does homework demotivate students

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

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

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

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

homework isn’t that bad

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

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

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

why the hell?

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

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

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

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

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

not true it just causes kids to stress

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

homework does help

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

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

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

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

I disagree.

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

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

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

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

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oof i feel bad good luck!

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

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

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

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

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

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

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

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

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

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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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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Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

Print article

You know the drill. It’s 10:15 p.m., and the cardboard-and-toothpick Golden Gate Bridge is collapsing. The pages of polynomials have been abandoned. The paper on the Battle of Waterloo seems to have frozen in time with Napoleon lingering eternally over his breakfast at Le Caillou. Then come the tears and tantrums — while we parents wonder, Does the gain merit all this pain? Is this just too much homework?

However the drama unfolds night after night, year after year, most parents hold on to the hope that homework (after soccer games, dinner, flute practice, and, oh yes, that childhood pastime of yore known as playing) advances their children academically.

But what does homework really do for kids? Is the forest’s worth of book reports and math and spelling sheets the average American student completes in their 12 years of primary schooling making a difference? Or is it just busywork?

Homework haterz

Whether or not homework helps, or even hurts, depends on who you ask. If you ask my 12-year-old son, Sam, he’ll say, “Homework doesn’t help anything. It makes kids stressed-out and tired and makes them hate school more.”

Nothing more than common kid bellyaching?

Maybe, but in the fractious field of homework studies, it’s worth noting that Sam’s sentiments nicely synopsize one side of the ivory tower debate. Books like The End of Homework , The Homework Myth , and The Case Against Homework the film Race to Nowhere , and the anguished parent essay “ My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me ” make the case that homework, by taking away precious family time and putting kids under unneeded pressure, is an ineffective way to help children become better learners and thinkers.

One Canadian couple took their homework apostasy all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. After arguing that there was no evidence that it improved academic performance, they won a ruling that exempted their two children from all homework.

So what’s the real relationship between homework and academic achievement?

How much is too much?

To answer this question, researchers have been doing their homework on homework, conducting and examining hundreds of studies. Chris Drew Ph.D., founder and editor at The Helpful Professor recently compiled multiple statistics revealing the folly of today’s after-school busy work. Does any of the data he listed below ring true for you?

• 45 percent of parents think homework is too easy for their child, primarily because it is geared to the lowest standard under the Common Core State Standards .

• 74 percent of students say homework is a source of stress , defined as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems.

• Students in high-performing high schools spend an average of 3.1 hours a night on homework , even though 1 to 2 hours is the optimal duration, according to a peer-reviewed study .

Not included in the list above is the fact many kids have to abandon activities they love — like sports and clubs — because homework deprives them of the needed time to enjoy themselves with other pursuits.

Conversely, The Helpful Professor does list a few pros of homework, noting it teaches discipline and time management, and helps parents know what’s being taught in the class.

The oft-bandied rule on homework quantity — 10 minutes a night per grade (starting from between 10 to 20 minutes in first grade) — is listed on the National Education Association’s website and the National Parent Teacher Association’s website , but few schools follow this rule.

Do you think your child is doing excessive homework? Harris Cooper Ph.D., author of a meta-study on homework , recommends talking with the teacher. “Often there is a miscommunication about the goals of homework assignments,” he says. “What appears to be problematic for kids, why they are doing an assignment, can be cleared up with a conversation.” Also, Cooper suggests taking a careful look at how your child is doing the assignments. It may seem like they’re taking two hours, but maybe your child is wandering off frequently to get a snack or getting distracted.

Less is often more

If your child is dutifully doing their work but still burning the midnight oil, it’s worth intervening to make sure your child gets enough sleep. A 2012 study of 535 high school students found that proper sleep may be far more essential to brain and body development.

For elementary school-age children, Cooper’s research at Duke University shows there is no measurable academic advantage to homework. For middle-schoolers, Cooper found there is a direct correlation between homework and achievement if assignments last between one to two hours per night. After two hours, however, achievement doesn’t improve. For high schoolers, Cooper’s research suggests that two hours per night is optimal. If teens have more than two hours of homework a night, their academic success flatlines. But less is not better. The average high school student doing homework outperformed 69 percent of the students in a class with no homework.

