I had the very good fortune this July to attend a Challenge Success Summer Leadership Seminar.  As it happened, the Principal and Vice Principal of my own children’s public middle school were also in attendance.  After a busy morning of workshops, I took advantage of the lull before lunch to share with the two school administrators an anecdote with my perspective on the preceding school year.  To sum up, my story went something like this: “I just wanted to say that overall I am very satisfied with what I assume is the school’s policy to not assign homework over holidays and long breaks, with one exception.  For the winter and spring breaks both of my children, in grades 6 and 8, were asked to complete sections of a review book for the state math assessment.  What concerns me is the message that it sends about the values of our school. We say we have a commitment to breaks as downtime for students and their families to unwind and spend quality time with one another, without the stress of homework.  But when that commitment is measured against the requirements of standardized testing schedules, we allow the test to take precedence. We are in essence communicating that we value performance on a standardized test more than we value the need of families to have quality time with one another while on vacation.”