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Is Homework a Waste of Time? Teachers Weigh In

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The debate over homework rages on.

In response to an Opinion essay by a teacher titled “ What Do You Mean My Kid Doesn’t Have Homework? ”, many Facebook users took to the comments section to voice their perspectives on whether assigning homework is outdated and unnecessary—especially during a pandemic—or whether it’s a critical step to cultivating learning.

The benefits of homework have long been disputed, especially at the elementary school level. In 2018, Marva Hinton wrote about how homework was assigned at early grades and the potential effects on these young students. Some schools embraced homework, like Arlington Traditional School, a countywide elementary school in Arlington, Va., where kindergartners were expected to complete a minimum of 30 minutes of homework a night, Monday through Thursday. But some teachers such as Cathy Vatterott, a professor of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the author of Rethinking Homework worried that adjusting to school routines combined with homework could sour young students on school.

But what about the benefits for older students? In a 2019 article , Education Week Assistant Editor Stephen Sawchuk unpacked the results of a Center for American Progress analysis, which found that while much of the homework assigned to the students in the study aligned with the Common Core State Standards, it did not contribute to building more difficult skills called for in the standards, like analyzing or extending their knowledge to new problems.

Beyond considering the efficacy of homework, the debate over how much time students should spend daily on take-home assignments dates back to the early 1900s. The public furor even led some state lawmakers to ban homework entirely at one point. Multiple studies over the years have examined different angles of the homework debate, including just how much homework students were assigned. In 2003, a pair of national studies found that most American students spent less than an hour daily on homework, and the workload was no bigger than it was 50 years prior.

“There is this view in the popular media that there has been this terrible burden of homework on children, and that the homework is increasing,” said Tom Loveless, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution to Education Week’s Debra Viadero in a 2003 article . “That is not the case.”

Fast-forward to the present, teachers and students alike might find themselves at another crossroads in the homework debate. The pandemic brought with it the advent of strategies like “flipped learning” , which relies heavily on homework as an integral component of the lesson. While this might work for some, many students grew weary of the reliance on homework during remote and hybrid learning. This is on top of the potential equity issues arising from lack of internet access affecting students’ ability to complete the steady stream of homework being assigned, and the uptick in mental health issues in students .

So what do teachers really think about homework? Here’s what they had to say in response to the recently resurfaced essay by Samantha Hulsman.

A Disconnect Between Parents and Educators

“i teach 1st grade. i had parents ask for homework. i explained that i don’t give homework. home time is family time. time to play, cook, explore and spend time together. i do send books home, but there is no requirement or checklist for reading them. read them, enjoy them, and return them when your child is ready for more. i explained that as a parent myself, i know they are busy—and what a waste of energy it is to sit and force their kids to do work at home—when they could use that time to form relationships and build a loving home. something kids need more than a few math problems a week.”.

- Colleen S.

“I tried the ‘no homework’ policy one year and received so much pushback from my parents that I began sending home a weekly packet. I pass it out on Monday and it is due on Friday. Parents [are] happy, I’m happy, and life goes on. I say pick your battles. Now, I refuse to give packets over school breaks (winter/spring). If a parent asks, I simply tell them to have them work on any app that we use in class.”

“i literally only assign homework because some parents always make a huge deal of it if i don’t.”, “parents are the driving force behind homework ... they demand it and will complain about not receiving it even after explaining your philosophy of education and providing them with pedagogy that refutes the ‘benefits’ of it.”, homework can be useful for certain subjects or grades, “as a teacher of nearly 40 years, i believe homework has its place. especially in math math needs to be practiced to learn it. i don’t believe in giving homework just because. i think it should be purposeful.”.

- Sandra S.

“For those leading the charge against homework, please think about the expectation for students beyond your classroom. If you teach elementary school, will they be asked to do homework in middle school, high school, and beyond? If so, organization, time management, and study skills are not so easily learned at a later age, when the expectation has never been present. I can’t imagine being a student, who enters college, having never had the expectation of nightly HW.”

- Bobbie M.

Is Homework Actually Helpful for Learning?

Some agree that at its core, homework is practice, which is a needed element to achieving learning.

“Homework is practice. Practice the skills we learned about in class so we can review and add to them. My instrumental students are required to practice every day. When they don’t it’s evident.”

Others aren’t as convinced it’s actually a good tool for assessing comprehension.

“As a teacher, if the kids were assigned homework, guess when the papers were graded ... After discovering a Mom had been doing the homework and was making failing grades ... I gave it up ... taught 25 years without it and my students did much better ...”

- Martha H.

Heightens Equity Issues

“no homework ever it is unnecessary it is so elitist and ableist and teaches kids that it is expected to take work home after hours of a job. nope never”, “homework just further separates the students. those who have parents home who understand the work, or can afford a tutor will do so. families already struggling financially tend not to have parents home to help and cannot afford tutors.”.

- Rebecca J.

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More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

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Is Homework a Waste of Students’ Time? Study Finds It’s the Biggest Cause of Teen Stress

It’s the bane of every teen’s existence. After sitting through hours at school, they leave only to get started on mountains of homework. And educators are mixed on its effectiveness . Some say the practice reinforces what students learned during the day, while others argue that it put unnecessary stress on kids and parents , who are often stuck nagging or helping.

According to a new study, conducted by the Better Sleep Council , that homework stress is the biggest source of frustration for teens, with 74 percent of those surveyed ranking it the highest, above self-esteem (51 percent) parental expectations (45 percent) and bullying (15 percent).

Homework is taking up a large chunk of their time , too — around 15-plus hours a week, with about one-third of teens reporting that it’s closer to 20-plus hours.

The stress and excessive homework adds up to lost sleep , the BSC says. According to the survey, 57 percent of teenagers said that they don’t get enough sleep, with 67 reporting that they get just five to seven hours a night — a far cry from the recommended eight to ten hours. The BSC says that their research shows that when teens feel more stressed, their sleep suffers. They go to sleep later, wake up earlier and have more trouble falling and staying asleep than less-stressed teens.

“We’re finding that teenagers are experiencing this cycle where they sacrifice their sleep to spend extra time on homework, which gives them more stress — but they don’t get better grades,” said Mary Helen Rogers, the vice president of marketing and communications for the BSC.

RELATED VIDEO: To Help Or Not To Help: Moms Talk About Whether Or Not They Help Their Children With Homework

Another interesting finding from this study: students who go to bed earlier and wake up earlier do better academically than those who stay up late, even if those night owls are spending that time doing homework.

To end this cycle of sleep deprivation and stress, the BSC recommends that students try setting a consistent time to go to sleep each night, regardless of leftover homework. And their other sleep tips are good for anyone, regardless of age — keep the temperature between 65 and 67 degrees, turn off the electronic devices before bed, make sure the mattress is comfy and reduce noise with earplugs or sound machines.

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Is homework a waste of time.

Homework has always been one of the biggest challenges to school and home life, causing family tension, stress and time pressures.

Research from Stanford Graduate School of Education  conducted amongst 4,300 students highlighted that over 56 per cent considered homework to be a primary source of stress, whilst others reported increased levels of anxiety, sleep deprivation, exhaustion and weight loss.

After considerable review and debate, ACS Egham has decided to drop ‘traditional’ homework for students aged four to eleven.

The educational debate over the merits of homework has been going on a long time, with different countries taking very different approaches. Wanting to discover the best approach to setting homework to achieve optimal wellbeing for students and parents, our teaching team collaborated on a research project to help find the solution. Our findings highlighted that for homework to be truly effective, it must be highly personalised for each student. So we set about making these changes.

Traditional homework

Traditional homework or ‘busy work’, as we like to call it, is generic across a class, and does little to enhance the individual student learning experience. This kind of homework assumes that every student is the same, that each has the same maturity, concentration and ability level. It is, therefore… a bit lazy. As we all know, in real-life abilities vary enormously from one person to the next, and students can often find this type of homework very stressful, especially if they feel they have been set impossible tasks that they must face alone.

Children are already at school for some seven hours a day and ‘busy work’ simply eats up their free time, which they could be better spending with their families, or taking part in extra-curricular activities to refresh their minds and bodies. Younger students especially should be encouraged to use time after school for unstructured play and developing their own creativity.

Reflecting upon these issues, we decided to replace ‘busy work’ with a personal, guided approach building on class work and learning, which parents and students can share together, making the work more meaningful, manageable and worthwhile.

Personalised approaches

Instead of setting homework, ACS Egham teachers share with parents the learning topics for the upcoming term and suggest that these subjects are explored at home. The Lower School intranet hosts ‘talk topics’ which link in with lessons and can be discussed at home around the dinner table or during car journeys. We also include extra-curricular activities which tie in to each unit, such as visiting a museum, art exhibition, or hands on activities.

Arithmetic and literacy skills can also be enhanced at home without endless sums and compulsory reading times. Parents can help their children practice mathematical skills in everyday scenes; calculating a grocery budget, or measuring furniture on a trip to IKEA. Equally, parents are actively encouraged to read with students as much as they can, and for as long as it’s enjoyable. When reading is not a chore but an enjoyable activity, students’ literacy skills increase.

All these opportunities allow students to apply their class-based learning in a different context. In a multi-cultural class, exploring topics at home can be particularly important for students who have a native language other than English, giving them the forum in which to widen their vocabulary in their mother tongue. If students have struggled with a specific task, parents can notify the teachers, enabling teachers to give more targeted support in these areas.

Alternative education systems

In Finland, students are generally assigned virtually no homework; they don’t start school until age seven, and the school day is short. Despite this, Finland is considered to have one of the leading education systems in the world. Finnish students achieve some of the world’s best international PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test results; in 2016 achieving fourth place in reading compared to the UK in 22nd place, and 12th place in maths, compared the UK in 27th place.

According to a BBC article, a key concept in the Finnish school system is trust, where there’s little homework and no culture of extra private tuition. This trust is built from parents’ trusting schools to deliver a good education within the school day, and schools putting trust in the quality of their teachers. This certainly resonates with our opinions on homework; if a student has been delivered a quality education in the school day, there should be no need to spend hours in the evening carrying out a rigid schedule of homework.

Developing skills for the future

We prepare our nine to eleven year olds for secondary education through ‘I-Inquiry’ projects. These are individual research topics which students investigate over a period of four to six weeks. Recently students designed, created and built virtual models of their own imaginary planets, following a unit of inquiry that explored the solar system.

Using their iPads, students researched the characteristics of different planets before creating and naming their own. The final projects were then presented back to the class using iPads, artistic drawings and in some cases, hand built models.

Through the I-Inquiry project, students developed a whole range of essential life skills. These included time management and organisational skills, as students were required to work on the project both at home and at school; independent inquiry, exploring different sources to create their planet; as well as helping develop a creative mindset. Students also enhanced their communication skills and public speaking through their final presentations. Most importantly, students were energised by their learning and engaged with their subjects on a much deeper level.

We strongly believe that setting homework for the sake of it doesn’t benefit children or prepare them in a robust way for their next steps. It can also be a cause of family stress and tension, and potentially even hinder the wellbeing of the student. Where we’ve adopted our new approach at ACS Egham, we can see our students develop life skills through extra-curricular activities, spending time with their friends and family, and engaging at home with meaningful, highly personalised tasks, like the I-Inquiry Projects, which equips them for success beyond education and develops a curious mind as well as a lifelong love of learning.

