how can homework lower test scores

Trending Today

Spending Too Much Time on Homework Linked to Lower Test Scores

A new study suggests the benefits to homework peak at an hour a day. After that, test scores decline.

Samantha Larson

Polls show that American public high school teachers assign their students an average of 3.5 hours of homework a day . According to a recent study from the University of Oviedo in Spain, that’s far too much.

While doing some homework does indeed lead to higher test performance, the researchers found the benefits to hitting the books peak at about an hour a day. In surveying the homework habits of 7,725 adolescents, this study suggests that for students who average more than 100 minutes a day on homework, test scores start to decline. The relationship between spending time on homework and scoring well on a test is not linear, but curved.

This study builds upon previous research that suggests spending too much time on homework leads to higher stress, health problems and even social alienation. Which, paradoxically, means the most studious of students are in fact engaging in behavior that is counterproductive to doing well in school.

Because the adolescents surveyed in the new study were only tested once, the researchers point out that their results only indicate the correlation between test scores and homework, not necessarily causation. Co-author Javier Suarez-Alvarez thinks the most important findings have less to do with the amount of homework than with how that homework is done.

From Education Week :

Students who did homework more frequently – i.e., every day – tended to do better on the test than those who did it less frequently, the researchers found. And even more important was how much help students received on their homework – those who did it on their own preformed better than those who had parental involvement. (The study controlled for factors such as gender and socioeconomic status.)

“Once individual effort and autonomous working is considered, the time spent [on homework] becomes irrelevant,” Suarez-Alvarez says. After they get their daily hour of homework in, maybe students should just throw the rest of it to the dog.

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Samantha Larson | | READ MORE

Samantha Larson is a freelance writer who particularly likes to cover science, the environment, and adventure. For more of her work, visit SamanthaLarson.com

Too Much Homework Can Lower Test Scores, Researchers Say

By: Natalie Wolchover Published: 03/30/2012 09:42 AM EDT on Lifes Little Mysteries

Piling on the homework doesn't help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores.

That's the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students' academic performance.

According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The same correlation is also seen when comparing homework time and test performance at schools within countries. Past studies have also demonstrated this basic trend.

Inundating children with hours of homework each night is detrimental, the research suggests, while an hour or two per week usually doesn't impact test scores one way or the other. However, homework only bolsters students' academic performance during their last three years of grade school. "There is little benefit for most students until senior high school (grades 10-12)," Walker told Life's Little Mysteries .

The research is detailed in his new book, "Reforming Homework: Practices, Learning and Policies" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

The same basic finding holds true across the globe, including in the U.S., according to Gerald LeTendre of Pennsylvania State University. He and his colleagues have found that teachers typically give take-home assignments that are unhelpful busy work. Assigning homework "appeared to be a remedial strategy (a consequence of not covering topics in class, exercises for students struggling, a way to supplement poor quality educational settings), and not an advancement strategy (work designed to accelerate, improve or get students to excel)," LeTendre wrote in an email. [ Kids Believe Literally Everything They Read Online, Even Tree Octopuses ]

This type of remedial homework tends to produce marginally lower test scores compared with children who are not given the work. Even the helpful, advancing kind of assignments ought to be limited; Harris Cooper, a professor of education at Duke University, has recommended that students be given no more than 10 to 15 minutes of homework per night in second grade, with an increase of no more than 10 to 15 minutes in each successive year.

Most homework's neutral or negative impact on students' academic performance implies there are better ways for them to spend their after school hours than completing worksheets. So, what should they be doing? According to LeTendre, learning to play a musical instrument or participating in clubs and sports all seem beneficial , but there's no one answer that applies to everyone.

"These after-school activities have much more diffuse goals than single subject test scores," he wrote. "When I talk to parents … they want their kids to be well-rounded, creative, happy individuals — not just kids who ace the tests."

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover . Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries , then join us on Facebook .

Easy Answers to the Top 5 Science Questions Kids Ask
Smart Answers for Crazy Hypothetical Questions
Pointing Your Finger Makes You Credible to Kids

Support HuffPost

Our 2024 coverage needs you, your loyalty means the world to us.

At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.

Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.

Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your contribution of as little as $2 will go a long way.

Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.

Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.

Contribute as little as $2 to keep our news free for all.

Dear HuffPost Reader

Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.

Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.

Before You Go

Popular in the community, from our partner, more in science.

Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?

Share this story on facebook
Share this story on twitter
Share this story on reddit
Share this story on linkedin
Get this story's permalink
Print this story

Educators should be thrilled by these numbers. Pleasing a majority of parents regarding homework and having equal numbers of dissenters shouting "too much!" and "too little!" is about as good as they can hope for.

But opinions cannot tell us whether homework works; only research can, which is why my colleagues and I have conducted a combined analysis of dozens of homework studies to examine whether homework is beneficial and what amount of homework is appropriate for our children.

The homework question is best answered by comparing students who are assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link the amount of homework to achievement, but control for lots of other factors that might influence this connection. These types of studies, often based on national samples of students, also find a positive link between time on homework and achievement.

Yet other studies simply correlate homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent find the link between homework and achievement is positive. Most interesting, though, is these results suggest little or no relationship between homework and achievement for elementary school students.

Why might that be? Younger children have less developed study habits and are less able to tune out distractions at home. Studies also suggest that young students who are struggling in school take more time to complete homework assignments simply because these assignments are more difficult for them.

These recommendations are consistent with the conclusions reached by our analysis. Practice assignments do improve scores on class tests at all grade levels. A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what's going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Opponents of homework counter that it can also have negative effects. They argue it can lead to boredom with schoolwork, since all activities remain interesting only for so long. Homework can deny students access to leisure activities that also teach important life skills. Parents can get too involved in homework -- pressuring their child and confusing him by using different instructional techniques than the teacher.

My feeling is that homework policies should prescribe amounts of homework consistent with the research evidence, but which also give individual schools and teachers some flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students and families. In general, teachers should avoid either extreme.

Link to this page

Copy and paste the URL below to share this page.

Heavier Homework Load Linked to Lower Math, Science Performance, Study Says

The optimal amount of homework for 13-year-old students is about an hour a day, a study published earlier this month in the Journal of Educational Psychology suggests. And spending too much time on homework is linked to a decrease in academic performance.

Researchers from the University of Oviedo administered surveys to 7,725 Spanish secondary school students, asking about how many days per week they did homework, how much time they spent on it, how much effort they put in, and how much help they received. The students also took a test with 24 math and 24 science questions.

Students who did homework more frequently—i.e., every day—tended to do better on the test than those who did it less frequently, the researchers found. And even more important was how much help students received on their homework—those who did it on their own performed better than those who had parental involvement. (The study controlled for factors such as gender and socioeconomic status.)

The researchers also found that prior knowledge—measured by previous letter grades—was a better predictor of test performance than any homework factor.

Regarding the amount of time students spent on homework, the results were a bit more complicated.

Overall, students spent on average between one and two hours a day doing homework from all subjects.

Those who spent about 90 to 100 minutes a day on homework scored highest on the assessment—however, they didn’t outperform their peers who spent less time on homework by much. The researchers therefore determined that going from 70 minutes of homework a day to 90 minutes a day is not an efficient use of time. “That small gain requires two hours more homework per week, which is a large time investment for such small gains,” they wrote. “For that reason, assigning more than 70 minutes homework per day does not seem very efficient, as the expectation of improved results is very low.”

And after 90 to 100 minutes of homework, they found, test scores declined. The relationship between minutes of homework and test scores is not linear, but curved.

“The key is that the optimum time is about 60 or 70 minutes [of homework] a day,” Javier Suarez-Alvarez, co-lead researcher on the study, said in an interview.

The study does, of course, come with some caveats. As the researchers note, the results are not causal; they only show a correlation between homework and test scores. Also, the survey did not distinguish between math and science homework. Suarez-Alvarez said the study also brings up questions about how factors like “academic intelligence, self-concept, and self-esteem” play into academic performance.

Even so, the study offers some insights that middle school teachers may find helpful. “Our data indicate that it is not necessary to assign huge quantities of homework, but it is important that assignment is systematic and regular, with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning,” the researchers write.

Or as Suarez-Alvarez put it, “Maybe it’s more important how they do the homework than how much.”

Chart: From “Adolescents’ Homework Performance in Mathematics and Science: Personal Factors and Teaching Practices,” Journal of Educational Psychology , March 16, 2015.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.

Sign Up for EdWeek Update

Study: Homework Doesn’t Mean Better Grades, But Maybe Better Standardized Test Scores

Robert H. Tai, associate professor of science education at UVA's Curry School of Education

The time students spend on math and science homework doesn’t necessarily mean better grades, but it could lead to better performance on standardized tests, a new study finds.

“When Is Homework Worth The Time?” was recently published by lead investigator Adam Maltese, assistant professor of science education at Indiana University, and co-authors Robert H. Tai, associate professor of science education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education , and Xitao Fan, dean of education at the University of Macau. Maltese is a Curry alumnus, and Fan is a former Curry faculty member.

The authors examined survey and transcript data of more than 18,000 10th-grade students to uncover explanations for academic performance. The data focused on individual classes, examining student outcomes through the transcripts from two nationwide samples collected in 1990 and 2002 by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Contrary to much published research, a regression analysis of time spent on homework and the final class grade found no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not. But the analysis found a positive association between student performance on standardized tests and the time they spent on homework.

“Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be,” Maltese said.

Tai said that homework assignments cannot replace good teaching.

“I believe that this finding is the end result of a chain of unfortunate educational decisions, beginning with the content coverage requirements that push too much information into too little time to learn it in the classroom,” Tai said. “The overflow typically results in more homework assignments. However, students spending more time on something that is not easy to understand or needs to be explained by a teacher does not help these students learn and, in fact, may confuse them.

“The results from this study imply that homework should be purposeful,” he added, “and that the purpose must be understood by both the teacher and the students.”

The authors suggest that factors such as class participation and attendance may mitigate the association of homework to stronger grade performance. They also indicate the types of homework assignments typically given may work better toward standardized test preparation than for retaining knowledge of class material.

Maltese said the genesis for the study was a concern about whether a traditional and ubiquitous educational practice, such as homework, is associated with students achieving at a higher level in math and science. Many media reports about education compare U.S. students unfavorably to high-achieving math and science students from across the world. The 2007 documentary film “Two Million Minutes” compared two Indiana students to students in India and China, taking particular note of how much more time the Indian and Chinese students spent on studying or completing homework.

“We’re not trying to say that all homework is bad,” Maltese said. “It’s expected that students are going to do homework. This is more of an argument that it should be quality over quantity. So in math, rather than doing the same types of problems over and over again, maybe it should involve having students analyze new types of problems or data. In science, maybe the students should write concept summaries instead of just reading a chapter and answering the questions at the end.”