Many schools are starting to act on this research. A Florida superintendent abolished homework in her 42,000 student district, replacing it with 20 minutes of nightly reading. She attributed her decision to “ solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students .”

More family time

A 2020 survey by Crayola Experience reports 82 percent of children complain they don’t have enough quality time with their parents. Homework deserves much of the blame. “Kids should have a chance to just be kids and do things they enjoy, particularly after spending six hours a day in school,” says Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth . “It’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.”

By far, the best replacement for homework — for both parents and children — is bonding, relaxing time together.

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Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

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

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

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

A balancing act

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

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

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

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

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

High-performing paradox

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

Student perspectives

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

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

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Grades Have Huge Impact, But Are They Effective? 

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You can listen to this episode of the MindShift Podcast on Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts ,  NPR One ,  Spotify ,  Stitcher  or wherever you get your podcasts.

Grades can determine so much of a child’s future – the ability to get into college, qualify for scholarships and lessen student debt, land a higher paying job that will lead to a better quality of life and accelerate social mobility. At the start of the pandemic, several school districts switched to pass/fail models, but that period of grace disappeared by fall 2020. Subsequently, students this year saw a spike in Fs and Ds as they struggled with distance learning, financial and physical security at home, mental health, work and more.

This reignited some of the debates about equitable grading , putting into question what teachers grade and the accuracy of their methods.  

“If I don’t grade it, the student won’t do it.” 

It’s a common phrase used by teachers to extrinsically motivate students to do homework, turn in assignments, show up for class and test students on their knowledge. Teachers’ ability to grade everything became even more pronounced in the 1990s due to ed tech and digital grading programs that average scores based on a 100-point scale. Some outcomes of the 100-point scale meant that getting a zero on an assignment could derail a student’s average. Also, failure is over represented on a 100-point scale, making up nearly 60 percent of the possible grades.  

Claim: An F, or fear of getting an F, will motivate a student to work harder. FALSE

Joe Feldman: There’s no research that F’s motivate students to do better except for a tiny slice of students. The only research that supports that F’s motivate, or that low grades motivate, is for the students who have gotten A’s historically. And when they start to get a B or a C, they scramble like mad because they don’t want to get anything lower because it implicates all aspects of the fixed mindset they have about themselves. 

But for everyone else, in all other circumstances, there is no research to support that Fs motivate. In fact, there’s research that Fs demotivate students because they know that they don’t know something. 

And in the way that we historically average performance over time, that F now is a hole that students have to dig themselves out of. And they know the math. They know that if they get a couple of F’s early, forget having high grades at the end of the term. And so what’s the point? They might as well use their energy elsewhere.

W hat we’ve got to do instead is help students understand that even if they fail early, if they get low grades early, miss things early, they can always keep learning, they can always redeem themselves with our help and support, and success is never out of reach for them. 

CLAIM: Giving some students more time – without any penalties – is unfair to those who do turn it in on time. FALSE 

Feldman: So I think there’s a couple of things underneath that. One is that if something is unfair, that suggests that there’s a competition. And I think we’ve come a long way in disabusing ourselves of the idea that grades should be a competition. Because if I’m trying to teach a class, I really shouldn’t care if I have a whole lot of kids who are successful.  

You know, we don’t want students to feel like they’re competing against each other because we know that only adds stress and demotivates students and lowers performance. And learning is not a race. Just because someone is able to learn something quicker, that doesn’t have any value in whether or not a student learned. A grade should only reflect the level of understanding a student has of the content, not the speed at which they learned.  

Claim: Students can learn without being graded on their behavior. TRUE

Feldman: We want students to learn how to manage their time and we want students to know how to work diligently and to take notes and to be a good citizen of the classroom. We can have ways of giving feedback to students and even consequences that can help them understand how to learn effectively and to learn the skills – the soft skills they’ll need for success in the professional world. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be included in the grade. We, as teachers, want students to self regulate. We want them to understand that if I didn’t take very good notes one time, I can connect not taking very good notes to having lower performance on that quiz or assessment. So now I will learn that I have to take good notes so I do well on the next test. And that’s what we want to get kids to do.

Claim: If I don’t grade it, the student won’t do it. FALSE

Feldman: So that is a commonly held belief based on extrinsic motivation – that the only way a student will do it is if the value that I invest in it is through the points that I use to grade it.  

