what percentage of schools don't have homework

11 Surprising Homework Statistics, Facts & Data

Chris Drew (PhD)

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

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

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

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

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

Homework Statistics List

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

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

Here are the figures for math homework:

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

Here are the figures for language arts homework:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. The 10-Minute Rule

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

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

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

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

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

11. 46.5% of Parents find Homework too Hard

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

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Interpreting the Data

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

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

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

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

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

Related: Funny Homework Excuses

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

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 10 Reasons you’re Perpetually Single
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 20 Montessori Toddler Bedrooms (Design Inspiration)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 21 Montessori Homeschool Setups
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 101 Hidden Talents Examples

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The ‘Homework Gap’ Persists. Tech Equity Is One Big Reason Why

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Nearly a third of U.S. teenagers report facing at least one academic challenge related to lack of access to technology at home, the so-called “homework gap,” according to new survey from the Pew Research Center.

And that is the case even though nearly all K-12 students were back to in-person learning this school year, according to the Pew Research Center survey , conducted April 14 to May 4. The survey examines teens’ and parents’ views on virtual learning and the pandemic’s impact on academic achievement.

“More than two years after the COVID-19 outbreak forced school officials to shift classes and assignments online, teens continue to navigate the pandemic’s impact on their education and relationships, even while they experience glimpses of normalcy as they return to the classroom,” the report’s authors noted.

The survey found that 22 percent of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 said they often or sometimes have to do their homework on a cellphone, 12 percent said they “at least sometimes” are not able to complete homework assignments because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection, and 6 percent said they have to use public Wi-Fi to do their homework “at least sometimes” because they don’t have an internet connection at home.

The “ homework gap ” is a term used to describe the difficulty students have in getting online at home to complete school assignments. It disproportionately impacts students in low-income households, students of color, and students in rural areas.

The Pew Research Center’s report found the homework gap remains a persistent problem. About 24 percent of teens who live in a household making less than $30,000 a year said they “at least sometimes” are not able to complete their homework because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection, compared with 14 percent of those in a household making $30,000 to $74,999, and 8 percent of those in a household making $75,000 or more, the report found.

Teens whose parents report an annual income of less than $30,000 are also more likely to say they often or sometimes have to do homework on a cellphone or use public Wi-Fi for homework, compared with those living in higher-earning households, according to the survey.

Sixteen percent of Hispanic teens reported they “at least sometimes” aren’t able to complete homework because they lack reliable computer or internet access, compared with 7 percent of Black teens and 10 percent of white teens. Hispanic teens are also four times more likely than white teens to say the same about having to do their homework on a cellphone or using public Wi-Fi for homework, the report found.

When it comes to access to a computer, 20 percent of teens living in a household with an annual income of less than $30,000 reported not having access to a desktop or laptop at home.

Teens prefer learning in person

Eighty percent of teens said they attended school completely in person over the month prior to when the survey was administered, according to the report. Eleven percent said they attended school through a mix of online and in-person instruction, and 8 percent said they attended school completely online.

A majority of teens prefer in-person over virtual or hybrid learning. Sixty-five percent said they would prefer school to be completely in person after the COVID-19 outbreak is over, while 9 percent said they would prefer a completely online learning environment. Eighteen percent said they would prefer a mix of online and in-person instruction, according to the report.

While a majority of teens prefer in-person learning, there are some differences that emerge by race and ethnicity and household income. Seventy percent of white teens and 64 percent of Hispanic teens said they would prefer completely in-person learning after the COVID-19 outbreak, but that share drops to 51 percent among Black teens, according to the report.

Seventy-one percent of teens living in households earning $75,000 or more a year said they prefer for school to be completely in person after the pandemic is over. That share drops to 60 percent or less among those whose annual family income is less than $75,000.

Some teens worry about falling behind

When asked about COVID-19’s effect on their schooling, a majority of teens expressed little to no concern about falling behind in school due to disruptions caused by the outbreak. But Hispanic teens and teens from families with lower incomes were more likely to say they are “extremely” or “very” worried about falling behind in school due to COVID-19 disruptions.

