What's homework?

The entire faculty has been involved in a year long debate on our grading policy, especially with regards to how we handle zeros.  The goal is to reach some type of school wide consensus for implementation next fall.  On our hallway, we continually come back to issues of a philosophical nature.  One of those recurring issues deals with homework.

Many questions regarding homework have come out of this discussion:

1. What is the purpose of homework?  Most (all?) treat it as necessary practice.
2. How should it be graded - for accuracy (skill) or merely for completion (process)?
3. Relating to #2 above, when is it appropriate to give a process grade?

As we seek to answer these questions, I think the final arbiter of the discussion needs to be, "What is best for the students?"  With that in mind, how would you answer the above questions?  What questions would you add to the discussion?

Why am I doing this?

Because this is how I'm wired. I tend to be very introspective. For a while at least. Like the rest of America, I have some sort of ADD. Which means I usually hop from one project to the next. Well, this is my latest project. Now that I have returned to the field of teaching again (for the 4th time!), I'm more excited than ever. I'm older, wiser (I hope), and I've regained that fervor I had for the profession when I first began almost twenty years ago as a 21 year old college grad. I've begun to see the possibilities again instead of the problems. I'm ready to take more risks if it's good for the student. I'm living in a renewed sense of the call.

Because of all of the above, I need place to record my thoughts. And this hopefully be a space where other teachers, or anyone else for that matter, will help me sort them out.