If you live in Texas, the team homework assignment is a state requirement. We hated those assignments and always opted our daughter out of them. She did the entire assignment on her own and made better grades than the kids who worked on a team.
It worked well until her junior year. Her history teacher (a first year teacher who was an ABSOLUTE twit) wouldn't let my daughter opt out. We ended up in a two hour conference with the new VP and the new teacher that ended when my husband forced them to admit that they had no intention of letting her out of it.
My husband then turned to my daughter and said, "You have to understand that these people are typical bureaucrats. They are not here to work with you. They are not here to help you. They are here to tell you that you have to do exactly what the say without thought or deviation."
The state can babble all the "requirements" it likes, but it can't make your kid do this crap unless you go along with it. Any college worth attending will get the picture, when your kid's transcript shows a bunch of Ds and Fs and no diploma, while SAT and achievement test scores paint a clear picture of outstanding academic achievement. An application essay on "Why I didn't waste my time on all those stupid assignments, and what I did instead" will be the icing on the cake. If more parents stood up for their right to direct their own children's lives, the trend would catch on, and the educrats would get steamrolled.