reasons homework should be optional

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Pros and Cons of making homework optional

Pro Catherine Gagulashvili  calendar manager Not doing anything is so much easier than doing something. By nature, students would rather avoid doing strenuous amounts of homework, simply because it’s less taxing. When given the option to not do homework on a daily basis, the average student may leap at the opportunity to slack off. They would do that without taking into account the fact that being assigned optional homework is one of the most academically potent opportunities a high school student can be offered. Homework should be made optional because it teaches students to be held accountable for their actions. The daily, mandatory assignment of homework is something that should be enforced and practiced throughout elementary and middle school, but should slowly be phased out once a student graduates to high school. Once a student enters high school, he or she should be prepared to let go of the culture that comforted and guided them through elementary and middle school; it’s time to grow up. Simply put, making homework optional further prepares students on the path of expectations in college and in life. Optional homework should be viewed as an opportunity to pace oneself and to practice what needs to be practiced. If a student excels in a subject without needing extra practice, why force him or her to do that extra homework for the sake of simply going through the motions? If a student has clearly mastered an academic skill or an ability, it is pointless and counterproductive to force him or her to overpractice. By making homework a mandatory assignment, teachers force their students to waste their time on something that might be redundant. Assigning optional homework allows the student to better his or her time management skills. Considering that the average high school student receives 3.5 hours of homework per day , the opportunity to receive optional homework allows students to properly prioritize their work and maximize their time. It allows for flexibility in a student’s life. For students who balance six to seven academic classes and have a sport, having optional homework allows them to spread out their assignments over a longer period of time. If taken advantage of properly , optional homework forces the student to budget his or her time, allocating the right amount of study time for each assignment. In addition, it allows the student to work at his or her own pace. The assignment of optional homework has been used on Beverly’s campus. Geometry and IAT teacher Dustin Mathias assigns optional homework, or as he calls them, “suggested problems” in his classroom. He has found that suggested problems give students more options, teach them how to be responsible and force them to “be honest with themselves and what they need to do.” By no means is one to assume that every student will do his or her homework if it isn’t mandatory. The goal is to have students realize that they have to do the work even if no one is watching. College professors don’t check to see if each student did the reading: they give a final.  High school has a more hands-on approach to learning, but as students transition to being upperclassmen, they need to realize that they are required to dedicate a certain amount of time and energy to a class, regardless if it’s in the form of doing their homework, studying, taking notes or paying attention in class. The average student may view optional homework as an opportunity to slack off, completely disregarding the fact that by doing so, they are setting themselves up for failure. After graduating high school, the student will likely fail to realize that tasks need to be completed not because they need someone else’s approval, but because otherwise failure will await them at every turn. Not doing any homework and failing a test is the equivalent of not doing work at the job and getting fired. No one should have to consistently tell one to do his or her job; one should know one’s responsibility to accomplish goals independently in a satisfactory and timely manner. While both mandatory and optional homework assignments have their pros and cons, some find that mandatory homework does more harm than good. C hild education, parenting and human behavior expert Alfie Kohn finds that “There [is] simply no compelling data to justify the practice of making kids work what amounts to a second shift when they get home from a full day of school.” While Kohn takes it to the extreme opinion by stating “no homework should be the norm,” he brings up the valid point that the assignment of  mandatory homework forces a student to spend his or her entire day focused on academics. Some students will not thrive in an atmosphere that forces them to be held accountable for their actions. But hopefully, if they are forced to deal with the real world consequences for long enough, they will come to realize what their voluntary obligations are. If every class continues to assign homework that is checked on a daily basis, students will not be prepared for college and for life. Assigning optional homework is the stepping-stone through which students learn to be held accountable for their decisions, work and actions. Con Sam Bernstein staff writer Homework needs to be mandatory. It is a fact that students do better after completing homework at home. It’s a fact that students do better when homework is mandatory. There is no reason at all to make homework optional. Not giving credit to those that complete homework nightly is also unfair. With admission into college getting more and more competitive, students need every point they can get. Completing assignments and not getting points for them is absurd and only hurts students chances of getting into the college. Homework points can be the difference between a B and an A for some students, and it hurts students  It’s simply wasting students’ time that they could be spending completing assignments that count for points in other classes. If a kid is willing to put in the work to get an A, teachers should reward them. “The school needs to think about everybody, and if homework was not mandatory, some students who are doing below average would do worse if they had an option to do even less,” sophomore Colin Newberry said. This is school. In real life you’ll lose credibility for not completing tasks. School should be a model of what real life is and what real life will be, as it is a developmental place. Teens need to know responsibility, and having a responsibility to complete homework teaches young minds how to have jobs in the future. Homework is the most basic form of this responsibility. Homework is graded for a reason. Students work hard to complete daily assignments and deserve credit for doing so. Not getting credit for homework is like waiting a table and not getting a tip. If a student is willing to put work into your class, they deserve credit. It’s also a way to give credit for efforts in a class. Students that don’t happen to be good test takers should have another way to make up points lost. “I wouldn’t do the homework without an incentive such as a grade,” freshman Eva Levin said. Other students could attest to that. “If there’s no mandatory studying or homework to be done, then most won’t care about it because is doesn’t affect their grade whether or not they do it,” freshman Nathan Naghi said. Cutting corners is human nature. “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it,” Bill Gates said.  If optional homework has to be cut for students to spend an extra hour on other studying, they’ll do it. By not doing homework, there’s no way to assess how your knowledge of the subject is growing. Sitting in a class for 53 minutes cannot possibly give you enough understanding of a subject to take anything away from it. Homework fundamentally exists to remind students what they learned in class by providing practice problems similar to those on future assessments. By not helping students out in this regard, teachers are setting students up for failure. By encouraging students with points, both students and teachers can spend less time on review and on more time exploring new concepts. “Homework is designed specifically to complement the lessons taught by teachers during class. Sometimes the lessons lack in class, forcing students to essentially teach themselves at home, further reiterating the cruciality of homework,” junior Ethan Manaster said. Not every student has the diligence to sit at a desk and study at their own will. Students do, however, have the diligence to complete homework for points. And by encouraging students through rewards, they’ll learn from the homework they’re forced to do. By teaching students the rewards of being dedicated at getting better  with challenges in life, they’re better prepared to go off into the job force and make a true impact. Students could absolutely be hard working and do their own studying at their own pace. Nobody is getting anywhere by blindly distrusting students. But by giving students guidance in their studying, you’re doing them a solid. Teachers have been to college and are professionally trained to work with young minds. They know what to assign you and how to assign it. They know what’s on their tests and they know how much practice needs to happen outside of class to reach your highest potential on those said tests. Teachers aren’t just there to provide Kahoot codes and to yell at you for sliding into Sarahahs in class. Their purpose is to guide you. By not enabling teachers to guide students, you’re taking away from the purpose of a teacher’s’ job; to teach. By restricting the work teachers can get their students to do, you’re diminishing from the amount of content teachers can teach in a semester. Teachers can go faster when nearly everyone in the class is completing homework. By making homework optional, teachers can not reach their maximum potential with classes. Students, teachers and everyone in between cannot function at their highest potential without assigning mandatory homework.

• beverly hills high school
• Catherine Gagulashvili
• mandatory homework
• optional homework
• sam bernstein

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Emma • Feb 26, 2023 at 12:02 pm

Five days a week for almost nine months, students spend almost their entire day at school learning concepts and doing tedious work. Even after school, they go home and do even more work. According to College Homework Help, in the year 1905, homework was invented as a punishment for kids. Yet for some reason, it is now assigned almost every night. Homework can be boring, unnecessary, and sometimes just busy work for most students. Therefore, optional homework should be implemented in order to provide the extra practice for those who want it, without penalizing those who do not.

25 Reasons Homework Should Be Banned (Busywork Arguments)

As students across the globe plow through heaps of homework each night, one question lingers in the minds of educators, parents, and students alike: should homework be banned?

This question is not new, yet it continues to spark lively debate as research findings, anecdotal evidence, and personal experiences paint a complex picture of the pros and cons of homework.

On one hand, proponents of homework argue that it reinforces classroom learning, encourages a disciplined work ethic, and provides teachers with valuable insight into student comprehension. They see homework as an extension of classroom instruction that solidifies and enriches learning while fostering important skills like time management and self-discipline. It also offers an opportunity for parents to be involved in their children's education.

However, some people say there are a lot of downsides. They argue that excessive homework can lead to stress and burnout, reduce time for extracurricular activities and family interactions, exacerbate educational inequalities, and even negatively impact students' mental health.

This article presents 25 reasons why we might need to seriously consider this radical shift in our educational approach. But first, lets share some examples of what homework actually is.

Examples of Homework

These examples cover a wide range of subjects and complexity levels, reflecting the variety of homework assignments students might encounter throughout their educational journey.

• Spelling lists to memorize for a test
• Math worksheets for practicing basic arithmetic operations
• Reading assignments from children's books
• Simple science projects like growing a plant
• Basic geography assignments like labeling a map
• Art projects like drawing a family portrait
• Writing book reports or essays
• Advanced math problems
• Research projects on various topics
• Lab reports for science experiments
• Reading and responding to literature
• Preparing presentations on various topics
• Advanced math problems involving calculus or algebra
• Reading classic literature and writing analytical essays
• Research papers on historical events
• Lab reports for advanced science experiments
• Foreign language exercises
• Preparing for standardized tests
• College application essays
• Extensive research papers
• In-depth case studies
• Advanced problem-solving in subjects like physics, engineering, etc.
• Thesis or dissertation writing
• Extensive reading and literature reviews
• Internship or practicum experiences

Lack of proven benefits

Homework has long been a staple of traditional education, dating back centuries. However, the actual efficacy of homework in enhancing learning outcomes remains disputed. A number of studies indicate that there's no conclusive evidence supporting the notion that homework improves academic performance, especially in primary education . In fact, research suggests that for younger students, the correlation between homework and academic achievement is weak or even negative .

Too much homework can often lead to increased stress and decreased enthusiasm for learning. This issue becomes particularly pressing when considering the common 'more is better' approach to homework, where the quantity of work given to students often outweighs the quality and effectiveness of the tasks. For instance, spending countless hours memorizing facts for a history test may not necessarily translate to better understanding or long-term retention of the subject matter.

However, it's worth noting that homework isn't completely devoid of benefits. It can help foster self-discipline, time management skills, and the ability to work independently. But, these positive outcomes are usually more pronounced in older students and when homework assignments are thoughtfully designed and not excessive in volume.

When discussing the merits and drawbacks of homework, it's critical to consider the nature of the assignments. Routine, repetitive tasks often associated with 'drill-and-practice' homework, such as completing rows of arithmetic problems or copying definitions from a textbook, rarely lead to meaningful learning. On the other hand, assignments that encourage students to apply what they've learned in class, solve problems, or engage creatively with the material can be more beneficial.

Increased stress

Homework can often lead to a significant increase in stress levels among students. This is especially true when students are burdened with large volumes of homework, leaving them with little time to relax or pursue other activities. The feeling of constantly racing against the clock to meet deadlines can contribute to anxiety, frustration, and even burnout.

Contrary to popular belief, stress does not necessarily improve performance or productivity. In fact, high levels of stress can negatively impact memory, concentration, and overall cognitive function. This counteracts the very purpose of homework, which is intended to reinforce learning and improve academic outcomes.

However, one might argue that homework can teach students about time management, organization, and how to handle pressure. These are important life skills that could potentially prepare them for future responsibilities. But it's essential to strike a balance. The pressure to complete homework should not come at the cost of a student's mental wellbeing.

Limited family time

Homework often infringes upon the time students can spend with their families. After spending the entire day in school, children come home to yet more academic work, leaving little room for quality family interactions. This limited family time can hinder the development of important interpersonal skills and familial bonds.

Moreover, family time isn't just about fun and relaxation. It also plays a crucial role in the social and emotional development of children. Opportunities for unstructured play, family conversations, and shared activities can contribute to children's well-being and character building.

