I agree that homework has benefit, particularly as grade levels increase. There probably should be a fairly smooth slope from little or no homework in the earliest grades to the levels of out-of-class work (not necessarily “homework”) required in college. Certainly, time spent in recreational reading in elementary school is valuable.
A related, but not identical, movement is project-based learning (or whatever they want to call it; there is disagreement). For an example, see the trailer at http://mltsfilm.org/
My son is in a 4-year engineering program at his school that used a similar project-based learning strategy to that shown in the trailer (but only for that class, not for the whole school day). The engineering class has little homework. There’s some homework in their physics rotation, but for the other rotations, it’s tough to bring the lathe, mill, soldering setup, CAD software, etc. home to do homework. The idea is that projects need to be finished by the end of grading periods, but more artificial grading periods are creeping back in.
Regarding “flipped” classrooms. My son did have that for Algebra II/Trig. His teacher was pretty good at creating lectures (and has now moved to some district-wide technology position). DS thought that being able to do the homework in class after having watched the video at home was a better strategy for kids who would have difficulty translating the lecture to actual practice if doing the homework at home. He didn’t feel that it made a difference one way or the other for him, since he didn’t find the material challenging. I think he did like that math homework only took the 15 minutes or so to watch the video and take notes.
I suppose APUSH is also “flipped” somewhat because the students take notes on a chapter prior to discussing the chapter in class. I think that helps make the class more interactive and less dependent on lecture and testing only.