I was just talking to a teacher yesterday who said, ‘I used to grade every single homework assignment because I thought that if I didn’t grade it, the students wouldn’t do it. And then I stopped including homework in the grade and I was shocked that the students kept doing it. And in fact, some students did more than before. And then when the students handed it in, I knew it was actually their work rather than copying because so many students copy each other’s homework because otherwise they lose points.’

(Note: There are plenty of students who don’t do the homework even when it counts towards their grades.)

CLAIM: Giving points for extra credit helps those who fell behind during the year. TRUE, BUT

Feldman: Oh, well, that is a “true, but.” It certainly can help them get the points that they missed out so I guess it does mathematically help them in their grade. But the problem is it renders the grade inaccurate. 

For example, I didn’t know the political causes of Reconstruction, but I brought in cake. So points are just fungible, I guess. And if I didn’t learn something there, I can just get the points over here. It doesn’t matter whether I actually learned the thing. 

So it teaches students that all you have to do is get points. You don’t actually have to learn, you just have to get points. 

It perpetuates institutional biases because the students who can do the extra credit usually require additional resources, whether that be time or money or transportation. 

You can read an excerpt of Joe Feldman’s book “ Grading for Equity ” on MindShift and check out his website .

So When a Teacher Reimagines Grading, What Happens to Students? 

The disruptions caused by the pandemic gave teachers, students and families deep insights into some of the inequities in learning. The spike in Ds and Fs in school districts across the country, especially for high school students, has a lot of people thinking about what’s important to learning. Experts at the start of the pandemic called for cutting down curriculum clutter and focusing on relationships. But these practices shouldn’t be just a reaction to a pandemic. 

In order to better assess his students, Syrie changed how he graded. Instead of being the sole distributor of points, he asked students to self-assess their work and tell him what grade they deserved. And if their grades were unsatisfactory, students could revise their work, demonstrate what they learned and improve their grade. But for Syrie, this also meant changing how he teaches because teaching and grading go hand in hand.

“I no longer have the power to motivate kids with points,” said Syrie, who teaches at Cheney High School in Spokane County, Washington.  

He had to create meaningful learning tasks that would help students on assessments. These tasks weren’t graded, but students would have to find the value in doing the work in order to feel better prepared for the assessments. He said transitioning to this model had its challenges because some students wouldn’t see the value of the tasks until after stumbling on the first assessment. “And then they started to realize, like, wait a minute, [this learning task] is putting things in place for us so by the time we get to the assessment, we’re prepared for the assessment,” he said. 

This model of learning and grading was a major adjustment for students who were used to programming all their efforts on the expectations of a teacher. Instead, students had to reflect more upon their own efforts and abilities. 

“We had a full conversation about our grades and why we believed we deserved the one we chose, and that was something I literally never experienced before,” said Lauren Hinrichs, who was Syrie’s student three years ago when he started to implement these changes. “I think we always saw the teacher-student relationship as a parent-child relationship. Or, as a student, I always viewed the teachers as someone above me, never as a fellow human, always kind of that other more significant figure,” she said. The new system allowed her to see her teacher and herself differently. “Instead, it’s kind of a human-to-human [relationship], eye-to-eye.”

Not being graded on everything meant feeling more open to learning and engaging more deeply with peers as a community, even for students like Lauren who take high-pressure courses. “It allowed me to ‘chill out’ in the best way possible. And you know what? That motivated me even more to get my schoolwork done.”  

The feedback process was an important part of Syrie’s class – for grades, assignments, revisions – and opinions were not exclusive to the teacher; students were active participants, too. Throughout the year, students gave feedback to one another on class presentations, which helped build camaraderie among students.

During the first five minutes of each class, students did check-ins sharing things that made them smile (like having a great snack) or frown (a personal setback). Hinrichs said getting to know each other this way helped build greater community among her classmates, but also, helped understand inequities in the classroom. Just because teens show up in the same space every day doesn’t mean they know about each others’ joys and struggles outside of school. But getting to know each other through smiles and frowns created the space to do that. 

“There are 15-year-olds out there working night shifts or working right after school to provide for their family. And they don’t have time to do three hours of homework for a project,” she said. These check-ins helped students who were not in each other’s worlds connect in ways they wouldn’t in a typical classroom. She said the sense of community helped the students learn in ways she hadn’t in any other class. 