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11 Surprising Homework Statistics, Facts & Data

The age-old question of whether homework is good or bad for students is unanswerable because there are so many “ it depends ” factors.

For example, it depends on the age of the child, the type of homework being assigned, and even the child’s needs.

There are also many conflicting reports on whether homework is good or bad. This is a topic that largely relies on data interpretation for the researcher to come to their conclusions.

To cut through some of the fog, below I’ve outlined some great homework statistics that can help us understand the effects of homework on children.

Homework Statistics List

1. 45% of parents think homework is too easy for their children.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that parents are almost twice as likely to believe their children’s homework is too easy than to disagree with that statement.

Here are the figures for math homework:

• 46% of parents think their child’s math homework is too easy.
• 25% of parents think their child’s math homework is not too easy.
• 29% of parents offered no opinion.

Here are the figures for language arts homework:

• 44% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is too easy.
• 28% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is not too easy.
• 28% of parents offered no opinion.

These findings are based on online surveys of 372 parents of school-aged children conducted in 2018.

2. 93% of Fourth Grade Children Worldwide are Assigned Homework

The prestigious worldwide math assessment Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) took a survey of worldwide homework trends in 2007. Their study concluded that 93% of fourth-grade children are regularly assigned homework, while just 7% never or rarely have homework assigned.

3. 17% of Teens Regularly Miss Homework due to Lack of High-Speed Internet Access

A 2018 Pew Research poll of 743 US teens found that 17%, or almost 2 in every 5 students, regularly struggled to complete homework because they didn’t have reliable access to the internet.

This figure rose to 25% of Black American teens and 24% of teens whose families have an income of less than $30,000 per year.

4. Parents Spend 6.7 Hours Per Week on their Children’s Homework

A 2018 study of 27,500 parents around the world found that the average amount of time parents spend on homework with their child is 6.7 hours per week. Furthermore, 25% of parents spend more than 7 hours per week on their child’s homework.

American parents spend slightly below average at 6.2 hours per week, while Indian parents spend 12 hours per week and Japanese parents spend 2.6 hours per week.

5. Students in High-Performing High Schools Spend on Average 3.1 Hours per night Doing Homework

A study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) conducted a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California. 

Across these high-performing schools, students self-reported that they did 3.1 hours per night of homework.

Graduates from those schools also ended up going on to college 93% of the time.

6. One to Two Hours is the Optimal Duration for Homework

A 2012 peer-reviewed study in the High School Journal found that students who conducted between one and two hours achieved higher results in tests than any other group.

However, the authors were quick to highlight that this “t is an oversimplification of a much more complex problem.” I’m inclined to agree. The greater variable is likely the quality of the homework than time spent on it.

Nevertheless, one result was unequivocal: that some homework is better than none at all : “students who complete any amount of homework earn higher test scores than their peers who do not complete homework.”

7. 74% of Teens cite Homework as a Source of Stress

A study by the Better Sleep Council found that homework is a source of stress for 74% of students. Only school grades, at 75%, rated higher in the study.

That figure rises for girls, with 80% of girls citing homework as a source of stress.

Similarly, the study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) found that 56% of students cite homework as a “primary stressor” in their lives.

8. US Teens Spend more than 15 Hours per Week on Homework

The same study by the Better Sleep Council also found that US teens spend over 2 hours per school night on homework, and overall this added up to over 15 hours per week.

Surprisingly, 4% of US teens say they do more than 6 hours of homework per night. That’s almost as much homework as there are hours in the school day.

The only activity that teens self-reported as doing more than homework was engaging in electronics, which included using phones, playing video games, and watching TV.

9. The 10-Minute Rule

The National Education Association (USA) endorses the concept of doing 10 minutes of homework per night per grade.

For example, if you are in 3rd grade, you should do 30 minutes of homework per night. If you are in 4th grade, you should do 40 minutes of homework per night.

However, this ‘rule’ appears not to be based in sound research. Nevertheless, it is true that homework benefits (no matter the quality of the homework) will likely wane after 2 hours (120 minutes) per night, which would be the NEA guidelines’ peak in grade 12.

10. 21.9% of Parents are Too Busy for their Children’s Homework

An online poll of nearly 300 parents found that 21.9% are too busy to review their children’s homework. On top of this, 31.6% of parents do not look at their children’s homework because their children do not want their help. For these parents, their children’s unwillingness to accept their support is a key source of frustration.

11. 46.5% of Parents find Homework too Hard

The same online poll of parents of children from grades 1 to 12 also found that many parents struggle to help their children with homework because parents find it confusing themselves. Unfortunately, the study did not ask the age of the students so more data is required here to get a full picture of the issue.

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Interpreting the Data

Unfortunately, homework is one of those topics that can be interpreted by different people pursuing differing agendas. All studies of homework have a wide range of variables, such as:

• What age were the children in the study?
• What was the homework they were assigned?
• What tools were available to them?
• What were the cultural attitudes to homework and how did they impact the study?
• Is the study replicable?

The more questions we ask about the data, the more we realize that it’s hard to come to firm conclusions about the pros and cons of homework .

Furthermore, questions about the opportunity cost of homework remain. Even if homework is good for children’s test scores, is it worthwhile if the children consequently do less exercise or experience more stress?

Thus, this ends up becoming a largely qualitative exercise. If parents and teachers zoom in on an individual child’s needs, they’ll be able to more effectively understand how much homework a child needs as well as the type of homework they should be assigned.

Related: Funny Homework Excuses

The debate over whether homework should be banned will not be resolved with these homework statistics. But, these facts and figures can help you to pursue a position in a school debate on the topic – and with that, I hope your debate goes well and you develop some great debating skills!

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Animism Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 10 Magical Thinking Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Social-Emotional Learning (Definition, Examples, Pros & Cons)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is Educational Psychology?

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The homework wars are back.

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As the Covid-19 pandemic began and students logged into their remote classrooms, all work, in effect, became homework. But whether or not students could complete it at home varied. For some, schoolwork became public-library work or McDonald’s-parking-lot work.

Luis Torres, the principal of PS 55, a predominantly low-income community elementary school in the south Bronx, told me that his school secured Chromebooks for students early in the pandemic only to learn that some lived in shelters that blocked wifi for security reasons. Others, who lived in housing projects with poor internet reception, did their schoolwork in laundromats.

According to a 2021 Pew survey , 25 percent of lower-income parents said their children, at some point, were unable to complete their schoolwork because they couldn’t access a computer at home; that number for upper-income parents was 2 percent.

The issues with remote learning in March 2020 were new. But they highlighted a divide that had been there all along in another form: homework. And even long after schools have resumed in-person classes, the pandemic’s effects on homework have lingered.

Over the past three years, in response to concerns about equity, schools across the country, including in Sacramento, Los Angeles , San Diego , and Clark County, Nevada , made permanent changes to their homework policies that restricted how much homework could be given and how it could be graded after in-person learning resumed.

Three years into the pandemic, as districts and teachers reckon with Covid-era overhauls of teaching and learning, schools are still reconsidering the purpose and place of homework. Whether relaxing homework expectations helps level the playing field between students or harms them by decreasing rigor is a divisive issue without conclusive evidence on either side, echoing other debates in education like the elimination of standardized test scores from some colleges’ admissions processes.

I first began to wonder if the homework abolition movement made sense after speaking with teachers in some Massachusetts public schools, who argued that rather than help disadvantaged kids, stringent homework restrictions communicated an attitude of low expectations. One, an English teacher, said she felt the school had “just given up” on trying to get the students to do work; another argued that restrictions that prohibit teachers from assigning take-home work that doesn’t begin in class made it difficult to get through the foreign-language curriculum. Teachers in other districts have raised formal concerns about homework abolition’s ability to close gaps among students rather than widening them.

Many education experts share this view. Harris Cooper, a professor emeritus of psychology at Duke who has studied homework efficacy, likened homework abolition to “playing to the lowest common denominator.”

But as I learned after talking to a variety of stakeholders — from homework researchers to policymakers to parents of schoolchildren — whether to abolish homework probably isn’t the right question. More important is what kind of work students are sent home with and where they can complete it. Chances are, if schools think more deeply about giving constructive work, time spent on homework will come down regardless.

There’s no consensus on whether homework works

The rise of the no-homework movement during the Covid-19 pandemic tapped into long-running disagreements over homework’s impact on students. The purpose and effectiveness of homework have been disputed for well over a century. In 1901, for instance, California banned homework for students up to age 15, and limited it for older students, over concerns that it endangered children’s mental and physical health. The newest iteration of the anti-homework argument contends that the current practice punishes students who lack support and rewards those with more resources, reinforcing the “myth of meritocracy.”

But there is still no research consensus on homework’s effectiveness; no one can seem to agree on what the right metrics are. Much of the debate relies on anecdotes, intuition, or speculation.

Researchers disagree even on how much research exists on the value of homework. Kathleen Budge, the co-author of Turning High-Poverty Schools Into High-Performing Schools and a professor at Boise State, told me that homework “has been greatly researched.” Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer and leader of the education nonprofit Challenge Success, said, “It’s not a highly researched area because of some of the methodological problems.”

Experts who are more sympathetic to take-home assignments generally support the “10-minute rule,” a framework that estimates the ideal amount of homework on any given night by multiplying the student’s grade by 10 minutes. (A ninth grader, for example, would have about 90 minutes of work a night.) Homework proponents argue that while it is difficult to design randomized control studies to test homework’s effectiveness, the vast majority of existing studies show a strong positive correlation between homework and high academic achievement for middle and high school students. Prominent critics of homework argue that these correlational studies are unreliable and point to studies that suggest a neutral or negative effect on student performance. Both agree there is little to no evidence for homework’s effectiveness at an elementary school level, though proponents often argue that it builds constructive habits for the future.

For anyone who remembers homework assignments from both good and bad teachers, this fundamental disagreement might not be surprising. Some homework is pointless and frustrating to complete. Every week during my senior year of high school, I had to analyze a poem for English and decorate it with images found on Google; my most distinct memory from that class is receiving a demoralizing 25-point deduction because I failed to present my analysis on a poster board. Other assignments really do help students learn: After making an adapted version of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book for a ninth grade history project, I was inspired to check out from the library and read a biography of the Chinese ruler.

For homework opponents, the first example is more likely to resonate. “We’re all familiar with the negative effects of homework: stress, exhaustion, family conflict, less time for other activities, diminished interest in learning,” Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, which challenges common justifications for homework, told me in an email. “And these effects may be most pronounced among low-income students.” Kohn believes that schools should make permanent any moratoria implemented during the pandemic, arguing that there are no positives at all to outweigh homework’s downsides. Recent studies , he argues , show the benefits may not even materialize during high school.

In the Marlborough Public Schools, a suburban district 45 minutes west of Boston, school policy committee chair Katherine Hennessy described getting kids to complete their homework during remote education as “a challenge, to say the least.” Teachers found that students who spent all day on their computers didn’t want to spend more time online when the day was over. So, for a few months, the school relaxed the usual practice and teachers slashed the quantity of nightly homework.