Overall, 16 percent of teens said they are “extremely” or “very” worried they may have fallen behind in school because of COVID-19-related disturbances. Twenty-eight percent of Hispanic teens said they are “extremely” or “very” worried that they may have fallen behind, compared with 19 percent of Black teens, and 11 percent of white teens. And 46 percent of teens from households making less than $75,000 annually reported concerns about falling behind in school, compared with 13 percent of teens from households making more than $75,000 annually.

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Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework

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

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

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

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

My spirit crumbled along with his.

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

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

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

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

It’s time for an uprising.

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

More from TIME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Homework Gap

16.9 million children remain logged out because they don’t have internet at home.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a near-total shutdown of the U.S. school system, forcing more than 55 million students to transition to home-based remote learning practically overnight. In most cases, that meant logging in to online classes and accessing lessons and assignments through a home internet connection. Sadly, that was not an option for children in one out of three Black, Latino, and American Indian/Alaska Native households.

Nationwide, across all racial and ethnic groups, 16.9 million children remain logged out from instruction because their families lack the home internet access necessary to support online learning, a phenomenon known as the “homework gap.” According to an analysis of data from the 2018 American Community Survey conducted for All4Ed, National Urban League , UnidosUS , and the National Indian Education Association , millions of households with children under the age of 18 years lack two essential elements for online learning: (1) high-speed home internet service and (2) a computer.

Lack of High-Speed Internet and Connected Devices

Five Facts About Home Internet Access for Students

#1 – 8.4 million households with children lack high-speed home internet service..

This includes 16.9 million children. For this analysis, “high-speed home internet” refers to a wireline broadband internet subscription—high-speed internet service provided via cable, fiber, or digital subscriber line (DSL). While many households have wireless broadband internet access through smartphones, these services generally are insufficient for educational purposes since they do not have the same capacity, reliability, or speeds available through wireline services. (1) A study from Michigan State University  finds that students who do not have home internet access or who rely solely on a mobile plan for their internet access spend more time on their homework, have lower grade point averages, and have weaker digital skills, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors that potentially influence academic performance (2) . In fact, “[t]he gap in digital skills between students with no home access or cell phone only and those with fast or slow home Internet access is equivalent to the gap in digital skills between 8th and 11th grade students,” according to the study. (3)

#2 – 3.6 Million Households Lack a Computer, putting 7.3 Million Children at an Academic Disadvantage.

In this analysis, a computer refers to a laptop, desktop, or tablet. Students who rely exclusively on smartphones for completing homework must contend with smaller screens on slower devices that have fewer features. Smartphone applications lack the full functionality of software that is available on computers. Therefore, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for students to complete assignments that require detailed writing, editing, calculations, and graphics. Additionally, these students may need to monitor data caps or recharge prepaid phone plans to maintain their internet access. (4) Consequently, these students are less likely to complete and submit assignments online outside of school or engage in other online activities such as conducting research, video chatting with peers about school work, or looking up classroom information. (5)

#3 – 4.7 Million Black, Latino, Asian, and American Indian/Alaska Native Families combined lack the High-Speed Home Internet Service Necessary for Online Learning.

Nationally, only about 23% of all households with children do not have high-speed home internet service and about 10% do not have a computer. However, rates vary widely by race. 34% of American Indian/Alaska Native families and about 31% each of Black and Latino families lack access to high-speed home internet, compared to only 21% of White families.

Furthermore, lack of high-speed home internet access disproportionately affects children of color. For example, Latino households make up 20.9% of all households with children, but represent 28.7% of households without high-speed home internet access. This totals 2.4 million Latino families and 5.1 million Latino children. Similarly, Black households make up 14.4% of all households with children, but represent 19.5% of households without high-speed home internet access. This totals 1.6 million Black families and 3.3 million Black children.

Home access to computers and other devices is also limited for students of color. About 17% each of Black and Latino families and nearly 16% of American Indian/Alaska Native families do not have a computer at home, compared to only 8% of White families.

#4 – 4.6 Million Families Earning Less than $50,000 Per Year lack Access to high-Speed Home Internet Service.

Four in ten families that earn less than $25,000 annually do not have high-speed home internet access and three in ten do not have a computer. Similarly, among households that earn between $25,000 and $50,000 annually, one-third lack high-speed home internet service and nearly one-fifth do not have a computer.

