Let’s start with something fundamental.  Well-designed homework is important and helps kids learn. (I’ll save the discussion around “well-designed homework” for another post.)

What does homework have to do with proficiency? The misunderstanding usually goes like this: “Since formative assessments (like homework) shouldn't count significantly towards the final grade, kids don't have to do any homework, and there's nothing I can do about it.” Can you spot the logical fallacy here?

The mistake is assuming that simply because homework isn't worth “points” it therefore means that kids can’t be required to do it. But there's a big difference between "making something worth points" and requiring students to complete the work. In other words, just because homework may not contribute towards a final score doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a consequence for not completing it.

A school in Minnesota tackled this issue with a simple solution. According to the assistant principal, "We decided that the consequence for not doing the work….should be doing the work." After all, even in a points-based system, if we truly believe that the homework is important to help kids learn, why would we let them go by just giving them a zero and moving on? Another high school in California doesn’t use homework as part of the final grade; however, homework completion is part of a separate “Habits of Scholarship” score that affects sports and extra-curricular eligibility, among other things.  

Bottom line: There are plenty of ways to motivate kids to complete homework in a proficiency-based system, if only we use them.

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