So then WHY does my kindergartener have homework, again?

Fascinating article on MSN on homework (warning to parents: this is NOT going to help you in your after-school discussion of why it must be finished!):

100 years of research have failed to prove conclusively that homework administered prior to middle school increases academic performance, improves skill sets, or leads to higher levels of achievement.

The cavet is that of neural pathways (that which you practice, you do better at) which are developed as teenagers (thus leaving anyone younger than that out of this equation). However:

"There's a disconnect between cause and correlation," says Kalman M. Heller, Ph.D., a retired family and child psychologist* who practiced for more than 40 years in Massachusetts. "Students who do their homework and get better grades are generally more organized and may be very eager to succeed. It fits their 'student personality.' They do their homework and get better grades because it's natural for them to do so."

As many adults have been relieved to discover after leaving school, not all of life works like a typical classroom, and you don't have to have been good at typical classroom work in order to succeed. So what should be happening during those homework hours instead?

Some of the hours now spent hogtied to a chair, trying to solve for x and y, would be better spent thinking outside of the box…or even simply outside of the house.