This issue is particularly relevant given that the time spent on homework reported by most students translates into the equivalent of 100 to 180 50-minute class periods of extra learning time each year.

The authors conclude that given current policy initiatives to improve science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, education, more evaluation is needed about how to use homework time more effectively. They suggest more research be done on the form and function of homework assignments.

“In today’s current educational environment, with all the activities taking up children’s time both in school and out of school, the purpose of each homework assignment must be clear and targeted,” Tai said. “With homework, more is not better.”

Media Contact

Rebecca P. Arrington

Office of University Communications

[email protected] (434) 924-7189

Article Information

November 20, 2012

/content/study-homework-doesn-t-mean-better-grades-maybe-better-standardized-test-scores

clock This article was published more than 11 years ago

Study: Homework linked to better standardized test scores

Researchers who looked at data from more than 18,000 10th-graders found there was little correlation between the time students spent doing homework and better grades in math and science courses. But, according to a study on the researc h, they did find a positive relationship between standardized test performance and the amount of time spent on homework.

The study , called ”When Is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association Between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math,” was conducted by Adam Maltese, assistant professor of science education at the Indiana University School of Education; Robert H. Tai, associate professor of science education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, and Xitao Fan, dean of education at the University of Macau.

According to a news release by Indiana University, the researchers looked at survey and transcript data from the students in an effort to explain their academic performance and concluded that despite earlier research to the contrary, homework time did not correlate to the final course grade that students received in math and science classes.

The value of homework has been the subject of various research studies over the years, yet there is still no conclusive evidence that it makes a big difference in helping students improve achievement. The most often-cited studies are those that conclude that there is virtually no evidence that it helps in elementary school but some evidence that it does improve academic performance in later grades. Yet this newest study looked at 10th graders and found no correlation.

The study did, however, find a positive association between time spent on homework and student scores on standardized tests. It doesn’t directly conclude that the homework actually affected the test scores, but the university release quotes Maltese as saying that “if students are spending more time on homework, they’re getting exposed to the types of questions and the procedures for answering questions that are not so different from standardized tests.”

That, of course, would depend on the kind of homework students receive. Maltese is further quoted as saying, “”We’re not trying to say that all homework is bad. It’s expected that students are going to do homework. This is more of an argument that it should be quality over quantity. So in math, rather than doing the same types of problems over and over again, maybe it should involve having students analyze new types of problems or data. In science, maybe the students should write concept summaries instead of just reading a chapter and answering the questions at the end.”

The co-authors also recommend that education policymakers better evaluate homework — the kinds of assignments that are most useful and the time required to make the work effective.

You may also be interested in this : 3 Healthy Guidelines for Homework

Too Much Homework = Lower Test Scores

A comprehensive review of academic performance around the world gives bad marks to excessive homework.

Teachers in Japan, the Czech Republic and Denmark assign relatively little homework, yet students there score well, researchers said this week.

"At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very low average scores -- Thailand, Greece, Iran -- have teachers who assign a great deal of homework," says Penn State researcher David Baker.

"American students appear to do as much homework as their peers overseas -- if not more -- but still only score around the international average," said co-researcher Gerald LeTendre.

Baker and LeTendre examined the Third International Study of Mathematics and Sciences (TIMSS), which in 1994 collected data from schools in 41 nations on performance in grades 4, 8 and 12. Additional similar data from 1999 was factored in.

The homework burden is especially problematic in poorer households, where parents may not have the time or inclination to provide an environment conducive to good study habits, the researchers conclude. In particular, drills designed to improve memorization may not be suited to many homes.

"An unintended consequence may be that those children who need extra work and drill the most are the ones least likely to get it," Baker said. "Increasing homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within the family, thereby generating more inequality and eroding the quality of overall education."

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

The findings are detailed in a new book, "National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling" (Stanford University Press).

In the early 1980s, U.S. teachers began assigning more homework, the researchers say. The shift was in response to mediocre performance in comparison to Japanese students. At the same time, the trend was going the other way in Japanese schools. The new study found U.S. math teachers assigned more than two hours of homework a week in 1994-95, while in Japan the figure was about one hour per week.

"Undue focus on homework as a national quick-fix, rather than a focus on issues of instructional quality and equity of access to opportunity to learn, may lead a country into wasted expenditures of time and energy," LeTendre says.

The homework burden might also affect performance among children of higher-income parents.

"Parents are extremely busy with work and household chores, not to mention chauffeuring young people to various extracurricular activities, athletic and otherwise," LeTendre said. "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and memorization as intrusions into family time."

Search form

Find Stories
For Journalists

Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework

A Stanford researcher found that students in high-achieving communities who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance and even alienation from society. More than two hours of homework a night may be counterproductive, according to the study.

Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

• Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

• Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

• Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

What Test Scores Actually Tell Us

Posted November 6, 2019
By Jill Anderson

Professor Andrew Ho thinks test scores often simplify how we view student performance, school effectiveness, and really educational opportunity. By taking a more comprehensive look at data like test scores and learning rates in districts, we may be able to better identify and contextualize how well a school is really performing. In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Ho discusses his work with the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and how it provides data to help scholars, policymakers, educators, and parents learn to improve educational opportunity for all children.

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. We love and perhaps even loathe test scores, but it's how so many of us choose where to send our kids to school. Then how good a job a school might be doing and how we compare schools. Harvard professor Andrew Ho wants us to think more about what test scores actually tell us. He studies how we design educational test scores, use them, and whether there's better ways to judge academic performance and educational opportunity. He's involved in the recently launched Educational Opportunity Project based at Stanford, where people can go to get a more comprehensive look at their school district. I wanted to know more about that project and what educational opportunity really means.

At edopportunity.org we're measuring test scores and test scores are not the complete measure of what we want for our kids. Nonetheless, if you look at all of these state tests, what do they measure? Mathematics proficiency and reading and those are quantitative reasoning, as well as a kid's ability to read are really important. You need to read to be able to learn. And so they are important measure as well we also recognize they're not the sum total of everything we hope schools to do and hope for our kids. So that's what we mean Ed Opportunity as we operationalize it on the website as test scores, but they are strongly correlated with a number of other measures that we do care about, right? So while recognizing that they're incomplete, we also believe they're important.

Jill Anderson: What our test scores actually tell us about a school and the students there?

Andrew Ho: I got into this field because I recognized as a teacher in high school and also in middle school and as an observer of schools and particularly in Japan where I spent my junior year abroad, just how powerful test scores were as a lever for policy and curricular change. Everyone was saying, "We have to teach this because it's on the test." And that I realized was both very, very sad and an incredible opportunity to improve test scores and to improve the design of tests, not just to make them more relevant, but to make the results more actionable. And that's how I sort of got into this, this whole enterprise was a belief that we weren't designing tests right and using test scores right and that we could do a better job.

So I, and many other psychometricians, measurement folks, have really mixed feelings about tests. We want to improve them, we believe that they're powerful, but we believe they're also just sort of too powerful sometimes and people simplify what educational quality and opportunity is to a single number that is useful but imperfect. And so it's with that sort of humility but also recognizing this incredible promise that I went into this project thinking, "All right, how can we take the 350 million test scores that we've accumulated over the past 9, 10 years or so, and put them to good use to enable people to understand how complicated and variable educational opportunity as measured by test scores, is in this country?"

And so what I would recommend is for any given subject or grade, every State in this country makes test score items, the questions we ask of kids available. And I think we can be skeptical and should be skeptical of tests, but if you look at most of these questions, you sort of say to yourself, "Actually, I kind of want my kid to be able to answer this correctly. I kind of would like them to be able to understand vocabulary words, use them in context and be able to reason with numbers and algebra and geometry." These are abilities and skills and dispositions that we really do want our kids to have. Are they perfect? Are they everything? Do they encompass social, emotional aspects? No, they are incomplete, but they are still desirable. And so it's with that sort of humility, but also recognizing the importance of being able to communicate, being able to reason that we believe that these are incomplete but important measures.

Jill Anderson: Do you think the public understands the complexities of this? There's a lot of websites in the world that compare test score results from one community, one school, to another, and that's all you're getting. You might get some other ratios, demographics, that kind of thing, but it's fairly limited information.

Andrew Ho: Right. This is the problem we're trying to solve. The learning goals of this project are to appreciate just how different are test scores from changes in test scores because isn't that what education is about? Not just a score, but how we improve that score, right? Not just my daughter's ability to read, but how she gets better at reading and what I can do to improve that reading. And so that's the story of learning. And for us to be able to distinguish between those two, between test scores and learning changes in test scores, right? Or another way to put it is between proficiency and growth is a key learning goal of the website. And so, no, I don't think we as a society and even among folks in education communities, we are able to distinguish enough between what is good in terms of a level and what is good in terms of progress. So I hope that we can keep both in mind. It's not to say that performance doesn't matter and learning is all that matters, right? We should say that both matter. We can want high levels and we also want progress.

Jill Anderson: One of the things that is introduced through that Educational Opportunity Project is the learning rate. What is a learning rate?

Andrew Ho: When we say like, "There are good schools there," let's unpack that a bit. There are at least two answers there, 50 that we should consider, but at least two criteria that we want to really drill down in this project. And the first is to get people on the hook with what they already think they know, right? Which is about average test scores. And usually when you say, "There are good schools there," you think to yourself about average test scores. And of course the first thing you see when you click into that chart, we call it the Galaxy Chart because it looks kind of like the Milky Way at night, right? So that scatterplot there that shows that striking strong correlation between socioeconomic status and test scores, right? That's what we want to complexify, they are average test scores.

But now wait, look. Look at that tab over there and all of a sudden you see learning rates. Now what are learning rates? There's a difference between saying kids are above average in third grade, above average in eighth grade and coming in below average in third grade and ending eighth grade above average. So how would we describe those two schools where you come in in third grade above average, leave in eighth grade above average versus a school where you start below average but end above average? How would you describe those? They're both having kids that leave in eighth grade well above average, but wouldn't you say, "Wow, there's really something going on with that school that's bringing in kids at third grade who are below average and they're leaving at eighth grade above average."

So that's what learning is, and I think it's striking to realize that if we were to just to take an average, we would rank that school that's doing such a good job of bringing kids at the third grade who are below average, all the way up to above average, we'd rank that school below the other, right? One school is, you might say it's like polishing bright apples. It's like you get all these kids with high socioeconomic status and you bring them in and you keep them there. Congratulations. And here's another school that's taking students who have not had much early childhood opportunity, or early great opportunity and they're launching them to really high levels.

Shouldn't we recognize that as opposed to penalizing that school for having low third grade test scores? Shouldn't we care that there's a ton of learning happening at one school and not at another? And we have to recognize at a snapshot that if you just look at the districts that are polishing bright apples, should we be giving them credit for that? Or should we also recognize a second criterion, which is how much learning is going on in these schools?

Jill Anderson: I can imagine people hearing this and Googling this and they're pulling up their community and they're seeing negative 12% learning rates, for the district, for the whole community and hitting the panic button.