Nonetheless, advocates of homework might argue that it can be a platform for parental involvement in a child's education. While this may be true, the involvement should not transform into parental control or cause friction due to differing expectations and pressures.

Reduced physical activity

Homework can often lead to reduced physical activity by eating into the time students have for sports, recreation, and simply being outdoors. Physical activity is essential for children's health, well-being, and even their academic performance. Research suggests that physical activity can enhance cognitive abilities, improve concentration, and reduce symptoms of ADHD .

Homework, especially when it's boring and repetitive, can deter students from engaging in physical activities, leading to a sedentary lifestyle. This lack of balance between work and play can contribute to physical health problems such as obesity, poor posture, and related health concerns.

Homework proponents might point out that disciplined time management could allow students to balance both work and play. However, given the demanding nature of many homework assignments, achieving this balance is often easier said than done.

Negative impact on sleep

A significant concern about homework is its impact on students' sleep patterns. Numerous studies have linked excessive homework to sleep deprivation in students. Children often stay up late to complete assignments, reducing the amount of sleep they get. Lack of sleep can result in a host of issues, from poor academic performance and difficulty concentrating to physical health problems like weakened immunity.

Even the quality of sleep can be affected. The stress and anxiety from a heavy workload can lead to difficulty falling asleep or restless nights. And let's not forget that students often need to wake up early for school, compounding the negative effects of late-night homework sessions.

On the other hand, some argue that homework can teach children time management skills, suggesting that effective organization could help prevent late-night work. However, when schools assign excessive amounts of homework, even the best time management might not prevent encroachment on sleep time.

Homework can exacerbate existing educational inequalities. Not all students have access to a conducive learning environment at home, necessary resources, or support from educated family members. For these students, homework can become a source of stress and disadvantage rather than an opportunity to reinforce learning.

Children from lower socio-economic backgrounds might need to contribute to household chores or part-time work, limiting the time they have for homework. This can create a gap in academic performance and grades, reflecting not on the students' abilities but their circumstances.

While homework is meant to level the playing field by providing additional learning time outside school, it often does the opposite. It's worth noting that students from privileged backgrounds can often access additional help like tutoring, further widening the gap.

Reduced creativity and independent thinking

Homework, particularly when it involves rote learning or repetitive tasks, can stifle creativity and independent thinking. Students often focus on getting the "right" answers to please teachers rather than exploring different ideas and solutions. This can hinder their ability to think creatively and solve problems independently, skills that are increasingly in demand in the modern world.

Homework defenders might claim that it can also promote independent learning. True, when thoughtfully designed, homework can encourage this. But, voluminous or repetitive tasks tend to promote compliance over creativity.

Diminished interest in learning

Overburdening students with homework can diminish their interest in learning. After long hours in school followed by more academic tasks at home, learning can begin to feel like a chore. This can lead to a decline in intrinsic motivation and an unhealthy association of learning with stress and exhaustion.

In theory, homework can deepen interest in a subject, especially when it involves projects or research. Yet, an excess of homework, particularly routine tasks, might achieve the opposite, turning learning into a source of stress rather than enjoyment.

Inability to pursue personal interests

Homework can limit students' ability to pursue personal interests. Hobbies, personal projects, and leisure activities are crucial for personal development and well-being. With heavy homework loads, students may struggle to find time for these activities, missing out on opportunities to discover new interests and talents.

Supporters of homework might argue that it teaches students to manage their time effectively. However, even with good time management, an overload of homework can crowd out time for personal interests.

Excessive workload

The issue of excessive workload is a common complaint among students. Spending several hours on homework after a full school day can be mentally and physically draining. This workload can lead to burnout, decreased motivation, and negative attitudes toward school and learning.

While homework can help consolidate classroom learning, too much can be counterproductive. It's important to consider the overall workload of students, including school, extracurricular activities, and personal time, when assigning homework.

Limited time for reflection

Homework can limit the time students have for reflection. Reflection is a critical part of learning, allowing students to digest and integrate new information. With the constant flow of assignments, there's often little time left for this crucial process. Consequently, the learning becomes superficial, and the true understanding of subjects can be compromised.

Although homework is meant to reinforce what's taught in class, the lack of downtime for reflection might hinder deep learning. It's important to remember that learning is not just about doing, but also about thinking.

Increased pressure on young children

Young children are particularly vulnerable to the pressures of homework. At an age where play and exploration are vital for cognitive and emotional development, too much homework can create undue pressure and stress. This pressure can instigate a negative relationship with learning from an early age, potentially impacting their future attitude towards education.

Advocates of homework often argue that it prepares children for the rigors of their future academic journey. However, placing too much academic pressure on young children might overshadow the importance of learning through play and exploration.

Lack of alignment with real-world skills

Traditional homework often lacks alignment with real-world skills. Assignments typically focus on academic abilities at the expense of skills like creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. These are crucial for success in the modern workplace and are often under-emphasized in homework tasks.

Homework can be an opportunity to develop these skills when properly structured. However, tasks often focus on memorization and repetition, rather than cultivating skills relevant to the real world.

Loss of motivation

Excessive homework can lead to a loss of motivation. The constant pressure to complete assignments and meet deadlines can diminish a student's intrinsic motivation to learn. This loss of motivation might not only affect their academic performance but also their love of learning, potentially having long-term effects on their educational journey.

Some believe homework instills discipline and responsibility. But, it's important to balance these benefits against the potential for homework to undermine motivation and engagement.

Disruption of work-life balance

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is as important for students as it is for adults. Overloading students with homework can disrupt this balance, leaving little time for relaxation, socializing, and extracurricular activities. All of these are vital for a student's overall development and well-being.

Homework supporters might argue that it prepares students for the workloads they'll face in college and beyond. But it's also crucial to ensure students have time to relax, recharge, and engage in non-academic activities for a well-rounded development.

Impact on mental health

There's a growing body of evidence showing the negative impact of excessive homework on students' mental health. The stress and anxiety from heavy homework loads can contribute to issues like depression, anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide. Student well-being should be a top priority in education, and the impact of homework on mental health cannot be ignored.

While some might argue that homework helps students develop resilience and coping skills, it's important to ensure these potential benefits don't come at the expense of students' mental health.

Limited time for self-care

With excessive homework, students often find little time for essential self-care activities. These can include physical exercise, proper rest, healthy eating, mindfulness, or even simple leisure activities. These activities are critical for maintaining physical health, emotional well-being, and cognitive function.

Some might argue that managing homework alongside self-care responsibilities teaches students valuable life skills. However, it's important that these skills don't come at the cost of students' health and well-being.

Decreased family involvement

Homework can inadvertently lead to decreased family involvement in a child's learning. Parents often feel unqualified or too busy to help with homework, leading to missed opportunities for family learning interactions. This can also create stress and conflict within the family, especially when parents have high expectations or are unable to assist.

Some believe homework can facilitate parental involvement in education. But, when it becomes a source of stress or conflict, it can discourage parents from engaging in their child's learning.

Reinforcement of inequalities

Homework can unintentionally reinforce inequalities. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds might lack access to resources like private tutors or a quiet study space, placing them at a disadvantage compared to their more privileged peers. Additionally, these students might have additional responsibilities at home, further limiting their time to complete homework.

While the purpose of homework is often to provide additional learning opportunities, it can inadvertently reinforce existing disparities. Therefore, it's essential to ensure that homework doesn't favor students who have more resources at home.

Reduced time for play and creativity

Homework can take away from time for play and creative activities. These activities are not only enjoyable but also crucial for the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children. Play allows children to explore, imagine, and create, fostering innovative thinking and problem-solving skills.

Some may argue that homework teaches discipline and responsibility. Yet, it's vital to remember that play also has significant learning benefits and should be a part of every child's daily routine.

Increased cheating and academic dishonesty

The pressure to complete homework can sometimes lead to increased cheating and academic dishonesty. When faced with a large volume of homework, students might resort to copying from friends or searching for answers online. This undermines the educational value of homework and fosters unhealthy academic practices.

While homework is intended to consolidate learning, the risk of promoting dishonest behaviors is a concern that needs to be addressed.

Strained teacher-student relationships

Excessive homework can strain teacher-student relationships. If students begin to associate teachers with stress or anxiety from homework, it can hinder the development of a positive learning relationship. Furthermore, if teachers are perceived as being unfair or insensitive with their homework demands, it can impact the overall classroom dynamic.

While homework can provide an opportunity for teachers to monitor student progress, it's important to ensure that it doesn't negatively affect the teacher-student relationship.

Negative impact on family dynamics

Homework can impact family dynamics. Parents might feel compelled to enforce homework completion, leading to potential conflict, stress, and tension within the family. These situations can disrupt the harmony in the household and strain relationships.

Homework is sometimes seen as a tool to engage parents in their child's education. However, it's crucial to ensure that this involvement doesn't turn into a source of conflict or pressure.

Cultural and individual differences

Homework might not take into account cultural and individual differences. Education is not a one-size-fits-all process, and what works for one student might not work for another. Some students might thrive on hands-on learning, while others prefer auditory or visual learning methods. By standardizing homework, we might ignore these individual learning styles and preferences.

Homework can also overlook cultural differences. For students from diverse cultural backgrounds, certain types of homework might seem irrelevant or difficult to relate to, leading to disengagement or confusion.

Encouragement of surface-level learning

Homework often encourages surface-level learning instead of deep understanding. When students are swamped with homework, they're likely to rush through assignments to get them done, rather than taking the time to understand the concepts. This can result in superficial learning where students memorize information to regurgitate it on assignments and tests, instead of truly understanding and internalizing the knowledge.

While homework is meant to reinforce classroom learning, the quality of learning is more important than the quantity. It's important to design homework in a way that encourages deep, meaningful learning instead of mere rote memorization.

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Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

• Posted January 17, 2012
• By Lory Hough

The debate over how much schoolwork students should be doing at home has flared again, with one side saying it's too much, the other side saying in our competitive world, it's just not enough.

It was a move that doesn't happen very often in American public schools: The principal got rid of homework.

This past September, Stephanie Brant, principal of Gaithersburg Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md., decided that instead of teachers sending kids home with math worksheets and spelling flash cards, students would instead go home and read. Every day for 30 minutes, more if they had time or the inclination, with parents or on their own.

"I knew this would be a big shift for my community," she says. But she also strongly believed it was a necessary one. Twenty-first-century learners, especially those in elementary school, need to think critically and understand their own learning — not spend night after night doing rote homework drills.

Brant's move may not be common, but she isn't alone in her questioning. The value of doing schoolwork at home has gone in and out of fashion in the United States among educators, policymakers, the media, and, more recently, parents. As far back as the late 1800s, with the rise of the Progressive Era, doctors such as Joseph Mayer Rice began pushing for a limit on what he called "mechanical homework," saying it caused childhood nervous conditions and eyestrain. Around that time, the then-influential Ladies Home Journal began publishing a series of anti-homework articles, stating that five hours of brain work a day was "the most we should ask of our children," and that homework was an intrusion on family life. In response, states like California passed laws abolishing homework for students under a certain age.

But, as is often the case with education, the tide eventually turned. After the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, a space race emerged, and, writes Brian Gill in the journal Theory Into Practice, "The homework problem was reconceived as part of a national crisis; the U.S. was losing the Cold War because Russian children were smarter." Many earlier laws limiting homework were abolished, and the longterm trend toward less homework came to an end.

The debate re-emerged a decade later when parents of the late '60s and '70s argued that children should be free to play and explore — similar anti-homework wellness arguments echoed nearly a century earlier. By the early-1980s, however, the pendulum swung again with the publication of A Nation at Risk , which blamed poor education for a "rising tide of mediocrity." Students needed to work harder, the report said, and one way to do this was more homework.

For the most part, this pro-homework sentiment is still going strong today, in part because of mandatory testing and continued economic concerns about the nation's competitiveness. Many believe that today's students are falling behind their peers in places like Korea and Finland and are paying more attention to Angry Birds than to ancient Babylonia.

