Table 35. | Average hours spent on homework per week and percentage of 9th- through 12th-grade students who did homework outside of school and whose parents checked that homework was done, by frequency of doing homework and race/ethnicity: 2007 |
Race/ethnicity | Average hours spent on homework per week by students who did homework outside of school | Percentage distribution of students who do homework outside of school by how frequently they do homework | Percentage of students whose parents check that homework is done | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Less than once per week | 1 to 2 days per week | 3 to 4 days per week | 5 or more days per week | ||||||||
White | 6.8 | 4.2 | 12.9 | 38.6 | 44.3 | 57.2 | |||||
Black | 6.3 | ‡ | 20.1 | 41.0 | 29.7 | 83.1 | |||||
Hispanic | 6.4 | 5.9 | 17.7 | 36.6 | 39.9 | 75.6 | |||||
Asian | 10.3 | # | 13.8 | ! | 18.5 | ! | 67.7 | 59.0 | |||
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | |||||
American Indian/Alaska Native | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | |||||
Two or more races | 7.1 | ‡ | 10.5 | 32.9 | 50.5 | 65.9 |
# Rounds to zero. | |||||||||||
! Interpret data with caution. The coefficient of variation (CV) for this estimate is 30 percent or greater. | |||||||||||
‡ Reporting standards not met. Either there are too few cases or the coefficient of variation (CV) is 50 percent or greater. | |||||||||||
Refers to one or more parent or other household adult. | |||||||||||
NOTE: Data are based on the responses of the parent most knowledgeable about the student's education. Data exclude students who did not do homework outside of school; in 2007, parents reported that about 7 percent of 9th- through 12th-grade students did not do homework outside of school. Total includes other racial/ethnic groups not separately shown. Race categories exclude persons of Hispanic ethnicity. Detail may not sum to due to rounding. | |||||||||||
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program (PFI-NHES), 2007. |
Various factors, from the race of the student to the number of years a teacher has been in the classroom, affect a child's homework load.
In his Atlantic essay , Karl Taro Greenfeld laments his 13-year-old daughter's heavy homework load. As an eighth grader at a New York middle school, Greenfeld’s daughter averaged about three hours of homework per night and adopted mantras like “memorization, not rationalization” to help her get it all done. Tales of the homework-burdened American student have become common, but are these stories the exception or the rule?
A 2007 Metlife study found that 45 percent of students in grades three to 12 spend more than an hour a night doing homework, including the six percent of students who report spending more than three hours a night on their homework. In the 2002-2003 school year, a study out of the University of Michigan found that American students ages six through 17 spent three hours and 38 minutes per week doing homework.
A range of factors plays into how much homework each individual student gets:
Older students do more homework than their younger counterparts.
This one is fairly obvious: The National Education Association recommends that homework time increase by ten minutes per year in school. (e.g., A third grader would have 30 minutes of homework, while a seventh grader would have 70 minutes).
Studies have found that schools tend to roughly follow these guidelines: The University of Michigan found that students ages six to eight spend 29 minutes doing homework per night while 15- to 17-year-old students spend 50 minutes doing homework. The Metlife study also found that 50 percent of students in grades seven to 12 spent more than an hour a night on homework, while 37 percent of students in grades three to six spent an hour or more on their homework per night. The National Center for Educational Statistics found that high school students who do homework outside of school average 6.8 hours of homework per week.
Race plays a role in how much homework students do.
Asian students spend 3.5 more hours on average doing homework per week than their white peers. However, only 59 percent of Asian students’ parents check that homework is done, while 75.6 percent of Hispanic students’ parents and 83.1 percent of black students’ parents check.
Teachers with less experience assign more homework.
The Metlife study found that 14 percent of teachers with zero to five years of teaching experience assigned more than an hour of homework per night, while only six percent of teachers with 21 or more years of teaching experience assigned over an hour of homework.
Math classes have homework the most frequently.
The Metlife study found that 70 percent of students in grades three to 12 had at least one homework assignment in math. Sixty-two percent had at least one homework assignment in a language arts class (English, reading, spelling, or creative writing courses) and 42 percent had at least one in a science class.
Regardless of how much homework kids are actually doing every night, most parents and teachers are happy with the way things are: 60 percent of parents think that their children have the “right amount of homework,” and 73 percent of teachers think their school assigns the right amount of homework.
Students, however, are not necessarily on board: 38 percent of students in grades seven through 12 and 28 percent of students in grades three through six report being “very often/often” stressed out by their homework.
