Well said. Independent reading is a great homework assignment for young students... when they do it. Unfortunately even that is not consistent in lower income families in my experience. Yet it beats just sending home worksheets that are either too easy for most (and thus busy work) or too hard for some (and then the parents do it for them or it never gets brought back to school).

Most teachers I know feel that homework builds responsibility and thus it's part of a student's job to do it and return it in a timely manner. It builds character, in other words, and prepares them for the higher grades when homework is expected.

There seems to be a disconnect between the lower grades and higher grades and homework is part of it. In the elementary grades, where I teach, we teach the kids how to do everything--read, write, etc.-- but in middle and high school the teachers expect that ALL, or at least most, kids have learned the basics of what they need to know to tackle essays, long readings, more complicated math, etc. Homework then becomes disproportionately harder very quickly for some kids. Might be a phenomenon worth exploring?