Lack of Internet and Device Access by Household Income

#5 – 1.7 Million Households in Nonmetropolitan (or Rural) Areas Lack High-Speed Home Internet.

That is nearly two out of every five families living in rural locations. (6) The greatest disparities exist in rural southern and southwestern states, with Mississippi having the highest percentage of families who lack high-speed home internet service—nearly 42%.

Lack of Internet and Device Access by Location

Learn More About Internet Access in Your State

As you click on your state, you will find information by race, income, and location.

The Cost to Close the Homework Gap

Most of the burden for equipping students with devices and internet access for online learning will fall to schools, districts, and states. But they cannot resolve the existing disparities alone. Bringing high-speed home internet access to all 8.4 million households that currently are offline will require Congress to approve additional funding to support students’ learning needs.

Congress should appropriate the $6.8 billion necessary to cover immediate costs related to high-speed home internet access and devices in any upcoming funding packages passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, additional substantial resources will be necessary to build out the infrastructure in rural areas where connectivity is not currently available. This is critical to do in the long term to ensure students in isolated regions have full access to a high-quality education. However, these costs fall outside the scope of the immediate response to COVID-19 necessary for students to participate in online learning during the 2020–2021 school year.

Methodology

The data used for the analysis presented in “Students of Color Caught in the Homework Gap” comes from the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS). This survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, contacts 3.5 million households per year. Households receive notices through the mail that they have been selected for the survey, and they can respond through the mail, using the internet, or by telephone. If contacted households do not respond, ACS follows up with phone calls to ask that the survey be completed. About 90 percent of contacted households complete the ACS.

The large sample size of ACS allows analysis of fairly disaggregated geographic units. Since the ACS is an ongoing survey, the Census Bureau aggregates the data in different ways. For analysis of census tracts, which generally have populations of about  4,000 people  (although census tracts can be geographically large in rural areas), ACS aggregates data over five years. That means that about 17.5 million households are available for analysis. For larger geographic areas such as states, the “ 1-year ACS estimates ” are appropriate, since that survey can be used to analyze places with populations of 65,000 or more.

To calculate the numbers of children without digital tools, this analysis used ACS data on the number of related children in the household. That figure varies depending on income, race, and state. The calculations in the state-by-state tables account for these variations. For example, households in Texas, on average, have more children than those in Vermont, while low-income households generally have more children than upper-income ones. In other words, a separate figure for the average number of children in households was calculated for each state and, within each state, across income and race/ethnicity categories. The ACS downloadable PUMS data does not capture all children in the United States, but the ACS provides data on the total number of children in the country. The number of children in the ACS PUMS data differs from the total reported on the Census website by about 7 percent. The analysis allocated this difference proportionately across states and subcategories.

1 John B. Horrigan, senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, conducted the data analysis referenced in this document. To read the full methodology for this analysis, visit  all4ed.org/homeworkgap .

2 Columbia Telecommunications Corporation,  Mobile Broadband Service Is Not an Adequate Substitute for Wireline  (Kensington, MD: Author, 2017).

3 K. Hampton et al.,  Broadband and Student Performance Gaps  (East Lansing, MI: James H. and Mary B. Quello Center, Michigan State University, 2020).

7 Following the U.S. Census Bureau’s practice, this analysis defines metropolitan areas as urbanized areas of 50,000 or more people and urban clusters of at least 2,500 people but less than 50,000. Remaining areas are nonmetropolitan. The American Community Survey does not use the term “rural” in characterizing geographies.

Homework Gap in California

An analysis from All4Ed and the Linked Learning Alliance shows the very students who could benefit the most from the college- and career-focused approach of Linked Learning are the least likely to have the internet and devices needed to access it from home.

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Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

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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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A New Report Reveals That Homework in the United States is an Easy Load

Two new reports debunk the notion that U.S. schoolchildren suffer from a growing homework load, with little time to play and just be kids.

The great majority of students at all grade levels now spend less than one hour studying on a typical day—an amount that has not changed substantially in at least twenty years, according to data analyzed by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution and the RAND Corporation.

The research contradicts dramatic anecdotes of children overwhelmed with homework. The Brookings and RAND researchers collected and reviewed the best social science available on children’s homework, including data from surveys conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

Even at the high school level, where more homework might be expected to prepare students for the demands of college or the workplace, only about a third of seventeen-year-olds spend an hour or more a day on homework.