Andrew Ho: What negative means here is below average, right? It does not mean that kids know less this year. In what ways would we want them to be concerned, right? You know that your school has high or low test scores on average, does that mean anything about what you can say about their learning rates? And the answer is you don't know anything. All this knowledge that we have in our heads about what good schools and not so good schools are based on these averages, which don't really tell you about learning. In a way I hope it forces people to reconsider their notion of what a good school is and then ask, "Wait a second, how can we do better? How can we make sure that our kids who are coming in above average and might be leaving more close to average, what can we do about that?" And the answer is that there's a whole bunch of schools and districts out there that have really high learning rates, perhaps we should learn from them.

And so I hope that the panic isn't from this notion that a school that has below average learning will always be such, and the work of anyone who deals with numbers to take an improvement mindset to them. To say that these are not fixed features of schools, these are not fixed features of districts. These are things we can change and all of us at the graduate school of education, whoever all about, it's like, "Learn to change the world," we say. So yeah, let's think about what we can do better. And so I hope the panic is not the paralyzing panic, it's the productive panic, right? It's like, "Okay, let's get to work," and figure out why there's so much variation in achievement and in progress and learning across these schools and districts and learn from the best of them so that that negative 12% becomes positive 12% in the future.

Jill Anderson: So we do want to look at learning rates more?

Andrew Ho: Well, for what purpose? Again, one of the stories in our discoveries is that gaps correlate strongly with segregation. And so one of the things we deeply do not want to do is encourage parents to use this to select the quote best schools on any metric, right? As opposed to saying, "This helps me to discover what every school in every district can do better." Because again, these numbers are malleable, right? We can do something about them. So yes, I think the level one goal is to complexify the notions of school quality, right? And to say that there are actually multiple criteria we might want to consider when we're thinking about how to figure out if a school is doing well.

But then, once we figure out if a school is doing well, the solution isn't to send all the kids to just those schools. That is our sort of darkest fear out of all of this. We do not want to simply resort everybody into high quality schools, however defined, we want to say there are lessons to learn in all of these schools that we could apply broadly so that everyone, to use the Lake Wobegon metaphor, everyone should be above average, right? So everyone should be continuously improving. And if you look under the hood of the data, what we've done is we've managed, again, we described it as like a patchwork quilt where each State and every year is its own little patch. And what we've done is through our methods and statistical and psychometric methods, we've managed to stitch all these different patches together into sort of a big picture.

I think it's only when you have that context, the silos create this kind of... You have these blinders on and you're only looking at Massachusets and you're only looking at 2019. You don't see change and progress and you don't get to contextualize it in a nine year history of spanning grades three through eight. And so what I'm really proud of is that we've managed to the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right? It's like we can see through the stitching the dramatic variability in test scores and in learning rates, and that I think is what we hope along the lines what we've seen is like, "Yeah, we've always known about proficiency and growth, but it's never been presented in a way where you can see all the constellations, all the pieces of the puzzle," and that's what we hope this project does.

Jill Anderson: Andrew Ho is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

An education podcast that keeps the focus simple: what makes a difference for learners, educators, parents, and communities

Where Have All the Students Gone?

Student Testing, Accountability, and COVID

Data Dialogue

Review: The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning

(An updated version of this piece is available at this link.)

The End of Homework by Etta Kralovec and John Buell offers a succinct and researched account of why homework does little to actually improve academic performance, and instead hurts a family’s overall well-being. Kralovec and Buell analyze and dissect homework studies over the last few decades, finding that most research supports their claims or, at-best, makes dubious claims on the affects of homework. Although written in 2000, The End of Homework makes arguments that are only strengthened today: homework is discriminatory toward the poor (and the wealth gap has grown), it separates families from their children (and families work longer hours, and homework assigned has increased), and academic results are mixed (and recent studies reflect this.)

At Human Restoration Project , one of the core systemic changes we suggest is the elimination of homework. Throughout this piece, I will include more recent research studies that add to this work. I believe that the adverse affects of homework are so strong that any homework assigned, outside of minor catching up or incredibly niche cases, does more harm than good.

Summarized within The End of Homework , as well as developmental psychologists, sociologists, and educators, are the core reasons why homework is not beneficial:

Homework is Inequitable

In the most practical terms, calls for teachers to assign more homework and for parents to provide a quiet, well-lit place for the child to study must always be considered in the context of the parents’ education, income, available time, and job security. For many of our fellow citizens, jobs have become less secure and less well paid over the course of the last two decades.

Americans work the longest hours of any nation . Individuals in 2006 worked 11 hours longer than their counterparts in 1979. In 2020, 70% of children live in households where both parents work. And the United States is the only country in the industrial world without guaranteed family leave. The results are staggering: 90% of women and 95% of men report work-family conflict . According to the Center for American Progress , “the United States today has the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world due to a long-standing political impasse.”

As a result, parents have much less time to connect with their children. This is not a call to a return to traditional family roles, or even to have stay-at-home parents. Rather, our occupational society is structured inadequately to allow for the use of homework, and Americans must change how labor laws demand their time. For those who work in entry level positions, such as customer service and cashiers, there is an average 240% turnover per year due to lack of pay, poor conditions, work-life balance, and mismanagement. Family incomes continue to decline for lower- and middle-class Americans, leaving more parents to work increased hours or multiple jobs. In other words, parents, especially poor parents, have less opportunities to spend time with their children, let alone foster academic “gains” via homework.

In an effort to increase engagement in homework, teachers have been encouraged to create interesting, creative assignments. Although this has good intentions, rigorous homework with increased complexity places more impetus on parents. As Gary Natrillo, an initial proponent of creative homework, stated later:

‘…not only was homework being assigned as suggested by all the ‘experts,’ but the teacher was obviously taking the homework seriously, making it challenging instead of routine and checking it each day and giving feedback. We were enveloped by the nightmare of near total implementation of the reform recommendations pertaining to homework…More creative homework tasks are a mixed blessing on the receiving end. On the one hand, they, of course, lead to higher engagement and interest for children and their parents. On the other hand, they require one to be well rested, a special condition of mind not often available to working parents…’

Time is a luxury to most Americans. With increased working hours, in conjunction with extreme levels of stress, many Americans don’t have the necessary mindset to adequately supply children with the attention to detail for complex homework. As Kralovec and Buell state,

To put it plainly, I have discovered that after a day at work, the commute home, dinner preparations, and the prospect of baths, goodnight stories, and my own work ahead, there comes a time beyond which I cannot sustain my enthusiasm for the math brain teaser or the creative story task.

Americans are some of the most stressed people in the world. Mass shootings, health care affordability, discrimination, sexual harassment, climate change, the presidential election, and literally: staying informed have caused roughly 70% of people to report moderate or extreme stress , with increased rates for people of color, LGBTQIA Americans, and other discriminated groups. 90% of high schoolers and college students report moderate or higher stress, with half reporting depression and lack of energy and motivation .

Perhaps the solution to academic achievement in America isn’t doubling down on test scores or increasing the work students do at home, but solving the underlying systemic inequities : the economic and discriminatory problems that plague our society? Kralovec and Buell note,

Citing the low test scores of American students has become a favorite cocktail party game. However, some scholars have offered a more nuanced explanation for the poor showing by U.S. students in international academic performance comparisons, suggesting that it may have more to do with high levels of childhood poverty and a lack of support for families in the United States than with low academic standards, shorter school days, and fewer hours spent on homework.

Finland, frequently cited as a model education system, enjoys some of the highest standards of living in the world:

Finland’s life expectancy is 81.8 years, compare to the US’ 78.7 years and a notable difference exists in the US between rich and poor . Further, America’s life expectancy is declining, the only industrialized country with this statistic .
Finland’s health care is rated best in the world and only spends $3,078 per capita, compared to $8,047 in the US.
Finland has virtually no homelessness , compared to 500,000 homeless in the United States .
Finland has the lowest inequality levels in the EU , compared to the United States with one of the highest inequality levels in the world . Research has demonstrated that countries with lower inequality levels are happier and healthier .

Outside of just convincing you to flat-out move to Finland, these statistics reflect that potentially — instead of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in initiatives to increase national test scores , such as homework strategies, curriculum changes, and nationwide “raising the bar” initiatives — the US should invest in programs that universally help our daily lives, such as universal healthcare and housing. The solution to test scores is rooted in solving America’s underlying inequitable society — shining a light on our core issues — rather than making teachers solve all of our community’s problems.

But Wait, Despite All This…Does Homework Even Work!?

‘Extensive classroom research of ‘time on task’ and international comparisons of year-round time for study suggest that additional homework might promote U.S. students’ achievement.’ This written statement by some of the top professionals in the field of homework research raises some difficult questions. More homework might promote student achievement? Are all our blood, sweat, and tears at the kitchen table over homework based on something that merely might be true? Our belief in the value of homework is akin to faith. We assume that it fosters a love of learning, better study habits, improved attitudes toward school, and greater self-discipline; we believe that better teachers assign more homework and that one sign of a good school is a good, enforced homework policy.

Numerous studies of homework reflect an inconsistent result. Not only does homework rarely demonstrate large, if any, academic gains for testing, there are many negative impacts on the family that are often ignored.

Countries that assigned the least amount of homework: Denmark, Czech Republic, had higher test scores than those with the most amount of homework: Iran, Thailand .
Quality of instruction, motivation, and ability are all correlated with student success in school. Yet homework may be marginal or counterproductive .
Of all homework assigned, homework only saw marginal increases in math and science standardized testing , and had no bearing on grades.
Homework added pressure and societal stress to those who already experienced the same at home , causing a further divide in academic performance (due to lack of time and financial stress.)

By bringing schoolwork home, the well-intentioned belief of promoting equity through high standards has the adverse affect of causing further inequity. Private and preparatory schools are notorious for extreme levels of homework assignment . Yet, many progressive schools assign no homework and achieve the same levels of college and career success . Again, the biggest predictor of college success has nothing to do with rigorous preparation, and everything to do with family income levels. 77% of students from high income families graduated from a highly competitive college, whereas 9% of students from low income families did the same .

School curriculum obsession in homework is likely rooted in studies that demonstrate increased test scores as a result of assigned homework. The End of Homework deciphers this phenomena:

Cooper’s work provides us with one more example of a problem that routinely bedevils all the sciences: the relationship between correlation and causality. If A and B happen simultaneously, we do not know whether A causes B or B causes A, or whether both phenomena occur casually together or are individually determined by another set of variables…Thus far, most studies in this area have amounted to little more than crude correlations that cannot justify the sweeping conclusions some have derived from them.

If other countries demonstrate educational success (albeit measured through standardized testing) with little to no assigned homework and limited school hours , shouldn’t we take a step back and analyze the system as a whole, rather than figure out better homework schemes?

