Letting Kids Fail

I am the parent to a third and fourth grader in public school in Illinois. Both of their teachers this year have been assigning homework. Our district has a policy that homework is "optional" in grade school. Both of their teachers this year do not treat it as optional. I don't agree with that, but I'm also not going to get into a pissing match with the teacher over a 10-15 minute worksheet. So I tell them they just have to do it. (I do have them read every night before bed. I grill them on times tables and mental math in the car. I care, I just don't agree with homework, to be clear.)

My daughter is a rule follower, and she does her homework. She comes home and does a 10-15 minute worksheet, no problem.

My son, on the other hand, is a smartass that loves malicious compliance. He didn't do his homework the first week+ of school. Since it's technically optional and the stakes are low, I let him deal with the consequences of not doing his homework. Better to fail when the stakes are low than to have mom always do it for you and fail when the stakes are a lot higher. (And my son is the kind of kid that aces every test without trying. I might feel differently if he was behind, but he isn't.)

So this has kind of backfired. His teacher apparently called him out for being several lessons behind on their stupid math on a tablet modules. So he came home and completed the entire module for the quarter that same day. He is now 22 lessons ahead (seriously, they're supposed to be on 4 and he completed all 26). He decided that the easiest way to complete the homework was to do it all at once.

And his teacher is *pissed*. I'm struggling with this one, because the homework is supposed to be optional in the first place. I don't really mind a written math worksheet like the 4th grader has, I see the value in that. But I'm of the mind that math on an iPad is stupid to begin with. Frankly, I resent a tablet being sent home every night for homework when I'm already struggling to keep them off devices. (I understand that the teachers aren't necessarily making the decision to use Zearn, but they *are* choosing to send them home. They've never brought the iPad home in the past unless they had makeup work because they were sick. So I am stuck dealing with monitoring it, when I wouldn't allow them to have them in the first place. That probably is coloring my opinion.)

So I'm not sure how to approach this. Part of me says to double down that the homework is "optional". I'm 100% sure my son isn't getting anything out of it. He completed 26 lessons in ~2 hours. He clearly doesn't need the practice. He also figured out that if you just enter the wrong answer twice on 3 of the 4 "lessons" in each module, it just tells you the right answer. So he just hits "1 enter" over and over and over for the first 3 lessons. The fourth lesson will keep giving you problems until you give the correct answer, so those he actually bothers to read the question and answer correctly. I've watched; he gets the correct answer the first time.

So, basically, he outsmarted the homework. I don't know how to approach this with his teacher. The truth is that I'm proud of him for outsmarting the math app on an iPad. Good for him. He did what he was required to do, with a 100% grade (because the stupid app won't allow you to get anything less, that's a bug and not a feature). I struggle to enforce any consequences at home for maliciously complying with math on an iPad.

Can someone explain *why* it's such a big deal that he worked ahead? I would understand if he was struggling, but he isn't. I see the math work he does on paper, and he almost never makes a mistake. I can understand he needs to be paying attention and class and not setting the example that he works ahead, because other students may not be able to. But this is homework, and the ipad modules are to be done entirely at home. He managed his own time and did it very well. I don't want to tell him he's wrong, because he isn't.

Honestly, I just don't want to have an adversarial relationship with his teacher. I tend to be pretty hands off, and that's worked fine in the past. I'm hoping that teachers might have some advice for how I can approach this with his teacher. I'm not above just playing face and privately telling my son that I don't care. I just want to know if this is a hill to die on, or if it's going to cause problems with the teacher?