I've said this before, but public education seems to be in a death spiral of:
1. Reduce teacher autonomy
2. A lot of the better teachers dislike this, so move on
3. Decide that the teachers remaining aren't competent enough, so reduce their autonomy
4. GOTO 2
Not being able to decide how much, and what homework to assign is beyond absurd for someone who is so least ostensibly a teacher. If you are dictating what they are doing to that detail, stop requiring a college degree and call them day-care providers.
You're missing the step where Teachers College of Columbia University first hijacked the teaching profession for a specific progressive philosophy that aspired to a scientific approach to education, but went with pseudoscience around things like "learning to learn" instead. This provided fertile ground for fad after fad that later swept teaching. This created grounds to want to restrict teacher autonomy in the first place.
I recently re-read To Kill a Mockingbird and was surprised to find a first hand account of what an initial encounter with this philosophy was like back in the 1930s.
1. Reduce teacher autonomy
2. A lot of the better teachers dislike this, so move on
3. Decide that the teachers remaining aren't competent enough, so reduce their autonomy
4. GOTO 2
Not being able to decide how much, and what homework to assign is beyond absurd for someone who is so least ostensibly a teacher. If you are dictating what they are doing to that detail, stop requiring a college degree and call them day-care providers.