In the British pilot program mentioned earlier, recruitment was an important issue. The report says that successful recruitment depends on the enthusiastic support of staff at site where it will be held; when they offered “sample sessions” of the program, and registered parents right there at the sample session, recruitment was easier. A caveat in the drive for recruitment, however: they found it best not to mix more highly skilled parents with parents with lower skill levels in order to top up the numbers, because the less-skilled parents, who are really their target group, will not have their needs met (Family Numeracy Adds Up).
The issue of homework is a related subject, if not directly part of family math programs. It is a time when families do math together, or when they fail to do math together, and is the most usual way for parents to be connected to their children’s math learning in the K–12 system. It offers the other side of the coin from the relationships parents have with math when they are involved in most family math programs. The work a child brings home from school is radically different from the activities parents bring home from a family math group; indeed it may be the same work that many parents remember with dread, or it may come in such a different format that parents barely recognize it as the math they learned in school.
There are many books of advice to parents about dealing with homework and solving the nightly hassle that it is in many homes. Most of the books I read fall in line with the advice given by the National (USA) Council of Teachers of Mathematics, (2009) that is, to encourage, to help by asking questions or giving brief explanations, but not to do the homework for the child. In Ending the Homework Hassle (Rosemond, 1990) lists seven values of homework besides the surface practice/extension of work done in class: responsibility, autonomy, perseverance, time management, initiative, self-reliance, resourcefulness, which all add up to self-esteem (p. 23). She suggests the parental role is to be “consultants” rather than over-involved. When the parents take on responsibility, the kids learn the opposites of that list of values. Leonhardt (2000) offers tips for various age groups, and provides practical advice from someone who says that encouraging reading and a love of learning new things is more important than worksheets. The Homework Handbook (Cholden & Friedman, 1998) suggests parents can appropriately get involved by showing interest in what the child is doing in school, teaching study skills, praising effort, and providing links between school work and family activities.
At odds with nearly every homework advice book I read is The Secrets to Good Grades (Keogh, 1999). Chapters outline rules, shortcuts and memory tricks to help your kid in each subject in each grade. He suggests parents get a copy of the proficiencies that are supposed to be taught in each grade, ask the teacher several times a year to check off the proficiencies that their child has learned, and keep on the teacher about the missing ones as the year closes.
Fueled by discussion of Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth (2006), the Toronto District School Board debated the wisdom of abolishing homework altogether, but on April 16, 2008, it reaffirmed its commitment to its homework policy, which outlines homework that is mainly reading with parents for primary and junior grades, progressing to other assignments that should take less than 1 hour in grades 7 and 8, and less than 2 hours in grades 9–12 (Toronto District School Board, 2008).