Online learning made the preexisting divides between students more apparent, she said. Many students, even during normal circumstances, lacked resources to keep them on track and focused on completing take-home assignments. Though Marlborough Schools is more affluent than PS 55, Hennessy said many students had parents whose work schedules left them unable to provide homework help in the evenings. The experience tracked with a common divide in the country between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

So in October 2021, months after the homework reduction began, the Marlborough committee made a change to the district’s policy. While teachers could still give homework, the assignments had to begin as classwork. And though teachers could acknowledge homework completion in a student’s participation grade, they couldn’t count homework as its own grading category. “Rigorous learning in the classroom does not mean that that classwork must be assigned every night,” the policy stated . “Extensions of class work is not to be used to teach new content or as a form of punishment.”

Canceling homework might not do anything for the achievement gap

The critiques of homework are valid as far as they go, but at a certain point, arguments against homework can defy the commonsense idea that to retain what they’re learning, students need to practice it.

“Doesn’t a kid become a better reader if he reads more? Doesn’t a kid learn his math facts better if he practices them?” said Cathy Vatterott, an education researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. After decades of research, she said it’s still hard to isolate the value of homework, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned.

Blanket vilification of homework can also conflate the unique challenges facing disadvantaged students as compared to affluent ones, which could have different solutions. “The kids in the low-income schools are being hurt because they’re being graded, unfairly, on time they just don’t have to do this stuff,” Pope told me. “And they’re still being held accountable for turning in assignments, whether they’re meaningful or not.” On the other side, “Palo Alto kids” — students in Silicon Valley’s stereotypically pressure-cooker public schools — “are just bombarded and overloaded and trying to stay above water.”

Merely getting rid of homework doesn’t solve either problem. The United States already has the second-highest disparity among OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations between time spent on homework by students of high and low socioeconomic status — a difference of more than three hours, said Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University and author of No More Mindless Homework .

When she interviewed teachers in Boston-area schools that had cut homework before the pandemic, Bempechat told me, “What they saw immediately was parents who could afford it immediately enrolled their children in the Russian School of Mathematics,” a math-enrichment program whose tuition ranges from $140 to about $400 a month. Getting rid of homework “does nothing for equity; it increases the opportunity gap between wealthier and less wealthy families,” she said. “That solution troubles me because it’s no solution at all.”

A group of teachers at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, made the same point after the school district proposed an overhaul of its homework policies, including removing penalties for missing homework deadlines, allowing unlimited retakes, and prohibiting grading of homework.

“Given the emphasis on equity in today’s education systems,” they wrote in a letter to the school board, “we believe that some of the proposed changes will actually have a detrimental impact towards achieving this goal. Families that have means could still provide challenging and engaging academic experiences for their children and will continue to do so, especially if their children are not experiencing expected rigor in the classroom.” At a school where more than a third of students are low-income, the teachers argued, the policies would prompt students “to expect the least of themselves in terms of effort, results, and responsibility.”

Not all homework is created equal

Despite their opposing sides in the homework wars, most of the researchers I spoke to made a lot of the same points. Both Bempechat and Pope were quick to bring up how parents and schools confuse rigor with workload, treating the volume of assignments as a proxy for quality of learning. Bempechat, who is known for defending homework, has written extensively about how plenty of it lacks clear purpose, requires the purchasing of unnecessary supplies, and takes longer than it needs to. Likewise, when Pope instructs graduate-level classes on curriculum, she asks her students to think about the larger purpose they’re trying to achieve with homework: If they can get the job done in the classroom, there’s no point in sending home more work.

At its best, pandemic-era teaching facilitated that last approach. Honolulu-based teacher Christina Torres Cawdery told me that, early in the pandemic, she often had a cohort of kids in her classroom for four hours straight, as her school tried to avoid too much commingling. She couldn’t lecture for four hours, so she gave the students plenty of time to complete independent and project-based work. At the end of most school days, she didn’t feel the need to send them home with more to do.

A similar limited-homework philosophy worked at a public middle school in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A couple of teachers there turned as much class as possible into an opportunity for small-group practice, allowing kids to work on problems that traditionally would be assigned for homework, Jessica Flick, a math coach who leads department meetings at the school, told me. It was inspired by a philosophy pioneered by Simon Fraser University professor Peter Liljedahl, whose influential book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics reframes homework as “check-your-understanding questions” rather than as compulsory work. Last year, Flick found that the two eighth grade classes whose teachers adopted this strategy performed the best on state tests, and this year, she has encouraged other teachers to implement it.

Teachers know that plenty of homework is tedious and unproductive. Jeannemarie Dawson De Quiroz, who has taught for more than 20 years in low-income Boston and Los Angeles pilot and charter schools, says that in her first years on the job she frequently assigned “drill and kill” tasks and questions that she now feels unfairly stumped students. She said designing good homework wasn’t part of her teaching programs, nor was it meaningfully discussed in professional development. With more experience, she turned as much class time as she could into practice time and limited what she sent home.

“The thing about homework that’s sticky is that not all homework is created equal,” says Jill Harrison Berg, a former teacher and the author of Uprooting Instructional Inequity . “Some homework is a genuine waste of time and requires lots of resources for no good reason. And other homework is really useful.”

Cutting homework has to be part of a larger strategy

The takeaways are clear: Schools can make cuts to homework, but those cuts should be part of a strategy to improve the quality of education for all students. If the point of homework was to provide more practice, districts should think about how students can make it up during class — or offer time during or after school for students to seek help from teachers. If it was to move the curriculum along, it’s worth considering whether strategies like Liljedahl’s can get more done in less time.

Some of the best thinking around effective assignments comes from those most critical of the current practice. Denise Pope proposes that, before assigning homework, teachers should consider whether students understand the purpose of the work and whether they can do it without help. If teachers think it’s something that can’t be done in class, they should be mindful of how much time it should take and the feedback they should provide. It’s questions like these that De Quiroz considered before reducing the volume of work she sent home.

More than a year after the new homework policy began in Marlborough, Hennessy still hears from parents who incorrectly “think homework isn’t happening” despite repeated assurances that kids still can receive work. She thinks part of the reason is that education has changed over the years. “I think what we’re trying to do is establish that homework may be an element of educating students,” she told me. “But it may not be what parents think of as what they grew up with. ... It’s going to need to adapt, per the teaching and the curriculum, and how it’s being delivered in each classroom.”

For the policy to work, faculty, parents, and students will all have to buy into a shared vision of what school ought to look like. The district is working on it — in November, it hosted and uploaded to YouTube a round-table discussion on homework between district administrators — but considering the sustained confusion, the path ahead seems difficult.

When I asked Luis Torres about whether he thought homework serves a useful part in PS 55’s curriculum, he said yes, of course it was — despite the effort and money it takes to keep the school open after hours to help them do it. “The children need the opportunity to practice,” he said. “If you don’t give them opportunities to practice what they learn, they’re going to forget.” But Torres doesn’t care if the work is done at home. The school stays open until around 6 pm on weekdays, even during breaks. Tutors through New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development programs help kids with work after school so they don’t need to take it with them.

As schools weigh the purpose of homework in an unequal world, it’s tempting to dispose of a practice that presents real, practical problems to students across the country. But getting rid of homework is unlikely to do much good on its own. Before cutting it, it’s worth thinking about what good assignments are meant to do in the first place. It’s crucial that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds tackle complex quantitative problems and hone their reading and writing skills. It’s less important that the work comes home with them.

Jacob Sweet is a freelance writer in Somerville, Massachusetts. He is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, among other publications.

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Analyzing ‘the homework gap’ among high school students

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, michael hansen and michael hansen senior fellow - brown center on education policy , the herman and george r. brown chair - governance studies @drmikehansen diana quintero diana quintero former senior research analyst, brown center on education policy - the brookings institution, ph.d. student - vanderbilt university @quintero05diana.

August 10, 2017

Researchers have struggled for decades to identify a causal, or even correlational, relationship between time spent in school and improved learning outcomes for students. Some studies have focused on the length of a school year while others have focused on hours in a day and others on hours in the week .

In this blog post, we will look at time spent outside of school–specifically time spent doing homework–among different racial and socio-economic groups. We will use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to shed light on those differences and then attempt to explain those gaps, using ATUS data and other evidence.

What we know about out-of-school time

Measuring the relationship between out-of-school time and outcomes like test scores can be difficult. Researchers are primarily confounded by an inability to determine what compels students to choose homework during their time off over other activities. Are those who spend more time on homework just extra motivated? Or are they struggling students who need to work harder to keep up? What role do social expectations from parents or peers play?

Previous studies have examined the impact of this outside time use on educational outcomes for students. A 2007 study using data from Berea College in Kentucky identified a causal relationship between hours spent studying and a student’s academic performance through an interesting measure. The researchers took advantage of randomly assigned college roommates, paying attention to those who came to campus with a video game console in tow. They hypothesized students randomly assigned to a roommate without a video game console would study more, since all other factors remained equal. That hypothesis held up, and that group also received significantly higher grades, demonstrating the causal relationship.

Other research has relied on data collected through the American Time Use Survey, a study of how Americans spend their time, and shown the existence of a gender gap and a parental education gap in homework time. Other studies have looked at the relationship between holding a job and student’s time use in discretionary activities , like sleep, media consumption, and time spent on homework. We are curious about out-of-school differences in homework time by race and income.

Descriptive statistics of time use

We began with a general sample of 2,575 full-time high school students between the ages of 15 and 18 from the ATUS, restricting the sample to their answers about time spent on homework during weekdays and school months (September to May). Among all high school students surveyed (those that reported completing their homework and those that did not), the time allocated to complete homework amounted to less than an hour per day, despite the fact that high school teachers report they assign an average of 3.5 hours of homework per day.

To explore racial or income-based differences, in Figure 1, we plot the minutes that students reporting spending on homework separately by their racial/ethnic group and family income. We observed a time gap between racial groups, with Asian students spending the most time on homework (nearly two hours a day). Similarly, we observe a time gap by the students’ family income.

We can also use ATUS data to isolate when students do homework by race and by income. In Figure 2, we plot the percentage of high school students in each racial and income group doing homework by the time of day. Percentages remain low during the school day and then expectedly increase when students get home, with more Asian students doing more homework and working later into the night than other racial groups. Low-income students reported doing less homework per hour than their non-low-income peers.

Initial attempts to explain the homework gap

We hypothesized that these racial and income-based time gaps could potentially be explained by other factors, like work, time spent caring for others, and parental education. We tested these hypotheses by separating groups based on particular characteristics and comparing the average number of minutes per day spent on homework amongst the comparison groups.

Students who work predictably reported spending less time on educational activities, so if working disproportionately affected particular racial or income groups, then work could help explain the time gap. Students who worked allocated on average 20 minutes less for homework than their counterparts who did not work. Though low-income students worked more hours than their peers, they largely maintained a similar level of homework time by reducing their leisure or extracurricular activities. Therefore, the time gap on homework changed only slightly with the inclusion of work as a factor.

We also incorporated time spent taking care of others in the household. Though a greater percentage of low-income students take care of other household members, we found that this does not have a statistically significant effect on homework because students reduce leisure, rather than homework, in an attempt to help their families. Therefore, this variable again does not explain the time gaps.

Finally, we considered parental education, since parents with more education have been shown to encourage their children to value school more and have the resources to ensure homework is completed more easily. Our analysis showed students with at least one parent with any post-secondary degree (associate or above) reported spending more time on homework than their counterparts whose parents do not hold a degree; however, gaps by race still existed, even holding parental education constant. Turning to income levels, we found that parental education is more correlated with homework time among low-income students, reducing the time gap between income groups to only eight minutes.