“I’ve never been able to take five minutes to engage with my fellow students. It was constantly work, work, work, work, work,” she said. Getting to know other students helped her see how inequitable school can be and she felt fortunate to have the time after school to do homework in other classes. But the smiles and frowns activity helped her see what her classmates were going through no matter what their peer groups were.  

“We were all so close. And to be honest, I would have never gotten to know some of those kids the way I did in Syrie’s class had it not been for the few minutes he took every day to spend with us and spend to connect one another,” Hinrichs said. 

You can read more about Monte Syrie’s journey with grading on his Project180 site.

Subscribe in your favorite podcast app so you won’t miss a single episode. You can listen on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , NPR One , Spotify , Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.  

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Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should we get rid of homework? Why, or why not?

Is homework an outdated, ineffective or counterproductive tool for learning? Do you agree with the authors of the paper that homework is harmful and worsens inequalities that exist between students’ home circumstances?

Or do you agree with Mr. Kang that homework still has real educational value?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do? Do you think the amount is appropriate, too much or too little? Is homework, including the projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or, in your opinion, is it not a good use of time? Explain.

In these letters to the editor , one reader makes a distinction between elementary school and high school:

Homework’s value is unclear for younger students. But by high school and college, homework is absolutely essential for any student who wishes to excel. There simply isn’t time to digest Dostoyevsky if you only ever read him in class.

What do you think? How much does grade level matter when discussing the value of homework?

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

If you were a teacher, would you assign homework? What kind of assignments would you give and why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

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August 16, 2021

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in

by Sara M Moniuszko

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide-range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas over workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework .

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy work loads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold, says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace, says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.

And for all the distress homework causes, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night.

"Most students, especially at these high-achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school ," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely, but to be more mindful of the type of work students go home with, suggests Kang, who was a high-school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework, I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the last two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic, making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized... sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking assignments up can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

©2021 USA Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Motivating the Unmotivated Student

Posted By: Wendy Grolnick, PhD July 16, 2018

Kevin sits at his desk doodling while the other students are eagerly writing their biographical essays.  Time has almost run out and it is clear he will have nothing to hand in.  You want to light a fire under him and get him motivated, but how?

There is a natural tendency for teachers or parents to react to disengaged, lackluster behavior with pressures and pushes.  After all, such behavior is frustrating and pulls for this.  However, research has shown that more pressure in the form of rewards or punishments, directing, yelling, or threatening, actually undermines children’s own motivation to act .  It is possible to get some very short-term compliance but in the long-term this behavior is likely to continue and possibly worsen.

So is there another approach to motivating the unmotivated?  First, it is important to think about what motivating someone means.  Motivating is not the same as influencing.  Influence may involve getting someone to do something through whatever means possible – for example using rewards or taking away consequences.  However, motivating someone means tapping into their own goals or purposes – helping them to be more purposeful and intentional about what they are doing.  It is a much more challenging task!

A motivational approach involves considering why the student is not motivated.  From a Self-Determination Theory perspective, people are less motivated when one (or more) of three needs is not being met.

Autonomy – People need to feel choiceful or behind their own actions. Is the student feeling pressured or pushed?

Competence – People need to feel capable and effective at a task.  Does the student feel incapable of completing the task?

Relatedness – People need to feel they are valued members of a group.  Is the student feeling disconnected from others?

Approaching the situation

• Try to find out what is preventing the student from engaging in the material. Is he feeling like he has to do something he doesn’t want to do?  Does he feel it is too hard?
• Try some strategies that address the unmet need:
• Give the student some choices about how to do the assignment.
• Provide some information about how the assignment might help the student to reach his own goals (e.g., share some of his strengths with other students).

Competence –

• Consider breaking down the task into more manageable units (e.g., just work on the first 2 lines and don’t worry about the rest for now).
• Provide a start that the student can build on.

Relatedness –

• Ask another student to brainstorm with the student about what each wants to write about.
• Chat with the student for a minute about what he likes and dislikes for a start.

Do Some Students Need Pressure and Control?

