” she said. “Now, if a child doesn’t know how to read by first grade, we start getting nervous . . . I feel responsible for teaching kids how to read and how to write phonetically in first grade.”

Fiske tries to make it easier by giving students a week’s worth of homework all at once. This allows students to work at their own pace and reschedule homework sessions if they are tired or have family plans.

Maria Ott, an elementary school administrator for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Office of Instruction, said curriculum reforms in recent years have greatly increased the amount of material teachers are expected to cover.

The reforms stem from recommendations handed down by the state Department of Education, which publishes curriculum guidelines used as road maps by local school districts to set instructional policy.

The state updates its recommendations on one of seven subject areas each year on a rotating basis. The first state curriculum guideline to embrace the education reform movement was math and was published in 1985.

Basically, the new guidelines ask teachers to go beyond teaching the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, Ott said. Students should know how to apply their knowledge to solve meaningful problems that occur in real life. They must learn to analyze, recognize relationships and understand underlying concepts. They also are expected to know how to communicate effectively in writing.

“It’s a very rich curriculum, and the amount of content the children have to master has increased,” she said.

As the curriculum has changed, so has the nature of homework. Teachers are starting to assign meaning-centered, hands-on projects designed to teach these skills.

For example, a first-grader may be asked to create a city, complete with some form of industry, such as logging or a plant that manufactures a product. At Beverly Vista Elementary School in Beverly Hills, second-graders were asked to construct their family trees, including photos of ancestors and a brief description of each person.

Problems sometimes arise, however, Beverly Hills school board member AJ Willmer said, when high-achieving students, and often parents, go overboard and spend long hours on these projects. Willmer said he has heard several complaints from parents about excessive homework assignments.

One solution, he said, is for teachers to emphasize how much time a student is expected to spend on a project and resist using projects that obviously take a long time in setting the grading curve.

“You can’t penalize those who put in a reasonable amount of time,” he said. “They should still get A’s.”

Teachers agree that parents are increasingly relied upon to help with these elaborate, meaning-centered projects. In kindergarten, the homework assignment does not get done without a parent’s help. In later years, students are supposed to become increasingly independent. Although it is rare, teachers must sometimes call parents and encourage them to give their child more help on homework.

Roberta Golden, who teaches second- and third-graders at Braddock Drive Elementary School in Los Angeles, compensates for busy parents by pairing students together during recess to finish homework assignments.

“Usually they just need a buddy to help them over the hard part of getting started,” she said.

Teachers say they try to explain to parents that homework, especially in kindergarten, should be a pleasant experience. But many parents miss the point.

Instead, they focus on results, which creates “a tremendous amount of pressure for a child,” said Marc L. Levitt, a child psychologist who practices on the Westside.

Too many parents take the negative approach, Levitt said, making statements like “How come you’re not doing this,” or “You’re not going to get up from the table until you finish this.”

“Parents need tutoring,” he said. “They’re too focused on the results and get upset . . . I see a lot of kids coming in just devastated.”

Educators disagree on whether young children should get homework, what kind and how much.

Abby Cowan, who teaches a combination kindergarten-through-second-grade class with Anne Brown at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, believes homework should be fun. A typical assignment for teaching the concept of measurements, for example, would be to ask a child to prepare a food recipe with a parent, or to count how many shoe-lengths long his or her bed is.

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If it were not for the district policy, Cowan said, she would not assign any homework at all.

“There’s just so many other things kids could be doing,” she said. “I remember going home after school and playing--getting to know the world outside. Kids don’t get to do that anymore.”

Most teachers, like Fiske, include traditional math and vocabulary work sheets in their assignments to reinforce what is done in class.

Joan Swartz, who has identical twin sons in second grade at Franklin, believes the fun, hands-on approach is more effective. Her son Kevin, whose teacher has a traditional approach to homework, works somewhat grudgingly at his desk while brother Steven wanders eagerly through the house doing his “fun” assignments.

Ironically, Swartz says her sons are equally good at academics when put to the test. “The difference is Steven is more excited about learning,” she said.

How Much Time for Homework? Teachers and parents agree that the homework load for young children has grown in recent years. Here is the total amount of time recommended for homework under policies adopted by the Westside’s four public school districts.

Grade Santa Monica- Beverly Hills Culver City Los Angeles Malibu Kindergarten Minutes per day 5-10 * 15 15-20 Minutes per week 20-40 * 60 ** First Grade Minutes per day 10-20 ** 15-20 30-35 Minutes per week 40-80 40 80 ** Second Grade Minutes per day 20-30 ** 15-20 30-35 Minutes per week 80-120 60 80 ** Third Grade Minutes per day 30-40 ** 30 35-45 Minutes per week 120-160 80 120 ** Fourth Grade Minutes per day 40-50 40 60 35-45 Minutes per week 160-200 ** 240 ** Fifth Grade Minutes per day 45-60 60 60 50-60 Minutes per week 180-240 ** 240 **

*At discretion of teacher

**Time not given