Societal explanations

Our analysis of ATUS could not fully explain this gap in time spent on homework, especially among racial groups. Instead, we believe that viewing homework as an outcome of the culture of the school and the expectations of teachers, rather than an outcome of a student’s effort, may provide some reasons for its persistence.

Many studies, including recent research , have shown that teachers perceive students of color as academically inferior to their white peers. A 2016 study by Seth Gershenson et al. showed that this expectations gap can also depend on the race of the teacher. In a country where minority students make up nearly half of all public school students, yet minority teachers comprise just 18 percent of the teacher workforce, these differences in expectations matter.

Students of color are also less likely to attend high schools that offer advanced courses (including Advanced Placement courses) that would likely assign more homework, and thus access to rigorous courses may partially explain the gaps as well.

Research shows a similar, if less well-documented, gap by income, with teachers reporting lower expectations and dimmer futures for their low-income students. Low-income students and students of color may be assigned less homework based on lower expectations for their success, thus preventing them from learning as much and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy .

In conclusion, these analyses of time use revealed a substantial gap in homework by race and by income group that could not be entirely explained by work, taking care of others, or parental education. Additionally, differences in educational achievement, especially as measured on standardized tests, have been well-documented by race and by income . These gaps deserve our attention, but we should be wary of blaming disadvantaged groups. Time use is an outcome reflecting multiple factors, not simply motivation, and a greater understanding of that should help raise expectations–and therefore, educational achievement–all around.

Sarah Novicoff contributed to this post.

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Homework. How can one little word cause so much trouble? Almost all schools require homework , but should they? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of homework, plus what the research says you should really be doing after school. 

As a pupil in the UK, you will without a doubt encounter homework during your school years. Some kids love it, others… not so much! Many parents struggle to make their child complete their homework and to fit it into their family’s busy schedule, and many kids and teens find homework quite boring. But let’s put our feelings about homework to the side, and focus on a more important question – is homework really necessary?

Is homework helpful or harmful?

Well, it depends. There’s loads of debate about homework and whether or not it helps you learn. Researchers have been trying to find the answer to this question since your parents were in school!

It all comes down to the purpose of the homework and the age of the student, as well as their interest in the topic at hand. 

For secondary students, homework is useful as a "short and focused intervention .” That means something like a research project that you complete at home. 💻

For primary students, homework can help reinforce skills students are learning in school. It makes sense to practice spelling words at home or working on reading skills , for example. 

How does homework promote learning?

One way homework can promote learning is by giving older students a chance to read more content than can be covered in class. For example, a Literature student might read a couple of chapters of a novel at home and then spend the class time discussing its themes with peers. This saves classroom time for the part of learning that’s done with other students.

Research shows that the best homework is closely linked to what you’re learning in the classroom. It should expand your learning and always be something you can complete independently. ✔️

It goes without saying that homework takes time. The more homework you have, the less time you can spend outside or relax. 

Homework leaves less time for creative activities that are also very important for brain growth. 🧠

Studies show very little difference in test scores between students who spend lots of time on homework and students who do less homework. For primary school students especially, not many benefits have been found. 

So, should students have homework?

In an ideal world, primary students would not have homework. And secondary students would only have short-term homework assignments with a very specific goal, like a book report or a science project. 

Since students often do have homework, it shouldn’t take much time - the benefits are the same for a few minutes and a few hours of homework!

Stress-free homework tips 

At the end of the day, there may be very little you can do right away about your homework situation. If your teacher assigns it, it must get done – but here are a few tips to make it less stressful:

• It’s a great idea for you to be independent with planning and managing your work time rather than being hounded into starting your homework by your parents. As you get older, it’s up to you to manage yourself – maybe you’d prefer to divide the work up into manageable chunks, for example tackling one subject before dinner and another one after.
• You should have a distraction-free space to work at home. Turn off the television, and keep electronics out of sight to make it easier to stay focused.
• If you’ve had a long school day, it’s a great idea to take some free time after school before starting your homework. You may need a chance to relax and regroup before jumping right into homework. 
• If you find yourself struggling with your workload, you should have a chat with your teacher or speak to your parents about it. Homework should closely follow the in-class learning and shouldn’t take more than an hour.

Homework help with GoStudent

If you’re struggling to manage your homework, a GoStudent tutor can help. Our experienced, friendly tutors have a deep understanding of the content they teach, and your tutor can give you the one-on-one support you need to get back on track and be able to finish that homework in no time! 🚀

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Students spend three times longer on homework than average, survey reveals

Sonya Kulkarni and Pallavi Gorantla | Jan 9, 2022

Graphic by Sonya Kulkarni

The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association have suggested that a healthy number of hours that students should be spending can be determined by the “10-minute rule.” This means that each grade level should have a maximum homework time incrementing by 10 minutes depending on their grade level (for instance, ninth-graders would have 90 minutes of homework, 10th-graders should have 100 minutes, and so on).

As ‘finals week’ rapidly approaches, students not only devote effort to attaining their desired exam scores but make a last attempt to keep or change the grade they have for semester one by making up homework assignments.

High schoolers reported doing an average of 2.7 hours of homework per weeknight, according to a study by the Washington Post from 2018 to 2020 of over 50,000 individuals. A survey of approximately 200 Bellaire High School students revealed that some students spend over three times this number.

The demographics of this survey included 34 freshmen, 43 sophomores, 54 juniors and 54 seniors on average.

When asked how many hours students spent on homework in a day on average, answers ranged from zero to more than nine with an average of about four hours. In contrast, polled students said that about one hour of homework would constitute a healthy number of hours.

Junior Claire Zhang said she feels academically pressured in her AP schedule, but not necessarily by the classes.

“The class environment in AP classes can feel pressuring because everyone is always working hard and it makes it difficult to keep up sometimes.” Zhang said.

A total of 93 students reported that the minimum grade they would be satisfied with receiving in a class would be an A. This was followed by 81 students, who responded that a B would be the minimum acceptable grade. 19 students responded with a C and four responded with a D.

“I am happy with the classes I take, but sometimes it can be very stressful to try to keep up,” freshman Allyson Nguyen said. “I feel academically pressured to keep an A in my classes.”

Up to 152 students said that grades are extremely important to them, while 32 said they generally are more apathetic about their academic performance.

Last year, nine valedictorians graduated from Bellaire. They each achieved a grade point average of 5.0. HISD has never seen this amount of valedictorians in one school, and as of now there are 14 valedictorians.

“I feel that it does degrade the title of valedictorian because as long as a student knows how to plan their schedule accordingly and make good grades in the classes, then anyone can be valedictorian,” Zhang said.

Bellaire offers classes like physical education and health in the summer. These summer classes allow students to skip the 4.0 class and not put it on their transcript. Some electives also have a 5.0 grade point average like debate.

Close to 200 students were polled about Bellaire having multiple valedictorians. They primarily answered that they were in favor of Bellaire having multiple valedictorians, which has recently attracted significant acclaim .

Senior Katherine Chen is one of the 14 valedictorians graduating this year and said that she views the class of 2022 as having an extraordinary amount of extremely hardworking individuals.

“I think it was expected since freshman year since most of us knew about the others and were just focused on doing our personal best,” Chen said.

Chen said that each valedictorian achieved the honor on their own and deserves it.

“I’m honestly very happy for the other valedictorians and happy that Bellaire is such a good school,” Chen said. “I don’t feel any less special with 13 other valedictorians.”

Nguyen said that having multiple valedictorians shows just how competitive the school is.

“It’s impressive, yet scary to think about competing against my classmates,” Nguyen said.

Offering 30 AP classes and boasting a significant number of merit-based scholars Bellaire can be considered a competitive school.

“I feel academically challenged but not pressured,” Chen said. “Every class I take helps push me beyond my comfort zone but is not too much to handle.”

Students have the opportunity to have off-periods if they’ve met all their credits and are able to maintain a high level of academic performance. But for freshmen like Nguyen, off periods are considered a privilege. Nguyen said she usually has an hour to five hours worth of work everyday.

“Depending on the day, there can be a lot of work, especially with extra curriculars,” Nguyen said. “Although, I am a freshman, so I feel like it’s not as bad in comparison to higher grades.”

According to the survey of Bellaire students, when asked to evaluate their agreement with the statement “students who get better grades tend to be smarter overall than students who get worse grades,” responders largely disagreed.

Zhang said that for students on the cusp of applying to college, it can sometimes be hard to ignore the mental pressure to attain good grades.

“As a junior, it’s really easy to get extremely anxious about your GPA,” Zhang said. “It’s also a very common but toxic practice to determine your self-worth through your grades but I think that we just need to remember that our mental health should also come first. Sometimes, it’s just not the right day for everyone and one test doesn’t determine our smartness.”

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Is Homework A Waste of Time?

You just had what seemed like the longest day of your life. You walk into your room after a rough day of classes. You took two tests that you didn’t do so hot on and you are exhausted. All you want to do is relax for a little bit, but you can’t. Why? Because tomorrow you have 40 math problems due, a paper to write for your English class, and a speech outline due for your public speaking class.

So the question is, is all the homework really worth it? Is there any evidence that homework leads to a stronger academic student? Let’s take a look.

According to  District Administration , there is a positive correlation between homework and better scores on tests. When interviewed, researcher Robert Tai said, “Homework should act as a place where students practice the skills they’ve learned in class. It shouldn’t be a situation where students spend many hours every night poring over something new.” A study was done by Harris Cooper in 2006 (director of  Duke University’s Program in Education ). He analyzed and combined the results many homework studies. He found that students who had homework performed better on class tests compared to those who did not.

On the other hand, there are many studies that suggest otherwise. Some studies conclude that homework does not impact achievement significantly. In fact, some believe it has the opposite effect.  One study from Penn State  looked data from the late 1990s. They found that in countries that give more homework, student’s performance on the international test,  Trends in Mathematics and Science Study , was lower than those with less homework. These professors and researchers do not call for no homework necessarily, but they do suggest making homework more about the quality than quantity

Homework is helpful. Practice problems do in fact improve test grades and guide students in succeeding in the classroom. However, after about 90 minutes of homework, results will start to diminish. It’s important to find the happy-medium when it comes to homework and make sure students aren’t overloaded with busy work.

So next time you walk through your door after a stressful day of class, club meetings, and work, just remember that a few minutes hitting the book will benefit you in the long run. But after 90-120 minutes it may be time to put the pencil down, close your laptop, and call it a night.

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Homework is a Waste of Time

Homework isn’t helping kids improve, it’s dragging them down.

Photo JC Thaxton

A canva graphic showing an example of a kids phone after a week of school.

JC Thaxton , Senior Staff Writer October 10, 2022

Sitting at the dinner table till 10 or 11 pm just doing some of your homework. Taking hours to finish some math when you still have an essay to write. That can be taxing on the brain. A lot of people don’t see how much pressure we put on kids to make them “perfect.” Extra work to compensate for the? That’s kind of a joke.

“Children who don’t do their homework are not lazy, he said, but they may be frustrated, discouraged, or anxious. And for kids with learning disabilities, homework is like ‘running with a sprained ankle. It’s doable, but painful,'” child psychologist Kenneth Barish said.

Every kid learns differently and the fact all teachers “have to” assign homework is absurd. Kids get very overwhelmed with the amount of work they get per week even per day. With the amount of work kids get, they don’t get a chance to debrief at home. Kids need to let out their stress by doing fun activities or things to get their mind off of school. When kids go from school to home, they shouldn’t be doing more school. It is too much! This leads to over working the brain.