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A common question that parents always ask is, “How much time should my child dedicate to homework every day?” It’s not an easy question to answer. As we all know, every student learns differently from each other. While some kids do, substantially, better in school, by completing one hour of homework every day. There might be some others, who require two hours of homework, but only see a slight improvement in their grades.
To get to the bottom of this, we went to the experts for the answers! So here’s a break down of how much time your child should spend on homework according to their grade.
So before we give you a solid figure. We took a look at the results of a May 2012 study from the Los Angeles Unified School District . (Figure 1 below)
If your child is starting out in kindergarten and they receive some basic worksheets to complete for homework, the standard time they should spend on completing homework is 10 minutes per night.
Keep in mind, kindergarten childen might have shorter attention spans, than older kids, and might need a few intervals in between to complete their homework. So let them do it for 5 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, then continue for another 5 minutes to complete.
Usually, Grade 1 – 3 students receive one to three homework assignments per week. They suggest that your child spend at least 20 – 30 minutes per night on homework.
Grade 4 – 5 students who receive two to four assignments per week, should focus between 40 – 50 minutes on completing each assignment.
As your child enters middle and high school, naturally, their home work time will increase. As subjects get harder and more information needs to be retained for exams, more time is needed to practice. Here are the home work time estimations for older students from the Los Angeles Unified School District . (Figure 2 below)
Students in middle school are from Grades 6 – 8. As class subjects require more attention and practice, middle school students get assigned three to five sets of assignments per week. We recommend that your child spend between 45 – 75 minutes per night.
Once your child is in highschool, Grade 9 – 12 students usually receive four to five sets of homework per week. According to Figure 2, high school students should focus about 25-30 minutes on each subject.
For example, if your child is in Grade 10 and has a Math and English assignment to do for homework, they should spend at least 30 minutes on English and 30 minutes on Math. If they take one or two short breaks, it works out to be 75 – 150 minutes per set to complete both assignments.
Does your child need help completing their homework? ICan Education can help as we offer flexible Homework Help with tutors in Brampton, Mississauga, Milton, and Burlington!
ICAN Education tutoring centre has several locations in the GTA West, Mississauga, Brampton, Milton, and Burlington. To locate the closest ICAN Education centre near you, click here .
Do you have any tips to share with other parents and students about completing homework? Let us know by posting your comments below and let’s move the conversation to our Twitter Page @icanedu. Don’t forget to ‘Like’ ICAN Education’s Facebook and say ‘hi!’!
Homework assignments can be a part of the learning experience when they are done well. However, it is not always the case. Many different types of homework may be assigned, and there is no scientific answer as to how much time your assignment will take.
Table of Contents
For preschool through 2nd grade, most homework takes about 30 minutes. This can include a variety of different types of assignments ranging from literature and art projects to math problems.
Although there are differences in the rules for when and how long students should do their work, it does not mean that each state is different from the others.
A study by Time4Learning showed that students from grades 6-8 spent an average of 35 minutes a day doing homework.
A recent study showed that students from grades 9-12 spent an average of 90 minutes a day doing homework, not including the time they spent before or after class.
Without researching and asking the child, there is no way to tell how long a child will spend on their homework .
This can negatively affect your grades by parents or teachers receive notices from your teacher that you missed deadlines for doing work. So, it is essential to do all of your homework on time.
8. what is the difference between passing and failing.
Many students are concerned that they want to get a good grade on all their assignments but fear failing because they will not be able to do any subsequent time.
Preschool | 2 | 20 | 30 | 2 hours/day, 20 hours/week, 30 weeks/year, 18 months in the entire preschool stage. This is the duration for most schools in North America and Asia that offer a pre-kindergarten program with full-time students participating for three hours daily over 180 school days a year. |
Kindergarten | 2 | 20 | 35 weeks (5 days a week for 7.5 hours a day ) | 2 hours/day, 20 hours/week, 35 weeks/year 5 days a week for 7.5 hours a day, over 200 days a year. Since kindergarten is intended for children about five, who start school before they are in many places, this will amount to the minimum 1,000 hours of attendance required by most state and provincial laws. Children who begin schooling at age five and spend just five days a week in kindergarten will complete 1,000 hours after eight months, or 32 weeks. |
Grade 1 | 3 | 30 | 52 | 3 hours/day, 30 hours/week, 52 weeks/year Kindergarten is usually followed by grade 1. Grade 1 is an important year for students to study essential reading, writing, and number skills. Students start reading and writing worksheets that can be used for homework assignments. They are encouraged to learn their basic numbers up to 100 and addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts up to this level. This includes standard algorithms for basic math operations (addition, subtraction, and multiplication). |
Studies on the school term length show that students could graduate at 18 if they have found a local college. This is an average time for students and varies greatly depending on the course of study and level of education that you are receiving in school.