But there are also a growing number of Stephanie Brants out there, educators and parents who believe that students are stressed and missing out on valuable family time. Students, they say, particularly younger students who have seen a rise in the amount of take-home work and already put in a six- to nine-hour "work" day, need less, not more homework.

Who is right? Are students not working hard enough or is homework not working for them? Here's where the story gets a little tricky: It depends on whom you ask and what research you're looking at. As Cathy Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework , points out, "Homework has generated enough research so that a study can be found to support almost any position, as long as conflicting studies are ignored." Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth and a strong believer in eliminating all homework, writes that, "The fact that there isn't anything close to unanimity among experts belies the widespread assumption that homework helps." At best, he says, homework shows only an association, not a causal relationship, with academic achievement. In other words, it's hard to tease out how homework is really affecting test scores and grades. Did one teacher give better homework than another? Was one teacher more effective in the classroom? Do certain students test better or just try harder?

"It is difficult to separate where the effect of classroom teaching ends," Vatterott writes, "and the effect of homework begins."

Putting research aside, however, much of the current debate over homework is focused less on how homework affects academic achievement and more on time. Parents in particular have been saying that the amount of time children spend in school, especially with afterschool programs, combined with the amount of homework given — as early as kindergarten — is leaving students with little time to run around, eat dinner with their families, or even get enough sleep.

Certainly, for some parents, homework is a way to stay connected to their children's learning. But for others, homework creates a tug-of-war between parents and children, says Liz Goodenough, M.A.T.'71, creator of a documentary called Where Do the Children Play?

"Ideally homework should be about taking something home, spending a few curious and interesting moments in which children might engage with parents, and then getting that project back to school — an organizational triumph," she says. "A nag-free activity could engage family time: Ask a parent about his or her own childhood. Interview siblings."

Instead, as the authors of The Case Against Homework write, "Homework overload is turning many of us into the types of parents we never wanted to be: nags, bribers, and taskmasters."

Leslie Butchko saw it happen a few years ago when her son started sixth grade in the Santa Monica-Malibu (Calif.) United School District. She remembers him getting two to four hours of homework a night, plus weekend and vacation projects. He was overwhelmed and struggled to finish assignments, especially on nights when he also had an extracurricular activity.

"Ultimately, we felt compelled to have Bobby quit karate — he's a black belt — to allow more time for homework," she says. And then, with all of their attention focused on Bobby's homework, she and her husband started sending their youngest to his room so that Bobby could focus. "One day, my younger son gave us 15-minute coupons as a present for us to use to send him to play in the back room. … It was then that we realized there had to be something wrong with the amount of homework we were facing."

Butchko joined forces with another mother who was having similar struggles and ultimately helped get the homework policy in her district changed, limiting homework on weekends and holidays, setting time guidelines for daily homework, and broadening the definition of homework to include projects and studying for tests. As she told the school board at one meeting when the policy was first being discussed, "In closing, I just want to say that I had more free time at Harvard Law School than my son has in middle school, and that is not in the best interests of our children."

One barrier that Butchko had to overcome initially was convincing many teachers and parents that more homework doesn't necessarily equal rigor.

"Most of the parents that were against the homework policy felt that students need a large quantity of homework to prepare them for the rigorous AP classes in high school and to get them into Harvard," she says.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.'06, sees this at Another Course to College, the Boston pilot school where she teaches math. "When a student is not completing [his or her] homework, parents usually are frustrated by this and agree with me that homework is an important part of their child's learning," she says.

As Timothy Jarman, Ed.M.'10, a ninth-grade English teacher at Eugene Ashley High School in Wilmington, N.C., says, "Parents think it is strange when their children are not assigned a substantial amount of homework."

That's because, writes Vatterott, in her chapter, "The Cult(ure) of Homework," the concept of homework "has become so engrained in U.S. culture that the word homework is part of the common vernacular."

These days, nightly homework is a given in American schools, writes Kohn.

"Homework isn't limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important. Most teachers and administrators aren't saying, 'It may be useful to do this particular project at home,'" he writes. "Rather, the point of departure seems to be, 'We've decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week). … This commitment to the idea of homework in the abstract is accepted by the overwhelming majority of schools — public and private, elementary and secondary."

Brant had to confront this when she cut homework at Gaithersburg Elementary.

"A lot of my parents have this idea that homework is part of life. This is what I had to do when I was young," she says, and so, too, will our kids. "So I had to shift their thinking." She did this slowly, first by asking her teachers last year to really think about what they were sending home. And this year, in addition to forming a parent advisory group around the issue, she also holds events to answer questions.

Still, not everyone is convinced that homework as a given is a bad thing. "Any pursuit of excellence, be it in sports, the arts, or academics, requires hard work. That our culture finds it okay for kids to spend hours a day in a sport but not equal time on academics is part of the problem," wrote one pro-homework parent on the blog for the documentary Race to Nowhere , which looks at the stress American students are under. "Homework has always been an issue for parents and children. It is now and it was 20 years ago. I think when people decide to have children that it is their responsibility to educate them," wrote another.

And part of educating them, some believe, is helping them develop skills they will eventually need in adulthood. "Homework can help students develop study skills that will be of value even after they leave school," reads a publication on the U.S. Department of Education website called Homework Tips for Parents. "It can teach them that learning takes place anywhere, not just in the classroom. … It can foster positive character traits such as independence and responsibility. Homework can teach children how to manage time."

Annie Brown, Ed.M.'01, feels this is particularly critical at less affluent schools like the ones she has worked at in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and Los Angeles as a literacy coach.

"It feels important that my students do homework because they will ultimately be competing for college placement and jobs with students who have done homework and have developed a work ethic," she says. "Also it will get them ready for independently taking responsibility for their learning, which will need to happen for them to go to college."

The problem with this thinking, writes Vatterott, is that homework becomes a way to practice being a worker.

"Which begs the question," she writes. "Is our job as educators to produce learners or workers?"

Slate magazine editor Emily Bazelon, in a piece about homework, says this makes no sense for younger kids.

"Why should we think that practicing homework in first grade will make you better at doing it in middle school?" she writes. "Doesn't the opposite seem equally plausible: that it's counterproductive to ask children to sit down and work at night before they're developmentally ready because you'll just make them tired and cross?"

Kohn writes in the American School Board Journal that this "premature exposure" to practices like homework (and sit-and-listen lessons and tests) "are clearly a bad match for younger children and of questionable value at any age." He calls it BGUTI: Better Get Used to It. "The logic here is that we have to prepare you for the bad things that are going to be done to you later … by doing them to you now."

According to a recent University of Michigan study, daily homework for six- to eight-year-olds increased on average from about 8 minutes in 1981 to 22 minutes in 2003. A review of research by Duke University Professor Harris Cooper found that for elementary school students, "the average correlation between time spent on homework and achievement … hovered around zero."

So should homework be eliminated? Of course not, say many Ed School graduates who are teaching. Not only would students not have time for essays and long projects, but also teachers would not be able to get all students to grade level or to cover critical material, says Brett Pangburn, Ed.M.'06, a sixth-grade English teacher at Excel Academy Charter School in Boston. Still, he says, homework has to be relevant.

"Kids need to practice the skills being taught in class, especially where, like the kids I teach at Excel, they are behind and need to catch up," he says. "Our results at Excel have demonstrated that kids can catch up and view themselves as in control of their academic futures, but this requires hard work, and homework is a part of it."

Ed School Professor Howard Gardner basically agrees.

"America and Americans lurch between too little homework in many of our schools to an excess of homework in our most competitive environments — Li'l Abner vs. Tiger Mother," he says. "Neither approach makes sense. Homework should build on what happens in class, consolidating skills and helping students to answer new questions."

So how can schools come to a happy medium, a way that allows teachers to cover everything they need while not overwhelming students? Conklin says she often gives online math assignments that act as labs and students have two or three days to complete them, including some in-class time. Students at Pangburn's school have a 50-minute silent period during regular school hours where homework can be started, and where teachers pull individual or small groups of students aside for tutoring, often on that night's homework. Afterschool homework clubs can help.

Some schools and districts have adapted time limits rather than nix homework completely, with the 10-minute per grade rule being the standard — 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 30 minutes for third-graders, and so on. (This remedy, however, is often met with mixed results since not all students work at the same pace.) Other schools offer an extended day that allows teachers to cover more material in school, in turn requiring fewer take-home assignments. And for others, like Stephanie Brant's elementary school in Maryland, more reading with a few targeted project assignments has been the answer.

"The routine of reading is so much more important than the routine of homework," she says. "Let's have kids reflect. You can still have the routine and you can still have your workspace, but now it's for reading. I often say to parents, if we can put a man on the moon, we can put a man or woman on Mars and that person is now a second-grader. We don't know what skills that person will need. At the end of the day, we have to feel confident that we're giving them something they can use on Mars."

Read a January 2014 update.

Homework Policy Still Going Strong

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework

H ow long is your child’s workweek? Thirty hours? Forty? Would it surprise you to learn that some elementary school kids have workweeks comparable to adults’ schedules? For most children, mandatory homework assignments push their workweek far beyond the school day and deep into what any other laborers would consider overtime. Even without sports or music or other school-sponsored extracurriculars, the daily homework slog keeps many students on the clock as long as lawyers, teachers, medical residents, truck drivers and other overworked adults. Is it any wonder that,deprived of the labor protections that we provide adults, our kids are suffering an epidemic of disengagement, anxiety and depression ?

With my youngest child just months away from finishing high school, I’m remembering all the needless misery and missed opportunities all three of my kids suffered because of their endless assignments. When my daughters were in middle school, I would urge them into bed before midnight and then find them clandestinely studying under the covers with a flashlight. We cut back on their activities but still found ourselves stuck in a system on overdrive, returning home from hectic days at 6 p.m. only to face hours more of homework. Now, even as a senior with a moderate course load, my son, Zak, has spent many weekends studying, finding little time for the exercise and fresh air essential to his well-being. Week after week, and without any extracurriculars, Zak logs a lot more than the 40 hours adults traditionally work each week — and with no recognition from his “bosses” that it’s too much. I can’t count the number of shared evenings, weekend outings and dinners that our family has missed and will never get back.

How much after-school time should our schools really own?

In the midst of the madness last fall, Zak said to me, “I feel like I’m working towards my death. The constant demands on my time since 5th grade are just going to continue through graduation, into college, and then into my job. It’s like I’m on an endless treadmill with no time for living.”

My spirit crumbled along with his.

Like Zak, many people are now questioning the point of putting so much demand on children and teens that they become thinly stretched and overworked. Studies have long shown that there is no academic benefit to high school homework that consumes more than a modest number of hours each week. In a study of high schoolers conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), researchers concluded that “after around four hours of homework per week, the additional time invested in homework has a negligible impact on performance.”

In elementary school, where we often assign overtime even to the youngest children, studies have shown there’s no academic benefit to any amount of homework at all.

Our unquestioned acceptance of homework also flies in the face of all we know about human health, brain function and learning. Brain scientists know that rest and exercise are essential to good health and real learning . Even top adult professionals in specialized fields take care to limit their work to concentrated periods of focus. A landmark study of how humans develop expertise found that elite musicians, scientists and athletes do their most productive work only about four hours per day .

Yet we continue to overwork our children, depriving them of the chance to cultivate health and learn deeply, burdening them with an imbalance of sedentary, academic tasks. American high school students , in fact, do more homework each week than their peers in the average country in the OECD, a 2014 report found.

It’s time for an uprising.

Already, small rebellions are starting. High schools in Ridgewood, N.J. , and Fairfax County, Va., among others, have banned homework over school breaks. The entire second grade at Taylor Elementary School in Arlington, Va., abolished homework this academic year. Burton Valley Elementary School in Lafayette, Calif., has eliminated homework in grades K through 4. Henry West Laboratory School , a public K-8 school in Coral Gables, Fla., eliminated mandatory, graded homework for optional assignments. One Lexington, Mass., elementary school is piloting a homework-free year, replacing it with reading for pleasure.

