Homework has never been terribly popular with students and even many parents, but in recent years it has been particularly scorned. School districts across the country, most recently Los Angeles Unified, are revising their thinking on this educational ritual. Unfortunately, L.A. Unified has produced an inflexible policy which mandates that with the exception of some advanced courses, homework may no longer count for more than 10% of a student’s academic grade.

    This rule is meant to address the difficulty that students from impoverished or chaotic homes might have in completing their homework. But the policy is unclear and contradictory. Certainly, no homework should be assigned that students cannot complete on their own or that they cannot do without expensive equipment. But if the district is essentially giving a pass to students who do not do their homework because of complicated family lives, it is going riskily close to the implication that standards need to be lowered for poor children.

    District administrators say that homework will still be a part of schooling; teachers are allowed to assign as much of it as they want. But with homework counting for no more than 10% of their grades, students can easily skip half their homework and see very little difference on their report cards. Some students might do well on state tests without completing their homework, but what about the students who performed well on the tests and did their homework? It is quite possible that the homework helped. Yet rather than empowering teachers to find what works best for their students, the policy imposes a flat, across-the-board rule.

    At the same time, the policy addresses none of the truly thorny questions about homework. If the district finds homework to be unimportant to its students’ academic achievement, it should move to reduce or eliminate the assignments, not make them count for almost nothing. Conversely, if homework matters, it should account for a significant portion of the grade. Meanwhile, this policy does nothing to ensure that the homework students receive is meaningful or appropriate to their age and the subject, or that teachers are not assigning more than they are willing to review and correct.

    The homework rules should be put on hold while the school board, which is responsible for setting educational policy, looks into the matter and conducts public hearings. It is not too late for L.A. Unified to do homework right.

答案精析：根据题干中Paragraph 4和a key question可定位至原文第四段。该段首句指出，该政策并未解决真正棘手的问题（thorny questions）。第二、三句详细阐述了第一句所说的棘手问题。通过假设家庭作业重要或不重要，指出了该政策的不合理之处，也就说明该政策没有解决家庭作业是否重要的问题。故正确答案为B选项。

错项排除：取消家庭作业是假设家庭作业不重要时应采取的举措，并非该政策尚未解决的问题，故排除A选项。第四段最后一句指出该政策也无法保证老师布置的作业没有超过他们愿意批改的量，并未提及家庭作业增加了老师的额外负担，故C选项错误。原文认为如果家庭作业重要，则它应该在分数中占比更多，此处只是假设，并非待解决的问题，故排除D选项。