With all this extra work to do at home, kids can’t go out and genuinely be a kid. I am still a kid and I wish I could have gone out more and not stressed about a grade in my class. They only have so much time until they’re a considered adult and now the society is giving kids a lot of work and over working them. Kid’s brains are on overload and technically working overtime since it’s not in a classroom. When I see the word “overtime”, I think of money. Since kids can’t run around and be kids, they should be paid some money to work overtime. I’m just kidding. Unless I’m not.

It is said that homework “ can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills.” What happens if you don’t do it well? What is the point if you do all this work, yet don’t understand any of it? Also, What is the point if the teacher doesn’t review it? It’s pointless. If teachers don’t walk you through the work the send home, then they shouldn’t be sending it home in the first place. You could be doing it wrong the whole time and you wouldn’t know until it is test time and then, at that point, you’re screwed. No idea where you went wrong and now too afraid to go home and ask for help. Seeing that you’re a failure and that is stressing you out some more. To the teachers, we are numbers. Some will help you and others, who knows.

• waste of time

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JC Thaxton is a senior at Robinson and a Senior Staff Writer for Knight Writers. This is her second year on staff.  Thaxton is one of the four captains...

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Is Homework a Waste of Time?

Harris Cooper, the leading researcher in the effectiveness and quality of homework, has defined homework as “…any task assigned by schoolteachers intended for students to carry out during nonschool hours” (Cooper). The most frequent function of homework is for students to practice concepts demonstrated and acquired in class (Denisco) because this contributes to the whole reason why children attend school, which is to learn and become educated to make a difference. Even though the amount of time students spend on homework has risen by 51% since 1951, the students of the United States have ranked 17th on the Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Education Attainment and placed in the middle of the international academic rankings with 17th in reading and 23rd in math (Murphy Paul). Yet, Finland, a nation with no homework assignments, ranks first on the Global Index. This suggests the inefficiency of homework as as increasing amounts have failed to elevate the United States' position in international rankings. Although homework can enhance student's academic performance and promote learning, if it is not effectively designed and appropriately assigned, other methods of review and practice can be more constructive and beneficial for student achievement. Despite the decline in the academic achievement of American students with increasing amount of homework, proponents of homework have argued that it can provide positive and beneficial effects on students' school performance, along with promoting and ingraining other favorable attributes in the students and among the community. Advocates of homework argue for the implementation of homework as a necessity because it can further students' learning, and there has been countless research that proves its positive impacts on academic performance. In 35 studies, “...about 77 percent also found the link between homework and achievement is positive” (Denisco), reinforcing the idea that homework improves academic performance in school. Not only does homework enhance school achievement, but it also proves to be better alternative than not assigning homework as “[t]he average high school student doing homework outperformed 69% of the students in a class with no homework” (Crawford). This demonstrates that it is better to implement homework because it promotes a higher performance rate than those who do not receive it. Meta-analysis studies have also determined that compared to students who completed homework to those who did not have a statistical difference of d = .39 and d = .97 on standardized test (Ramdass and Zimmerman), which additionally articulates of the positive correlation between homework and academic success in school, as well as convey that it is much more beneficial to assign homework for students' success in school. Homework can extend the time student can learn as it can reinforce skills taught in class and provide practice. Because “[i]f typical American students add four hours of homework per week to 30 nominal hours of school work..., they have added 13 percent to their nominal learning in school” (Walberg, Paschal, and Weinstein 78). Thus, the designation of homework lengthens the period in which the students can learn and foster their growing intelligence. Proponents of homework believe that positive attributes can be ingrained in students through the implementation of homework because completing assignments promotes self-regulation, which then nurtures other characteristics (Corno and Xu 227). Self-regulation can be defined as a “proactive process whereby individuals consistently organize and manage their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and environment in order to attain academic goals” (Ramdass and Zimmerman), which in this case, is the completion of homework. For instance, in Lyn Corno's and Jianzhong Xu's case studies, it can be seen that children as young as those in elementary school demonstrate self-discipline and self-management as they were willing to delay the gratification of watching television or playing with friends to complete homework. They also removed themselves from distractions (i.e. loud noises) and planned for long-term projects by working on it little by little everyday (Corno and Xu 228-229). The importance of assigning homework as an approach to promote favorable attributes is further emphasized in an interview with Harris Walberg as he notes that it not only extends the “school day,” but it also help students to develop independence and responsibility as they learn to do assignments unaided, without the supervision of a teacher (Walberg). Researchers have also equated the completion of homework to that of a job to show that homework helps students to develop an aptitude for employment because homework is associated with characteristics essential in the workplace, such as planning ahead, breaking down assignments in a range of days, and the responsibility and self-discipline to complete the assignment on one's own time (Corno and Xu 228). Homework assignments allow and encourage communication among peers, which not only encourage students to ask for help from classmates on assignments but also foster interaction outside of school. This then encourages students to become more affiliated with one another and to develop and expand cooperative communities and social groups Social interaction among peers also benefits students' academic performance as “[r]esearch suggest that when adolescents support one another on homework, students have higher math and English report card grades” (Epstein and Van Vooris 183). This reinforces the positive influences since substantial scientific evidence proves that communication and support between classmates fostered by completion of homework improves achievement in school. The implementation of homework also helps parents to be involved in their child's academic life and have an understanding of their child's academic standing. This can be done in variety of ways, such as tutoring them in a concept, checking their answers, or teachers requiring that parents sign on students' planner to understand what their children are learning in school (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall) . Parental involvement may even reinforce the desired behavior of completing homework when children receive extrinsic rewards, such as praises (Hoover-Dempsey et al. 202-203). Although homework seems to impact students positively in academics, a students' work ethic, and social interaction, excessive amounts become detrimental to all these aspects that homework proponents argue that homework possesses, which indicate a necessity to establish guidelines that foster students' intellectual and traits. In order to produce and administer effective and productive homework, it must be assigned in consideration of the needs of the students to promote optimal learning. It is significant to first acknowledge that “...more homework does not correlate with higher test scores” (Wilde) because this demonstrates that quantity does not justify for the quality of it. Hence, it is important that teachers are assigning the right amount of homework, not an overwhelming amount. Teachers should adhere to homework guidelines set by Harris Cooper to prevent adverse impacts that homework may have when it becomes overwhelming and excessive. For instance, there is no correlation between homework and academic achievement for elementary students (Crawford), so it is suggested that teachers assign a meager amount of homework to develop self-discipline and responsibility in students to prepare them for the future. Junior high school students should not receive homework that exceeds 90 minutes per night as any homework done after this period reaches the point of diminishing returns, which means that the effectiveness of homework diminishes. With high school students, homework is most beneficial to students when it takes 90 minutes to two and a half hours to complete it (Denisco). Therefore, teachers should concede that the quality of the homework that will help students learn is not dependent on the hours it takes the students to complete but on a reasonable and rational time consumption that will reinforce the concepts. Improvement in homework can also be achieved in the development of assignments. Studies have shown that “...homework benefits achievement and attitudes, especially if it is commented upon or graded,” which can increase learning from the 50th to the 70th percentile (Walberg, Paschal, and Weinstein 76), so teachers can improve the motivation and effort students will exert into completing their assignments by providing commentary and evalutions. Effective homework can be developed when its main goal is to review material already taught and discussed in class rather than assigning homework meant to teach a new concept. However, instructors should leave some spacing in the homework given between the time that it was learned for students to grasp the concepts better. Also, it is extremely pertinent that homework is not meant to be “busy work,” but homework that is meant to advance student learning and challenge students to motivate them (Protheroe 44) because if students recognize that there is no purpose behind the assigment, they may lose motivation to complete it and undermine the value of all homework. Most importantly, teachers need to emphasize and further communication between their students and the parents of the students and receive feedback to have an understanding on whether the homework is truly effective in its goal (“Assigning Effective Homework” 4). Teachers can improve students’ motivation and increase homework completion if they give choices in the homework assignments. When instructors allow students to have autonomy and choice among homework assignments, it has been shown that students feel more motivated to complete homework and perform better on test compared to those who had none (Patall, Cooper, and Wynn). Reiterating what was said before, homework is most effective when it reviews not what was learn on the day of but rather material and concepts learned previously. Therefore, spaced repetition, a method of assigning homework that reviews information taught before but for a briefer period, can be productive for students to relearn and reinforce material (Murphy Paul). Motivation can also be increased by assigning homework that challenges students (Valerott) as students will be forced and encouraged to exert more effort and drive to solve complex problems. Interleaved assignment can both challenge the student and help them to have a full grasp of the material taught in class because problems are given in a miscellaneous order instead of grouping them by type, which requires students to ponder more carefully on the problems and fully understand the material (Murphy Paul). Despite the potential positive academic benefits homework can provide, other researchers refute these claims and bring to attention the adverse effects it can cause upon students. In refutation of what proponents have claimed, assigning homework does not guarantee or cause a student's success in school and provide the positive influences it is believed to be associated. Although researchers have find a positive correlation between homework and student performance in school, correlation does not mean a causation between these relationships – that homework causes greater achievement in school. Even “[h]omework supporter Harris Cooper acknowledges that 'the conclusions of past reviewers of homework research show extraordinary variability...the reviews often directly contradict one another'” (Kravolec and Buell). This shows that homework research does not yield dependable and reliable results. Even though homework may promote parent involvement in their child's academic life, it may result in negative repercussions rather than those beneficial to the child. Parents may also put too much pressure for their children to complete homework and cause confusion if they are teaching their child a different method of approaching the problem or unfamiliar with the topic (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall). Furthermore, homework may not help to develop self-regulation in children but rather promote frustration and cause them to avoid completing assignments to avoid the stress and frustration associated with homework (Corno 531).This then discourages students from completing assignments in the future and promotes a negative attitude to ward both school and homework. Despite improvements that teacher amend to their assignments, it does not conclusively guarantee the beneficial attributes homework is said to have and prevent parental involvement that may cause adverse effects on the students. Differences in socio-economic status is an important and pertinent factor to consider with homework as students may not have the available resources that is necessary to complete homework due to financial circumstances. Homework is argued to widen the differences between high and low achieving students in schools because those having academic success often have the resources, such as computers, that are sometimes necessary to do homework and have greater parental support coming from a well-provided family compared to those who are financially struggling (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall). Also, completing online assignments can be a struggling task for students who do not have the best resources (i.e. fast internet connection) or do not even have them available to them (Kravolec). This is demonstrated through the Coleman Report of 1996, as it “...revealed large gaps between advantages and disadvantaged youngsters on tests of academic and achievement” (Loveless 17), particularly in Harvard-based inequality studies. This evidently conveys a legitimate dilemma for those who may not have the finances to compete with others academically. There may also be occasion in which homework fails to achieve the objective of its creation because it is not supervised as the child is completing the assignment, or it is neglected to be checked by teachers. If homework is left unchecked or unsupervised by a parent, students may continue to be practicing the same mistakes without even knowing it because there is no one to point out their mistakes (Kravolec and Buell). It is also possible that homework “...might promote cheating or excessive reliance on other for help with assignments” (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall), which therefore defeats the whole reason for the homework – to help students learn and reinforce concepts already learned. Hence, homework appears to lack any of the benefits that proponents claimed, and the distribution of the assignment defeats the whole purpose of it if there is no guidance or oversight during the completion of homework. Furthermore, homework cannot meet the needs of every student because teachers may not take notice of students who are falling behind in class or those who already mastered the concept, which then means homework may not be as helpful as the teacher may desire. For instance, repetitive homework that is often administered to help students develop skills of a concept may be ineffective if the students have already a clear grasp on the subject (Kravolec and Buell).Although there are flaws in the development and assignment of homework, teachers can employ other options to teach students. There are other available resources that can be implemented to improve student performance, and possible reforms in the education system can be made from observing other nations. Schools could establish a new system of education, in which students learn via online videos at home and practice learned concepts in class. This education program can be more beneficial to students than the traditional classroom-teacher method because students will have the time and opportunity to ask questions if they still did not understand a concept, and this will permit students to have the lesson available, which will be especially helpful to those that have a difficult time paying attention (Walberg). However, students who do not have access to such resources may be able to receive a computer from their school. The implementation of this program has shown great academic success in students and among schools. In Clintondale High School, the Flipped Learning Network was put into practice, in which student receive lessons via video and complete problems in class. The school has seen that homework completion risen 30%, failure rate dropped from 35% to 10%, attendance went up 4%, and graduation rate increased from 80% to 90% (Denisco). Stanford University School of Medicine has also implemented the Flipped Learning Network with the cooperation of Khan Academy, an acclaimed website that offers videos on subjects ranging from math and science to economics. The development and the utilization of this new program improved attendance rate to the lesson as “[a]ttendance to lectures went from 20% to about over 90% in the optional interactive session,” and four in five students prefer this format of teaching (Straumsheim). This demonstrates the effectiveness of these new programs not only limited to academic but improvements in school attitude, motivation, and attendance. After-school programs can provide academic assistance to struggling students. These programs can offer tutoring that some students may need. Whether the tutoring may be from a professor or another student, this can give students who are confused the help they need in a one-on-one session (Topping). After-school programs are also beneficial for students who may be financially struggling as it can provide a safe place for them to interact with teachers and other students. Also, instructors can acquire a better sense of those who are struggling in class. Staff of after-school programs can both provide assistance and model desired behavior to students who may be having a difficult time in school. Students can also observe and learn from the behaviors conducted by the staff, so it is suggested that staff demonstrate positive behavior (Johnson and McComb 24). To further increase teaching and instruction efficiency, possible reforms can be developed based on education systems in other nations, such as Finland that is currently ranked number one on the Global Index Skill for education. For example, one of the reasons for its academic success may be due to that fact that it requires its teachers to have a master's degree and be ranked in the top 10% of their class if they intend to teach graduate programs (Hancock). Having teachers that are intelligent and at the top of their class are more likely to be knowledgeable on the subject they intend to teach and may do so better because of their higher education. Finland schools have a 1:12 teacher-student ratio, which is half to what the United States has , which is (1:24) (Lepi). Having a smaller classroom allows teachers to pinpoint students that may be struggling and give them special help if needed. Although homework may not improve education and learning, even with effective development and distribution, action by both the teacher and student must take place to amend the design of homework. Instead of assigning work meant to keep students busy, teachers should design and assign homework by considering the needs of the students, especially minding the time that is necessary to complete an assignment to promote optimal learning. Not only that, but if teachers offer students more autonomy in the choice among homework assignments, that flexibility can immensely improve both motivation and completion. However, for teachers to clearly develop the homework that is necessary to enhance and reinforce student learning, communication in both sides of the classroom must be considered with the goal should be to increase academic achievement and not to overwhelm and stress students. Works Cited American Federation of Teachers. "Assigning Effective Homework." N.d. PDF file. Cooper, Harris. "Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?" Duke Today. N.p., 23 Sept. 2006. Web. 25 Sept. 2013. <http://today.duke.edu/2006/09/homework_oped.html>. Cooper, Harris, and James J. Linsday. "Relationship among Attitude about Homework, Amount of Homework Assigned and Completed and Student Acheivement." Journal of Educational Psychology 90: n. pag. Addinson. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://tinyurl.com/n7ew2mx>. Cooper, Harris, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, and Erika A. Patall. "Review of Educational Research." File last modified on 2003. PDF File. Corno, Lyn. "Looking at Homework Differently." The Elementary School Journal 100.5 (2000): 529-48. PDF File. Corno, Lyn, and Jianzhong Xu. "Homework as the Job of Childhood." Theory into Practice: 227-33. Print. Crawford, Leslie. "Does Homework Really Work?" Great Schools. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2013. <http://www.greatschools.org/students/homework-help/1938-what-research-says-about-homework.gs?page=all>. DeNisco, Alison. "Homework or Not? That is the (Research) Question." District Administration. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2013. <http://www.districtadministration.com/article/homework-or-not-research-question>. Epstein, Joyce L., and Frances L. Van Vooris. "More Than Minutes: Teacher's Roles in Designing Homework." Educational Psychologist (2001): 181-93. PDF File. Hancock, LynNell. "Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?" Smithsonian.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html?c=y&story=fullstory>. Hoover-Dempsey, Kathleen V., et al. "Parental Involvement in Homework." Educational Psychologist (2001): 195-209. PDF File. Johnson, Tina S., and Errin M. McComb. "Homework in Afterschool Literature Review." June 2008. PDF File. Kralovec, Etta. Telephone interview. 28 Jan. 2014. Kralovec, Etta, and John Buell. "End Homework Now." Association for Supervison and Curriculum Development: 39-42. PDF File. http://home.roadrunner.com/~misswong/journal.pdf Lepi, Katie. "What You Should Know About Education In Finland." Edudemic. N.p., 16 Jan. 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2014. <http://www.edudemic.com/education-in-finland/>. Loveless, Tom. "The 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education." The Brown Center on Education 3.1 (2012): n. pag. Brooking Education. Web. 12 Jan. 2014. <http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/newsletters/0216_brown_education_loveless.pdf>. Menand, Louis. "The End of Homework?" New Yorker. N.p., 17 Sept. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. <http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/12/17/121217taco_talk_menand>. Mossberger, Karen, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Mary Stansburry. Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. N.p.: Georgetown University Press, 2003. Google. Web. 17 Feb. 2014. <http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lEzJlG0ByJgC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=homework+economic+disparity&ots=W3onzKYFxs&sig=5cebFSXrv1tObdNhl02LCURJCEo#v=onepage&q&f=false>. Patall, Erika A., Harris Cooper, and Jorgianne Civey Robinson. "Parent Involvement in Homework: A Research Synthesis." Review of Educational Research 78.4 (2008): 1039-101. Print. Patall, Erika A., Harris Cooper, and Susan R. Wynn. "The Effectiveness and Relative Importance of Choice in the Classroom." Journal of Educational Psychology (2010): n. pag. PDF File. Paul, Anne Murphy. "When Homework is a Waste of Time." Time. N.p., 5 Sept. 2013. Web. 10 Sept. 2013. <http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/05/when-homework-is-a-waste-of-time/>. Protheroe, Nancy. "Good Homework Policy." Principal (2009): 42-45. National Association of Elementary School Principals. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. <http://www.naesp.org/resources/2/Principal/2009/S-O_p.42.pdf>. Ramdass, and Zimmerman. "Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework." Journal of Advanced Academics 22.2 (2011): n. pag. David Institute for Talent Development. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. <http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10702.aspx>. "Research Spotlight on Homework." National Education Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2014. <http://www.nea.org/tools/16938.htm>. Self, Nancy S. "Designing Effective Homework." ASCD. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. <http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol4/426-self.aspx>. Straumsheim, Carl. "Flipping Med Ed." Insider Higher Ed. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. <http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/09/stanford-university-and-khan-academy-use-flipped-classroom-medical-education>. Topping, Keith. "Tutoring." 2000. PDF file. Vatterott, Cathy. "Five Hallmarks of Good Homework." Educational Leadership 68 (2010): 10-15. ASCD. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Five-Hallmarks-of-Good-Homework.aspx>. Walberg, Herbert. Telephone interview. 7 Dec. 2013. Walberg, Herbert J., Rosanne A. Paschal, and Thomas Weinstein. "Homework's Powerful Effect on Learning." Educational Leadership: 76-79. PDF File. Walberg, Herbert J., and Trudy Wallace. "Family Programs for Academic Learning." School Community Journal: n. pag. PDF File.