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Across the Atlantic, students in Spain launched a national strike against excessive assignments in November. And a second-grade teacher in Texas, made headlines this fall when she quit sending home extra work , instead urging families to “spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early.”

It is time that we call loudly for a clear and simple change: a workweek limit for children, counting time on the clock before and after the final bell. Why should schools extend their authority far beyond the boundaries of campus, dictating activities in our homes in the hours that belong to families? An all-out ban on after-school assignments would be optimal. Short of that, we can at least sensibly agree on a cap limiting kids to a 40-hour workweek — and fewer hours for younger children.

Resistance even to this reasonable limit will be rife. Mike Miller, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., found this out firsthand when he spearheaded a homework committee to rethink the usual approach. He had read the education research and found a forgotten policy on the county books limiting homework to two hours a night, total, including all classes. “I thought it would be a slam dunk” to put the two-hour cap firmly in place, Miller said.

But immediately, people started balking. “There was a lot of fear in the community,” Miller said. “It’s like jumping off a high dive with your kids’ future. If we reduce homework to two hours or less, is my kid really going to be okay?” In the end, the committee only agreed to a homework ban over school breaks.

Miller’s response is a great model for us all. He decided to limit assignments in his own class to 20 minutes a night (the most allowed for a student with six classes to hit the two-hour max). His students didn’t suddenly fail. Their test scores remained stable. And they started using their more breathable schedule to do more creative, thoughtful work.

That’s the way we will get to a sane work schedule for kids: by simultaneously pursuing changes big and small. Even as we collaboratively press for policy changes at the district or individual school level, all teachers can act now, as individuals, to ease the strain on overworked kids.

As parents and students, we can also organize to make homework the exception rather than the rule. We can insist that every family, teacher and student be allowed to opt out of assignments without penalty to make room for important activities, and we can seek changes that shift practice exercises and assignments into the actual school day.

We’ll know our work is done only when Zak and every other child can clock out, eat dinner, sleep well and stay healthy — the very things needed to engage and learn deeply. That’s the basic standard the law applies to working adults. Let’s do the same for our kids.

Vicki Abeles is the author of the bestseller Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheduled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation, and director and producer of the documentaries “ Race to Nowhere ” and “ Beyond Measure. ”

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Jay Caspian Kang

The movement to end homework is wrong.

By Jay Caspian Kang

Opinion Writer

Do students really need to do their homework?

As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?”

I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.”

The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Put a bit more simply: The quality of students’ homework production is linked to their socioeconomic status. This alone doesn’t seem particularly controversial. As I’ve discussed in this newsletter, many measures of academic achievement wind up being linked to wealth. The authors go on to argue that since this is the case, teachers should “interpret differences in students’ homework production through a structural inequalities frame.” What they have found, however, is that teachers don’t think of homework this way. Instead, they tend to rely on the “myth of meritocracy” to explain “homework inequalities.”

Calarco, Horn and Chen are all respected scholars at top-tier universities. Their paper was published in Educational Researcher, a journal of the American Educational Research Association, one of the pre-eminent research organizations in the education space. Homework reduction, or abolition, is part of an emerging educational movement. And while the authors acknowledge that eliminating homework would be difficult in the short term, given how rooted it is in American pedagogy, I imagine that many public schools over the next decade or so will start to de-emphasize homework as these ideas start to make their way to school boards and curriculum writers.

Trying to assess the value of homework, reduce it or at least make less of it busywork might very well be a useful endeavor. But Calarco, Horn and Chen are questioning something much more fundamental to the American educational system than homework. Whether they intend to or not, they are, in effect, reframing the purpose of schooling itself. Is school a place where a select group of children can distinguish themselves from their peers through diligence, talent and the pursuit of upward mobility? Is it a place where everyone should have equal access to learning and opportunity, whatever that might mean? And are these two ideals mutually exclusive?

The authors of “You Need to Be More Responsible” are part of a movement that argues, sometimes convincingly, that a meritocratic vision impedes true equal opportunity. In regards to homework, what they are saying, in effect, is that the idea of responsibility itself — requiring students to be accountable for completing assignments — exacerbates inequality. And that rather than trying to run all students through a hierarchical educational system in the hopes that they will end up in the same place, it appears that the authors would rather de-emphasize anything that reinforces the idea that one student is better than another.

According to the authors, then, teachers should factor in students’ socioeconomic status when evaluating their homework. Teachers should acknowledge that, even with completed assignments, structural inequalities may be why students with access to fewer resources got more questions wrong than their better-resourced peers did. And if they want to help these hypothetical poor students, they shouldn’t appeal to messages of personal responsibility and individual agency because those concepts reinforce the myth of meritocracy.

This all sounds a bit abstract. Having taught at a variety of schools, I agree that students’ socioeconomic status will likely be a better predictor of how they do on their homework than any personal traits, but I still can’t quite imagine how a structural inequalities frame would operate in the classroom. How would you even talk to your students?

Teacher: Hey there. You got half the questions wrong on your homework.

Student: I’m sorry about that. What do you think I could do to improve my performance?

Teacher: Well, you could boost your socioeconomic status. Otherwise, the deck’s extremely stacked against you getting any of these questions right.

To help combat the myth of meritocracy, the authors suggest that teachers not assign overly challenging homework and stop rewarding or punishing students based on the quality of the homework they produce. They also suggest that some teachers, if so inclined, could go “a step further in attempting to reduce homework’s harm” and just get rid of it altogether. They write:

More research is needed to understand the consequences of these more “progressive” homework policies. Yet, we suspect that while optional and ungraded homework may reduce inequalities in homework-related rewards and punishments, it may not prevent teachers from judging those students (and their parents) who do not complete the optional or ungraded work. No-homework policies have greater potential for alleviating the kinds of unequal practices we observed in the schools in our study.

In short, teachers can’t even be trusted to give out optional homework because they’re too meritocracy-brained and will still judge the students based on the results. The easiest solution is to just stop giving homework altogether, so the wrong-thinking teachers don’t have as much of a platform upon which to prop up their meritocratic myths.

I want to be fair to the authors and acknowledge that even if I’m a bit skeptical about how their prescriptions could operate in a classroom, there might be other good reasons for doing away with homework.

Evidence about the effectiveness of homework is pretty scattered. There are studies and articles saying that homework helps students learn and that kids aren’t overly burdened with it. There are also studies and articles that say excessive homework shows diminishing returns and can be harmful to students’ mental health . Having read some of these studies, I think the fairest assessment right now would be to say that the evidence about the benefits of homework is pretty inconclusive because of the inherent difficulties in isolating one part of a student’s academic life and drawing huge conclusions about how it affects everything else.

From a theoretical standpoint, I mostly agree with Calarco, Horn and Chen’s diagnosis of the American educational system. It does largely function as a way to sort and stratify children into different socioeconomic bands, which, again, in theory, means that it would be helpful for teachers to approach their work with that in mind. Many richer kids go to private schools that feed into elite colleges that will more or less ensure their alumni will be on the glide path to staying rich. Many poorer kids go to poorer schools that provide them, in many cases, with fewer opportunities that might help them advance socioeconomically. Some portion of middle-class and working-class people, including a lot of immigrants and children of immigrants, pragmatically use the school system to achieve class mobility.

When you break it all down, the amount of class mobility our education system can grind out each year falls well short of what most people expect. The spoils of academic meritocracy, then, aren’t particularly widespread, which does bring up the question: If we all agree that everyone should go to school and if the class mobility part is working only for some families and not at all for others, why do we structure it in such a competitive way?

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility.

A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Jay Caspian Kang ( @jaycaspiankang ), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.”

Have feedback? Send a note to [email protected] .

School Life Balance , Tips for Online Students

The Pros and Cons of Homework

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

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Why should students have homework, 1. homework encourages practice.

Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .

2. Homework Gets Parents Involved

Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.

3. Homework Teaches Time Management

Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.

4. Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication

Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.

5. Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.

6. Homework Reduces Screen Time

Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

1. homework encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework.

While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom.

Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.

2. Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home

While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .

3. Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job

School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.

4. Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results

Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success.

The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements.

It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity.

Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.

5. Homework Assignments Are Overdone

The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however.

On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

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What’s the Right Amount of Homework?

Decades of research show that homework has some benefits, especially for students in middle and high school—but there are risks to assigning too much.

Many teachers and parents believe that homework helps students build study skills and review concepts learned in class. Others see homework as disruptive and unnecessary, leading to burnout and turning kids off to school. Decades of research show that the issue is more nuanced and complex than most people think: Homework is beneficial, but only to a degree. Students in high school gain the most, while younger kids benefit much less.

The National PTA and the National Education Association support the “ 10-minute homework guideline ”—a nightly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. But many teachers and parents are quick to point out that what matters is the quality of the homework assigned and how well it meets students’ needs, not the amount of time spent on it.

The guideline doesn’t account for students who may need to spend more—or less—time on assignments. In class, teachers can make adjustments to support struggling students, but at home, an assignment that takes one student 30 minutes to complete may take another twice as much time—often for reasons beyond their control. And homework can widen the achievement gap, putting students from low-income households and students with learning disabilities at a disadvantage.

However, the 10-minute guideline is useful in setting a limit: When kids spend too much time on homework, there are real consequences to consider.

Small Benefits for Elementary Students

As young children begin school, the focus should be on cultivating a love of learning, and assigning too much homework can undermine that goal. And young students often don’t have the study skills to benefit fully from homework, so it may be a poor use of time (Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). A more effective activity may be nightly reading, especially if parents are involved. The benefits of reading are clear: If students aren’t proficient readers by the end of third grade, they’re less likely to succeed academically and graduate from high school (Fiester, 2013 ).

For second-grade teacher Jacqueline Fiorentino, the minor benefits of homework did not outweigh the potential drawback of turning young children against school at an early age, so she experimented with dropping mandatory homework. “Something surprising happened: They started doing more work at home,” Fiorentino writes . “This inspiring group of 8-year-olds used their newfound free time to explore subjects and topics of interest to them.” She encouraged her students to read at home and offered optional homework to extend classroom lessons and help them review material.

Moderate Benefits for Middle School Students

As students mature and develop the study skills necessary to delve deeply into a topic—and to retain what they learn—they also benefit more from homework. Nightly assignments can help prepare them for scholarly work, and research shows that homework can have moderate benefits for middle school students (Cooper et al., 2006 ). Recent research also shows that online math homework, which can be designed to adapt to students’ levels of understanding, can significantly boost test scores (Roschelle et al., 2016 ).

There are risks to assigning too much, however: A 2015 study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90 to 100 minutes of daily homework, their math and science test scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015 ). Crossing that upper limit can drain student motivation and focus. The researchers recommend that “homework should present a certain level of challenge or difficulty, without being so challenging that it discourages effort.” Teachers should avoid low-effort, repetitive assignments, and assign homework “with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning.”

In other words, it’s the quality of homework that matters, not the quantity. Brian Sztabnik, a veteran middle and high school English teacher, suggests that teachers take a step back and ask themselves these five questions :

• How long will it take to complete?
• Have all learners been considered?
• Will an assignment encourage future success?
• Will an assignment place material in a context the classroom cannot?
• Does an assignment offer support when a teacher is not there?

More Benefits for High School Students, but Risks as Well

By the time they reach high school, students should be well on their way to becoming independent learners, so homework does provide a boost to learning at this age, as long as it isn’t overwhelming (Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up valuable time to rest and spend time with family and friends. A 2013 study found that high school students can experience serious mental and physical health problems, from higher stress levels to sleep deprivation, when assigned too much homework (Galloway, Conner, & Pope, 2013 ).

Homework in high school should always relate to the lesson and be doable without any assistance, and feedback should be clear and explicit.

Teachers should also keep in mind that not all students have equal opportunities to finish their homework at home, so incomplete homework may not be a true reflection of their learning—it may be more a result of issues they face outside of school. They may be hindered by issues such as lack of a quiet space at home, resources such as a computer or broadband connectivity, or parental support (OECD, 2014 ). In such cases, giving low homework scores may be unfair.