A Reflection of Neoliberal Society

According to New York State’s Teacher of the Year in 1990:

‘[Schools] separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other’s lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop — then they blame the family for its family to be a family. It’s like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.’

Education often equates learning with work. I have to stop myself from behaving like an economics analysist: telling students to quit “wasting time”, stating that the purpose of the lesson is useful for future earnings, seeing everything as prep for college and career (and college is ultimately just for more earnings in a career), and making blanket assumptions that those who aren’t motivated will ultimately never contribute to society, taking on “low levels” of work that “aren’t as important” as other positions.

Since the nineteenth century, developmental psychology has been moving away from the notion that children are nothing more or less than miniature adults. In suggesting that children need to learn to deal with adult levels of pressure, we risk doing them untold damage. By this logic, the schoolyard shootings of recent years may be likened to ‘disgruntled employee’ rampages.

This mentality is unhealthy and unjust. The purpose of education should be to develop purpose. People live happier and healthier lives as a result of pursuing and developing a core purpose. Some people’s purpose is related to their line of work, but there is not necessarily a connection. However, the primary goal stated by districts, states, and the national government of the education system is to make “productive members of society.” When we double down on economic principles to raise complex individuals, it’s no wonder we’re seeing such horrific statistics related to childhood .

Further, the consistent pressure to produce for economic gain raises generations of young people to believe that wealth is a measurement of success and that specific lines of work create happiness. Teachers and parents are told to make their children “work hard” for future success and develop “grit.” Although grit is an important indicator of overcoming obstacles , it is not developed by enforcing grit through authoritarian classrooms or meaningless, long tasks . In fact, an argument could be made that many Americans accept their dramatically poor work-life balance and lack of access to needs such as affordable health care by being brought up in a society that rewards neoliberal tendencies of “working through it” to “eventually achieve happiness.”

Kralovec and Buell state,

Many of us would question whether our fighting with our children for twelve years about homework could possibly foster good habits. In contrast, participating in the decisions of the household and collaborating with others on common chores, from cooking to cleaning to doing routine repairs, are important life skills that also require good work habits. For many children, these habits are never learned because homework gets in the way of that work.

Americans have more difficulty than ever raising children, with increasing demands of time and rising childcare costs . Children often need to “pick up the slack” and help taking care of the home. In fact, children with chores show completely positive universal growth across the board . When teachers provide more and more homework, they take away from the parents’ ability to structure their household according to their needs. As written in The End of Homework ,

Most of us find we do not have enough time with our children to teach them these things; our ‘teaching’ time is instead taken up with school-mandated subjects. We often wonder if we wouldn’t have less tension in our society over prayer in schools if our children had more time for religious instruction at home and for participation in church activities. When school is the virtually exclusive center of the child’s educational and even moral universe, it is not surprising that so many parents should find school agendas (with which they may or may not agree) a threat to their very authority and identity.

Of course, this is not to say that it is all the teacher’s fault. Educators face immense pressure to carry out governmental/school policies that place test scores at the forefront. Many of these policies require homework , and an educator’s future employment is centered on enacting these changes:

As more academic demands are placed on teachers, homework can help lengthen the school day and thus ensure ‘coverage’ — that is, the completion of the full curriculum that each teacher is supposed to cover during the school year…This in itself places pressure on teachers to create meaningful homework and often to assign large amounts of it so that the students’ parents will think the teacher is rigorous and the school has high academic standards. Extensive homework is frequently linked in our minds to high standards.

Therefore, there’s a connection to be made between “work”-life balance of children and the people who are tasked with teaching them. 8% of the teacher workforce leaves every year , many concerned with work-life balance . Perhaps teachers see an increased desire to “work” students in their class and at home due to the pressures they face in their own occupation?

We have little opportunity to enjoy recreation, community events, local politics, or family life. Our diminished possibilities in this regard in turn reinforce our reliance on wages and the workplace. And even the family time that remains after the demands of work and commuting are met is increasingly structured by the requirements of the workplace and school.

The more we equate work with learning, and the more we accept a school’s primary purpose to prepare workers, the less we actually succeed at promoting academics. Instead, we bolster the neoliberal tendencies of the United States to work hard, yet comparably to other countries’ lifestyle gains, achieve little. The United States must examine the underlying inequities of peoples’ lives, rather than focus on increasing schools’ workloads and lessening children’s free time for mythical academic gains that lead to little change. Teacher preparation programs and popular authors need to stop promoting “ interesting and fun ways to teach ‘x’! ” and propose systemic changes that radically change the way education is done, including systemic changes to society at large. Only then will the United States actually see improved livelihoods and a better education system for all.

read this next

take a listen

Join the Movement

Stay informed.

I was just going to say that that is the ideal place to do it, because I think just biologically and whatever, when you're younger, you are more naturally a change agent, and have a better sense of vision, and have a longer time to be invested in the future, so that's actually the perfect place to be doing what you just said, Falami, is in schools, because that's where you've got this nexus of brilliance, and vision, and investment in 100 years from now or whatever. Not that we all can't be part of it, but you've got a nice concentration of people who are especially suited to creating that vision, and that change, and partnership with us elders.

Where's this from?

LIVE@CoSN2024: Exclusive Coverage

Study: Too much homework can lower test scores

Piling on the homework doesn’t help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores, the Huffington Post reports. That’s the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students’ academic performance. According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The same correlation is also seen when comparing homework time and test performance at schools within countries. Past studies have also demonstrated this basic trend…

Click here for the full story

Sign up for our K-12 newsletter

Recent Posts
‘Buyer’s remorse’ dogging Common Core rollout - October 30, 2014
Calif. law targets social media monitoring of students - October 2, 2014
Elementary world language instruction - September 25, 2014

Want to share a great resource? Let us know at [email protected] .

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

" * " indicates required fields

eSchool News uses cookies to improve your experience. Visit our Privacy Policy for more information.

Student GPA and test score gaps are growing—and could be slowing pandemic recovery

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, tom swiderski and tom swiderski postdoctoral research associate, epic - university of north carolina at chapel hill sarah crittenden fuller sarah crittenden fuller research associate professor - unc-chapel hill and epic @sarahcfuller1.

November 6, 2023

Administrative data from North Carolina shows that while students’ state exam scores have declined since pre-pandemic, their course grades are similar to pre-pandemic levels.
This growing gap between student GPAs and achievement could be contributing to parents’ confusion about the extent of their children’s needs for pandemic recovery supports and an under-utilization of recovery programs.
Strong communication between schools and communities will be key to ensuring the success of recovery efforts at the scale needed to reverse pandemic learning losses.

The harm to student learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented , and an incredible influx of resources—including $260 billion in federal government investment—has been dedicated to support schools’ recovery. Much of this money has been spent developing and expanding academic recovery efforts such as after-school tutoring and summer learning programs. Yet participation in recovery programs has been disappointingly low , often reaching no more than 20% to 30% of targeted students.

Although some students may not participate in recovery programs due to barriers related to program accessibility , experts suggest there may also be an “ urgency gap ” among parents, who may be underestimating the extent to which their children are behind. Surveys of parents have found that while the vast majority recognize that the pandemic harmed students’ math and reading achievement in general, most also report far more positive outlooks for their own children’s academic progress.

Understanding the urgency gap is vital. While tutoring and other recovery programs can be effective at improving student achievement, students cannot benefit if they do not participate, potentially slowing the pace of academic recovery.

In this piece, we describe one possible reason for the urgency gap – that while students’ test scores have fallen dramatically, their GPAs have not. And because parents often rely on report card grades to interpret how their children are doing in school, this growing gap between student GPAs and achievement may be contributing to parents’ confusion about the extent of their children’s needs for recovery supports.

Comparing post-pandemic grades and test scores

We begin by showing how students’ grades and test scores have changed since the onset of the pandemic using student-level data from North Carolina. 1 Figure 1 compares the percentage of students who earned an A or B in their math class and the percentage who met proficiency benchmarks on their end-of-grade state math exam in 2018-19 and 2021-22. In 2018-19, the percentage of students who earned an A or B in math was the same as the proficiency rate (54%). However, by 2021-22, there was a sizable gap between these metrics, as proficiency rates decreased much more than grades. As of 2021-22, the proficiency rate had fallen by 11 percentage points (to 43%) while the percentage of students earning As or Bs had fallen by just 3 points (to 51%).

Figure 2 examines this data another way, depicting the average test scores of students in 2018-19 and 2021-22 disaggregated by the letter grade they received in math. At every letter grade, post-pandemic students averaged lower scores on state exams than pre-pandemic peers who received the same grade in math. The average test score of students who earned an A in math in 2021-22 was 0.20 standard deviations lower than the scores of pre-pandemic peers who earned an A. For students who earned a B, the gap was 0.25 standard deviations, and similar results can be observed for all other letter grades. This highlights that even students with high course grades are scoring much lower on state exams than pre-pandemic peers who earned similar grades.

Understanding the difference between grades and test scores

Differences between standardized test scores and grades are not unexpected, as these are different measures that provide different insights into students’ performance in school. Standardized test scores offer a consistent criterion of students’ performance over time that is comparable across large populations and cohorts—a feature that makes them very useful for understanding pandemic impacts and recovery. At the same time, test scores provide only a snapshot of a student’s knowledge at a single point in time, which can be influenced by factors such as students’ wellness on the day of a test, general feelings of test anxiety, and ability to guess multiple choice questions. As a result, many students and parents may feel that test scores do not fully represent their or their child’s skills, knowledge, and efforts.

On the other hand, course grades reflect a mix of students’ mastery of content covered by their instructor, as measured by exams and quizzes, as well as positive participation and effort, such as speaking up in class, completing homework, and generally behaving well. Course grades are a more holistic measure of student performance, and research shows this can make them a better predictor of postsecondary success than test scores. However, this means that grades and test scores can diverge over time for many reasons, due to either students’ or teachers’ actions. For example, students might increase effort, or teachers might slow instructional pacing to cover less content, introduce more lenient grading policies, or grade on a curve. Course grades are therefore less useful for understanding COVID-19 recovery because it is not clear how these practices—including grading standards—may have changed over time.

“Grade inflation” is a term often used to describe the phenomenon where GPAs rise faster than test scores over time, which was occurring pre-pandemic . This provides a useful frame of reference for understanding the post-pandemic trends we observe in North Carolina and which have also been observed nationally . However, the post-pandemic version has also taken a very different form than pre-pandemic. Post-pandemic grade inflation has resulted from GPAs not decreasing despite drops in test scores rather than GPAs rising despite stagnant test scores. The post-pandemic gap between grades and test scores opened up in a much more pronounced and sudden way than was occurring pre-pandemic. And post-pandemic grades are holding steady despite the fact that not only has achievement worsened, but so have other indicators of student engagement, such as attendance and reported behavior problems .

