With the school year in full swing, the "H" word rears its fearsome head once again.

Homework.

Perhaps no word in the field of education is as fraught with pain, frustration and debate.

Whether homework is a breeze for your child or a conflict-ridden merry-go-round, August invariably means a return to lessons spilling over into home life, unless your child attends a school that has banished the practice. (Few have.)

The topic of homework is a gnarly one, steeped in controversy. How much is too much? Or not enough? What impact does homework actually have on achievement? On family life? Are kids today burdened by an onerous mantle of after-school assignments that keep them up until the wee hours, deaden their desire to learn and rob them of precious personal time?

In the '90s, a rash of newspaper and magazine articles painted a dark picture, with tales of children buried under piles of (usually irrelevant) homework that kept them drowsy in the daytime and their parents frantic at night. But how true, really, is this depiction? Is homework a weighty albatross hanging around our children's necks, strangling them?

The homework pendulum has swung widely through the years. Early in the 20th century some legislators out-and-out banned homework in their states, believing it was harmful to children. The launch of Sputnik in the '50s spawned fears that America couldn't compete with the Russians, and homework levels soared. They dipped down again in the freewheeling '60s and '70s, then increased again after 1983, with the publication of "A Nation at Risk," which documented the failings of American schools.

Today some say unreasonable homework is fueled by standardized test pressures and heavy competition to get into the best colleges and universities.

So if homework is a drag, why not just shuck it?

Educators say it's an important part of learning, giving children the chance to practice elements learned in class until they obtain mastery. It also helps foster important things such as good study skills, self-directed work habits and independent learning.

But how much is enough?

One rule of thumb offered by the experts is the "10 minute" rule: Students in first grade should receive roughly 10 minutes of homework per night, 20 minutes in second grade, 30 minutes in third grade and so on.

Although educators are quick to clarify that these are just estimates, not hard and fast rules.

But linking time requirements to homework is tricky. An assignment that takes one student two hours to complete may be whipped out by another in 15 minutes, says Gonzalez. And some students are overachievers, taking hard courses that pile on the homework.

Given all these variables, gauging the true state of the homework load in America seems impossible.

A groundbreaking review in 2003 poked a large hole in the notion that kids are weighted down with unreasonable outside study. The Brown Center Report on Education, produced by the Brown Center on Educational Policy, part of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, reported that the majority of students spent less than one hour a day studying, a rate that hasn't changed much in the last 20 years.

The study claimed that students who experienced an increase in the past decade are those who had no homework to begin with and now have a small amount.

What sparked the surge of too-much-homework stories was a University of Michigan study, which looked at the 24-hour time diaries of children ages 3 though 12 from 1981 and 1997. It did show that homework levels increased in one age group - kids ages 6 to 8. But the increase was no more than 11 minutes per day.

In the Brown study, students of all ages reported having plenty of time to watch TV, talk on the phone with their friends and take part in sports and other leisure or recreational activities.

One caveat: Experts say homework loads may indeed be dramatically higher in affluent communities, where well-off parents demand more and more because they want their kids to be competitive, to get into the best colleges and universities.

That was the experience of teacher Natalie Altizer, a second-grade teacher at Highland Hills Elementary School, an inner city school in San Antonio. Altizer had taught at a school in an upscale neighborhood in Austin, where the parents were "doctors, lawyers and CEOs."

Altizer recalls: "Because the children came with so much and the parents were so demanding, we teachers just overdid it. And then parents complained that their kids were spending three and four hours a night doing homework, with daily work and projects. So we had to streamline and cut back."

Today Altizer says she tries to stick to the 10-minute rule with her class, "although sometimes we go over."

It doesn't bother her if parents have a hand in homework. "Really, if a parent and child work together I can't see that as