Since the quantities of time discussed here are totals, teachers in middle and high school should be aware of how much homework other teachers are assigning. It may seem reasonable to assign 30 minutes of daily homework, but across six subjects, that’s three hours—far above a reasonable amount even for a high school senior. Psychologist Maurice Elias sees this as a common mistake: Individual teachers create homework policies that in aggregate can overwhelm students. He suggests that teachers work together to develop a school-wide homework policy and make it a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year.

Parents Play a Key Role

Homework can be a powerful tool to help parents become more involved in their child’s learning (Walker et al., 2004 ). It can provide insights into a child’s strengths and interests, and can also encourage conversations about a child’s life at school. If a parent has positive attitudes toward homework, their children are more likely to share those same values, promoting academic success.

But it’s also possible for parents to be overbearing, putting too much emphasis on test scores or grades, which can be disruptive for children (Madjar, Shklar, & Moshe, 2015 ). Parents should avoid being overly intrusive or controlling—students report feeling less motivated to learn when they don’t have enough space and autonomy to do their homework (Orkin, May, & Wolf, 2017 ; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008 ; Silinskas & Kikas, 2017 ). So while homework can encourage parents to be more involved with their kids, it’s important to not make it a source of conflict.

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Homework Should Be Optional

SEQUOIA CLARK , reporter | November 5, 2018

Five days a week for almost nine months, students spend almost their entire day at school learning concepts and doing tedious work. Even after school, they go home and do even more work. According to College Homework Help, in the year 1905, homework was invented as a punishment for kids. Yet for some reason, it is now assigned almost every night. Homework can be boring, unnecessary, and sometimes just busy work for most students. Therefore, optional homework should be implemented in order to provide the extra practice for those who want it, without penalizing those who do not. Beside the fact that almost all kids despise it, there is not enough time in the day for students to be expected to complete homework. It is expected of students to complete hours of homework every night, do an extracurricular, maintain a healthy social life, and get at least eight hours of sleep every night. Since this is essentially unattainable for students, they must sacrifice one thing for another. When faced with choosing between spending their time either doing homework or hanging out with friends, students always end up unhappy. If they chose to do homework, students begin to resent all schoolwork simply because they miss out on being with their friends, although if they chose to have fun with their friends, their grade will most likely suffer. Even if students manage to do both of these things, they usually have to stay up late to make sure everything gets done, which according to Craig Canapari M.D. can cause sleep deprivation. Due to this, it is no wonder that according to psychologist Robert Leahy, there has been a steady nationwide increase in the amount of stress caused by schoolwork among high school students. Even if homework was not so time consuming, there is little evidence that regular homework helps students academically, especially if it is just causing students to be stressed and resent schoolwork. In addition, in college there is no weight in daily homework anyway. While homework should be optional, it should not be abolished completely. Even though it has its downsides, some students do need additional practice outside of school. Giving students optional homework, lets them decide what they need. Some students might need a lot of help in a certain class, while others might need none at all. This can also teach students how to manage themselves, and figure out how to know if they need more or less practice for each subject. Several teachers at CHS, have already made homework optional.This is because they already have realized that it is not actually helping students. In addition, abolishing forced homework is favorable for teachers as well. The main benefit for teachers who implement optional homework is grading. Teachers spend hours upon hours grading homework and giving feedback. With optional homework, the need for this is eradicated and teachers can simply post an answer key online. This enables students who still do the homework to find out if they have done it correctly. Over the years, homework has become a regular part of students’ lives, yet no one ever enjoys any part of it. Getting rid of mandatory homework will improve the lives of teachers and students alike. Students will have more time for other things and become less stressed while teachers will not have to go through mountains of papers. Homework is not essential to learning and students should no longer be forced to work on it every night.

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Making Homework Optional

By RACHEL HIRSCHHEIMER

Third Place, Feature-Local — Long Island Press  High School Journalism Awards 2016

Recently there has been increased discussion about homework in the Jericho School District after Jericho Middle School Principal Dr. Donald Gately offered the idea of optional homework to the Middle School faculty. The term “optional homework” refers to a practice by which teachers assign homework and students are given the option to complete it or not after considering the usefulness of the homework assignment to their learning.

Fifth grade teacher Scott Bedley inspired Dr. Gately to try to suggest an “optional homework” policy throughout Jericho Middle School. Bedley and Gately have conversed about the benefits of optional homework. Bedley discovered that optional homework has dramatically increased the level of student engagement in his classroom. His policy is what it sounds like. Students in Bedley’s classroom have the choice to either complete or not complete homework. The assignments he distributes enhance the amount of material learned at home because students can explore the topic freely without being nervous that they’re going to lose points for getting something wrong. Bedley’s optional homework allows students to choose how they would like to learn information. Therefore, according to Bedley, students in his California classroom know more material coming into class than they would have without the homework being optional. Stanford researcher Denise Pope found that too much homework has a detrimental effect on students. Pope said, “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 discovered that many homework assignments are typically counterproductive and excessive. Too much homework leads to “greater stress, reduction in health and less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits.” The Stanford researcher saw that in high-performing schools like Jericho, students with excessive amounts of homework to complete end up spending most of their time alone which hinders a student’s social development.

Dr. Gately hopes to address such findings in part by making homework optional. “I want to make the assignments more meaningful. I especially want us to stop keeping score.” For instance, if a math teacher assigned a student 20 word problems for homework and the child only completed 17 problems, the student shouldn’t get penalized.  Gately doesn’t see the correlation between deducting points from homework and learning. He stated, “What does that have to do with learning? It has nothing to do with learning.”

Gately has spoken with some middle school students about such a policy.  Seventh grader Matthew R. said, “If the assignments were key to a test, I would do my homework.” Jericho Middle School student Jonathan C. agrees with R.  He stated, “If the homework was going to help me for a test, then I would do my homework.”

Jericho High School students have similar views. Freshman Deborah M. feels homework isn’t a beneficial practice for learning. “I feel as though I have better things to do, and believe that test prep is a more effective way of learning,” she said.  Deborah claimed that instead of doing repetitive homework, she would much rather take practice regents to prepare for final examinations. Sophomore Adrianna M. thinks optional homework would be an excellent policy for Jericho. She said, “I think homework should be optional because I don’t think students have enough time in their day to do it all.”

Gately isn’t looking to eliminate homework completely.  He feels that he has found a compromise between “a lot of homework and no homework.”  He believes teachers should be assigning homework that has meaning and value, minus the point system.

Jericho High School Assistant Principal Dr. Dagoberto Artiles is excited about Dr. Gately’s ideas regarding optional homework.

In fact, he feels that since Jericho is such a prestigious district, this is an excellent place to try a new policy. He said, “This is the perfect place where the school can become a laboratory.  We can reinvent education, reinvent the way people learn, and then send it out and share it with others.”

Jericho High School Principal Joan Rosenberg believes that homework is meant for the student to review what has occurred in class. She said, “I don’t know that saying homework is optional overall will change the system that dramatically.” Rosenberg believes that depending on the student, optional homework could relieve some stress.  However, making homework optional could be too extreme when trying to reduce the amount of homework. Rosenberg stated, “If it’s quality homework and not necessarily quantity homework, then there are ways of lessening the load.”

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Barbara Bauer doesn’t think a district-wide policy of optional homework is realistic.  “I think individual teachers giving options for certain activities or certain performance tasks is a possible way to go.”

The District’s homework policy currently states, “The Board of Education acknowledges the educational value of homework as an adjunct to and extension of the instructional program of the schools. For the purposes of this policy, ‘homework’ shall refer to those assignments to be prepared by the student outside of the school or independently while in attendance at school.” On occasion, the Board will review polices that need to be revised, but Mrs.  Bauer doesn’t feel a need to change the homework policy in Jericho.  Bauer stated, “As you can see it’s pretty general, and I really don’t see a need to change the policy as it stands now.”

If optional homework was implemented throughout the school district, some high school teachers would question its effectiveness. High school math teacher, Suzanne Jacobsen is against an optional homework policy. “I am not in favor of it. Part of your learning process is to do homework. You’re not going to meet with much success if you don’t practice.”

Science teacher Timothy Strout believes that homework acts as a reinforcement and can be used as feedback for students. “Homework is important to see what you have done wrong,” he said.  When asked if he would be open to making his homework optional if he had the choice, he immediately replied, “No, I wouldn’t do that. If I’m going to assign it and I’m going to have you spend the time doing it, making it optional makes it seem unimportant. If nobody is grading it, then what’s the point of doing it?”

The JerEcho invites our readers to weigh in on this issue.  Share your views on optional homework by commenting in the box below.

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Homework is already optional. Every student can opt not to complete it. He or she can determine that a social event, or gaming, or napping, or surfing the net, or reading a Stanford education researcher is more valuable or less stressful than completing an assignment that his or her teacher has deemed necessary for a better understanding of the material taught in class. There are always options. We have the option to consider the proposal an innovative aid to education or another absurd suggestion supported by one researcher who values more time for “friends, family, and extracurricular pursuits” over study or work that might still be conducted with friends and family.

A very interesting and informative article!

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Should Homework be Optional?

With stacking statistics proving damaging effects of stress on teens, it’s shocking that teens are still given up to five or more hours of homework a night, while statistically, academic pressure is a leading cause of stress in teens.  The majority of parents and teachers believe that homework is a student’s opportunity to reinforce or practice new material. But how much homework is enough, and just how effective is homework?

Stress isn't always destructive. It can provide energy to handle emergencies, make changes, meet challenges and excel. But even though some amount of stress is useful, indeed even helpful, the long-term consequences of constant stress are damaging to mental and physical health. If stress is constant and unrelieved, the body has little time to relax and recover. The stress button keeps getting pushed, continually releasing stress hormones when not needed, putting the body into overdrive. As a result, stress disorders can arise such as: high blood pressure, headaches, reduced eyesight, stomachaches and other digestive problems, facial, neck and back pain. High levels of the major stress hormone, cortisol, depress the immune system. A number of studies found that high levels of cortisol are implicated in AIDS, MS, diabetes, cancer, coronary artery disease, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease (Lewis, p.4).

While stress and cortisol take a toll on the body, they take an equally high toll on the brain. Joyce Walker, University of Minnesota, undertook a study and survey to determine the effect of stress and tension in adolescents and how said stress can cause destructive behavior.  The research focused on several situations that teens face and describe how they deal with it. The observations concluded that out of 4,300 students, 54 percent of them suffered from mild to severe depression compared to those who were not depressed, and could handle problems effectively.

Stress can make one forgetful and emotional, create anxiety and depression, and put one at risk of many mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Becky Beacom, health education manager for PAMF, surveyed 124 adolescents to explore what they find most stressful. 55 percent said homework and school over family and social life. And according to a survey released by the American Psychological Association (APA), during the school year, teens say their stress level is higher than levels reported by adults. It is proven that academic pressure acts as a chronic stressor, for students of every age and level - from elementary school through college and beyond. When enrolled in school, there is pressure to do well - and school becomes a daily focal point of life no matter what else one is involved in or how old one is. GreatSchools.org mentions standardized tests, increased homework loads and participation in advanced classes as school-related stressors. And a 2013 Stockholm University survey revealed that one-third of Swedish high school students experience serious stress related to pressure to perform in school, with eight percent reporting stress levels high enough to be considered burnout.

With all of this evidence which proves a correlation between school and stress, and the effect of stress on teens, why are teen’s work loads still stacking? The typical course load for high school students involves four major courses and two electives. For each class, up to an hour of homework or studying can be assigned each night, and more for advanced courses. And while a portion of students will participate in afterschool clubs or sports, others will have other responsibilities to take care of, like family obligations or work. So therefor, many students will have limited time to complete assignments and meet deadlines and suffer from the pressure and stress that comes along. Is it worth it?

As mentioned earlier, homework is given to students to strengthen skills and reinforce new material. Though as one parent states, “If the kids haven’t learned the concepts by the time they leave the classroom… the homework is pointless” (Broos, CNN), the effectiveness of homework becomes questionable. Another parent from California states, “Homework should never replace a teaching opportunity in the classroom” (Yakich, CNN), and how class time is used becomes questionable too.