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Homework: valuable learning tool or complete waste of time?

This article was published more than 11 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

The model of a medieval castle, cobbled together with bits of cardboard and leftover recyclables, was the final straw. When Rob Young, a single father, saw what his son's Grade 5 classmates had constructed – including a castle built entirely of meticulously glued rows of bite-sized cereal – he decided his family was done with homework.

He e-mailed the principal at St. Therese of Liseaux Elementary School in Hamilton, cc'ed all the teachers, and declared his home a "no-homework home."

Six months later, he says he and his two children couldn't be happier. There are no more fights over the "right" way to do long division or last-minute dashes to the craft-supply store.

"What a great feeling when the kids come home and we know that that evening is ours," said Young. "Board games, cub scouts, watch a movie – we can do anything we want to do because school does not invade our house."

Young is part of small movement of educators, parents and policy-makers who are pushing back against homework. French President Francois Hollande recently became the most high-profile and powerful homework detractor when he proposed that after-school assignments be abolished. A socialist, Hollande was appealing to anti-elite sentiment, arguing that homework reinforces the disadvantages of poorer students compared to peers with two highly educated parents keen and able to oversee school assignments.

If the anti-homework brigade succeeds, however, it would fly in the face of research that suggests that the right kind of homework can help to drive student achievement. Neuroscience is giving educators a better understanding of how young brains learn, and its findings could help structure what kind of homework is assigned. The familial angst, sweat and tears that go into after-school assignments is not necessary for learning, experts say, but doing away with homework is not the best option either.

The case for homework

Studies of how students learn have found that several techniques improve memory and recall. They all involve repetition, but not in a rote way. One strategy relies on frequent, short tests. Another requires material to be reinforced and reintroduced throughout a longer period of time than a typical classroom unit.

Homework is another key way to promote information retention, so long as students can complete work that draws on classroom learning beyond what was learned that day. Called interleaving, the mixing up of problems beyond the immediate unit studied can lead to gains on test scores for fourth graders, according to a recent study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Charles Ungerleider, an education sociologist at the University of British Columbia, says homework is not a frill. "Repetition is absolutely necessary for learning," he said.

Dr. Ungerleider believes the French president's proposed ban is doomed to fail because it won't close the achievement gap. Middle- and upper-class families will continue to lend extra support to their children, signing them up for tutoring services and discussing their lessons at home.

"Those parents are going to do the kinds of things that reinforce what's happening in the classroom," he said. "They'll ask their kids, 'What did you do in school today?' "

Meanwhile, in the long term, less homework could lead to Canada lagging in international competitiveness. Students in China and Korea are surging ahead of their Canadian peers in international tests, thanks in part to after-school tutoring programs that make the average North American book report or Popsicle stick diorama look like child's play.

The case against

Neuroscience does not drive most homework assignments. In Canada, homework policies are generally drafted by school districts, and guidelines for the amount and type of homework always leave room for interpretation, increasing parent frustration. The Toronto District School Board's policy, for example, says that homework in Grades 1 through 6 "shall more often take the form of reading, playing a variety of games, having discussions and interactive activities such as building and cooking with the family," but offers no specific guidance on volume. This means that within the same school, for example, one Grade 4 teacher could be assigning 30 minutes of reading or projects every night, while another could require students to do only what they didn't finish in class.