But one might ask – don’t some children need pressure and control to be successful? The answer is no. Studies show that unmotivated students are even more negatively affected by pressure than more motivated ones.  Less motivated students may need more assistance in the form of guidelines and clear expectations but pushing and pressuring do not help in the long run.

Taking a motivational approach can be difficult, especially in a busy classroom.  But, when possible, considering how to help students satisfy their needs may help to develop more motivated learners and improve relationships in the classroom and home.

Learn more about T he Psychology of Parental Control

About the Author

Wendy Grolnick, PhD

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Will less homework stress make California students happier?

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A bill from a member of the Legislature’s happiness committee would require schools to come up with homework policies that consider the mental and physical strain on students.

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Update: The Assembly education committee on April 24 approved an amended version of the bill that softens some requirements and gives districts until the 2027-28 school year. Some bills before California’s Legislature don’t come from passionate policy advocates, or from powerful interest groups.  

Sometimes, the inspiration comes from a family car ride. 

While campaigning two years ago, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo ’s daughter, then nine, asked from the backseat what her mother could do if she won.

Schiavo answered that she’d be able to make laws. Then, her daughter Sofia asked her if she could make a law banning homework.

“It was a kind of a joke,” the Santa Clarita Valley Democrat said in an interview, “though I’m sure she’d be happy if homework were banned.”

Still, the conversation got Schiavo thinking, she said. And while Assembly Bill 2999 — which faces its first big test on Wednesday — is far from a ban on homework, it would require school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to develop guidelines for K-12 students and would urge schools to be more intentional about “good,” or meaningful homework. 

Among other things, the guidelines should consider students’ physical health, how long assignments take and how effective they are. But the bill’s main concern is mental health and when homework adds stress to students’ daily lives.

Homework’s impact on happiness is partly why Schiavo brought up the proposal last month during the first meeting of the Legislature’s select committee on happiness , led by former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon .   

“This feeling of loneliness and disconnection — I know when my kid is not feeling connected,” Schiavo, a member of the happiness committee, told CalMatters. “It’s when she’s alone in her room (doing homework), not playing with her cousin, not having dinner with her family.” 

The bill analysis cites a survey of 15,000 California high schoolers from Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education. It found that 45% said homework was a major source of stress and that 52% considered most assignments to be busywork.  

The organization also reported in 2020 that students with higher workloads reported “symptoms of exhaustion and lower rates of sleep,” but that spending more time on homework did not necessarily lead to higher test scores.

Homework’s potential to also widen inequities is why Casey Cuny supports the measure. An English and mythology teacher at Valencia High School and 2024’s California Teacher of the Year , Cuny says language barriers, unreliable home internet, family responsibilities or other outside factors may contribute to a student falling behind on homework.

“I never want a kid’s grade to be low because they have divorced parents and their book was at their dad’s house when they were spending the weekend at mom’s house,” said Cuny, who plans to attend a press conference Wednesday to promote the bill.

In addition, as technology makes it easier for students to cheat — using artificial technology or chat threads to lift answers, for example — Schiavo says that the educators she has spoken to indicate they’re moving towards more in-class assignments. 

Cuny agrees that an emphasis on classwork does help to rein in cheating and allows him to give students immediate feedback. “I feel that I should teach them what I need to teach them when I’m with them in the room,” he said. 

The bill says the local homework policies should have input from teachers, parents, school counselors, social workers and students; be distributed at the beginning of every school year; and be reevaluated every five years.

The Assembly Committee on Education is expected to hear the bill Wednesday. Schiavo says she has received bipartisan support and so far, no official opposition or support is listed in the bill analysis. 

The measure’s provision for parental input may lead to disagreements given the recent culture war disputes between Democratic officials and parental rights groups backed by some Republican lawmakers. Because homework is such a big issue, “I’m sure there will be lively (school) board meetings,” Schiavo said.

Nevertheless, she says she hopes the proposal will overhaul the discussion around homework and mental health. The bill is especially pertinent now that the state is also poised to cut spending on mental health services for children with the passage of Proposition 1 .

Schiavo said the mother of a student with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder told her that the child’s struggle to finish homework has raised issues inside the house, as well as with the school’s principal and teachers.

“And I’m just like, it’s sixth grade!” Schaivo said. “What’s going on?”