A solution would be for teachers to make better use of class time by giving students the opportunity to complete assignments in class, this way students have more resources available to them and help from teachers. This way student’s schedules aren’t restricted by the amount of homework they have. And although homework can be helpful in augmenting new skills, more than an hour of homework a night is unnecessary and excess. If homework were to be optional,  the students who have the opportunity to complete assignments would be benefitted by the practice. And for those who do not have the chance to complete homework assignments, they will not be at a disadvantage. And those who have the time, but simply choose not to participate, will certainly not benefit from the lack of reinforcement.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

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.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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No More Homework: 12 Reasons We Should Get Rid of It Completely

Last Updated: February 16, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Finn Kobler . Finn Kobler graduated from USC in 2022 with a BFA in Writing for Screen/Television. He is a two-time California State Champion and record holder in Original Prose/Poetry, a 2018 finalist for the Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate, and he's written micro-budget films that have been screened in over 150 theaters nationwide. Growing up, Finn spent every summer helping his family's nonprofit arts program, Showdown Stage Company, empower people through accessible media. He hopes to continue that mission with his writing at wikiHow. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 116,148 times. Learn more...

The amount of homework students are given has increased dramatically in the 21st century, which has sparked countless debates over homework’s overall value. While some have been adamant that homework is an essential part of a good education, it’s been proven that too much homework negatively affects students’ mood, classroom performance, and overall well-being. In addition, a heavy homework load can stress families and teachers. Here are 12 reasons why homework should be banned (or at least heavily reduced).

School is already a full-time job.

• For years, teachers have followed the “10-minute rule” giving students roughly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. However, recent studies have shown students are completing 3+ hours of homework a night well before their senior years even begin. [2] X Trustworthy Source American Psychological Association Leading scientific and professional organization of licensed psychologists Go to source

Homework negatively affects students’ health.

Homework interferes with student’s opportunities to socialize.

Homework hinders students’ chances to learn new things.

Homework lowers students’ enthusiasm for school.

Homework can lower academic performance.

Homework cuts into family time.

Homework is stressful for teachers.

Homework is often irrelevant and punitive.

• There are even studies that have shown homework in primary school has no correlation with classroom performance whatsoever. [9] X Research source

Homework encourages cheating.

Homework is inequitable.

Other countries have banned homework with great results.

• There are even some U.S. schools that have adopted this approach with success. [13] X Research source

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• ↑ https://www.edutopia.org/no-proven-benefits
• ↑ https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/03/homework
• ↑ https://healthier.stanfordchildrens.org/en/health-hazards-homework/
• ↑ https://teensneedsleep.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/galloway-nonacademic-effects-of-homework-in-privileged-high-performing-high-schools.pdf
• ↑ https://time.com/4466390/homework-debate-research/
• ↑ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220485.2022.2075506?role=tab&scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=vece20
• ↑ https://kappanonline.org/teacher-stress-balancing-demands-resources-mccarthy/
• ↑ https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-homework-pros-cons-20180807-story.html
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6294446/
• ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/homework-inequality-parents-schedules-grades/485174/
• ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005
• ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-homework-its-the-new-thing-in-u-s-schools-11544610600

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Going to school is optional: Schools need to engage students to increase their lifetime opportunities

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, jing liu and jing liu assistant professor of education policy - university of maryland-college park @drjingliu susanna loeb susanna loeb director - annenberg institute at brown university, professor of education, international public affairs - brown university.

October 27, 2016

• 10 min read

While just about all students miss school some days during their elementary and secondary years for occasional sickness and family needs, some students miss school far more often. One conservative estimate is that 10 percent of students miss at least 10 percent of school days each year. [i] On top of being counted as absent for the full day, many students skip classes even when they are officially in school. In fact, students are as likely to miss a class because they simply choose to skip than they are to miss because they are out for the day. [ii] As shown in Figure 1, students’ unexcused class absence rate, on days they attend at some point, doubles once they enter high school (at least in this urban school district). Moreover, unexcused class absences on days when students are in school explains almost all of the increase in total absences in high school.

Figure 1: Mean absence rates by grade

Note: Years 2007-08 to 2012-13. Rates average across all student-year-semester-class observations in a given grade. Unexcused or excused classes on part-day absence is defined as percentage of unexcused or excused absences from a class on those days when students are part-day absent. Unexcused or excused classes on full-day absence is defined as percentage of unexcused or excused absences from a class on those days when students are full-day absent. Source: Whitney, Camille R. & Liu, Jing (2016). “What we’re missing: A descriptive analysis of part-day absence in secondary school,” Working Paper. 

Missing school and skipping class is consequential. Using variation in attendance caused by inclement weather, one study estimated that each additional absence reduced math achievement by 0.05 standard deviations, suggesting that attendance can account for up to one-fourth of the achievement gap by income. [iii] A similar study using data on students in Philadelphia found that living farther from school increased absences and resulted in lower grade point averages and test scores. [iv]

So why do students, especially high school students miss so many classes? Clearly multiple factors are in play. Students can face challenges simply getting to school as they may rely on public transportation, have family responsibilities in the morning, or simply have difficulty waking up. Missing first period is more common than missing other classes (about 5 percent, compared to about 3 percent for 3 rd period, which is the lowest—see Figure 2), though missing the last period is almost as likely. [v] They may have friends who are not in school or the potential for jobs and the monetary benefits they bring.

Figure 2: Class absence rate by period (for one urban district)

Note: Includes only students in schools that have 6-8 total periods per day. Rates represent the percentage of class meetings on which student was marked absent that period, on days that student was marked tardy or present in at least one other class (i.e., part-days). Source: Whitney, Camille R. & Liu, Jing (2016). “What we’re missing: A descriptive analysis of part-day absence in secondary school,” Working Paper. 

School, in general, and specific classes, in particular, also can be unpleasant experiences for students. More than one in four (28 percent) U.S. students between the ages of 12 and 18 say they have been bullied at school. [vi] This bullying ranges from being made fun of to being threatened with harm to actual physical contact and it happens in classrooms as well as in hallways and bathrooms and locker rooms. [vii] It also has long-run negative consequences for students. [viii] Even without direct bullying, some classes can be painful experiences, with the work either far too easy or far too difficult or the instruction too tedious for engagement.

The great returns to education—and there are many, from earnings to health to civic engagement—are unlikely to compensate for poor day-to-day experiences for students. For quite a while we have known that teenagers discount the future far more than do older adults, or even young adults. [ix] That is, many teenagers are not willing to sacrifice their enjoyment of life today for future benefits. Part of schools providing high quality educational opportunities, is providing engaging classrooms that are enjoyable so that teens don’t have to make a tradeoff for future gains.

Schools can do this. Recent research shows that both schools and individual teachers can affect attendance. As one example, a number of anti-bullying programs have reduced student victimization in schools, [x] improving experiences for students. More generally, two recent working papers show that high school teachers vary considerably in how much they engage students and that these differences are seen both in the year the student is in the teachers’ class and for future years as well. [xi]

Kirabo Jackson’s research (2016) shows that 9 th grade teachers vary in how much they help their students improve behaviors as measured by a combination of grades, on-time grade progression, suspensions and full-day absences. In our own work, we distinguish teachers’ effects specifically on students’ daily, unexcused absences in the teachers’ classes. The benefits of measuring teachers’ effects on class absences instead of on a combination of full-day absences and other measures such as grade progression are both that class absences can be linked to a particular teacher where as full-day absences are likely affected by multiple teachers, and because the additional measures, such on-time grade progression, are affected by both academic achievement and engagement. By assessing teachers’ effects on class skipping, we more directly target student engagement. We also find meaningful variation across teachers.

Some teachers are far abler to engage students in class than others are. Moreover, these are consistent abilities for teachers. If a teacher is effective at engaging students in one year, he or she is likely to be good at engaging students in the next year and in the following years as well. In fact, teacher effectiveness at engagement (as measured by student class attendance) is at least as consistent across classes over time as teacher effectiveness at improving students’ math or English language arts skills. [xii]

Teachers that improve students’ test performance most are not necessarily the same teachers as those who improve students’ attendance. Effectiveness at test score improvement is positively correlated with effectiveness at attendance improvement. That is, on average, teachers who are better at one are slightly more likely to be better at the other, but the relationship is not strong. Many teachers who are good at improving achievement are not good at improving attendance and many teachers who are good at improving attendance are not good at improving achievement. Reaching students at risk of chronic absenteeism likely takes skills that not all teachers have or require behaviors that not all teachers have been willing to undertake. We don’t currently know what those skills or behaviors are.

These teacher effects on attendance have long-lasting, important consequences for students. Both our study and Jackson’s find that having more engaging teachers increases not only attendance in the year in which the student has the teacher but also improves students’ chances of completing high school (See Figure 3). Both studies find that engaging teachers are approximately as influential on high school completion as teachers who are highly effective at improving students’ test performance. We find that English teachers, in particular, greatly affect students’ educational attainment, both through their effects on student test performance and their effects on student engagement.

Figure 3: High school dropout rate as a function of  average teacher value-added to attendances in grades 7-9

Note: Data come from all 7th to 9th graders during school years 2002-03 through 2012-13 in the district we examine. We pool together all math and ELA classrooms. To construct this binned scatter graph, we first residualize dropping out rate using baseline student, class, and school level characteristics, which include lagged math and English scores, absence rates, suspension, and demographic composition; tests students took in both previous and current year interacted with grade; year fixed effects; and subject fixed effects. We also control for teachers’ value-added to achievement so that we are holding teachers’ capability of increasing test scores constant. Finally, we add back the unconditional mean of the y variable to facilitate interpretation. Source: Liu, Jing & Loeb, Susanna (2016). “Engaging Teachers: Measuring the Impact of Teachers on Student Attendance in Secondary School,” Working paper. 

Should we care about keeping students in school and in class? Yes. Even holding constant test performance, students with a high school degree are far better positioned for economic success than those without. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median weekly earnings of high school degree holders (with no more advanced education) is $678 compared to $493 for those without, while the relevant unemployment rates are 5.4 percent compared to 8.0 percent. [xiii] Moreover, recent research provides evidence that the returns to degrees has gone up relative to returns to skills. [xiv] In fact, this research finds that holding test scores constant, the benefits of having a high school degree doubled from the 1980s to the 2000s.

Keeping students in school and in classes matter…and we have policy levers to do so. Preliminary evidence shows, for example, that low-cost interventions informing parents if their children are missing school can reduce chronic absenteeism. [xv] More broadly, if some teachers can engage students in their classrooms, then others can as well. The same types of policies and practices that have supported the development of measures of teaching practice that improve math or English language arts skills, could be used to develop similar measures focused more directly on student engagement. The same types of policies that have led to improvements in teaching math and English—such as regular feedback and a common language for good instruction [xvi] —could lead to improvement in engagement. Moreover, by including attendance as an indicator under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states could motivate these improvements. We should learn how to engage students and that knowledge should be used to help teachers improve and to select teachers who are most effective in this domain for the positions in which they are most needed.

The authors did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. They are currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article.