The Brown Center on Education Policy conducted the study after a wave of dramatic news stories over the past few years described a backlash against homework. Since 2001, feature stories about onerous homework loads and parents fighting back have appeared in Time , Newsweek , and People magazines; the New York Times , Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , Raleigh News and Observer , and the Tampa Tribune ; and the CBS Evening News and other media outlets.

“The stories are misleading,” writes author Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center. “They do not reflect the experiences of a majority—or even a significant minority—of American schoolchildren.”

“Excessive homework is not a common problem,” writes Loveless in the report. “The critics of homework need to produce some very powerful evidence before policymakers start mandating reductions in homework or even banning it altogether. To date, the evidence put forth by homework critics has been weak.”

Across three different age groups, the percentage of students with less than an hour of daily homework has actually risen since 1984, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which for two decades has been asking a nationally representative sample of students questions about homework.

In 1999, 83 percent of nine-year-olds, 66 percent of thirteen-year-olds, and 65 percent of seventeen-year-olds reported having less than an hour of homework per night (see figure 1). In 1984, 81 percent of nine-year-olds, 63 percent of thirteen-year-olds, and 59 percent of seventeen-year-olds had reported spending that amount of time studying.

Another survey, the Third International Math and Science Study, finds that American high school students have one of the lightest homework loads in the world. Of twenty countries, the United States ranked near the bottom, tied for the next-to-last position. Students in France, Italy, Russia, and South Africa reported spending at least twice as much time on homework as American students.

The University of Michigan research does show an increase in the amount of homework given to children ages six to eight. But the increase of ten to eleven minutes a day is largely due to the fact that the baseline was low to begin with—only a third of children ages six to eight spent any time at all on studying in 1981.

“Why is it important to get the homework study right?” asks Loveless. “Mainly because it is positively associated with student learning.” Research shows that the relationship of homework with student achievement is positive for both middle and high school students and neutral for elementary school students.

Moreover, homework is a “barometer of the success—or the limits—of movements to raise academic standards,” write Brian Gill of RAND and Steven Schlossman of Carnegie Mellon University in the fall 2003 issue of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

“To succeed, academic excellence movements ultimately require students to invest effort in their studies; time spent on homework is a ground-level indicator of this effort,” say Gill and Schlossman.

Gill and Schlossman trace homework time trends of the past fifty years, finding that the only substantial increases in homework for high-school students occurred in the decade after Sputnik, when the nation launched an academic excellence movement motivated by competition with the Soviet Union. Homework time subsequently declined to pre-Sputnik levels, and the excellence movement of the 1980s and 1990s that followed the publication of “A Nation at Risk” caused surprisingly small increases in homework (see figure 8).

Ironically, the only increase in homework in the last two decades has happened precisely in the lower grade levels, where researchers believe it matters least for academic achievement, according to Gill and Schlossman.

Most parents feel the homework load is about right, and, of those who would like to change it, more parents would rather see more homework than less, according to a 2000 poll conducted by the Public Agenda Foundation. Only one out of ten parents believes there is too much homework.

When a homework problem exists, which can happen because children vary in their study habits, solutions should come from parents and teachers, not policymakers, Loveless says.

About the Brown Center on Education Policy and the Brookings Institution

Established in 1992, the Brown Center on Education Policy conducts research on topics in American education, with a special focus on efforts to improve academic achievement in elementary and secondary schools. The Brown Center is part of the Brookings Institution, a private, nonprofit organization devoted to research, education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. The Institution maintains a position of neutrality on issues of public policy. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.

For a full copy of the report as well as information about other Brown Center events and publications, please visit the Brown Center’s website , or call Tucker Warren at 202/457-8100.

About RAND Education

RAND Education conducts independent research and analysis on education policy, including school reform and educational assessment and accountability. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.

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As schools close due to the coronavirus, some U.S. students face a digital ‘homework gap’

As K-12 officials in many states close schools and shift classes and assignments online due to the spread of the new coronavirus , they confront the reality that some students do not have reliable access to the internet at home – particularly those who are from lower-income households.

Here are key findings about the internet, homework and how the digital divide impacts American youth.

