One tough assignment: Settle homework beef

Their children will be lugging loaded backpacks on ski vacations and ditching family dinners to finish school projects. Not even on holiday, it seems, can a kid escape the homework demons.

But in upscale San Marino, the private commiseration of some parents has become an aggressive public campaign, mounted by a mother obsessed with the notion that homework is wrecking family relationships and turning children into automatons.

"They're making me out to be a homework-hater," said Tracy Mason, a former accountant, now stay-at-home mom of a Huntington Middle School sixth-grader. "All I'm saying is, this is a big burden on families. We want [the district] to justify it."

Mason has spent months poring over studies, interviewing experts and bombarding parents and school officials with research that suggests that homework contributes little to students' academic prowess. She wants San Marino district officials to study the issue and consider limiting the amount of work teachers can give.

Her aggressive effort has inspired some parents and annoyed others. And it has revealed an uncomfortable cultural breach in one of the state's most successful school districts, where 70% of the students are Asian American and high test scores are considered a ticket to the Ivy League.

"They're willing to make everybody miserable with hours of homework," Mason said, "and as long as test scores are going up, nobody cares."

When I spoke with Mason this week, she was in the car, hustling her daughter to an after-school grammar tutoring session. Twice a week, $50 an hour. She winces every time she writes a check.

Tutoring has become a lightning rod in the brewing homework debate, stoking resentment among parents, who say it reflects an unhealthy fixation on grades and handicaps students who do their homework the old-fashioned way.

In my conversations with middle-school moms -- almost all of them white -- it was clear where many place the blame: Hyper-competitive Chinese parents are raising the bar too high, to ensure that their children succeed, they said.

Few will say that for the record, of course. Never mind the racial sensitivity; no one wants their kid deemed a slacker in a high-flying district like this.