Importantly, the post-pandemic version of grade inflation may also be due to very different—and potentially more transient—underlying motivations than pre-pandemic. Some degree of grade inflation could be reasonable in the current moment for many reasons. It may be appropriate to provide some additional leniency towards students given the events of recent years, perhaps even more so given the poor state of youth mental health . Dramatically increasing course failure rates could create a crisis of its own by decreasing student morale and engagement, potentially leading to higher dropout rates, whereas rewarding students’ efforts to get back on track could be beneficial for increasing engagement. Further, because of the impacts of the pandemic, teachers may be spending more time reviewing old content, leading them to be unable to cover all grade-level standards. If so, it may be unfair to grade students poorly if they are learning the material that is covered in class but display gaps in knowledge on state tests that are more comprehensive.

At the same time, this trend is not without consequences. Most importantly, one likely consequence that we see is that parents, who often rely on their children’s grades to interpret their performance in school, are severely underestimating how far behind their children are. This, in turn, may be contributing to an under-utilization of recovery programs and, ultimately, a slow and stalling recovery.

Moving forward

To ensure that parents are fully informed about the impacts of the pandemic on their children, states, districts, and schools should aim to make sure that parents receive clear, consistent, and regular feedback about how their children are performing on work they are completing this year as well as how they are performing compared to historic norms and benchmarks. This may mean working to make sure that parents see how test scores and grades provide different, valuable insights into student performance, know how to interpret test scores, and ultimately recognize that their children may need recovery services even if they are receiving As and Bs (indeed, students themselves should understand this as well).

Meanwhile, state and federal government investment into recovery services should not end without a stronger understanding of why programs are being underutilized, particularly given that students will likely need years of additional support to return to pre-pandemic achievement levels. If barriers to program take-up can be addressed, services could reach more students and have a greater impact on recovery. State and federal investment should support schools and districts to conduct more outreach to better understand the needs, concerns, and beliefs about the impacts of the pandemic within their communities.

Recovering from the pandemic remains a monumental challenge requiring substantial investment from students, parents, educators, and policymakers alike. Failing to achieve a strong recovery may hinder not only students’ educational prospects, but also life course outcomes related to employment, health, and well-being. Strong communication between schools and communities will be key to ensuring the success of recovery efforts at the scale needed to reverse pandemic losses.

How the ‘Stress Bias’ Affects Students’ Test Scores

Test anxiety is real. Even those who don’t experience extreme levels of stress when taking exams probably know someone whose skin goes clammy and stomach churns on test days. The condition is recognized by the Anxiety and Depression Society of America as a form of performance anxiety, due to fear of failure, lack of preparation, and poor testing history.

Unlike a normal amount of stress , test anxiety doesn’t lead to better results. As new research shows, under some circumstances, it can decrease test scores—sometimes by quite a bit.

Stress Bias: the Impact of Test Anxiety

Parents and teachers have long suspected that the stress of test-taking can influence students’ results. However, without formal research on the topic, it was hard to know how much of a difference it could make. A new study shows that stress bias decreases standardized test scores for some students. The effect is particularly severe for children exposed to other significant stressors outside of school, such as neighborhood violence and poverty .

These results may require states to reconsider the methods used to measure academic progress. If stress causes lower scores, annual standardized academic achievement exams may not accurately reflect some students’ skills and abilities. Since these scores have an impact on the courses students take, whether or not they are eligible to graduate, and which colleges they attend, the effects of stress bias extend far beyond the day of the test.

Testing, Stress, and Performance

The study, titled Testing, Stress, and Performance: How Students Respond Physiologically to High-Stakes Testing , is the work of researcher Jennifer Heissel and her team. The group measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol in students before, during, and after high-stakes exams. Once compiled, the results were powerful.

The students selected for the study attended school in New Orleans. They were already under significant amounts of stress due to family instability, neighborhood violence, and poverty, which affected their bodies’ ability to handle additional stressors. Researchers examined cortisol levels during weeks where no exams were held and compared the results to exam weeks.

Some students had marked increases or decreases in cortisol during exam weeks, and the changes showed up in exam results. The students who reacted strongly to the stress of testing scored 0.40 standard deviations lower than expected. These results suggest that exam scores are not necessarily a reflection of students’ abilities. Given the impact that standardized test scores have on future academic decisions, these findings are significant.

Of course, this is the first study to methodically examine the impact of stress on high-stakes test scores. A relatively small group of students were included, and all were from low-income backgrounds in New Orleans. Additional research may be needed to move forward with large-scale policy changes. In the meantime, there are steps teachers and parents can take to support overly anxious children.

Supporting Students Through Test Anxiety

The good news about test anxiety is that it can be managed. With guidance from parents and teachers, many students have successfully reduced their stress levels before and during exams. These are some of the techniques that have proven effective with students of all ages:

Increase opportunities for art, music, and movement during periods of high test-related stress. All of these areas are proven antidotes to academic performance anxiety.
Offer plenty of opportunities to review material. Eliminating the sense of being unprepared for the test reduces stress.
Practice test-taking. In some cases, anxiety comes from not knowing what to expect. Use sample questions and explain all parts of the answer sheet so students can clearly visualize how test day will unfold.
Explain the stakes. Students understand that certain tests are particularly important, and they sense teachers’ concerns about standardized state tests. However, they may be imagining consequences of poor scores that are far worse than reality. By discussing how test results are used, students who have catastrophized the process will understand that poor results do not spell the end of the world.
Value progress as much as—or more than—scores. If students are showing improved performance, take time out to celebrate.

Finally, be sure to provide unlimited reassurance. Beneath test-related stress lies any number of dark feelings. For example, students may believe that parents and teachers will think less of them if scores are low. Remind students to do their best, but be sure to note that test scores don’t impact the pride and affection you feel for them.

A college student walks on her campus holding her notebooks and class materials.

How am I Going to Pay for College?

April 16 2024

5 Major Benefits of Summer School

April 12 2024

A girl reads a poem in a green book with a slightly confused look on her face.

Inspiring an Appreciation for Poetry in Kids

April 9 2024

A mom comforts her daughters while sitting on the couch

A Parent’s Guide to Tough Conversations

April 2 2024

A mom and two kids sit on a bed and read a story together.

The Importance of Reading to Children and Its Enhancements to Their Development

March 26 2024

5 Steps to Master College-Level Reading

March 19 2024

A young boy sits on a tree stump with his stuffed animal, reading a book.

10 Timeless Stories to Inspire Your Reader: Elementary, Middle, and High Schoolers

March 15 2024

A boy lays down to read a book in a library

From Books to Tech: Why Libraries Are Still Important in the Digital Age

March 13 2024

A young student uses virtual reality to explore a new universe

The Evolution of Learning: How Education is Transforming for Future Generations

March 11 2024

The Ultimate Guide to Reading Month: 4 Top Reading Activities for Kids

March 1 2024

Two brothers watch fun YouTube videos together on their living room TV.

Make Learning Fun: The 10 Best Educational YouTube Channels for Kids

February 27 2024

High school students work together on a project.

The Value of Soft Skills for Students in the Age of AI

February 20 2024

Why Arts Education is Important in School

February 14 2024

A teacher greets parents at a parent-teacher conference

30 Questions to Ask at Your Next Parent-Teacher Conference

February 6 2024

Two students build a vehicle on an interactive white board

Smart Classrooms, Smart Kids: How AI is Changing Education

January 31 2024

A teen smiles as she inputs an order in a POS within a cafe.

Four Life Skills to Teach Teenagers for Strong Resumes

January 25 2024

Students pose on large cement blocks while on a field trip

Exploring the Social Side of Online School: Fun Activities and Social Opportunities Await

January 9 2024

A girl plays in a moving box while her parents unpack in their new home.

Six Ways Online Schools Can Support Military Families

A student works on equations on a chalkboard.

Is Your Child Ready for Advanced Learning? Discover Your Options.

January 8 2024

A girl wears headphones while she works at her laptop on her online school.

Online School Reviews: What People Are Saying About Online School

January 5 2024

Two children use cookie cutters and a rolling pin to make holiday cookie cutouts.

Your Ultimate Guide to Holiday Fun and Activities

December 18 2023

A child colors a printed coloring sheet with a cup of crayons next to their hand.

Free Printable Holiday Coloring Pages to Inspire Your Child’s Inner Artist

December 12 2023

A young girl hangs out of a moving box while her parents unpack at their new house.

Five Reasons to Switch Schools Midyear

December 5 2023

A parent helps their child with their online school.

A Parent’s Guide to Switching Schools Midyear

November 29 2023

A student holds her notebook and pen while standing in front of her chalkboard at home with her study schedule written on it.

Building Strong Study Habits: Back-to-School Edition

November 17 2023

Two students listen to music in their online classroom.

Turn Up the Music: The Benefits of Music in Classrooms

November 7 2023

Robotics for kids. Two children sit on the ground and play with a robot together.

A Parent’s Guide to Robotics for Kids

November 6 2023

A mom helps her daughter with online school

Six Ways Online Learning Transforms the Academic Journey

October 31 2023

Young girl leans against a fence at school while looking at her cell phone.

How to Get Ahead of Cyberbullying

October 30 2023

A mother comforts her child by gently touching his head and speaking to him.

Bullying’s Effect on Students and How to Help

October 25 2023

A teen girl hides behind a brick wall at school out of sight from two boys.

Can You Spot the Warning Signs of Bullying?

October 16 2023

A teen male in a yellow shirt sits in front of his computer at home.

Could the Online Classroom Be the Solution to Bullying?

October 11 2023

A young girl watches as her mom smiles toward her cell phone.

Bullying Prevention Starts With Parents

October 9 2023

Stressed High School Teacher Trying To Control Class

Teacher Stress: Top Causes for Teacher Burnout and Its Impact on Students

May 23 2018

student looking at a test holding head in hands

How State Testing Affects Students

May 16 2018

How to Combat Students’ Stress

June 10 2014

Join our community

Welcome! Join Learning Liftoff to participate in America’s premier community focused on helping students reach their full potential.

Excessive screen time linked to lower student test scores

Are children getting too much screen time?

That question is getting more scrutiny in the wake of recent national standardized tests that showed a decline in reading comprehension among fourth- and eighth-graders.

In Spokane and the rest of the nation, educators have noticed.

“In some ways these devices enhance learning,” said Lisa Laurier, a professor at Whitworth University who specializes in elementary education. “But sometimes the negatives outweigh the positives.”

One study found children ages 8 to 12 are spending an average of five hours a day looking at screens that have nothing to do with their schoolwork.

Laurier said she worries about the long-term effects of heavy screen time, such as the overstimulation of young minds by flashing images.

“You end up with children who seem distracted, who lose their ability to concentrate,” said Laurier, who also worries some school districts are over-reliant on tablets because federal grants make them cheaper than printed materials.

Meanwhile, local officials say they’re working hard to strike an instructional balance.

