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FeedHomework: How Much is too Much?
Here's our annual report cards on public and private high schools. To offer your views on homework, find out what top educators say, get tips on handling the homework load, and find homework polices locally and elsewhere, visit Diablo’s Homework Resource Guide. We want to know: How much time do your kids spend on homework? Does your child have a good balance between school, extracurricular, and quality time with family and friends? How is homework affecting your home life? Go to the comments section at the bottomof the page to offer your remarks.
Getty Images/ Rubberball
(page 3 of 10)
The Homework on Homework
Such stories prompted Dickinson and Kurtz to approach the district, whose student services director Kirby Hoy put together the task force, made up of teachers, administrators, and parents with diverse experiences and viewpoints. The task force members read articles by top educators and examined other local and national policies. The group learned that like most trends in education, homework’s popularity has ebbed and flowed in this country over time. At the turn of the 1900s, the Ladies’ Home Journal carried out an antihomework campaign. New York City public schools banned homework for students younger than fourth grade during the ’20s and ’30s. By the late ’50s, the space race pushed American kids back to the books after school, but homework’s popularity fell again during the counterculture ’60s and ’70s, only to enjoy a resurgence in the Reagan ’80s.
The problem with devising a policy based on current research is that current research could fill 10 school buses. And, national experts—such as Alfie Kohn and Harris Cooper—spar over how to interpret studies and find solutions.
Cooper, a Duke University professor considered the nation’s most prolific homework researcher, completed a landmark metareview of some 60 studies on homework in 2006. He found some correlation between homework and achievement in the upper grades, but little effect on students from elementary school to seventh grade.
Cooper may be best known for advocating the “10-minute rule” that says kids should do 10 minutes of homework per grade each night. That means a first-grader would do 10 minutes and a high school senior would do 120 minutes. The national PTA and the National Education Association support this rule. Cooper found that more than 90 minutes for middle schoolers and 150 minutes for high schoolers offers no added benefit. At the same time, Cooper argues that even if the evidence doesn’t connect homework in the lower grades with better grades or test scores, homework has another key benefit: It creates academic discipline that will prepare kids for later grades, college work, and ultimately, the workforce.
The argument that homework in the lower grades prepares kids for homework in the upper grades makes Kohn cringe. He says there is much evidence that homework undermines a genuine love of learning. Should we really be preparing our first-graders now for the grind of the workforce that’s coming after 12 years of school and four years of college? he asks.
“No study has shown any value before high school,” says Kohn by phone from his office in Boston. “It’s all pain and no gain. At the very least, we should demand that homework be an exception, assigned only when it is really necessary. Regular homework is bizarre and indefensible.”
Cooper responds by saying that if study habits aren’t instilled now, they won’t materialize later. “The counterargument is wait until middle school,” says Cooper by phone from Durham, North Carolina. “And, what the proponents of homework would say is that by the time kids get to middle school, if they haven’t developed those habits, it will be exceedingly difficult to teach them.”
San Ramon Valley schools task force member Denise Jennison represents the middle ground in the debate. She is the mother of all PTA mothers, who has spent 13 years involved in San Ramon Valley schools while raising her four boys ranging from 11 to 22 years old. Her oldest was categorized as gifted, her second had a learning disability, and the last two are “very middle-of-the-road” students. She’s heard from parents who want no homework and people who want more homework. “Research seems to tell us that the answer is somewhere in between,” says Jennison. “Homework should be thoughtful, purposeful, relevant.”
Sarah Augustinsky, an eighth-grader at Pine Valley Middle School, can’t think of a homework assignment that she truly loved (except for a sixth grade report on Pride and Prejudice). The honors student found it especially ridiculous when a teacher gave kids homework that involved lots of coloring and then graded down for coloring mistakes.
Meanwhile, Danville mom Mary Grace Houlihan hopes that any new policy won’t tie the hands of teachers who want to challenge kids. She disagrees with Dickinson’s antihomework stance but agrees with her view that any policy should emphasize differentiation, the concept that teachers should give different types of homework based on each child’s ability. As it happens, both her kids, Amanda Swenson, 17, and younger brother Chris, 13, thrive on academic challenge. Amanda, who has a 4.65 GPA and has her sights set on Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, or Princeton, is more than willing to study five or six hours a night for the half-dozen AP courses she’s taking at San Ramon Valley High.
“Most of my homework is [self-driven projects], which I love,” Amanda says. “Sure, it can be stressful, but school is inherently stressful.”