[i] Balfanz, R., & Byrnes, V. (2012). Chronic Absenteeism: Summarizing What We Know From Nationally Available Data. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Organization of Schools. [ii] Whitney, Camille R. & Liu, Jing (2016). “What we’re missing: A descriptive analysis of part-day absence in secondary school,” Working Paper; Cortes, K. E., Bricker, J., & Rohlfs, C. (2012). The Role of Specific Subjects in Education Production Functions: Evidence from Morning Classes in Chicago Public High Schools. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 12(1). Retrieved from http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bejeap.2012.12.issue-1/1935-1682.2749/1935-1682.2749.xml . [iii] Goodman, Joshua (2014). “Flaking Out: Student Absences and Snow Days as Disruptions of Instructional Time” NBER Working Paper 20221. [iv] Gottfried, M. A. (2010). Evaluating the Relationship Between Student Attendance and Achievement in Urban Elementary and Middle Schools: An Instrumental Variables Approach. American Educational Research Journal 47(2): 434–465. [v] Whitney, Camille R. & Liu, Jing (2016). [vi] U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 2011. [vii] Ibid. [viii] Eriksen, Tine Louise Mundbjerg, Nielsen, Helena Skyt & Simonsen, Marianne (2014). “Bullying in Elementary School.” Journal Human Resources 49(4): 839-871. [ix] Green, Leonard, Myerson, Joel, & Ostaszeski, Pawel (1999). “Discounting of delayed rewards across the life span: age differences in individual discounting functions,” Behavioral Processes 46(1): 89–96. [x] Ttofi, Maria M. & Farrington, David P. (2011). “Effectiveness of school-based programs to reduce bullying: a systematic and meta-analytic review.” Journal of Experimental Criminology 7(27). [xi] Jackson, Kirabo (2016). “What Do Test Scores Miss? The Importance of Teacher Effects on Non-Test Score Outcomes.” NBER Working Paper 22226; Liu, Jing, & Loeb, Susanna (2016). “Engaging Teachers: Measuring the Impact of Teachers on Student Attendance in Secondary School,” Working paper. [xii] Liu, Jing & Loeb, Susanna (2016). [xiii] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm . Data from the Current Population Survey updated March, 2016. [xiv] Castex, Gonzalo & Dechter, Evgenia Kogan (2014). “The Changing Roles of Education and Ability in Wage Determination.” Journal of Labor Economics 32(4): 685-710. [xv] See draft paper: Rogers, Todd & Feller, Avi (Draft). Intervening through Influential Third Parties: Reducing Student Absences at Scale through Parents. [xvi] See Taylor, Eric S. and John H. Tyler. 2012. “The Effect of Evaluation on Teacher Performance.” American Economic Review 102(7): 3628-3651; Papay, John, Eric S. Taylor, John H. Tyler, and Mary Laski. “Learning Job Skills from Colleagues at Work: Evidence from a Field Experiment Using Teacher Performance Data.” July 2015.

Economic Studies

Center for Economic Security and Opportunity

Sofoklis Goulas

March 14, 2024

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Homework should be optional.

W e’ve all been there — 2 a.m. Snapchats from fellow APUSH scholars, frantic AP Chemistry lab questions and Facebook messenger rants about the latest Physics lab grade at midnight. But what is the reason behind this widespread lack of sleep?

While AP and honors classes, by nature, were never meant to be sleep-killers or anxiety magnets. Yet, we still see many occurrences of juniors and seniors stressing out over seemingly insurmountable homework loads. And right there lies the problem: homework.

On an average night, a junior or senior taking two APs — the recommended quantity provided by Paly — expects to have around three to four hours of homework, not including studying for quizzes and tests. Often, this homework is due within one or two nights after being assigned. However, a closer look at these classes in a college setting reveals a much different agenda.

Homework in college is nothing like homework in high school. A typical college homework assignment is a problem set, or pset, that is assigned but not due until a week later. Similarly, readings, essays and projects are rarely due before a one-week deadline, which gives students enough time to space out assignments and work on them at a reasonable pace. Additionally, classes meet only once or twice a week, rather than the three times a week we meet in high school. The combination of six or seven classes meeting three times a week with homework often due the next block period creates a dangerous situation for students.

In a 2014 research article published by the Washington Post examining 10 high-achieving California high schools, researchers found that too much homework might actually be harming students, as it results in “excess stress, physical problems and little or no time for leisure.” The researchers added that current homework loads were found to be around 3.1 hours, while the optimal workload is around two hours.

The statistics from student surveys speak for themselves. Of the 4,317 students surveyed in the same 2014 study, more than 99 percent listed homework as a stressor, and more than half indicated it as their primary stressor. Moreover, a majority of students expressed concerns over health problems, such as sleep deprivation, stress and anxiety, as a direct consequence of high homework loads. But possibly the biggest toll homework takes on students is in their lives outside of academics. In the same study, many students stated that they had trouble balancing extracurriculars, time with friends and family and the occasional break for themselves.

If this survey were to be done at Paly, the responses would surely match the results of the study above. One of the aspects of homework not observed in the studies above is the fact that homework often detracts from studying for quizzes or tests. While homework is designed to prepare us for assessments, it often turns into dreaded “busy work.” Students must complete tedious homework before they can actually get to studying material for tests.

There are two possible solutions — a moderate one and a radical one. The moderate solution entails spacing out homework assignments so that there is more time in between the assigned date and the due date. It also involves teachers selecting only the most useful problems to assign for homework. But this solution is not enough because, essentially, the homework levels stay the same, there is just more time to do it.

Another solution is one that allows a student to skip any minor assignment, such as worksheets, notes or textbook problems, as long as their grade in that class does not suffer. While major assignments like labs, essays and projects are non-negotiable and have to be turned in, what students call “busywork” right now will become a thing of the past. Since Paly students are already highly motivated, if homework serves as a hindrance to deeper learning of the material, it can be taken out of the equation so real studying can begin.

By eliminating at least a few assignments from a student’s packed day, we can work toward bringing homework time closer to the recommended two-hour mark, while allowing students to study in the way that works best for them. The principle of studying in college is doing what works for the individual, and removing homework from the to-do list does exactly that, while preparing students for post-Paly education.

In this solution, students who find homework helpful or want homework grades to be taken into account in their overall grade are still welcome to continue turning in assignments for points, but they are not required to do this if homework is not the study tool they personally need. Teachers who are concerned about student performance can always make assignments mandatory if a student’s grade drops below a certain level.

In a case study of an AP Biology class described in a Healthline article, a teacher cut down her assigned homework by first a third, and then by a half. Student test scores did not drop during this time, which can be explained in a couple of ways. Either the students were using the new-found time to learn in ways that worked for them or having the extra time to relax was helping them as well.

Research has shown that an excess amount of homework can take a toll on a high school student’s physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. And while college students are working just as hard, if not harder, because they are working on something specific to their interests. They are learning in ways that are tailored toward the individual, rather than toward everyone. It’s time Paly reforms their homework policies.

Comments (4)

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john • Mar 26, 2021 at 5:41 am

no homework

YEET • Jan 21, 2020 at 10:45 am

NO HOMEWORK

dylan • Mar 4, 2019 at 4:24 pm

no • Jan 12, 2018 at 6:46 am

OMG OMG OMG :0 so true

What happened when a school made homework optional?

Homework is often the bane of teachers, pupils and parents’ lives, eating into personal time and causing friction between all involved.

Yet for time immemorial, it has been set, with the expectation that it is delivered on time and without excuse.

But at Dar Al Marefa School in Dubai, something quite different is happening. Homework is optional.

Well, that’s perhaps a slight exaggeration - reading and maths are still compulsory.

But, for all other subjects, there is no specific requirement for teachers to set homework or pupils to complete it.

A radical idea

Ian Thurston, head of secondary at Dar Al Marefa School, is the man behind this seemingly radical idea, and he explains how it came about in the latest Tes International podcast.

“It started in term one because we identified there was a big problem in that everyone was complaining about homework - parents said there was too much, children were stressed, teachers found the homework timetable didn’t always work for them.”

“So, we looked at it and said ‘why are we doing this traditional model?’ - just because it has been done this way is not a good enough answer. I always look at things and say ‘why do we do this?’ and the answer ‘we always have done it this way’ has never been good enough.”

To fully understand the extent of these issues, the school surveyed staff to ensure it had a clearer idea of what most parents felt about homework.

“The results were clear: more than 70 per cent of parents felt the homework we were setting was having a negative impact on their child’s wellbeing, and 50 to 60 per cent of parents felt homework we were setting was not adding any academic value, which meant we had to look at what are we doing with homework.”  

Reading the research

From here the idea was formed: make all but reading and maths homework optional. To call this a bold move is, perhaps, an understatement.

“It wasn’t simple; it was seen as being a bit out of leftfield and the immediate reaction from teachers, the board and parents, was ‘why?’

“But I go back to ‘why do we want to do something, what do we want to achieve?’

Of course, the decision to do this wasn’t made overnight, with the school spending a lot of time looking at research around homework to truly understand how it helps - and hinders - students, and families, so it knew what the implication would be of the change.

“Every school improvement I want to see happen in my school has to be research-backed - so we looked into a lot around homework, which varied and was very interesting in itself,” Thurston explains.

“Most research will say, yes, homework adds value; at schools that give homework, students do better. But when you dive into it, there are a lot of underlining inconsistencies. It depends on the age of the student - homework works well for older students but less so for younger students. And there is increasing evidence homework adds to stress for not only students but families as well.”

What to keep

From here, the next move was to understand what homework - now termed “home learning” in the school - should remain compulsory and what should become optional.

The decision was that reading and maths would remain.

“The idea was to make reading compulsory every evening, as we are a bilingual school and study in English and in Arabic, we want students to be reading three nights a week in Arabic and three nights a week in English.”

Maths was also chosen because of the positive knock-on impacts the skill has in other areas from business studies to art.

Of course, the question this poses is: how did other teachers feel about this?

“The initial reaction is ‘you don’t value my subject if mine is not compulsory’, but by involving staff...we got a working party together and everyone was involved in the research and everyone found out for themselves that reading does impact on all subjects, [as does] maths,” Thurston explains.

“[And] yes, earlier on there were fears that with optional homework no-one will submit it - but that didn’t happen,” he says, noting that submission rates have remained the same even during lockdown.

A flexible future

Furthermore, the aim is that with removing the need to set homework as a scheduled task, it offers more flexibility to teachers to set more interesting, beneficial and less-pressured homework.

“The research says that homework for homework’s sake does not add much value, but projects, where suitably timed, do add value and students get much more involved in it, [so] we have taken the shackles off teachers.”

Secondly, the change also means parents now have the option to decide what is right for their child with regards to how much work they are doing and when - something Thurston does on a personal level, too.

“Those parents who complained there was too much [homework] can now decide what homework is relevant for their children and some weeks it might be suitable, some weeks it might not.

“I know that I myself have written a note saying ‘they haven’t done their homework as they were too tired’ and that’s a judgement call that I make as a parent that my child is better served getting a good night’s sleep and going into school being more productive during those schools hours than staying up [doing homework].”

More family time

Thurston adds that, particularly in the Middle East, family time is an especially important part of children’s lives and so, for many parents, being able to allow their children to take part in family activities knowing homework can be left for that evening makes everyone happier.

“Some parents have said that is exactly what I want for my kids, I want them to go to school and learn academic subjects but when they finish that school day, I want them to have a life as a child and learn lots of other things and not have to worry about homework.”

The plan now is to continue with this push when school returns to the classroom in September and monitor the submission rates and uptake of homework.

“We will be reviewing very regularly and making sure we are getting things right. With anything new you do, you will never get it 100 per cent right and there will always be things you can improve on...I like to look at data and see what it is showing us,” says Thurston.

“When we test the reading age of students, are they improving faster now, are rates of homework submission rising or falling, in terms of student wellbeing are they reporting they feel happier now then they did last year...all these metrics we can use to analyse whether it’s having a positive impact or not.”

To find out more about the project and how it was implemented - and plans for the future - watch the full interview below on YouTube or listen to the audio podcast on the player below or on your podcast platform of choice.

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20 Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned

• Post author By admin
• September 19, 2022

Colleges and schools give a lot of homework to students. Students often do it incorrectly because they don’t have enough information and knowledge. Sometimes students get new and unknown tasks to complete. Even at home, students are unable to find anyone to assist.

These types of practices make things worse. Facts are overwhelming nowadays, which is one of the reasons why homework should be banned. Today’s parents are too busy with their responsibilities to run their families effectively. They are frequently unable to teach their students about the subjects.

These factors leave a student alone to gather knowledge and do homework. When these students return to school the next day, their teachers may punish or scold them for their poor presentation.