Lawmakers want to help California be happy

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Lynn La is the WhatMatters newsletter writer. Prior to joining CalMatters, she developed thought leadership at an edtech company and was a senior editor at CNET. She also covered public health at The Sacramento... More by Lynn La

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The Roots of ADHD Motivation Problems — and How to Get Students Engaged in Learning

Motivation in children with adhd is tied to how the brain perceives challenges, among other factors. when we create learning environments and activities that help students feel safe and confident, we reduce their chances of experiencing failure and increase their chance at success — factors that increase motivation and make learning more fun..

Lackluster or inconsistent motivation is one of the most common and challenging problems for students with ADHD, who often struggle to turn on and tune in to schoolwork they find less than captivating. Difficulties with motivation often result in poor academic performance, further decreasing motivation and contributing to a self-defeating cycle.

But motivation in children with ADHD is complex and often misunderstood. Motivation may seem attitudinal, but it is closely tied to the neurobiology of ADHD, and how the brain perceives challenges.

Though ADHD motivation problems are real, it is possible to engage children with ADHD. Read on to understand what’s behind motivation problems in children with ADHD, and the strategies that can help break the cycle of low motivation in the classroom.

Understanding Motivation and ADHD: A Scientific Approach

Neuroscience and behavior science can help explain motivation, and why children with ADHD in particular find it difficult to initiate, sustain, or complete tasks. Understanding the science of motivation can inform our approaches toward improving it.

First, What is Motivation?

Motivation is the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. It often explains why a person acts or behaves in a particular way.

[ Get This Free Download: 4 Secrets to Motivating Students with ADHD ]

All of us do — and don’t do — things based on how they correspond to our needs. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory, basic, primary needs must be met before we can attend to needs of a higher order. Among the most important needs for students with ADHD are safety and esteem, which includes security, confidence, feelings of achievement, and the respect of others.

Why else do we “do” things? The need to survive motivates us, as do rewards, which can be either tangible and extrinsic (like toys and money) or intangible and intrinsic (joy, the thrill of success, improving our status, avoiding the unpleasantness of failure).

We are generally not motivated to do things that we perceive to be uninteresting (“Why should I learn that? That’s boring to me”), unproductive (“I don’t need that”), and/or a “threat” to our safety, status, and wellbeing.

[ Read: How to Motivate (Not Demoralize) a Student with ADHD ]

Motivation in Children with ADHD: Critical Needs Unmet

Children with ADHD often struggle to develop a positive sense of self in school. If a child does not feel positive about what they can do or achieve, that can be an impediment to learning.

Students with ADHD are more likely than their neurotypical classmates to encounter bumps in their learning. They may be less likely than their peer to experience success — which strengthens self-esteem and increases motivation. What’s more, children with ADHD have difficulty storing and recalling past experiences of success when it is attained. Neurologically speaking, fear and failure leave a bigger footprint than success.

Over time, these negative experiences of repeated failure or limited success accumulate and lead to a lack of confidence and feelings of incompetence, even when rewards are offered and earned. The brain, as it latches on to these bad experiences, recalibrates and tries to protect itself. As a result, many students with ADHD eventually develop an “I can’t” mindset, which has a negative impact on thinking and motivation.

Motivation in Children with ADHD: Increased Fear Factor

The brains of people with ADHD differ from neurotypical brains, specifically in how the  prefrontal cortex (PFC) — the front part of the brain implicated in planning, decision-making, and, indeed, motivation — processes and connects information to other parts of the brain, including the primitive survival center (the fear zone). These differences in wiring ultimately impact the way students with ADHD make sense of and interpret new tasks and challenges.

The act of learning becomes all the more challenging when parts of the brain aren’t effectively “talking” to one another. Without efficient integration of messages within the brain, the ability to perform these related tasks can be seriously compromised:

• Assess the complexity or difficulty of a task
• Make connections to prior learning (e.g. every task becomes “new” and stressful)
• Organize a plan of action
• Execute and evaluating a response
• Store the experience for later retrieval

It’s easy to see why students with ADHD may not experience success as often as other kids. Their history of failure primes them to assume that any new task is too difficult and therefore stressful. And stress gets in the way of effective learning. This reactive response, reinforced by  an “I can’t” attitude and low self-esteem , causes students with ADHD to perceive academic environments as unsafe and threatening. People (and animals as well) who do not feel safe and secure do not learn well.