Some classrooms become "pressure cookers for achievement" where standardized test scores drive learning, demanding mounds of math worksheets and book reports from children, says Heather Blair, a professor of language and literacy education at the University of Alberta.

The most dreaded form of homework, particularly among parents, is the project.

Book reports, dioramas, science projects and the like have consumed countless hours in Heather Murray's Kingston, Ont., home. Murray has children in Grades 6 and 9, and questions what they learn from assignments.

"They eat into after-school time, the deadlines creep up on us, we're up late in the evening gluing Styrofoam pieces together and the work becomes contaminated with parental input," she said. "The running joke on the schoolyard goes something like, 'Hey Anne – did you get an A on Johnny's project?'"

"Homework may be the greatest extinguisher of children's curiosity. It creates an incentive to see learning as work, rather than learning that is engaging," says American educational author Alfie Kohn, who wrote The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.

Kohn says the strongest evidence for homework improving learning is in the correlation between standardized test scores in math and extra homework practice, but he questions what even that correlation means. Is homework improving students' understanding of mathematical concepts, or just their familiarity with test-taking?

"It certainly does nothing to enhance their enjoyment of math," he said.

Homework is a key issue for parents. Globe readers weighed in:

As a high school science teacher, I do believe a moderate amount of homework is a good thing. Thanks to the Internet, it doesn't really allow me to see my students' comprehension, but it does allow me to teach them other skills that are important in life – time management, when to ask questions, working hard, etc. The students who will go on to study further will be completely shocked and overwhelmed by their university/college workloads if they are not properly prepared.

– Shivani Ruparell, Mississauga The argument that we should not give homework on the basis that all students should have equal opportunities is absurd. No two schools are run the same way, no two teachers teach in the same way and no two students learn the same way. Let us remember that being give equitable opportunities is very different than being given equal opportunities.

– C.D. Borges, Toronto Here is our most recent, exasperating example of "project homework." This past weekend we spent several hundred dollars on equipment for a terrarium that must support a living ecosystem for 90 days with no further intervention after initial set up from our Grade 9 student. As parents we helped out a ridiculous amount in terms of sourcing and obtaining the plants, aquarium and assorted supplies, and I have low expectations of the fish living due to the tight time frame to set up the equipment.

I have no clear concept of what the teacher is hoping to achieve. The class did the project in pairs and will now have 15 or so terrariums and aquariums plugged in around the classroom for the next 90 days. Maybe keeping spiders, beetles, fish and plants alive will impart a higher level of understanding. Maybe it is a classroom-wide, $3,000 (estimate) parental spend that could have been something rather more.

– Bobbi-Sue Menard, Edmonton As an elementary teacher and as a mom, I hate homework. As a teacher I hate creating it, I hate marking it and I hate asking young kids to do more "school work" after six hours of it. As a working mom, I don't want to spend the very little time I have with my child fighting about homework.

Kids need to play after school, childhood obesity is skyrocketing, only eight per cent of kids are active between 3 and 6 p.m. on weekdays. They don't need to be coming home to sit and do more work. Homework does not translate into academic success.

– Beth Ritchie, Toronto

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The Student News Site of West Middle School

Homework is a Waste of Time

Nailah Spencer

Ava Obrock, Olivia Stults, Viviana Buzzelli, and Caitlyn Blasch work on homework during the school day.

Nailah Spencer , Reporter October 26, 2018

Kids at West Middle School say Homework is a waste of time! Did you know that West Middle School does not require teachers to give out homework to students? “Teachers give out homework according to how they feel about a student or a class’s learning process,” Mr. Smiley told me. I did some research, interviews, and additional thinking to see how some of the students and staff feel about homework.

”I strongly dislike homework because it stresses me out. We go to school to for many hours a day to learn, I don’t get why we have to go home and spend 1-2 more hours on homework,” Hannah Comar, a 7th grader at West, explained to me.

According to the Drop Out Prevention Center (D.O.P.C.),  “32.1% of students from 8th grade through high school drop out each year because they can’t keep up with all their homework assignments.” This research was done in the United States. 

Mrs. O’dell, a sixth-grade teacher at West, explained to me,  “I have over the years seen behavior changes with students.”

Academic Partnerships states,  “When kids know they will have to go home from school and work to do more work at home they become disengaged and don’t come to school the next day ready to pay attention and are usually talkative and disruptive for no time to themselves after school”. Mrs. O’Dell states, “Yes,  have seen students overwhelmed with work, but behavior changes, not so much. Mostly just [students’] grades dropping.”

Mrs. Odell reflects, “I give it out so I can see the students’ progress, it also builds on good habits, like time management and organizational skills.”

Mrs. Horvath’s Journalism states that they can have anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours of homework a night between all their classes.

Free time to yourself is essential, whether it is for sports or just time with your family. Free time gives you a chance to refresh and get ready for the new day to come.

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Liam Knickerbocker • Apr 12, 2024 at 1:13 pm

This article is a beauty. We need more like this

Richard Cao • Jul 3, 2021 at 12:29 pm

I think Homework should be abolished in schools. Students already have a difficult time in school so giving more work at home would just stress out even more. Students should have time to spend with their family and friends, while also learning essential skills such as cooking, cleaning, and getting plenty of cardio exercise. Also it would benefit teachers because they would have less things to grade.

bababoi • Dec 8, 2020 at 11:05 am

Desi • Mar 30, 2020 at 7:41 pm

Homework is a waste when we go to school for several hours a day all for what so we could go home and do even more work instead of relaxing many kids drop out because of how much time they wasted on doing stressful meaningless work

joey • Dec 19, 2018 at 12:40 pm

I do agree that homework is a waste of time because we work all day and then we get homework so we have to work at home too.

Joey • Dec 19, 2018 at 12:39 pm

homework doesn’t do anything I just forget everything that teachers give homework on quicker then usual.

Jacob • Nov 20, 2018 at 12:49 pm

Homework is useless because kids spend almost half their at school then having to worry about homework once they get home its to much pressure for kids our age, high schools should be the grade when homework starts and we know homework is supposed to prove what we learn but we don’t learn anything from test nor homework we just memorise it, do it, then we forget everything we learned because you have to then memorize other things and forget others. And that is why I think homework is a waste of time.

The truth talker • Nov 20, 2018 at 12:44 pm

Homework is too stressful, and is too time-consuming.

Jacob Mdelski • Nov 20, 2018 at 12:44 pm

Homework can be good for us but it can just be too much for some students to handle.

finn st john • Nov 15, 2018 at 8:16 am

homework is not good. we are at school for 7 hours and some of us stay at club (after school thing) till 4 5 or even 6! homework is just what we were doing that day all over again but at home.

the derp • Nov 2, 2018 at 12:53 pm

homework helps us but can sometimes be a waste of time

Ryan M • Nov 2, 2018 at 12:47 pm

Homework is like telling a dog never to play or lick your face again

Madisyn Hackett • Nov 2, 2018 at 12:42 pm

Homework is very stressful!

Dillon Starnes • Oct 31, 2018 at 12:12 pm

This is an excellent article, Nailah!

Kyle Dani • Oct 31, 2018 at 12:10 pm

This is a great article. I agree that teachers hand out way to much homework.

Hannah Comar • Oct 31, 2018 at 12:03 pm

I agree with this considering I was one of the interviewees. Great article Nailah!

Maddie Andrews • Oct 31, 2018 at 11:59 am

I like your picture and I agree, homework is very stressful!

Maddie Andrews • Oct 31, 2018 at 11:57 am

I like your picture! I agree homework can be very stressful!

Caitlin Noe • Oct 31, 2018 at 11:50 am

I like your picture a lot it is very creative and I agree homework is just a recap of what we learned.

unknown • Oct 29, 2018 at 1:51 pm

homework is ok I always finish it in class so I don’t have homework relly

AAron • Oct 26, 2018 at 12:49 pm

i hate having to do work at home it is a wast of my time

AAron • Oct 26, 2018 at 12:48 pm

i think homework is a wast of time

Bob Ross • Oct 26, 2018 at 12:45 pm

I get it homework is stress full but homework is good for us examples: Homework is like a mini quiz that lets the teachers know if you actually learned something in their class.

Lizzy Gutkowski • Oct 26, 2018 at 12:21 pm

I think homework is too stessful. It makes me have to stay up late and work on my homework.

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3 Reasons Why Doing Homework is a Waste of Time

Table of Contents

Not a sign of intelligence, doesn’t make much sense, makes you miss the motivation wave, wrapping up.

Students are often burdened with doing homework assignments that get the better of them and their valuable time. However, it is also possible for these students to use this time instead for doing other productive tasks or even for intended procrastination, which may in-turn help increase productivity. Here’s a viewpoint on why doing homework is a waste of time and how to use this time to better your productivity. ~ Ed. 

Do you know people who always have tons of motivation to do homework ?

I haven’t come across such people. Though there might be a few, I guess majority want to avoid doing homework.

Me too! But it turns out that it`s okay to be a bit lazy. It’s okay not to have motivation for doing homework.

Let me bring it down real quick. It is okay to have zero desire to do homework and to procrastinate for hours instead of being all energetic and productive.

No, it doesn’t mean that you’re lazy or foolish; this phenomenon has many explanations. But the thing you’ve got to remember for sure is that it is fine if you can’t catch up with the A-students.

First and foremost, you’ve got to face reality here. How important are the grades for you?

If you want to receive a grand to get a master’s degree in another country, then, of course, grades are important. When all you need is a diploma which you will proudly hand over to your mom and never use it again, then you have the right to dedicate some time to procrastination .

Don’t you dare to think that I’m trying to lure you into the world of drop-outs and couch potatoes? I only want you to learn how to set your priorities right.

Success in life cannot be determined by the number of essays that you wrote at the university. You may not even write them at all. The simplest way to avoid all that stress is by addressing a good homework doer service.

I’m going to calm down your stressed out nervous system and conscience, and tell you why you shouldn’t be all anxious about having zero motivation to do homework.

But before we do that, please note that such an emotional state when you have little desire to do anything, not just your homework, may be a sign of such serious mental condition as clinical depression. So, please be careful with that and never hesitate to ask for professional help.

Okay, so as per my thoughts, here are the three main reasons why doing homework is a waste of time:

As I’ve mentioned above, a state of procrastination doesn’t necessarily point out to your inability to study.

A scientific study reports that people who have a higher intellectual level tend to procrastinate more . Just don’t perceive this information as an excuse for your social media addiction, it doesn’t work this way. How is that even related?

It’s believed that very smart people are thinking all the time, even without realizing it. They have very active brain activity, and they may even try to solve the world issues on the subconscious level.

The moments of procrastination are highly important for people of this type. It gives their brains a chance to cool off and relax a little bit. Because, yes, our brain does get tired from time to time, and it can switch off your concentration and attention when it feels like having a little rest so that you can go on with all the thinking processes.

No matter how much you love studying, and no matter how great your university is, still there is no way of avoiding some absurd and senseless assignments. You have no idea why you would do this or why such a huge piece of work is assessed with so few points.

Your logic isn’t as dead as you may think. It’s still somewhere in there, and it can give you a hint that you really shouldn’t do this task because it’s nothing but a complete waste of time. Of course, you lose any kind of motivation with such assignment.