COMMENTS
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 ...
By the time they reach high school, students should be well on their way to becoming independent learners, so homework does provide a boost to learning at this age, as long as it isn't overwhelming (Cooper et al., 2006; Marzano & Pickering, 2007). When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up ...
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It's very common for elementary kids to have 1-2 hours of homework each night, middle school 2-3 hours and high school around 5 hours. Thank god there have been recent studies showing this is actually terrible for kids and many districts are adopting "no homework" policies. ... Generally homework would take a couple of hours maximum in ...
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. • Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered ...
In high school students will receive four to five sets of homework per week, taking them between seventy-five and 150 minutes per set to complete. As children progress through school, homework and the amount of time engaged in homework increases in importance. Due to the significance of homework at the older age levels, it is not surprising ...
1. Designate a set amount of time for homework. Middle-schoolers typically spend about 60 to 90 minutes on homework each weeknight. It'll depend on your child's courses, teachers, and study hall schedule. Work with your child to set aside the right amount of time for homework. Be sure to include time to check over the work.
In 1st grade, children should have 10 minutes of daily homework; in 2nd grade, 20 minutes; and so on to the 12th grade, when on average they should have 120 minutes of homework each day, which is ...
Take the child's grade and multiply by 10. So first-graders should have roughly 10 minutes of homework a night, 40 minutes for fourth-graders, on up to two hours for seniors in high school. A lot ...
Too much homework may diminish its effectiveness. While research on the optimum amount of time students should spend on homework is limited, there are indications that for high school students, 1½ to 2½ hours per night is optimum. Middle school students appear to benefit from smaller amounts (less than 1 hour per night).
Sixty to 90 Minutes of Homework. Depending on the rigor of a district or private school, the time students are expected to spend on homework will vary. However, educational researcher Harris Cooper asserts that each child should spend 10 to 20 minutes every night on homework in the first grade. As that child moves up in school, 10 more minutes ...
An education board released remote learning recommendations that denote minimum and maximum hours per day kids should spend on school work by grade level.
The effects of homework are mixed. While adolescents across middle and high school have an array of life situations that can make doing homework easier or harder, it's well known that homework magnifies inequity.However, we also know that learning how to manage time and work independently outside of the school day is valuable for lifelong learning.
Research shows that the benefits of homework are more evident at the high school level than at the elementary or middle school level (Cooper, 1989). There is little question that parental involvement in homework has a strong positive effect (Van Voorhis, 2003; Xu, 2004). In fact, some research suggests
In seventh through ninth grade we recommend students receive three to five sets of assignments per week, lasting between forty-five and seventy-five minutes per set. In high school students will receive four to five sets of homework per week, taking them between seventy-five and 150 minutes per set to complete.
Teachers should assign an appropriate amount of homework. While there is still much discussion on the effectiveness of homework, research asserts that the 10-minute rule per grade level holds true for middle school students. This means that students might receive anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes of homework each evening.
In that poll teens reported spending, on average, more than three hours on homework each school night, with 11th graders spending more time on homework than any other grade level. By contrast ...
The survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers found, among other things, that high school teachers on average assign about 3.5 hours of homework each week. For high school students who typically have five ...
How much homework is too much is an age-old question, and there's been a constantly shifting debate on this for as long as I've been teaching. Research tells us that homework has some benefits, especially in middle and high school. However, some districts and teachers are abandoning homework altogether. At the end of the day, it's about ...
Percentage distribution of students who do homework outside of school by how frequently they do homework Percentage of students whose parents 1 check that homework is done Less than once per week 1 to 2 days per week 3 to 4 days per week 5 or more days per week ; Total: 6.8 : 5.4 : 14.8 : 38.0 : 41.9 : 64.6: White: 6.8 : 4.2 : 12.9 : 38.6 :
In the 2002-2003 school year, a study out of the University of Michigan found that American students ages six through 17 spent three hours and 38 minutes per week doing homework. A range of ...
We recommend that your child spend between 45 - 75 minutes per night. Once your child is in highschool, Grade 9 - 12 students usually receive four to five sets of homework per week. According to Figure 2, high school students should focus about 25-30 minutes on each subject. For example, if your child is in Grade 10 and has a Math and ...
4. How long does homework take in high school? A recent study showed that students from grades 9-12 spent an average of 90 minutes a day doing homework, not including the time they spent before or after class. This would be an average of 15 minutes per day if you did 10 minutes each night, 5 days a week.