“Our district on the whole is very mindful of how we distribute these materials,” said Scott Kerwein, director of technology and information at Spokane Public Schools.

Kerwein, who also serves as a teacher counselor, said the addition of screens allows one group of students in a given classroom to work semi-independently while a teacher works one-on-one with other students.

“We know that tech is going to be part of student life now and moving forward,” said Brian Coddington, the district’s director of communications and public relations. “We’re trying to make sure that we help teachers find ways to be selective.”

Everyone agrees on two main points: screens are here to stay and children must be guided toward a balance.

Even as the National Assessment of Educational Progress – often called “the nation’s report card” – was released late last month, independent analysis showed some troubling trends.

The nonprofit Common Sense Media’s annual census of children’s media use, released the same week as the NAEP, found that 94 percent of English/language arts teachers surveyed said they used digital programs for core curriculum activities several times a month.

Using screens for class instruction and homework comes on top of the average of five hours a day.

That too raises a question about communication between parents and teachers: Do they compare notes? And do they have time to do so?

One thing is certain, according to the NAEP data: Locally and nationally, students have lost ground since the 2017 tests on both main reading content areas: literary experience, such as fiction analysis, and reading for information, such as finding evidence to support an argument.

Both grades declined significantly in both areas from 2017 to 2019, but the drop was larger for literary skills. In fact, eighth-graders perform worse now than they did in 2009 in literary experience.

An Education Week analysis of the NAEP data showed a relationship between high-screen and digital-device use and lower proficiency on the test.

For example, students who used digital devices for reading fewer than 30 minutes a day scored on average 8 scale points higher than those who used computers in language arts for longer periods of time.

These light digital users scored 26 scale points higher than the students who spent the longest reading periods on digital devices, four hours or more a day.

To put that into context, one year of school equals roughly 12 points on the NAEP’s 500-point scale.

However, according to Laurier, there’s even more to worry about as children spend hours in front of laptops, tablets and smartphones.

“What we’re seeing,” Laurier said, “is that the brain is starting to develop behaviors that look like ADHD.”

Flashing lights, on-screen movements and the constant shifting of images may contribute to greater distractions and loss of ability to concentrate.

And while the internet and videos offer opportunities to develop background on academic materials, annotation is more difficult on a screen.

“That limits kids to some extent … and comprehension is impaired,” Laurier said.

From prenatal care to pediatrics, Providence is creating a healthier future for families

Like many expectant mothers, Miranda Kekauoha had a plan.

Pros and Cons of Homework: What You Should Know

Affiliate Disclaimer

As an affiliate, we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases. We get commissions for purchases made through links on this website from Amazon and other third parties.

Homework can be a great tool for students to improve their academic performance, but there are also some drawbacks.

Some pros to assigning homework are that it can help students practice and master the material they learned in class, it can help students develop good study habits, and it can give students a sense of accomplishment. Some cons to assigning homework are that it can be a burden for students if they have a lot of homework to do, it can take away time from family and friends, and it can cause students to stress out.

In this post, I am going to explore the various benefits and drawbacks of using homework in your classroom. Let’s get started!

Pros of homework

Homework can be a great tool for you to improve the learning process of your students if you use it correctly. The following are some of the benefits of homework for teaching and learning:

1. It helps students learn.

Homework has been proven to help students learn effectively. It can help them retain information, increase their focus and improve their recall. By providing a routine for homework, students are able to better manage their time and stay on track with their education.

For example, homework can help students keep track of their progress and reinforce what they have learned. It can also help them focus on what they are doing in class, which will improve the amount of time that they spend in class.

2. It improves test scores.

Homework is a common assignment that students receive in school. It can be thought of as a way for teachers to help students learn and practice the material they have learned. Research has shown that homework can improve students’ test scores. This is because homework helps students learn the material more thoroughly and retain it better.

If a student does their homework, they will be able to answer questions from the test that they will take on that topic. The more homework a student does, the better their test scores will be. For example, in one study, it was found that homework helps improve students’ scores on standardized tests . The more homework a student doe s, the better it is for their grades.

3. It increases student engagement and motivation.

Homework has been proven to increase student engagement and motivation. When done correctly, homework can help students learn by engaging them in challenging tasks and helping them develop skills.

Homework can have a number of benefits for students, both in terms of engagement and motivation. By helping to reinforce the learning process, homework can help students retain information better and increase their understanding of what they are studying. With this, students become engaged and motivated to continue learning.

Additionally, homework can provide a sense of accomplishment and help students feel responsible for their own learning. This motivates students to engage in their studies.

Finally, homework can be used as an opportunity for students to connect with other classmates and share ideas about the material they are studying. Connecting and sharing ideas with classmates about homework helps students become engaged and motivated.

4. It enhances productivity.

Homework has been shown to be beneficial to student productivity in the classroom. Homework allows students to focus on their work and learn more about the material being taught. It also helps students develop better study habits, which can lead to them performing better in class.

Additionally, homework can provide a sense of accomplishment that can encourage students to continue learning. Overall, homework enhances student productivity in the classroom by helping them focus on their work and learn more about the material being taught.

5. It teaches responsibility.

Every student knows the feeling of dread when they have to do their homework. For some, it can be tedious and time-consuming. But homework has a far bigger purpose than just helping students pass exams-it teaches them how to be responsible citizens in the classroom.

Homework can help students develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, organizational skills, and time management skills. It also encourages them to stay on top of their studies and stay up-to-date with new information. In short, homework helps students become better learners overall.

While there are many benefits to doing homework, it can also be frustrating when it’s not done on time or when it’s not done well. That’s why teachers value homework so much; it helps students learn how to be responsible members of society.

6. Homework develops time management skills.

Many students believe that homework is a waste of time because they think it only helps teachers track their progress and keeps them from having fun. In reality, homework is one of the most important tools teachers have to help students develop time management skills.

The reason homework helps students develop these skills is because it forces students to focus on their schoolwork in addition to their other responsibilities. By doing this, students learn how to manage their time better and stay on track with their goals.

Additionally, homework can also help students learn how to problem-solve and work independently. When students are able to do these things, they are more likely to be successful in the classroom.

In all, homework can help students learn how to manage their time by planning and organizing their work, dividing up tasks into manageable chunks, prioritizing homework over other responsibilities, and scheduling time for schoolwork.

7. It helps students develop study skills.

When students are assigned homework, they are learning to develop important study skills. Homework helps students learn how to organize and focus their attention, manage their time, and build discipline. It also teaches them how to solve problems. These skills will help the student in the classroom and in life.

For example, a student who can better organize their time and work independently may be more likely to finish homework assignments that are harder.

8. Homework builds self-discipline.

When students work on their homework, they are developing self-discipline. Self-discipline is the ability to focus, organize and manage time, plan, solve problems, and follow directions. Self-discipline is vital to success in school and in life.

For example, a student who has developed self-discipline is less likely to be distracted by friends and television, which are two common distractions that many students face in school.

9. Homework helps students learn to work independently.

When students are required to complete their homework, they become more independent learners. They gain skills in time management, organization, and problem-solving. These skills will help them in the classroom and in life.

For example, a student who has learned to work independently is more likely to be able to plan and schedule his or her time throughout the day, which will help him or her become more organized.

10. Homework helps students learn to follow directions.

In the classroom, following directions can be difficult for students. This is especially true for students who have difficulty paying attention to what is happening in class. Homework can help students learn how to follow directions.

By doing homework, students are required to complete a task that has been assigned by the teacher. This makes it easier for the student to pay attention in class and follow directions.

For example, students often get homework that requires them to pay attention and follow directions before completing the tasks assigned to them. With that, they learn to follow instructions and directions, which is a critical skill in life.

11. It enhances critical thinking skills.

How does homework enhance the critical thinking skills of students in the classroom? Homework can help improve the critical thinking skills of students in the classroom by requiring them to apply their knowledge and skills in a practical context.

In addition, homework can also help students learn how to use their critical thinking skills to solve problems. Furthermore, homework can help students develop patience and perseverance when faced with difficult tasks. Overall, homework helps students become better thinkers and more effective learners.

12. It boosts academic achievement.

Homework can boost academic achievement by helping students focus and retain information, work ahead in their lessons, and build valuable study skills.

Additionally, staying organized and completing tasks on time can help students build good habits that will carry over into other areas of their lives. For example, homework helps students develop skills that propel them to become successful in the classroom.

13. It promotes teamwork and cooperation.

Many people believe that homework promotes teamwork and cooperation among students in the classroom. This is because homework often requires students to work together on tasks, which helps them learn how to work cooperatively.

Additionally, when students are required to complete homework, they are more likely to try hard and cooperate with their classmates. This is because they know that if they do their homework, they will receive good grades.

For example, when students are given group homework, it can help them to learn how to cooperate and work with other people to achieve a particular task.

14. Prepare for future academic challenges.

Homework can help students better prepare for future academic challenges. This is because it allows them to develop skills that will be useful in their academic careers.

For example, homework can help students learn how to organize their information, study for tests, and think critically. In addition, homework can also help students build vocabulary and learn new concepts.

15. It promotes good work habits.

The benefits of homework are well known among educators, but what about students? There are many reasons why homework promotes good work habits among students.

One reason is that it helps students learn how to manage their time. They learn how to prioritize and how to plan their days. Homework also teaches critical-thinking skills. Students must be able to analyze information and come up with solutions on their own.

Homework can also help strengthen relationships between parents and children, as parents support and supervise students to complete their homework. Parents can see the value in homework, and children may have a better attitude towards school if they know their parents expect them to complete their work.

16. It enhances problem-solving skills.

Problem-solving is a critical skill for students to develop. Problem-solving is the process of making decisions about how to solve problems. Homework can help students learn problem-solving skills by providing opportunities to practice them. In fact, homework has been shown to improve problem-solving skills .

One reason why homework is so effective in teaching problem-solving skills is that it provides a consistent and systematic format for practicing these skills. Homework assignments provide students with opportunities to practice critical thinking skills, identify and solve problems, and develop persistence. Additionally, homework can help students learn how to work cooperatively with others. All of these abilities are essential for success in school and in life.

17. A greater understanding of the material.

Homework has been shown to enhance a greater understanding of the material among students. This is because homework allows students to practice what they have learned and to reinforce it. It also allows them to explore the material further and experiment with it.

In addition, homework can help students develop their critical thinking skills. This is because homework helps students not to only understand the material, but to also organize it and think about it. It can help them develop their memory and recall abilities, which are essential for success in school and life.

Cons of homework

When you don’t use homework appropriately in the classroom, the following problems will arise:

1. It can leave students feeling overwhelmed.

Homework can be a daunting task for students, leaving them feeling overwhelmed and stressed. As homework has become more and more common in schools, students are often left with little choice but to complete it.

This can lead to students feeling overwhelmed and stressed, as they have no break from the workload and are often expected to perform well in class while also completing the homework. This can create a difficult balance for students, as they are faced with two competing demands.

