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Barnes spent that summer immersed in research on learning and homework, and returned in the 14th year of his teaching career determined to do away with homework and create what he calls a “results-only learning environment.”

Contrary to my first concern, Barnes found that most parents were in favor of his doing away with homework, particularly once he outlined the research for them.

Barnes points out that a no-homework policy does not mean that his students never work outside of class; indeed, they often do, because they enjoy the learning and want it to continue outside of class.

His class was a project-based classroom, so many students did choose to prepare for their projects outside of class. Barnes eliminated all work that required rote memory, and leaned more on context clues and word roots instead. “The result of eliminating traditional, mostly rote memory, homework was one of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career,” Barnes wrote.

Above all else, my students enjoyed class and become intrinsically motivated independent learners.

I would add for the no-homework skeptics, and they are legion, you have to keep in mind that any research that supports homework is based almost universally on test results.

 Even assuming the existence of a causal relationship, which is by no means clear, one or two hours’ worth of homework every day buys you two or three points on a test.

And the result of this fine-tuned investigation?  There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.”

Even if homework were a complete waste of time, how could it not be positively related to course grades?

The better the research, the less likely one is to find any benefits from homework.  

The assumption that teachers are just assigning homework badly, that we’d start to see meaningful results if only it were improved, is harder and harder to justify with each study that’s published.

The data also indicated that if students take part in leadership early in their academic careers, their retention rate is higher.

Parks says with the metrics from the co-curricular data, department chairs, deans and institutional researchers are able to “mine down on the level of experiences” the students in a given major or degree program are having.

Parks adds that the data can even reveal the level of engagement by advisor, adding that if you control for other factors like a students’ living and learning community, it appears that advisors have a “pretty significant impact” on students’ level of engagement.

“Here’s this 100 plus year-old thing, formally produced, tracked and managed by basically every university that nobody uses," he says. "There’s an interesting question embedded in that—why not? And if it’s not used, what’s wrong with it? And if there’s something wrong with it, well, maybe we should do something about that. Maybe that should be better.”

But in 1912 a study by two Wisconsin researchers seriously challenged the reliability of percentage grades as accurate indicators of students' achievement.

These demonstrations of wide variation in grading practices led to a gradual move away from percentage scores to scales that had fewer and larger categories. One was a three-point scale that employed the categories of Excellent, Average, and Poor. Another was the familiar five-point scale of Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing, (or A, B, C, D, and F). This reduction in the number of score categories served to reduce the variation in grades, but it did not solve the problem of teacher subjectivity.

At the same time, significant evidence shows that regularly checking on students' learning progress is an essential aspect of successful teaching–but checking is different from grading. Checking implies finding out how students are doing, what they have learned well, what problems or difficulties they might be experiencing, and what corrective measures may be necessary. The process is primarily a diagnostic and prescriptive interaction between teachers and students. Grading and reporting, however, typically involve judgment of the adequacy of students' performance at a particular point in time. As such, it is primarily evaluative and descriptive.

To ensure a fairer distribution of grades among teachers and to bring into check the subjective nature of scoring, the idea of grading based on the normal probability, bell-shaped curve became increasingly popular. By this method, students were simply rank-ordered according to some measure of their performance or proficiency. A top percentage was then assigned a grade of A, the next percentage a grade of B, and so on. Some advocates of this method even specified the precise percentages of students that should be assigned each grade, such as the 6-22-44-22-6 system.

Grading on the curve was considered appropriate at that time because it was well known that the distribution of students' intelligence test scores approximated a normal probability curve. Since innate intelligence and school achievement were thought to be directly related, such a procedure seemed both fair and equitable. Grading on the curve also relieved teachers of the difficult task of having to identify specific learning criteria. Fortunately, most educators of the early twenty-first century have a better understanding of the flawed premises behind this practice and of its many negative consequences.

An increased emphasis on having students work in teams may also have played a role.

Numerous projects and research studies have shown that frequently reinforcing standards, to both students and teachers, can lessen cheating. But experts say most schools fail to do so.

“When you start giving take-home exams and telling kids not to talk about it, or you let them carry smartphones into tests, it’s an invitation to cheating,” he said.

have found that most college students see collaborating with others, even when it is forbidden, as a minor offense or no offense at all. Nearly half take the same view of paraphrasing or copying someone else’s work without attribution.

PBL means students are doing work that is real to them -- it is authentic to their lives -- or the work has a direct impact on or use in the real world.

The project meets a real need in the world beyond the classroom, or the products that students create are used by real people.

he project focuses on a problem, issue or topic that is relevant to students' lives -- the more directly, the better -- or on a problem or issue that is actually being faced by adults in the world students will soon enter.

he project sets up a scenario or simulation that is realistic, even if it is fictitious.

The project involves tools, tasks or processes used by adults in real settings and by professionals in the workplace. (This criterion for authenticity could apply to any of the above examples of projects.)