The newly installed homework policy states that students at Albemarle should not have more than two hours of homework a week for any core class. It was enacted in hopes of relieving students of their large amounts of homework, prioritizing quality over quantity.  

The policy highlights how different class levels should receive different amounts of homework. Advanced placement courses, for example, are allowed to give up to three hours of work a week. Core classes, as mentioned, are limited to two hours a week. While electives should assign only one and a half per week.    

Junior Landen Woods stated that he has “around 30 minutes of homework a night.” This, in his eyes, and in those of the school board, is a rather tolerable amount of work – well within the limits. But Landen also added that he doesn’t always understand the assignment, that “it’s not always clear” what the teacher wants him to do. So sometimes he cannot complete the assignments.

On the other hand, students such as Jack Brocato can average as much as four hours a night. Though his schedule does consist of four college level classes, along with various others, it is still beyond the recommended weekly limit for both standard and college level courses.

Furthermore, Jack reported that his “immense amounts of homework” can interfere with his ability to attend sporting events, like track practice. He also admitted that the homework policy may have helped slightly, but nowhere near enough to create a visible impact on his daily life.

In contradiction, Senior Emily Downing found the new policy to have made “a drastic difference.” She experiences only around four hours of homework a week, which falls far under the limit. Senior Nick Mitchell, who has up to two and a half hours a night exclaims how the policy has made “a noticeable difference.” He felt that teachers give him a fair amount of homework because they understand that “they have to teach us one class while we have to learn eight.”

According to Albemarle’s principal Jay Thomas on the subject of parent homework complaints, in his eight years as head of the school’s administration, he claimed that “this is the only year I have received zero complaints.” Which suggests that the homework policy might very well be serving it’s intended purpose.

Even though there has been nothing in the complaints department, AP English teacher Abby Baum stated that she has changed nothing as a result of the homework policy. She claimed to have “always been thinking about the balance” that students have between all of their eight classes. Which, in total, means that students in her class should only be receiving a little over an hours worth of homework a week. Additionally, she said that she “tries to structure the semester so that the student has control over how they’re divvying up the work.”