2. It can be a distraction from other activities or interests.

Homework can be a distraction from other activities or interests because it can be time-consuming, boring, and repetitive. It can also stress people out, which can lead to problems at school or in their personal lives. There are ways to make homework less of a distraction and more of a learning experience. For example, teachers could make assignments that are relevant to the class material, make sure the homework is done in a reasonable amount of time, and give students feedback on their work.

There are a few reasons why homework can be a distraction from other activities or interests. One reason is that homework often requires concentration and focus, which can be difficult to maintain when there are other distractions around. Additionally, many students find it boring or tedious to do homework, which can lead to them losing interest in the task overall.

Finally, because homework often takes up a large amount of time each night, it can prevent students from spending time with friends or family members, which can also lead to boredom and loneliness.

3. It can create stress and anxiety in students.

Homework can create stress and anxiety in students for a variety of reasons. For some, homework can be a daunting task that requires hours of uninterrupted concentration. For others, it may be a source of frustration due to the lack of consistency in its delivery or because it conflicts with other duties outside of school.

Regardless of the reason, homework can often lead to feelings of stress and frustration. This is particularly true for students who are struggling academically or who have other responsibilities at home. Consequently, homework can be a major contributor to stress and anxiety in students.

4. It can lead to cheating.

Cheating on homework has become a common phenomenon among students across the globe. There are many reasons why this may be the case, but one of the most common reasons is that homework can be a source of stress for students. When assignments are difficult or when there is pressure to perform well, some students may feel like they have to cheat in order to get through them.

Another reason why cheating on homework can occur is that it can be an easy way for students to get ahead. If they know the answers to certain questions, they can simply copy them off of their classmates and submit their work as their own. This type of cheating is unfair to other students who have worked hard on their assignments.

And finally, it can be a way for students to hide their mistakes or try to cheat on tests. All of these reasons are why homework should not be given out as punishment, but rather as a way to help students learn and improve.

5. It can cause health problems.

How can homework cause health problems for students? Numerous studies have shown that a large number of students experience negative health effects from doing homework. These health problems can include stress, anxiety, insomnia, and even depression.

One reason why homework can be so problematic is that it often takes up a lot of time and energy that should be spent on other activities. Additionally, homework can be extremely tedious and requires a great deal of concentration. For these reasons, many students find it difficult to complete it proficiently.

Consequently, excessive amounts of homework may actually be harmful to your overall health.

6. It can interfere with family time.

Homework can interfere with students’ family time if the student is not able to complete their homework in a reasonable amount of time. This can lead to tension between the student and their parents, as well as less time for the student to spend with their families.

Excessive homework can create stress for parents, who may have to pick up the children after school or help them with their studies. Ultimately, homework can cause tension between students and their parents, and it can be a barrier to communication between the two parties.

There are many benefits to having a homework system in place, but it must be done in a way that does not interfere with family time.

7. It can interfere with sleep.

Homework can interfere with the sleep of students for a variety of reasons. For some students, homework can lead to feelings of overwhelm and stress. This can disrupt the natural sleep cycle and cause students to have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Additionally, completing homework can take up time that could be spent relaxing and enjoying downtime with friends or family. As a result, homework may actually reduce the amount of sleep that students get each night.

8. Too much homework can affect students’ achievement.

Too much homework can have negative consequences for students’ academic achievement and future success. Too much homework can lead to a decrease in student productivity, diminished focus, and diminished enjoyment of learning.

Furthermore, it has been shown that students who do too much homework tend to have lower grades and lower test scores. There are several reasons why too much homework can have these detrimental effects.

First, when students are excessively busy with assigned work, they may lose opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities or other enrichment programs that could help them improve their skills and knowledge.

Second, when students become bogged down by excessive amounts of homework, they may find it difficult to devote sufficient time to studying for tests or completing other academic tasks.

Third, when students are spending too much time working on schoolwork rather than engaging in other enjoyable activities, they may lose interest in learning and forfeit valuable opportunities for personal growth.

All of the above negatively impact the academic achievement of students.

9. Homework can lead to boredom.

Many students find homework to be a tedious and time-consuming chore. This can lead to boredom and a lack of focus in the classroom, which can adversely affect student learning. Too much homework can actually make students feel tired and stressed, making them less likely to enjoy their schoolwork.

To conclude, homework can be a great way to help students learn and retain information. If done correctly, however, homework provides valuable instruction that reinforces what was learned in class. Too much of it, on the other hand, can result in students feeling overwhelmed and not getting the benefits they need from their studies. It’s important for educators to strike a balance between providing enough challenges for students while also ensuring they are well-rested so they are able to excel academically.

About the author

Latest posts

Enhancing classroom communication with visual aids.

As a teacher, I’ve noticed that students often lose interest quickly. However, when I use visual aids in my lessons, the classroom becomes much more engaging. I want to share with you 15 effective ways that visual aids have made learning more exciting. These tools, which include interactive whiteboards and detailed mind maps, do more…

Boosting Student Participation: 13 Communication Tips for Success

As an educator, my goal is to find effective ways to increase student participation in the classroom. It’s important to understand that communication plays a crucial role in engaging students. In this article, I will share 13 communication tips that have proven to be successful in creating a positive classroom environment and fostering open dialogue…

Why Is Empathy Essential for Effective Classroom Communication?

Empathy is really important when we talk with our students. When we understand how they feel, it helps remove barriers and makes learning easier. Empathy builds trust, makes the classroom a supportive place, and gets students truly involved. When we pay attention to each student’s specific situation and treat them with respect, we’re doing more…

share this!

August 18, 2020

Smartphones are lowering student's grades, study finds

by Rutgers University

The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting students' long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on exams, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study.

The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology , found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework but lower exam scores—a half to a full letter grade lower on exams—were more likely to get their homework answers from the internet or another source rather than coming up with the answer themselves.

"When a student does homework by looking up the answers, they usually find the correct answer, resulting in a high score on the assignment," said lead author Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers-New Brunswick's School of Arts and Sciences. "However, when students do that, they rapidly forget both the question and answer. Consequently, they transform homework from what has been, until now, a useful exercise into a meaningless ritual that does not help in preparing for exams."

The research also found that while 14 percent of students scored lower on exams than homework in 2008, that number jumped to 55 percent in 2017 as the use of smartphones for homework has become more common.

Glass says when students read a homework question, they should think about it, generate the answer on their own and commit to that answer.

"If the student does this first and then finds the correct answer online, the student is likely to remember the answer, which will have a significant long-term effect on subsequent exam performance," said Glass, whose goal was to determine when a student knows a particular fact, whether they remember it and can generalize it.

The study included 2,433 Rutgers-New Brunswick students in 11 different lecture courses. Over the 11-year period more than 232 different questions were created.

Working with co-author and graduate student Mengxue Kang, Glass and Kang's study is a part of an ongoing project to use technology to monitor academic performance and to assess the effects of new instructional technologies, like smartphones and the Internet, on how students perform in school.

Provided by Rutgers University

Explore further

Feedback to editors

European XFEL elicits secrets from an important nanogel

6 hours ago

Chemists introduce new copper-catalyzed C-H activation strategy

7 hours ago

Scientists discover new way to extract cosmological information from galaxy surveys

Compact quantum light processing: New findings lead to advances in optical quantum computing

Some plant-based steaks and cold cuts are lacking in protein, researchers find

8 hours ago

Merging nuclear physics experiments and astronomical observations to advance equation-of-state research

Which countries are more at risk in the global supply chain?

The Italian central Apennines are a source of CO₂, study finds

Dramatic burning of royal remains reveals Maya regime change

Accelerating the discovery of new materials via the ion-exchange method

Relevant physicsforums posts, motivating high school physics students with popcorn physics.

Apr 3, 2024

How is Physics taught without Calculus?

Mar 29, 2024

Why are Physicists so informal with mathematics?

Mar 24, 2024

The changing physics curriculum in 1961

Suggestions for using math puzzles to stimulate my math students.

Mar 21, 2024

The New California Math Framework: Another Step Backwards?

Mar 14, 2024

Checking phones in lectures can cost students half a grade in exams

Jul 27, 2018

Doing homework is associated with change in students' personality

Oct 6, 2017

How expectations impact actual exam scores

Jan 25, 2018

Scholar suggests ways to craft more effective homework assignments

Oct 1, 2015

How much math, science homework is too much?

Mar 23, 2015

Study of first-time smartphone users reveals devices may be detrimental to learning process

Jul 7, 2015

Recommended for you

Training of brain processes makes reading more efficient

Apr 18, 2024

Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order

Apr 17, 2024

Earth, the sun and a bike wheel: Why your high-school textbook was wrong about the shape of Earth's orbit

Apr 8, 2024

Touchibo, a robot that fosters inclusion in education through touch

Apr 5, 2024

More than money, family and community bonds prep teens for college success: Study

Research reveals significant effects of onscreen instructors during video classes in aiding student learning

Mar 25, 2024

Let us know if there is a problem with our content

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter

3 Strategies to Help Your Child Fix Low Test Scores

At MEK Review, we often hear concerns from parents that go something like this: My child is receiving 90% or higher on homework but is getting low test scores.

This can be frustrating for students and parents alike who want to know why this is happening and how they can fix it.

Let’s start with why this happens in the first place.

The Problem

1. time management.

Most teachers assign homework with the idea that students will spend around 30 minutes completing the assignment. In reality, some students actually take several hours to complete an assignment.

Your child’s dedication in spending so much time on his or her homework might seem like a good thing (and it can be!), but it might explain why there’s a discrepancy between his or her high homework scores and low tests scores.

Almost all tests and quizzes are given in class under a certain time limit. So, students who do well on homework might not be able to repeat that performance when under time constraints.

2. Lack of Understanding

We just discussed the timed aspect of a quiz or test, but students who struggle with time management on a test rarely do so just because they are naturally slower test-takers. Usually, it is because they don’t really understand the concepts taught in the class to begin with. There is a reason they are spending hours on homework that the teacher most likely designed to take 30 to 40 minutes — lack of understanding.

So after hours of reviewing their notes, using their textbooks, and maybe even receiving outside help, their homework scores are fairly good, even as their test and quiz scores stagnate.

This often gives parents the false impression that their child actually understands the material and is just “bad at taking tests.” But often the low test scores correctly reflect the students’ abilities — they simply haven’t mastered the concepts.

This can be a sign that the student is behind in the class or finds it challenging.

3. Weak Reading Comprehension Skills

If your child is struggling in science and math, you might be tempted to skip this section. Don’t!

Reading comprehension is a skill that impacts every class, even math (think of all those word problems on standardized tests). Students who lack these skills are unable to differentiate between important and unimportant details; they have a hard time understanding the overarching message or main idea of a text; and frequently have a lower level of vocabulary.