[bignumber]The majority of eighth-grade students in the United States rely on the internet at home to get their homework done. Roughly six-in-ten students (58%) say they use the internet at their home to do homework every day or almost every day, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Just 6% of students say they never use the internet at home for this purpose.

There are differences in these patterns by community type and parents’ education level. Roughly two-thirds of students attending suburban schools (65%) say they use the internet for homework every day or almost every day, compared with 58% who attend schools in cities, 50% of those who attend in rural areas and 44% of those attending schools in towns. Students whose parents graduated from college are more likely to use the internet for homework at home. Some 62% of these students use the internet at home for homework, compared with smaller shares of students whose parents have some post-high school education (53%), have only a high school education (52%) or have no high school education (48%).

This analysis examines the impact of the internet and the digital divide on youth in the United States. The survey data cited here comes from a Pew Research Center poll of 743 U.S. teens conducted March 7 to April 10, 2018, using the NORC AmeriSpeak panel. AmeriSpeak is a nationally representative, probability-based panel of the U.S. household population. Randomly selected U.S. households are sampled with a known probability of selection from the NORC National Frame, and then contacted by U.S. mail, telephone or face-to-face interviewers. More details about the NORC AmeriSpeak panel methodology are available here .

Part of this analysis also relies on data from the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP administers the digitally based Technology and Engineering Literacy assessment to better understand what students in the U.S. know and can do in the areas of technology and engineering. For more, see the assessment methodology .

Another part of this analysis uses the 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS is a national survey using continuous measurement methods. In the survey, a series of monthly samples produce annual estimates for the same small areas (census tracts and block groups) formerly surveyed via the decennial census long-form sample. For more, see the ACS methodology .

[bignumber]The “homework gap” – which refers to school-age children lacking the connectivity they need to complete schoolwork at home – is more pronounced for black, Hispanic and lower-income households. Some 15% of U.S. households with school-age children do not have a high-speed internet connection at home, according to a previously published Pew Research Center analysis of 2015 U.S. Census Bureau data. School-age children in lower-income households are especially likely to lack broadband access. Roughly one-third (35%) of households with children ages 6 to 17 and an annual income below $30,000 a year do not have a high-speed internet connection at home, compared with just 6% of such households earning $75,000 or more a year. These broadband gaps are particularly pronounced in black and Hispanic households with school-age children – especially those with low incomes.

[bignumber]Some lower-income teens say they lack resources to complete schoolwork at home. In a 2018 Center survey , about one-in-five teens ages 13 to 17 (17%) said they are often or sometimes unable to complete homework assignments because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection. Black teens and those living in lower-income households were more likely to say they cannot complete homework assignments for this reason.

For example, one-quarter of black teens said they often or sometimes cannot do homework assignments due to lack of reliable access to a computer or internet connectivity, compared with 13% of white teens and 17% of Hispanic teens. Teens with an annual family income below $30,000 were also more likely to say this than teens with a family income of at least $75,000 a year (24% vs. 9%).

In the same survey, around one-in-ten teens (12%) said they often or sometimes use public Wi-Fi to do schoolwork because they lack a home internet connection. Again, black and lower-income teens were more likely to do this. Roughly one-in-five black teens (21%) said they use public Wi-Fi to do schoolwork due to a lack of home internet connection, compared with 11% of white teens and 9% of Hispanic teens. And around a fifth (21%) of teens with an annual family income under $30,000 reported having to use public Wi-Fi to do homework, compared with 11% of teens in families with a household income of $30,000-$74,999 and just 7% of those living in households earning at least $75,000.

[bignumber]A quarter of lower-income teens do not have access to a home computer. One-in-four teens in households with an annual income under $30,000 lack access to a computer at home, compared with just 4% of those in households earning over $75,000, according to the 2018 survey. There are also differences by race and ethnicity. Hispanic teens were especially likely to say they do not have access to a home computer: 18% said this, compared with 9% of white teens and 11% of black teens.

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Brooke Auxier is a former research associate focusing on internet and technology at Pew Research Center .

Monica Anderson is a director of research at Pew Research Center .

U.S. adults under 30 have different foreign policy priorities than older adults

Across asia, respect for elders is seen as necessary to be ‘truly’ buddhist, teens and video games today, as biden and trump seek reelection, who are the oldest – and youngest – current world leaders, how teens and parents approach screen time, most popular.