Table of Contents

Why Homework Should Be Banned

We can’t say that homework is not important, homework also has its importance , but that does not mean that it is too necessary. It creates many types of problems for students and their parents, which is why people demand to ban homework.

These are some of the reasons why homework should be banned -:

Homework Restricts A Student’s Freedom

• No Time For Exercises
• No Time To Play Outdoor Games

Often Breaks Students’ Confidence

Homework doing not an achievement, most homework creates bad habits, less time to spend with family members, conflict with parents, downtime at home, negative impact on tests, writing has different effects, extra challenges, homework causes depression, homework provides no real benefit, too much homework means not enough time for yourself, school is a full-time job, no real impact on performance, irrelevant content.

In most cases, children do not want to get up early in the morning. When they sleep for long periods and wake up late in the morning, they feel more relaxed and energetic. The best time for students to spend more time in bed is during the holidays. If kids are assigned homework during the holidays, it becomes a painful task. Students must finish assignments on time, regardless of the consequences. In any case, they must study every day. This is the first reason why homework should be banned.

No Time For Exercises 

Exercises are suitable for people of all ages. Persons of any age group can do activities. Students go to school, spend hours there, and then return home. They don’t have a lot of time to become fresh and eat. Most students go to their rooms to rest before beginning to work on their homework. They are busy doing school homework at home during the week and on weekends. This is the second reason why homework should be banned.

No Time To Play Outdoor Games 

More students take part in home activities these days. Students do not have enough free time to participate in sports. They’re on their way out the door to finish their homework. Parents have been unable to discover a solution to this problem. They have all of these headaches and are exhausted. The clock runs its way, and by the time they’ve finished, it’s bedtime. This is the third reason why homework should be banned.

Homework cannot be achieved without the use of the tool. Nobody can judge a student’s ability just on their homework. Many students are unfamiliar with the topic and how to complete it correctly. If you provide incorrect information, you will be misusing the concepts you are familiar with. Facts are overpowering, which is why homework should be banned.

Suppose many students do it incorrectly and that several teachers make fun of them in class. Because of uncultured experts, it occurs in many schools. Such activities will break students’ confidence. Regardless, teachers should assist students in gaining a thorough comprehension of concepts and showing how to apply them to the subject. This is the fourth reason why homework should be banned.

Students who complete homework according to a teacher’s instructions will not succeed. If you spend all of your time studying and working hard on your lesson, you will not have enough time to do other tasks. It becomes boring for you. It has the potential to impact the causal relationship with others. Doing homework is not a learning process. Students treat homework as though it were a competition with their classmates. This is the fifth reason why homework should be banned.

If a student continues to work on homework, additional study time for another topic will be added to the stack. You will be unable to study and read due to a lack of time. Many students treat homework as though it were a daily task. Homework rarely motivates students. They have no idea what the topic is and finish it without any motivation. This is why homework should be banned because it is discouraging. This is the sixth reason why homework should be banned.

A student’s hours are consumed by their homework load. For a child to grasp the relationships between different persons, family time is crucial when they are young. It reduces the amount of time that children must spend with their families. It helps form social bonds and teaches them how to live in society. This is the seventh reason why homework should be banned.

Students frequently refuse to do homework or study. They are exhausted and wish to rest. This might lead to a disagreement between children and their parents. Parents never want to scold their children, but situations force them to do so. This is the eighth reason why homework should be banned.

Homework Can Encourage Cheating

When students have a large amount of work to complete in a short amount of time, they copy from other students. This attempt to duplicate leads to them learning how to cheat effectively such that teachers are unable to differentiate between the two works. If a teacher finds both works similar, they may punish both. With the availability of generative AI writing tools like ChatGPT that assist in making interactive brochures and other homework related tasks. This can get students into a lot of trouble with writing assignments being detected by an accurate AI content detector . This is why homework should be banned. This is the ninth reason why homework should be banned.

Also Read -: Best Homework Songs to Listen

After 8 hours in class, 2 hours of homework is a punishment. Professors should provide students with more unscheduled time. Going outside, hanging out with friends, joining hobby organizations, supporting parents, and, yes, watching TV and playing video games all make children feel like kids. This is the tenth reason why homework should be banned.

One of the main reasons homework should be banned is that many teachers cannot provide all the information needed to finish the lesson during class. Parents also can’t help their children with all tasks. The friends of students lack the experience to assist them. Online assignment companies are the options for them. They only can help students with their homework of any level. This is the eleventh reason why homework should be banned.

Even though students understand the subject, the lack of writing or research skills can cause them to fail the entire course, and many teachers do nothing to help them. This is the twelth reason why homework should be banned.

It is challenging for students who juggle their business schedules with activities after classes, internships, and part-time jobs to keep up. They are exhausted at the end of the day. This is the thirteen reason why homework should be banned.

Having too much homework can negatively affect students’ mental and physical health. Five-six per cent of students say their homework is the primary source of stress and exhaustion, according to a Stanford University study. Lack of sleep, headaches, and weight loss can result from too much homework. This is the fourteen reason why homework should be banned.

Many teachers believe that students will become better and remember more if they give them more homework. However, this is not always the case, as more homework results in students not learning. Students are being pushed into a corner of stress by homework instead of using it as a tool to encourage them to learn more.

A lot of homework negatively impacts academic performance. Although homework can contribute to higher grades, it mostly has diminishing returns. This is the fifteen reasons why homework should be banned.

Students who spend too much time on homework fail to develop their life skills and developmental needs. A student who has too much homework is more likely to avoid participating in activities outside of school, such as sports, music, etc.

Additionally, if students spend all their time doing homework, they may not develop essential life skills, such as independence, cooking skills, time management, or social skills.

Most students feel forced to prioritize their homework over discovering and developing other skills and talents. By not having homework, they could spend more time on their interests, such as dancing, video gaming, and painting, thus fitting into society as they grow older. This is the sixteen reason why homework should be banned.

For most kids in Taiwan, school begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. or later. Each day, kids put in about 9 hours of work into their education. Students do extracurricular activities to compete and survive in society, such as attending cram school, learning musical instruments, and participating in sports. They quickly spend more than 10 hours a day engaged in school-related activities. This is the seventeenth reason why homework should be banned.

In 4 hours of weekly home-taken assignments, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) discovered that spending more time on education has no effect on productivity. This is the eighteen reason why homework should be banned.

If homework has nothing to do with the topic or subject being studied, it should be banned. It’s unethical to assign homework that students haven’t completed in class and expect good grades. This is the nineteen reason why homework should be banned.

Also read : Is Homework Illegal AnyWhere?

20 Other Reasons about Why Homework Should be Banned

These are the 20 reasons because of why homework should be banned:

• Waste time of Students
• It affects the physical health of students
• It affects the mental health of students
• Homework does not provide practical knowledge
• Homework creates the habit of Procrastination in children
• Because of homework children starts hating study
• It forces children to work like a robot
• Homework is boring
• Does not help that much in study
• It creates the habit of memorizing concepts in the students
• Children start thinking of their parents and teachers as a villain
• Homework creates pressure on the students
• No time left for students to learn something new
• Homework repeats the already taught concepts of school
• The teacher gives a lot of homework to students
• It increases the daily tasks of the students
• Another burden on the students
• No family time left for the students
• It makes students feel like a puppet
• Students lose their confidence if they fail to do their homework.

List Of The Pros Of Banning Homework

Homework Does Not Improve Student Academic Performance.

The reality of homework for modern students is that we don’t know if assigning an extra task outside of class is helpful. Each study contains several flaws, resulting in unreliable data & Students also search for someone to do their homework online. Some research suggests that students in secondary schools or higher can benefit from little homework; banning it for younger students may make sense for their learning experience.

Banning Homework Can Reduce Burnout Among Students.

Today, teachers are paying more attention to homework stress in the classroom. Over 25% of grade school professors say that they have seen students stressed out by homework. When students are dealing with the impact of homework, it can have a tremendous negative impact.

It Can Help You Spend More Time With Your Family.

 Homework creates a noticeable disruption to family connections. It not only cuts down on time spent with family, but it also reduces the opportunities for parents to teach their values and talents to their children. Over half of North American parents say they’ve had a significant disagreement with their children about schoolwork in the last month. Homework is identified as the leading source of trouble in one-third of families.

It Can Reduce The Negative Impact Of Homework On The Student’s Health.

When students fail to complete a homework assignment on time, they suffer mental distress. When the outcome occurs, assumptions are frequently made about the student’s time management skills, but the reasons are usually more complex. It may be too challenging, tedious, or uninteresting, or there may be insufficient time in the day to finish the task. When students fail in this area, it can lead to serious mental health problems. It can discourage a desire to learn in students. Some people believe they are intellectual failures who will never live a good life.

Why Homework is good

Here are a few reasons why homework is good .

• Increase Memory Power.
• Enhances Concentration.
• Homework Strengthens Problem-Solving.
• Helps in Developing Analytical Skills.
• Discipline Skills.

Also read : Who Invented Homework And Why? Best Facts You Should Know

List Of The Cons Of Banning Homework

Homework can assist parents and educators in determining a child’s learning skills..

Many children develop a self-defense strategy that helps them fit in with the other students in their class. This procedure allows them to hide learning problems that may be hindering their academic achievement. Because children cannot hide their learning problems while working one-on-one with their parents on specific subjects, homework allows teachers and parents to uncover this problem. By banning homework, you’re removing half of the opportunity to spot possible issues right away.

It Teaches Students How To Manage Their Time Effectively.

As people get older, they recognize that time is a limited resource. To increase productivity, it is critical to managing time wisely. Homework is an excellent technique to encourage the development of abilities in children as early as school. The trick is to keep the time allocated for work to a minimum. Students should spend 10 minutes on schoolwork and plan their schedules accordingly. If a student is having trouble creating a program, the family should provide them with the opportunity to do so.

Homework Allows Parents To Participate In Their Children’s Education.

Parents must be aware of what their children are learning in school. Even when a parent inquires about their children’s learning, the response is more generic than precise. Parents will see and experience their children’s growth in what they are doing while they are at school throughout the day if work is sent home from the classroom. Parents can readily participate in the learning process to reinforce their children’s essential concepts every day.

Is Homework Good or Bad?

What are your thoughts on whether is homework good or bad ? It is essential to consult with students and their parents. Parents work hard to keep track of their children’s progress in every field. When it comes to family tours and celebrations, homework becomes a source of frustration. The majority of homework takes up a child’s spare time. To live, it’s not enough to breathe. More is required for a student to have a happy childhood and grow peacefully. It would help if you understood why homework should be banned.

Another point to consider is that homework is not an after-school activity. Parents provide tutors for their children who are having difficulty with their homework. This keeps a student occupied during their free time. Many parents choose to send their children to boarding schools. You should be aware of your child’s activities and achievements. It is a source of worry about whether homework is harmful or beneficial to students. It is something that parents and teachers should seriously consider.

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Homework is a big topic, and some people wonder if we should get rid of it. Homework is when teachers give you work to do at home, like math problems, reading, or projects. Some people think it’s a good way to practice what you learned in school, but others say it’s not so great.

People who want to get rid of homework say it can be too much. It can take up a lot of your free time, leaving less time to play and relax. Some kids also feel stressed and worried about getting their homework done. They might even need help from their parents, and that can be tough if their parents are busy too.

But not everyone agrees. Some think homework helps you learn better. It can reinforce what you learn in class and make you more responsible. You can also get extra practice, which might make you better at things like math or reading.

In this blog, we have discussed why homework should be banned and the pros and cons of banning homework. I hope you have understood why homework should be banned easily. 

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What are the negative effects of too much homework.

Overburdening students with homework can lead to stress, worry, despair, physical illnesses, and even lower exam scores.

How much homework is appropriate for high schoolers?

Students in high school are capable of handling additional schoolwork. According to the 10-minute rule per grade, freshmen should have no more than 90 minutes of homework, and seniors should have no more than 2 hours.

Why does homework exist?

Homework helps teachers determine how well the lessons are being understood by their students.

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