When children feel threatened (e.g. afraid of looking dumb, weak, and incompetent), their “fear factor” increases. The brain’s survival center, believing it is under threat when it encounters something it doesn’t know (in this case, schoolwork), essentially says, “Well, if you can’t do it, you better get away from it because it’s dangerous.” This process effectively shuts down the PFC in the interest of survival — and “powers down” the very cognitive abilities students need to stay motivated.

When the fear factor goes up and cognitive abilities suffer, children become even more inefficient as learners, and their desire to “escape” from the situation increases. It’s a destructive, cyclical process. But at its core, it’s protective. It’s how our brain protects us from harm in our environment. But in this case, schoolwork has become the threat — the predator.

This is why we sometimes see students who are almost aggressively passive, opting not to engage in any schoolwork at all. These are the students who may sit in the back of the classroom with hoodies up and earphones on — a defensive move that helps them avoid ridicule and shame. “If I don’t do it,” they think, “nobody really knows whether I’m smart or stupid.”

In sum, a lack of motivation is generally attributed to neurobiologically-imposed challenges related to a student’s perception of the difficulty of the task and her ability to do it. These perceptions are shaped by a history of success or failure in a related task. The desire to avoid “dangerous” situations leads to a self-defeating cycle: “I can’t do this, so I won’t do this.”

Unmotivated No More: How to Increase Interest in Learning

1. talk about the adhd brain.

Teaching students about the neuroscience of stress and fear, and how it impacts motivation in ADHD brains , will help them understand that it’s something else inside them — i.e. not attitude or some personal default — that is behind their motivation problems. Armed with this explanation, students are less likely to use ADHD as an excuse and more likely to develop a better sense of control over the situation.

2. Use Success Rating Scales

How a student perceives the difficulty level of a task and their ability to take it on is more important than anything a parent or teacher says. (That’s why comments like, “I know you can do this. It’s easy. You’ve done it before,” while well-intentioned, don’t always work on a student who is trying, but finding it difficult, to experience success.) It’s important to know how students perceive a task in order to determine how to support them. That’s where success rating scales come in.

For a given task, students can indicate difficulty and ability perceptions on a scale of one to five, where one means low difficulty or high ability , and five means extreme difficulty or low skill/ability .

• A 5:1 ratio (hard task: lots of ability) is a great combination that indicates high motivation
• A 5:5 (hard task:low ability) is a no-go ratio, meaning that the brain is perceiving something to be too difficult
• A 3:3 ratio (moderate task:moderate ability) is optimal for learning

For classwork and homework, students can rate their initial difficulty:ability rating at the top of the page, and their final rating at the bottom once they complete the assignment. Students might find that what they perceived to be a 4:4 task, for example, was actually a 3:3. This difference can be the basis for discussions between students and teachers about how to get into a go-go zone at the beginning of a learning activity. Teachers and parents should keep a work file to be used as an objective track record of the student’s growth and success.

How worthwhile a student finds a task is another important component to motivation that can be gauged with a similar scale. To increase motivation for a task that a student finds “boring” or irrelevant, teachers can create a learning activity related to a student’s life or interests. This way, it’ll allow the student to achieve or demonstrate the intended target skill on a more personal level. For example, if a student isn’t interested in writing an essay about a book, they might be interested in writing about a video game they enjoy playing.

3. Maximize Assets and Minimize Barriers

Teachers and parents should help students analyze their asset profile. In other words, what skills they have going for them that might make it possible to do a task well.

Many students might be quick to say that they have “nothing” going for them, which is untrue. In this moment of low motivation, teachers and parents can use a “competence anchor” — a reminder of an activity or time in which the student experienced success — to help them re-establish a positive mindset and reduce the fear factor. Pull a similar task from the student’s work file (mentioned above), for example, to prove that they have persevered, checked their perceptions, and been successful before — and that they can do it again. Remind them of non-academic activities they stuck to as well, like the time they spent hours learning how to play an instrument, or trying to beat a difficult level in their video game. Demonstrating that a student has the stamina and drive to complete a task, can help to dispel the myth of the “lazy” kid.

