Students have been rapidly evolving into a competitive species seeking more knowledge and success. Especially in high school, the drive to seek higher education has been accompanied by adapting teachers who unload piles of assignments onto students.

According to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District’s Board of Education, “student stress and evolving instructional practices” led to the creation of the district’s new homework policy, which was approved on June 23, 2015.

But is the homework policy really reducing the amount of homework students have?

Six months into the school year, The Californian deems the homework policy to be an ineffective dud so far.

The the new policy is intended to help lighten the heavy load of students, but in reality, there are numerous loopholes teachers can use to keep on assigning the same amount of work.

Some teachers give out extensive “classwork” that will clearly turn into homework or assign work on Thursdays before breaks so that technically the work is due the next day. But because of the block schedule, it is actually the first day after break.

The new policy specifically that there should be no homework assigned over breaks.

This is not happening.

In a recent poll conducted by The Californian, 156 of the 266 students asked said they were given homework in a non-AP or advanced class over Thanksgiving or winter breaks.

If teachers were actually abiding by the district’s new homework policy, 58.6 percent of students polled would not have been stuck doing homework over these recent breaks.

The homework policy also suggest that total homework assignments (excluding those in Advanced, Honors, and AP classes) should not exceed two hours per course in one week.

Departments are also expected to collaborate with each other to create balanced schedules.

Many teachers view the homework policy more as a suggestion than an actual requirement. The homework policy is not enforced in such a way that it truly benefits students, and it only seems to include assigned homework, not studying for tests or reviewing.

So even if a teacher follows the policy and assigns half an hour of homework a night, an upcoming test in that class could leave the student with hours of homework between the assignments and test preparation.

Bottom line: teachers need to do a better job following the homework policy if it is actually going to be effective.