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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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Nobody knows what the point of homework is

The homework wars are back.

by Jacob Sweet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s no consensus on whether homework works

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canceling homework might not do anything for the achievement gap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not all homework is created equal

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

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

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

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

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

Cutting homework has to be part of a larger strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why Millions of Teens Can't Finish Their Homework

The push toward technology-focused education overlooks the students who lack the resources needed to complete their assignments.

In decades past, students needed little more than paper, pencils, and time to get their schoolwork done. For the vast majority of students, that's no longer the case. Most schoolwork these days necessitates a computer and an internet connection, and that includes work to be done at home. One federal survey found that 70 percent of American teachers  assign homework that needs to be done online; 90 percent of high schoolers say they have to do internet-based homework at least a few times a month. Nearly half of all students say they get such assignments daily or almost daily.

Yet despite the seemingly ever-growing embrace of digital learning in schools, access to the necessary devices remains unequal, with a new report from the Pew Research Center finding that 15 percent of U.S. households with school-age children lack high-speed internet at home. The problem is particularly acute for low-income families: One in three households that make below $30,000 a year lacks internet. This is despite an emerging reality in which poorer students are attending schools that evangelize technology-based learning while their more affluent counterparts, as The New York Times reported this past weekend, are “going back to wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction.”

It’s a glaring irony that’s also a major force behind class- and race-based discrepancies in academic achievement. In what’s often referred to as the “homework gap,” the unequal access to digital devices and high-speed internet prevents 17 percent of teens from completing their homework assignments, according to the new Pew analysis, which surveyed 743 students ages 13 through 17. Black teens are especially burdened by the homework gap: One in four of them at least sometimes struggle to complete assignments because of a lack of technology at home. And close to half of teenagers in the bottom income bracket have to do their homework on a cellphone occasionally or often.

Read: The futile resistance against classroom tech

From a history-class assignment on the political debate over immigration to required participation in an online discussion board for AP Environmental Science, access to a functioning computer and high-speed internet is all but a prerequisite for success in high school. This is becoming especially true as schools gravitate toward software where students file assignments and papers virtually, as well as schools that equip each student with a laptop or tablet ; one 2017 survey found that half of U.S. teachers have one device for each of their students, up 10 percentage points from the year prior. Close to two in three teachers use technology in their classroom daily, according to a separate 2017 survey .

The homework gap can have major consequences, with some studies suggesting that teens who lack access to a computer at home are less likely to graduate from high school than their more technologically equipped peers. The “challenge to complete homework in safe, predictable, and productive environments can have lifelong impacts on their ability to achieve their full potential,” wrote John Branam, who runs an initiative to provide lacking teens with internet access, in an op-ed for The Hechinger Report last year.

Although the big telecom providers offer subsidies to low-income families, these programs are generally underused . And while disadvantaged students can resort to public libraries and other venues that offer free Wi-Fi, such alternatives are still major obstacles to finishing homework every night. “Your aunt has internet access [at home] but she lives a 40-minute bus trip across town,” Branam wrote, illustrating the roadblocks for teens without internet access. “The public library does, but it has a 30-minute computer use limit and, as a young woman, you don’t feel comfortable there late at night. McDonald’s has free Wi-Fi but it’s noisy, you have to buy food and you can’t linger there forever.”

Read: When students can’t go online

With a team of researchers, the University of Texas at Austin professor S. Craig Watkins spent a year and a half observing and interacting with high schoolers to better understand the digital divide. The researchers’ forthcoming book, The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality , chronicles the ways low-income students of color get around not having access to the internet and a computer. In what Watkins calls “social hacking,” students often “reengineer their socioeconomic circumstances in order to get access to technology that they otherwise would not have access to.” For example, the researchers observed that students without such resources at home were adept at developing relationships with teachers who could, say, give them special weekend access to laptops and software for use at home. They also tended to rely on other needy classmates to find work-arounds, sharing with one another smartphones and tablets that more affluent students often take for granted, for instance. “It was an inventive way of cultivating social capital,” Watkins says, “but it also created a kind of sharing economy.”

