Texas Teacher Brandy Young Tells Kids She Will Not Assign Homework This Year

Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Godley Independent School District just outside Dallas-Fort Worth, sent home a letter to parents promising that she will not assign homework to students this year.

Her letter has been shared more than 100,000 times on Facebook in one week, indicating that this is indeed a national issue.

"After much research this summer, I am trying something new," Mrs. Young wrote. "Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year.

"Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early."

"This is so awesome as it demonstrates how many parents and teachers would support this kind of policy! Especially for kids in Elementary school," one mom excitedly wrote. "It prioritizes family time and youth activity! I feel 8 hrs a day in school for kids this age is enough.

Samantha Gallagher, the parent who posted it online, wrote that it "just goes to show how universal this subject is!"

"We're happy that at the end of a long school day she'll get to come home and unwind and be a kid ... go outside to play, make new friends, spend more time as a family," Gallagher told CBS News.

Young has been teaching in Godly for about eight years, according to her biography on the school district's website. She lives with her husband and her young son in Joshua, a small city south of Fort Worth, the site said.

"My family revolves around a love of God, sports, and hunting," she wrote in her bio. "I love to travel, shop, make crafts, go out to eat and spend time with the people I love."A teacher in the Dallas-Fort Worth region isn't the only one who doesn't assign homework. An Austin area teacher hasn't doled out homework to his students for the past two years.

"Kids love it and my test scores have been great!" said Patrick Hinson, who teaches Advanced Placement Biology and is the student council sponsor at the high-performing Lake Travis High School.

As the majority of students across the country routinely are assigned homework, such no-homework policies appear rare. The North Texas teacher's letter to parents last week saying she would not be assigning homework to her second graders went viral.

Teacher Brandy Young said in her letter that research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. She asked her parents that in place of the time spent on school assignments at home, that they spend their evenings eating dinner as a family, reading together, playing outside and getting their child to bed early. The note, which was posted by a parent on Facebook, had more than 74,000 shares by this week.

Parent Samantha Gallagher said in her post her daughter is "loving her new teacher already!"

Hinson told the American-Statesman by phone that his son spent two hours on homework as a fourth-and-fifth grader. "There's no family time," he said.

Hinson, a 14-year teaching veteran, said he examined his homework policy after looking at the schedules of his students, who were taking other AP courses, were participating in school clubs and extracurricular activities and working part-time jobs. He said students are much busier than when he was in school.

"If I can take one thing off their plate and keep them learning," then why not, he said.

His strategy appears to be working for his 11th and 12th grade students: "My kids ended up enjoying class more and performance was better. AP scores went up."