When Homework Isn’t a Good Signal

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A lot of homework in schools today is graded for completion, not accuracy. Did you turn something in?

Did you upload it to Canvas? Did you check a box?

But that’s, that’s useless as far as actual learning. It doesn’t tell you, like, does the student actually understand the concept?

Did they actually do the problems correctly? Did they even do it themselves?

Did they just outsource it to AI or their older sibling, their smart friend…? Who knows?

See, homework is supposed to be practice. And practice only helps if somebody is actually checking whether you’re practicing correctly and giving you feedback on the things that you gotta tweak so that you can improve on them.

Otherwise, you can spend a whole hour doing homework and reinforce the exact mistakes that you were supposed to fix.

Further reading: It’s Incredible How Poor Math Instruction Can Be .

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