Watkins says the digital divide is an “institutional blind spot” for many school leaders and policy makers. “I suspect that people a pay grade or two above teachers likely don’t understand the depth at which this access- and participation-gap divide still exists,” he says.

While embedding technology into the curriculum is all the rage in some schools, “oftentimes there’s a lack of clarity and vision in terms of what learning should look like with technology,” Watkins says. “There’s this assumption that just by providing access to technology you’re somehow creating a better learning future for kids, but that is not always the case.” After all, technology in schools is going to be of limited success if kids don’t have access to the internet and a computer once the final bell rings.

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National Arts Education Status Report 2019

The Arts Education Data Project (AEDP) provides the first-ever look at the status and condition of arts education in the U.S. using actual student participation data reported by school districts to their state education departments. The AEDP created the National Arts Education Status Report 2019 as a comprehensive look at access to and participation in arts education in the United States. 

Citation: Morrison, R. B., McCormick, P., Shepherd, J. L., Cirillo, P (2022). National Arts Education Status Report 2019. Arts Education Data Project, Quadrant Research, State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education. 

National funding for the Arts Education Data Project has been provided by: CMA Foundation, The Music Man Foundation, NAMM Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. Individual state funding has been provided by various state agencies and state-based philanthropic organizations.

The Arts Education Data Project is a partnership between the State Education Agencies Directors of Arts Education and Quadrant Research. The nationwide project coordinates with participating state departments of education to collect and report arts education data from State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) and other state department of education datasets on an annual basis.

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Teens are losing interest in school, and say they hear about college 'a lot'

Cory Turner

Survey results: Teens don't feel challenged in school and feel unprepared for future

A new survey finds middle- and high-schoolers feel much less engaged in school than they did just last year. Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images hide caption

This is not your standard back-to-school story, about school supplies or first-day butterflies.

It’s about how school-aged members of Gen Z — that’s 12- to 18-year-olds — are feeling about school and the future. And according to a new national survey, those feelings are a little worrying.

School engagement is down. The middle- and high-schoolers surveyed find school less interesting than they did just last year, and only about half believe they’re being challenged “in a good way.” The problem is especially acute for teens who say they don’t want to go to college right out of high school.

Want to help support your Gen Z kids? Talking really helps

Here are five takeaways from the new survey , a joint effort between Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, about Gen Zers’ school attitudes. (Quick disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation is a funder of NPR.)

1. Students say they don’t feel challenged in school

When asked whether “my schoolwork challenges me in a good way,” just under half of middle and high school students agree, with only 14% agreeing strongly.

Many middle- and high-schoolers feel disconnected from what they’re being taught in the classroom. Just 46% agree that “at school, I get to do what I do best every day.”

Sure, lots of students won’t love learning fundamental math concepts or how to conceive a well-reasoned argument, but they need to learn them anyway, hopefully with the help of a good teacher. What’s concerning is that students say they feel much less engaged in school than they did just last year, compared to Gallup’s 2023 Gen Z survey.

One of the greatest differences between this year and last came in response to the prompt: “In the last seven days, I have learned something interesting at school.” In 2023, 68% said they had. This year, though, among the same students, that number dropped a full 10 points, to 58%.

2. There’s a college-bound engagement gap

In trying to gauge students’ feelings around classroom engagement (or disconnection), schools are especially struggling to engage students who don’t have college plans.

When asked if they feel challenged by their school work “in a good way,” more than half of students with higher education plans, 55%, agree. But only 41% of middle and high schoolers with no college plans say they feel challenged in a good way.

That’s just one of many warning signs.

Just over a third of Gen Z students without college plans believe that “at school, I get to do what I do best every day” — compared to more than half of students with college hopes.

Non-college-bound students are also less likely to say they have a teacher who makes them excited about the future or an adult at school who encourages them to pursue their dreams.

These are big gaps that affect lots of students, considering only about half of middle- and high-school respondents say they plan to enroll in a 4-year college right out of high school.

3. Schools spend a lot of time talking about college

While only about half of Gen Z students say they plan to go to college, their K-12 schools spend a lot of time talking about it — way more than they talk about alternatives.

Sixty-eight percent of high-school respondents say they’ve heard “a lot” about college.

