Here is a book that we definitely do not want students in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District to be reading:

The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing by Alfie Kohn.

A compelling exposé of homework -- how it fails our children, why it's so widely accepted, and what we can do about it.

In an interview, Mr Kohn explains:

What advice would you give a school leader regarding homework?

Take seriously all the lovely rhetoric we repeat about the need to do what's best for kids. Be willing to question the conventional wisdom, challenge traditional practices, and take some flack for doing so. Be guided by what the research says, not by pressures from people who know less about learning than you do. Ask yourself whether what families do in the evenings should be decided by families or by schools. Ask yourself whether there's any reason to believe that kids who rarely get homework-who don't have to work what is, in effect, a second shift after school is over-will be at any disadvantage in terms of their intellectual development. And above all, help teachers and parents to remain focused on the overriding question: How does homework affect kids' interest in learning, their desire to read and think? If the effect isn't positive, we should have doubts about assigning it. If the effect is actually negative, then the obligation to question the way things have always been done is even more urgent.

Does the homework that your children are assigned make them think?
Is it having a positive effect?