By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:23 AM

Tom Loveless, senior fellow and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, has been making trouble again. His latest report asks, "How Well Are American Students Learning?" It upends hitherto highly regarded research based on data from several countries that says more time for instruction and homework has a negative correlation with achievement -- in other words, the more teaching at school and more homework at home, the less you learn.

Loveless thought that didn't make much sense, given other research that associates more time on task with more learning. In the report, he comes at the international data from a different direction, focusing on changes in instructional and homework time rather than on static measures. He finds that class time strongly correlates with achievement and that the apparent negative effect of homework disappears.

I was thinking: uh-oh. New data on homework, anything on homework, is always going to get mixed reviews. The pro- and anti-homework camps are dug in, their artillery lined up, their troops heavily armed. Loveless is a conscientious researcher, but I suspect he will pay for his attempt to clarify the issue.

Which led me to decide, in the holiday spirit of giving, that it was time to share some of the ideas I have been gathering for getting beyond this homework standoff. They are worth pondering, as long as no child in your household has to do a five-page report on the future of the environment, due the day they get back to school after vacation.

1. Exploit the writers' strike: I am always on the side of wordsmiths trying to make a few more dollars, but the disappearance of original dramas and comedies from television presents an opportunity. In the national effort to raise the level of high school achievement, the tube is the enemy. On average, American teenagers spend about one hour a night doing their homework and two hours watching TV. (This is not true of the 10 percent of students who are trying frantically to look good for selective colleges, but I will address their issues another day.) The Writers Guild of America strike gives parents a chance to reverse that 2-to-1 TV-to-homework ratio. I am not sure we can get our children to ramp up to two hours of homework a night right away, but we can at least use the empty hours filled with reruns to create a reading habit, which I think is the best road to peace in the homework wars.

2. Start reading to your kids at age zero: That's right, immediately upon exit from the womb, say hi to the baby and open a book, a newspaper, something. The newborn won't have any idea what you are talking about, but the child will love to hear your voice. Just the tone and rhythms of reading aloud are likely to soak into that little growing brain and connect with its pleasure centers. And the seemingly futile exercise might even give you a chance to catch up on your own reading. You probably have homework yourself, something you didn't finish at work. What's wrong with reading it to your infant if you provide the proper intonation? "Well, Freddie, it appears that the party of the first part has been accused of violation of the federal antitrust act by the party of the second part. ISN'T THAT EXCITING?! Yes it is! And the party of the second part . . . ." You get the idea.

3. Encourage your child's elementary school teachers to assign just reading for homework, and encourage them to make it the kid's choice: A column I wrote on this for The Washington Post Magazine in August has been well received. Most sides in the homework debate agree with research showing that elementary school children don't benefit much from traditional homework. Instead, they could be reading to their parents, or parents could be reading to them, for fun, family togetherness and deeper understanding of the language.

4. Try starting your own family reading traditions: You could take turns reading "The Night Before Christmas" or "The Polar Express" in December, or "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" at Halloween. Washington Post reporter and author T.R. Reid reads the Declaration of Independence to his family every Fourth of July, although he warns that when there are small children in the audience he has to read it pretty fast -- it's very long for them. My wife and I read to our children at bedtime well into their teens. It was a nice way to end the day. We could explore authors they might not have picked up on their own, like Ring Lardner or T.H. White. Anything that fills a few extra minutes with the written word spoken aloud is a plus.

5. Strike back, politely, at bad homework: The KIPP middle schools that have been so successful in many low-income neighborhoods give students the cellphone numbers of their teachers and require them to call with any homework questions. I think this system would work in middle-class neighborhoods, too. It would not only reduce homework confusion but would give parents a chance to ask the teachers, on certain occasions, what they heck they think they are doing. One parent recently told me about an English teacher who insisted that essays be exactly 40 sentences long, forcing the student to cut one sentence whenever she got a good idea for a new sentence or decided a too-long sentence should be cut in two. Eventually, the parent complained to the principal, who acknowledged that was not a good instructional technique and said he would talk the teacher. I think it would be good for parents to communicate such concerns directly. The teachers might resist at first, but in the long run, they will appreciate the incentive to think more carefully about what they are assigning.

These ideas are just a start. Homework, I believe, is good for most children, at least in principle. In reality, it is not always a valuable part of the daily routine. Reading, on the other hand, has no discernible downside. This is a good season for giving books and coming up with new ways to make more time to read them.