Don’t worry. Just think whether this homework will have a big impact on your final score and then make a decision.

One of the biggest mistakes that you can do while feeling all down and unmotivated is looking at other people, who seem extremely productive and compare your pitiful self to those walking energizers.

We all may feel that way from time to time – mainly because our powers aren’t infinite. We get tired and worn out. So, just stop sobbing and go out for a walk. You’ll be surprised how inspirational one single stroll around the town can be. Your demotivation just a phase, and you’ve got to get over it.

And while you’re still in the moment when you can get nothing done, make a list of activities and tasks that you need to finish.

Then you have to learn how to be a surfboarder. No need to buy a ticket to Australia, you just need to learn how to catch the waves. One “wave of motivation,” to be precise.

Have you noticed that sometimes the feeling of productivity and endless energy rushes through your veins, and you just get everything done in no time?

Congrats, you`re just an average human being. You need to learn how to spot those moments of motivation and get as much work done as it’s humanly possible.

And when you have a day or two of no motivation at all, you won’t feel so frustrated because you know for sure that the productivity will eventually come back.

Doing homework is not a sign of intelligence. It’s okay to procrastinate at times if it helps you relax and solve bigger issues.

If you think your homework doesn’t make much sense or it’s not worth spending your valuable time that you can use elsewhere for more worthy tasks, then you may think of using any homework services.

Missing out on the homework may give you the opportunity not to miss the motivation wave that can help you become more productive .

Over to you –

Have you ever felt that doing homework is a waste of time? Share in the comments.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are entirely of the author.

Disclaimer: Though the views expressed are of the author’s own, this article has been checked for its authenticity of information and resource links provided for a better and deeper understanding of the subject matter. However, you're suggested to make your diligent research and consult subject experts to decide what is best for you. If you spot any factual errors, spelling, or grammatical mistakes in the article, please report at [email protected] . Thanks.

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Is Homework A Waste of Time? Let’s Find Out!

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The is homework a waste of time debate, why homework is a waste of time, why is it good to do homework, does homework prevent family time.

So, is homework a waste of time? As a student, you are probably wondering why you need to complete so many school chores every day. The truth is that high school and college students get a lot of homework weekly. In many cases, you need to study during the weekends when you should spend time with your family and friends. And let’s not forget that there are times when you need to spend several nights working on a difficult research paper.

It’s no wonder you consider that homework is a waste of time. Did you know that the is homework a waste of time debate has been going on for years? You are not the only one doubting the efficacy of an education system based on homework. Let’s discuss this in more detail.

The debate about whether homework should be required in schools has been going on for years. There are a lot of homework debate pros and cons. Even teachers and parents have reacted and contributed with their points of view to this debate. And yes, there is even a should homework be banned debate.

In many cases, both teachers and parents have agreed that students get too much homework to do at certain times. The truth of the matter is that some professors don’t care about their students’ workload. They don’t realize that students have to complete various school chores for most of their other classes. It’s no wonder many students end up spending night after night working on their essays and research papers. The homework debate is getting hotter every year.

But how is homework a waste of time? We can’t defend homework entirely, even if we do agree that it is beneficial in some cases. We have to think about why the ban homework debate is so intense. And there are certain things that make homework a waste of time. Here are some of them:

• According to scientific studies, it looks like people with a high intellectual level tend to procrastinate more. If you don’t do your homework or if you rush it, you usually get a low grade. And a low grade usually suggests an inability to study, therefore a lower intellectual level. As you can see, homework does not accurately reflect a student’s intelligence . This is the main reason why homework is a waste of time.
• Why do teachers give homework? It’s easier to hand out homework than it is to make sure your students understand the subject matter during class hours. However, a students who didn’t understand much won’t usually be able to complete the homework without some form of help.
• Some of the assignments are pointless, plain and simple . They simply don’t make sense. They won’t help you in your academic career or in life in any way. This is one of the things that come up frequently in the banning homework debate. It points to the fact that some homework is really a waste of the student’s time.

Now that you know about some of the things that make homework somewhat useless, it’s time to take a look at some of the benefits of homework. Why is it good to do homework? There are plenty of pros to getting some homework (perhaps not as much as you currently receive though). Here are some of them:

• Organizing your homework time helps you improve your organizational skills . You will learn how to organize your time so that you can finish each assignment on time. You will also have to learn how to split a large assignment into smaller parts and then work on each part in an organized manner. These skills will help you immensely when you get your first job.
• Why do i have to do my homework? One of the main benefits of doing homework is that you can learn the subject matter a lot faster . It helps you remember important things that you will need to know to take top grades on your future tests.
• Is homework a waste of time? Sometime it is not. Homework sometimes teaches you how to solve difficult problems in the most efficient manner . Problem solving skills will prove to be very useful in life, as you will surely find out at some point in the future.

But does homework prevent family time? In some cases, yes, homework can interfere with family time. Some students can even go into a depression. Spending night after night working on your homework and not spending enough time with your friends and family can have negative effects on your mental health. This is the reasons why many students ask us the “why can’t i do my homework” question.

At times, homework is useless. We really agree that part of the dreaded homework debate is accurate: students sometimes receive too many school assignments. They are swamped. They are overwhelmed. Even though there are many benefits to doing homework, school chores should not prove to be such an unbearable burden.

The Best Time to Do Homework

How much time should be spent on homework each night? We hear this question a lot lately. The problem is that you shouldn’t even be asking this question. The night is not meant for study. It is meant for rest. The best time to do homework is during the morning (during the weekends, of course). If you have school in the morning, you can work on your homework in the afternoon or even the evening.

What’s the average time spent on homework by grade? There is no set figure, but on average high school students get 10 to 14 hours’ worth of homework every week. College students are often looking at 20+ hours per week. This is quite a lot, so you should consider getting some help from our homework helpers , if you need some assistance with more complex essays and research papers.

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Professional cleaners reveal the 8 cleaning tasks that are a waste of your time

Not every cleaning task is essential. Professionals suggest giving these eight a miss

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1. Dusting every surface every time

2. vacuuming upholstery, 3. washing your windows, 4. cleaning baseboards, 5. vacuuming every room regularly, 6. washing walls, 7. cleaning light fixtures, 8. cleaning behind appliances.

We are all probably tired of hearing that we need to clean more, more often, and with more intensity. It can leave us feeling like our chores will never be done. 

However, there are a few spots that even the professionals skip most of the time when cleaning their homes with very little consequence to our properties or our health. 

These are the eight cleaning tasks that are a waste of time in the eyes of professional cleaners, and how skipping them can save you time and energy. 

Cleaning tasks that are a waste of time

It is rare that cleaning tips tell you not to clean something, but we are certainly not going to complain if it means we can spend more time relaxing and even enjoy a chore-free weekend .  

It is certainly important to remove dust in your home – especially if you have allergies, but there are some spots that are just not worth the time and effort every single week, begins Tina Priestly, home organizer and owner of Ready, Set, REFRESH :

‘While it's important to dust regularly, areas like the tops of kitchen cabinets or shelves that aren't touched often can be dusted less frequently. Focus on frequently used surfaces like doorknobs, light switches, and countertops instead for a truly hygienic home.’ 

Similarly, removing the dust from your furniture and upholstery is another task you can probably cut back on, making it a monthly task rather than weekly to save time, adds Courtney Walsh, expert cleaner at Homeaglow . 

‘ Vacuuming upholstery is often done constantly on short-form social media. While aesthetically appealing, it is probably a monthly task unless you have a particular mess to clean up. Similarly, vacuuming mattresses is overdone on socials - it needs to be done once or twice a year. If you use a mattress case like for dust mites, then you probably don’t need to vacuum your mattress at all.’ 

Unless you have recently had a dust or sand storm, cleaning windows every month is probably a little overkill, suggests Tina Priestly, home organizer. While it can help to increase natural light in your home , the effect is usually minimal, she says.

‘Unless windows are visibly dirty or in high-traffic areas, they typically don't need to be cleaned inside and out every week. Prioritize indoor surfaces and save full window cleanings for seasonal maintenance.’

Bosch GlassVAC $190 at Walmart To help save time and energy when you do clean your windows, consider using a window vac to limit how much water you use and the mess you make for a streak-free shine.

‘While clean baseboards can contribute to an overall tidy appearance, they don't typically accumulate significant dirt or grime on a daily basis. Unless visibly soiled, wiping them down monthly or even bi-monthly should suffice,’ recommends Emily Adams of NW Maids . Not only will it save you time, but your knees and back as well. 

If you want to quickly freshen them up, a nozzle attachment on the best vacuum will likely collect most of the dust and debris for you more quickly and efficiently than with a cloth.  

Speaking of vacuuming, Tina Priestly, home organizer, suggests we are also doing this too often for certain spots. 

‘While vacuuming is key, not every room needs daily attention. Focus on high-traffic spots like living rooms and hallways, and adjust based on use. Bedrooms and guest rooms can be vacuumed less often,’ she says. Working out how often you should vacuum for every space to prevent visible dirt and dust mites will save you lots of time, and will also extend the life of your vacuum cleaner.  

You definitely need to clean walls before painting , but on a weekly basis they are best left as is, assures Emily Adams of NW Maids. 

‘Unless there are noticeable stains or marks, washing walls frequently might be excessive and could damage your paint or wallpaper with time – no matter which gentle methods you use. Spot cleaning as needed is usually adequate, with a more thorough wall washing reserved for occasional deep cleans.’ 

Our lighting ideas are magnets for dust, but that doesn't mean we have to spend precious time cleaning them every single week, Emily Adams of NW Maids continues. ‘As long as they're not visibly dirty or affecting light output, a quarterly wipe down should suffice,’ she assures. 

When you do need to clean them, a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth or a rollover with a lint roller for fabric shades will quickly tackle build-up with very little effort. 

Cleaning behind large appliances and underneath larger furniture pieces are some of the hardest household cleaning tasks – so don't break your back trying to tackle them every month, advises Yessica Bello, cleaning expert at Bello’s Cleaning :

‘Cleaning behind appliances like refrigerators or washing machines every week is overkill for most households. What’s more, our experience has shown that excessive moving of these appliances can also lead to wear and tear both on your floor and the appliances' moving parts.

Unless you are dealing with pest infestations or similar urgent situations, moving these heavy appliances to clean behind them quarterly or bi-annually is ample.’

Is it okay to not clean your house?

Although there are some small cleaning tasks you can usually skip with little consequence, it is not a good idea to stop cleaning your house entirely. Keeping a clean house is vital to protecting your health and wellbeing. Not cleaning will lead to a build-up of bacteria, mold, and even pests that will make every day life not only disgusting, but more difficult too. 

This is not to say that these areas of your home should be completely abandoned and never cleaned again. Dusting high cabinet tops and light fixtures can help to make a home smell nice when done infrequently, for example, while washing windows can boost your curb appeal . It is more about relaxing on some tasks and completing them as part of infrequent maintenance than stressing about getting everything done every month – helping you to rest and reset each week.  

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Chiana has been at Homes & Gardens for two years, having started her journey in interior journalism as part of the graduate program. She spends most of her time producing content for the Solved section of the website, helping readers get the most out of their homes through clever decluttering, cleaning, and tidying tips – many of which she tests and reviews herself in her home in Lancaster to ensure they will consistently deliver for her readers and dabbles in the latest design trends. She also has a first-class degree in Literature from Lancaster University.

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