Although it’s harder to find a kid like Amanda who will praise homework than one who will reject it as a crime against humanity, a probing talk can reveal that many kids are complaining about the kind of homework and the timing of assignments more than the quantity. Middle and high school students, especially those who describe themselves as good, motivated students, largely complain about a mire of busywork, rote assignments whose purpose is to drill them for standardized tests or to prove to the teacher that they’re paying attention. (One high school teacher points out that she assigns busywork, reluctantly, to make sure that less-motivated students are at least reading some of what she assigns in class.)
The students also charge that teachers don’t communicate with one another across subject areas to make sure there aren’t four class projects due the same day.
“I think there’s a fair amount of homework, but it’s not spaced out,” says Sophia Grossman, who just completed eighth grade at Charlotte Wood. When an adult suggests she could better manage her time, Grossman balks. Besides homework, she also plays competitive soccer, attends Hebrew school, participates in other extracurricular activities—and, of course, texts her friends.
Last spring, she worked on a report with Chris Swenson, Amanda’s brother, about medieval falconry. The two ended up getting jazzed about their project, went to a falconry demonstration, and created an extensive PowerPoint project that included video and still photos. It’s the kind of assignment that would probably fit the definition of thoughtful, purposeful, and relevant.
Reader Comments:
I once had a friend from Europe , a doctor's wife, say that we coddled our children here in America and that European youngsters are ready to go to college at the same age that we are still treating ours as children. I do believe she is right . I strongly believe in homework as I believe it prepares you for college and a successful life,by teaching you organization .You cannot time homework as one child may doddle while another speeds through it.It is not lack of money that is making our children fall behind the National average ---but parents that do not want to discipline their children to do the work.
I once had a friend from Europe , a doctor's wife, say that we coddled our children here in America and that European youngsters are ready to go to college at the same age that we are still treating ours as children. I do believe she is right . I strongly believe in homework as I believe it prepares you for college and a successful life,by teaching you organization .You cannot time homework as one child may doddle while another speeds through it.It is not lack of money that is making our children fall behind the National average ---but parents that do not want to discipline their children to do the work.
Too much homework leads to stress in children, and long-term stress is related to chronic illness; from headaches to cancer. After a long day of class room learning, it is debatable how much more information can even be absorbed during homework. Children have little time to recharge their mental and physical batteries and at the jr. high and high-school level, many turn to drugs and alcohol to relieve the pressure( whether we want to admit this or not). Where does the pressure come from? From the school districts, from parents and from children themselves. Is it worth sacrificing one's childhood to get into the perfect university? Afterall, there are hundreds of schools out there to meet the many needs of our diverse students. For all you parents who punish your children for not getting a 4.0 or better, are you pressuring him/her for them, or is it to give yourself bragging rights?
I disagree with anonymous who posted about his or her European friend. As a college student entering her senior year, I have to say, most of my classes in high school did not prepare me for college. The type of work required in high school has very little baring on the type of work required in college. I struggled to remember to complete and turn in every weekly ditto and nightly assignment in high school; however, when I arrived at college I found only large papers due every few weeks were required of me. My friends and I rejoiced. College is a relief in comparison to the high schools in Acalanes Unified School District.
As for the other anonymous poster, he or she is correct. By my senior year, my rich peers had moved beyond smoking pot during class in the bathroom, instead many were snorting coke lines during and after school, and binge drinking on the weekends. Affluent parents must be especially aware of the pressure they apply in all areas, especially academic.
I'm on the fence about whether homework is good or bad for kids. Yes, too much homework is not good. But maybe some is useful. My kids do it just fine, but they are in elementary school. Fortunately, we didn't deal with the ridiculous load expected by that kindergarten teacher described in the story. My kids also haven't hit middle school yet, with the dreaded middle school coloring assignments. Yes, I hear that these assignments go on at schools throughout the area, not just in the San Ramon district.
I'm just glad that someone is finally raising the question around here about homework, its value and whether we as a community, as a society, are overdoing it. It seems like some weird culture has grown up around it, with most everyone, parents, teachers, administrators, students, behaving like compliant drone-like characters in some dystpotian Orwellian novel, going along with The Program. Schools come up with ways to inculcate kids and parents into this Homework Program, accepting these mantras that Homework Leads to Success, Homework Leads to Good Time Management Skills, Homework Leads to Good Citizenship, Homework Leads to a Good Corporate Work Ethic. Where is the questioning among us? The critical thinking about whether homework is good or bad, or whether, if it is valuable, we in the community of schools and families could be doing it better.