When taking a test, students with weak reading comprehension skills are typically slower, less confident in what is being asked of them, and prone to careless errors.

4. Lack of Study Skills

One of the most under-taught skills in schools today is how to effectively study .

Students are taught concepts, facts, and even more challenging skills such as analyzing and synthesizing ideas. But few students are explicitly taught how to study. This especially hurts students when they take a more challenging class, in which there is either more breadth or depth when it comes to the material.

Do they break material down for themselves into manageable chunks? Should they utilize their homework, handouts, and in-class notes? How much time should they devote to studying? Students don’t know, and what’s worse is sometimes they don’t even know that they should know.

This is why students might be able to master individual homework assignments, but comprehensive tests that cover multiple concepts are a challenge. For more studying tips, read this blog to find out how to break bad study habits .

5. Lack of Test-Taking Skills

It’s true that sometimes parents mistakenly believe their child is a “poor test taker,” when really their child genuinely doesn’t understand the material. Sometimes however, this suspicion may be correct. Your student may not know the best way to tackle a test.

Some students struggle to maintain the intense focus often required of a test. Other students consistently make careless mistakes. Test-taking, like studying, is a skill, and it’s a skill often not taught in school (just like study habits).

The Solution

1. understand the problem.

You are already making great progress on this step simply by reading this!

You have now read several reasons why your child might be receiving low test scores. Now, it’s time to determine which of these reasons applies to your child.

Is it a time issue? Does he not really understand the content? Does she have no study plan?

Most likely the answer is yes to more than one of these questions. But to really know, you need to find out from your child. Just asking him or her what the problem is, though, might not be that effective. After all, students often don’t even realize themselves why they are struggling; they just know that they are.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

How long do you spend on homework? Is that how long your teacher predicted it would take?
Do you feel like you understand what is happening in class?
Do you enjoy the class and feel motivated to do well in it?
How do you study for tests? Do you have any strategies or methods that you use?
What kind of questions do you miss on your tests?

It may also be helpful to ask the teacher for some insight as well. They often have the inside scoop on certain intangible aspects of your child’s performance. Does he raise his hand in class a lot? Does she seem engaged in the material? All of this would be helpful to ask and to know.

2. Build Strong Study Habits

This is one of the most important habits you can teach your child for his or her current and future studies.

Here are some of the basics:

Have your child list the materials covered in class, by topic.

Once they’ve listed all the different topics, it becomes much easier to divide those items into manageable studying chunks .

For instance, after meeting with his Language Arts teacher, one of our MEK Review students and his parents came up with the following list for grammar topics currently covered and to be covered in class:

Subject Verb agreement – covered
Verb tense – covered
Semi-colons – covered
Colons – covered
Commas – upcoming
Coordinating conjunctions – upcoming
Subordinate conjunctions – upcoming

Once the material has been divided into more manageable chunks, plan a date and time that he or she should review each section. Make this schedule visible and concrete: Put it on the calendar hanging in her room. Post it on your refrigerator door. Schedule an alarm on his phone.

Be as specific as possible – you will study at this time, on this day, for this long. Make sure your child is part of this process and agrees to abide by the schedule. Talk to him or her about what times work best, and when he or she feels most focused and motivated. However, then make sure your child sticks to the agreed upon schedule.

Talk to your child about how they utilize homework and class materials. Most students think that completing their homework is a form of studying. It isn’t! They are completing an assignment. Even if they get a 100% on a homework assignment, it doesn’t mean they will remember any of the concepts come test day.

When making a study schedule with your child, make sure students spend time studying material and not just completing assignments. That means reviewing previous homework assignments, class notes, in-class assignments, and previous quizzes and tests.

Help your child learn multiple methods of studying. Not everybody likes to just stare at a page of notes. The good news is there are many ways to study: making flashcards, completing online quizzes, or reading supplementary material about a subject. Usually, a combination of these strategies yields the best results.

3. Seek Outside Help

As previously mentioned, sometimes the main reason students earn low test scores is because they truly don’t understand the concepts or because they have poor test-taking skills.

Creating study plans, talking to teachers, and identifying the problem will only get your child so far. There is a point where you need professional help to get your child back on track, so he or she can master difficult concepts and learn the important skills of time management, test-taking, and studying. This is where MEK Learning Circles can help.

About MEK Learning Circles

For instance, our Critical Reading Circles program is perfect for students who need to improve their time management and reading comprehension skills. In this course, students read a variety of fiction and non-fiction passages of increasing difficulty levels, answer questions about the passages and write a critical essay in a timed environment. All the while, students receive feedback and strategies from expert instructors.

It’s important to remember that building positive habits is not something that happens overnight. It requires effort and time from students. However, once they learn these skills, they will have lifelong habits that benefit them for their entire education.

Register Today

The earlier you begin, the better. Place your kid ahead of the curve by checking out our MEK Learning Circles program, which keeps students mentally in shape when it comes to disciplined studying and hands-on learning. And our MLC program gives students the strategies to improve low test scores.

Call 855-346-1410 or contact us to get started today.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

Rachel Erwin

Rachel is the Dean of Faculty, in charge of teacher training and material development. She teaches College Test Prep, H.S. Test Prep, and College Application Essays. Within the English Department, she serves as a coordinator for the Exam Prep team, working diligently to ensure all students’ success. With her clear and systematic approach to teaching, she helps students make huge improvements.

computer-with-stickers-backpack-and-open-notebook-with-notes-and-graphs

STAY POSTED

Don’t miss the next insider event.

SET YOUR CHILD UP SUCCESS

IMAGES

CSE 457 Homework and Exam Scores
Too Much Homework Can Lower Test Scores
CSE 457 Homework and Exam Scores
Pin on Interesting Facts
How Much Homework Is Enough?
CSE 457 Homework and Exam Scores

VIDEO

#Class#Homework#Test#subscribe #viral #SkillswithSaniya
WOKE Kindergarten Is A Massive Failure
SLPS Elementary Attendance PSA
Communities and educators address learning loss
The Anxious Generation, Brought To You By Smartphones
New study predicts learning loss will shrink Arizona's economy by billions

COMMENTS

Spending Too Much Time on Homework Linked to Lower Test Scores
In surveying the homework habits of 7,725 adolescents, this study suggests that for students who average more than 100 minutes a day on homework, test scores start to decline. The relationship ...
Too Much Homework Can Lower Test Scores, Researchers Say
In fact, it can lower their test scores. That's the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students' academic performance. According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data ...
PDF Does Homework Really Improve Achievement? Kevin C. Costley, Ph.D ...
statistics have shown that teachers are attempting to remedy low test scores by giving students more homework (O'Neill 2008). ... particularly high and low performing students; it is counterproductive for students who are ... (O'Neill, 2008). Some believe that homework can be beneficial, but is sometimes over used and the pros are ...
Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?
The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th ...
Key Lessons: What Research Says About the Value of Homework
Other studies indicate that students whose parents are more involved in their homework have lower test scores and class grades — but this may be because the students were already lower performing and needed more help from their parents than did higher-performing students. (Balli, Wedman, and Demo 1997; Cooper, Lindsay, and Nye 2000; Epstein ...
Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?: If So, How Much Is ...
The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in second grade did better on the math tests; third and fourth graders did better on English skills and vocabulary tests; fifth graders on social studies tests; ninth through 12th ...
Low Test Scores Have Educators Worried, Survey Shows
The 2020-21 test scores, while low, aren't his biggest concern in this new landscape. Instead, it's behavior and social-emotional skills, as students re-learn the routines of school.
Heavier Homework Load Linked to Lower Math, Science Performance, Study Says
And after 90 to 100 minutes of homework, they found, test scores declined. The relationship between minutes of homework and test scores is not linear, but curved.
Study: Homework Doesn't Mean Better Grades, But Maybe Better
The time students spend on math and science homework doesn't necessarily mean better grades, but it could lead to better performance on standardized tests, a new study finds. "When Is Homework Worth The Time?" was recently published by lead investigator Adam Maltese, assistant professor of science education at Indiana University, and co ...
Analyzing 'the homework gap' among high school students
Measuring the relationship between out-of-school time and outcomes like test scores can be difficult. Researchers are primarily confounded by an inability to determine what compels students to ...
Study: Homework linked to better standardized test scores
Study: Homework linked to better standardized test scores. By Valerie Strauss. November 19, 2012 at 4:11 p.m. EST. Researchers who looked at data from more than 18,000 10th-graders found there was ...
Too Much Homework = Lower Test Scores
Too Much Homework = Lower Test Scores. A comprehensive review of academic performance around the world gives bad marks to excessive homework. Teachers in Japan, the Czech Republic and Denmark ...
Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework
The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations - some might regard it as an opportunity for ...
What Test Scores Actually Tell Us
Harvard professor Andrew Ho wants us to think more about what test scores actually tell us. He studies how we design educational test scores, use them, and whether there's better ways to judge academic performance and educational opportunity. He's involved in the recently launched Educational Opportunity Project based at Stanford, where people ...
Why Homework Doesn't Seem To Boost Learning--And How It Could
Critics have objected that even if homework doesn't increase grades or test scores, it has other benefits, like fostering good study habits and providing parents with a window into what kids are ...
Review: The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families
School curriculum obsession in homework is likely rooted in studies that demonstrate increased test scores as a result of assigned homework. The End of Homework deciphers this phenomena: Cooper's work provides us with one more example of a problem that routinely bedevils all the sciences: the relationship between correlation and causality.
Study: Too much homework can lower test scores
Piling on the homework doesn't help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores, the Huffington Post reports. That's the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students' academic performance.
Student GPA and test score gaps are growing—and could be slowing
The average test score of students who earned an A in math in 2021-22 was 0.20 standard deviations lower than the scores of pre-pandemic peers who earned an A. For students who earned a B, the gap ...
How the 'Stress Bias' Affects Students' Test Scores
Beneath test-related stress lies any number of dark feelings. For example, students may believe that parents and teachers will think less of them if scores are low. Remind students to do their best, but be sure to note that test scores don't impact the pride and affection you feel for them. Stress bias can affect the test results of students ...
Excessive screen time linked to lower student test scores
An Education Week analysis of the NAEP data showed a relationship between high-screen and digital-device use and lower proficiency on the test. For example, students who used digital devices for ...
Pros and Cons of Homework: What You Should Know
Research has shown that homework can improve students' test scores. This is because homework helps students learn the material more thoroughly and retain it better. ... Furthermore, it has been shown that students who do too much homework tend to have lower grades and lower test scores. There are several reasons why too much homework can have ...
Smartphones are lowering student's grades, study finds
The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework but lower exam scores—a half to a full letter ...
3 Strategies to Help Your Child Fix Low Test Scores
Not everybody likes to just stare at a page of notes. The good news is there are many ways to study: making flashcards, completing online quizzes, or reading supplementary material about a subject. Usually, a combination of these strategies yields the best results. 3. Seek Outside Help.