TheApple

You may be trying to grade with too fine a point.  Much of the benefit of an assignment is in the completing of it, not necessarily the corrections.  Focus your most time consuming grading on fewer assignments, and give less important work less of you time.

I teach HS math & science, and assign about 18 homeworks per report period (= 1/4 of the school year). I have about 125 students in all. Let's say that the average rate of HW submission is 75%. That would equal about 1700 HWs submitted for the 10 week report period, or about 170 per week.

If I marked each one in some detail taking just 5 minutes per assignment, that would be about 14 hours per week devoted to just mark HWs on top of the 7 hr school day; this does not include marking tests question-by-question, planning lessons and labs, and responding to parent phone calls and emails (3 this Sunday morning).

The paper burden placed on teachers by assigning HW is impossible to manage if teachers do anything more than give a HW a cursory 30 second glance, and perhaps note some defect or superior quality.