A competence anchor works because success is a powerful motivator for the brain, which, as we have said, is unfortunately quite good at holding on to past experiences of fear and failure. (The thrill of success explains the popularity of video games, which are designed to give children early exposure to success at lower levels of performance, and only increase the difficulty level based on performance.)

Finally, it’s also important to help a child analyze the barriers to success. Apart from lack of skill, impediments could include things in the child’s immediate environment, like noise, or movements outside the window, that interfere with focus and motivation. A fix for this particular issue, for example, could be moving the student to a quieter area or eliminating the distraction. Parents and teachers may need to offer suggestions to students until they are able to independently troubleshoot.

Teaching kids about the neurobiological basis of stress and motivation can help to put them on the pathway to increased success. When we create learning environments and activities that help students feel safe and confident, we are reducing their chances of experiencing failure and increasing their chances at success — factors that increase motivation — and make learning more fun.

Unmotivated Students with ADHD: Next Steps

• Free Download: 9 Teaching Strategies for ADHD Learning Hurdles
• Q&A: “My Child is Angry and Frustrated Due to Learning Loss.”
•   Read: Nudge, Don’t Nag: 9 Ways to Motivate Your Child to Do Well

The content for this article was derived from the ADDitude Expert Webinar “Motivating Your Child with ADHD: What Ignites Interest in and Energy for Learning [Video Replay & Podcast #364] with Jerome Schultz, Ph.D. , which was broadcast live on July 20, 2021.

SUPPORT ADDITUDE Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing . Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.

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Does homework cause decreased motivation?

I can remember getting my first homework assignment in second grade, and each year receiving increased amounts. I can remember feeling overwhelmed in middle school when I would receive thirty minutes of homework from each class I took. These assignments were meant to make me a better student but, can too much of it cause students to become less motivated? According to professor of education and international affairs Gerald LeTendre the answer is yes. “Too much of anything can be harmful.” says LeTendre. According to LeTendre, students receiving large amounts of homework at an early age will become distraught and feel as though they can not do anything to understand the material they are receiving, bad grades usually follow once students begin to feel overwhelmed and once they receive these grades out the window goes their motivation.

Think about it like this. Lets say a seventh grade student is receiving thirty minutes of homework a night. He has more than enough time to thoroughly do all of his assignments and still spend valuable time with his family. He does not get overwhelmed and he feels motivated to do his homework each and every night because he knows he can handle it.

On the other hand lets say the same student receives two hours of homework. This student, feeling rushed to do everything, may have trouble figuring out how to solve some problems and give up. But, he has spent all this time doing his homework leaving him with a little time to spend with his family. Since he did not complete said homework he receives a poor grade. This student will lose his motivation because he will not see a reason to do his homework if he doesn’t have the time.

LeTendre’s research states that students should not receive homework until after second grade. He then says that students should then receive homework in ten minute increments as they move up a grade. So, in third grade students should receive ten minutes a night, in fourth twenty, fifth thirty, and so on until they graduate.

I believe that LeTendre’s reasoning behind this is that he believes that students minds should expand in relation to their grade in school. By doing this students are not going to feel overwhelmed. This strategy of giving homework would also allow students the opportunity to have some free time while they are younger, which LeTendre states is important.

Based on my readings on LeTendre’s research and findings I can say that the amount of homework a student receives at a young age affects motivation.

http://news.psu.edu/story/141247/2009/08/31/research/probing-question-homework-bad-kids

http://www.ed.psu.edu/eps/faculty-bios/edthp/gerald-letendre

http://www.holmeslibrary.org/departments/reference-services/homework-help/

3 thoughts on “ Does homework cause decreased motivation? ”

I agree with Justin as well. I think the earlier we start doing homework the easier it will be for everyone as they progress with their education. Also I think teachers in elementary schools need to read this article! Very cool post though.

Good point, Justin. I think what LeTendre is saying is that he believes that time spent with family and friends at that age is more important in developing a child’s brain that homework is. I agree with what you are saying and what LeTendre says. But in my opinion I think the bare minimum of homework is appropriate for a young student.

I disagree with Letendre’s philosophy that kids should not receive homework before the second grade. Although we all hate homework, the work at that age does not have to be that challenging. The homework should at least keep the kids brain active so that it can be strong. Homework also teaches a person a sense of responsibility.

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