But I read some of the language that teachers and administrators, and hear some of the language used by parents, to justify The Homework Program, and I can't help but feel like I'm reading and hearing mindless spouting-off of some kind of propoganda. Perhaps it's just easier to go along with the Program, believe in it, than to stop and ask questions. And this Program is supported by state and national policies and by an Educational Industrial Complex that includes SAT test companies and local "consultants" who will help your fourth-graders learn to be better time managers.
Maybe we're producing kids that ace their SATs and get into good schools, but we're also sowing fertile ground for growing an almost mindless, facist-like culture. The kind that doesn't question our leaders, locally or nationally, when they propose measures that can lead us down paths that prove destructive.
Wow. That's a really well-written article. I enjoyed it. Great job Diablo!
Just talked to a mother whose son is in my son's fifth grade-class. Our sons attend a high-performing school in central Contra Costa. School started this past week. This mom and I ran into each other at a neighborhood restaurant.
"So, how do you think it's going so far," she asked.
I shrugged. "So far, okay," I said. "He seems to like the teacher."
"Yeah, well wait until we get to the homework," she said.
Homework.
Yes, homework. The defining issue, it seems, of the contemporary school experience.
"What do you mean," I asked. "Has that been an issue for you?"
She nodded, and went on to describe the nightly power struggles between her and her son--the yelling, the frustration. "He gets home and starts it, but then he can't finish it." She described how her son would get frustrated by some concept he didn't get-- either because he needs more time than other kids to grasp the concept; or because the teacher simply didn't do a good job in explaining it. And this mom says she would try and and explain the concept to him, but perhaps she didn't explain things very well and not in a way he could understand.
More yelling, more frustration.
Then again, she's not a teacher, trained to explain these concepts in the way a fifth grader could understand.
This struggle to get the homework done was a source of nightly arguments, and was creating tension in the relationship between her and her son.
I suggested: "Don't you think that it's the teacher's job to explain it to the kids. Not yours?"
She nodded. Then shrugged, almost with a sense of hopelessness.
And so we have it: one of the realities of our lives as parents and students in the East Bay suburbs. Because of the homework assigned by teachers and the homework load expected by our schools, and by ourselves as a society, we parents end up serving as teachers. One parent at my son's school suggested that we should be willing to serve as this role. That's part of the job of being a parent, she says, to help nurture our children's academic endeavors and at all costs.
To some extent, I can see her point. On the other hand, many of us aren't trained to teach. And because of the way homework is assigned, we end up in the role of teachers each night. I can say for myself that I'm not very good at teaching elementary school students, especially math concepts. It's just not in me. Plus, I've worked all day and come home and had to fix dinner and deal with other domestic crises... Now, I have to start a second work shift playing teacher, a job for which I'm not trained? What's up with that? Shouldn't I get the chance to sit back and relax, especially with my kids?
I think of the inept way I try to explain some concept to my son. For example, long division, back in third grade. I was taught to do it a certain way, but my way doesn't seem to coincide with how the current curriculum wants him taught. Of course, I don't know. No one has told me. All I know is he's faced with a homework sheet he needs to fill out that consists of him completing 20 long division problems, and he's not really sure how to begin, and it's MY job to show him.
Is this what I, as a taxpayer, am paying for? Geez: maybe I should quit my job and start home schooling him.
Overall, I'd say the homework situation is a big mess, for parents, for kids, for teachers, for schools, for everybody. Right now, in thinking of my past experiences, and those of my friend, I just have to throw my hands up and say, what a mess. What a stupid sad mess. For everyone involved.
Can't we do better?
Homework is as much a lesson in learning to prioritize and manage time. It's important to work our teenagers especially so that they are prepared for active careers as adults.
I appreciated the opinions of the high school seniors in this article. And while at first I glanced over the grades,test scores and universities these kids were boasting and assumed they were all over achieving nerds, it doesn't appear to be that way for all them.
Brittney caught my eye when I saw she was attending West Point. That is an amazing school. Forbes even ranked it number one in public universities this year I believe. Interestingly enough she had the lowest GPA and not the highest test scores. That got me cuious as to what exactly got her into a school like West Point. Her opinions were refreshing. It was nice to hear from a student who was successful but realistic about expectations and having fun. It would be interesting to hear more from her as she seems to have an interesting philosophy that worked well for her. Maybe we should all take a lesson from this in regards to our own children... experience in life is just as important as actually doing the homework.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM...If the classroom teaching was done more "efectively" then perhaps homework would be less of an issue.
Writing is not an arduous task once you learn how ro write well.
Mathematics must be taught at school, not at home. If your kids know how to do the homework, it shouldn't take long.