Snuggles, pep talks and love notes: 10 ways to calm your kid’s back-to-school jitters

By comparison, just 23% of high-schoolers say they’ve heard “a lot” about apprenticeships, certificates and vocational programs. And only 19% say they hear a lot about jobs that don’t require college.

“The conversations that [K-12 schools are] having with middle-schoolers and high-schoolers are predominantly about college,” says Zach Hrynowski, a senior education researcher at Gallup. “Even the kids who are like, ‘I don't want to go to college,’ what are they hearing the most about? College. We're not talking to them about apprenticeships, internships, starting a business, entrepreneurial aspirations or jobs that don't require a college degree.”

This mismatch was born of good intentions. In the name of educational equity, to make sure they’re not limiting children, schools today have doubled down on the idea that college can be for everyone. That’s not inherently bad. What’s bad is that students who don’t want to go to college say their schools aren’t listening or talking with them about anything else.

4. What makes a good teacher? Caring

We know that good teaching can make a big difference to student engagement, but what is good teaching? Better yet, how does Gen Z define good teaching?

As part of the survey, students were asked to think about the best middle or high school teacher they’ve ever had and what attributes made them the best.

The most popular teacher attribute, with 73%, was “they cared about you as a person.”

Being able to make the material “easy to understand” finished a distant second, with 62%.

6 ways grown-ups can recreate that fresh, buzzy feeling of a new school year

“Care about me as a person,” Gallup’s Hrynowski says. That’s what teens value most in teachers. “Know who I am, know what's important to me, know what my goals and dreams are, and help me understand what I have to do to reach them.”

5. Young Gen Zers feel optimistic about the future, especially the college-bound

A remarkable 86% of Gen Z students with plans to go to a four-year college say they have a great future ahead, and according to Gallup that optimism is reflected in Gen Z more broadly.

“I think one of the prevailing narratives around Gen Z has been that they're nihilistic. They don't care. They're pessimists. And we have never found that,” Hrynowski says.

But there are signs that pessimism may be creeping in at the edges.

Non-college-bound students feel considerably less rosy about their prospects – a warning to schools that they need to be more proactive and creative about helping teens dream big without simply saying, “Go to college.”

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How States Are Working to Narrow FAFSA Completion Gaps

Nationally, completed applications from high school seniors are down by about 9.5 percent. A federal funding boost has helped some states over the summer—but only so much.

By  Katherine Knott

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In some states, FAFSA completions are down as much as 15.7 percent, as of Aug. 16, compared to this point last year.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Chris Ryan/Getty Images

In West Virginia, billboards declare that students should fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and “fetch funds for college fast.” In Alabama, students who have yet to finish the form are receiving direct text messages reminding them to complete their FAFSA. In Mississippi, dozens of businesses, churches and nonprofits are hosting events to help students with the application.

States across the country have worked all summer on a final push to boost FAFSA completion rates, which have dropped this year due to the U.S. Education Department’s botched launch of the revamped form. State officials and college-access professionals say their efforts, backed by a $50 million infusion from the Education Department, have helped to move the needle, but they don’t expect to catch up to last year’s application numbers.

“The hole that students were in over all was so deep that it’s very hard to climb out … over the course of the summer,” said Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives for National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit. “Closing the gap is out of the question.”

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Nationally, applications from recent high school graduates are down by about 9.5 percent, as just over half of the Class of 2024 has completed the form, according to the National College Attainment Network’s FAFSA tracker . In states, FAFSA applications are down anywhere from 1 percent to nearly 16 percent. (The Education Department says that the total gap in FAFSA submissions is 3 percent, but that includes all students, not just high school seniors.)

Although the gap has narrowed over the last several months—from nearly 40 percent in late March to 13.5 percent at the end of May—progress slowed during the summer months—a time when the Education Department , higher education leaders and others hoped to make up lost ground.

“There’s a lot of great programming that’s going on out there in the field right now, [but] it does rely on students and families availing themselves of it,” DeBaun said. “ In some cases, we’re not seeing droves of students and families coming and taking advantage of the programming.”

But DeBaun and others aren’t giving up yet, even as some colleges have already started classes and the next FAFSA cycle looms. The 2024–25 FAFSA is open until June 30, 2025, and students can still opt to start in the spring semester or enroll in at community colleges that have rolling admissions or programs that start later in the fall.

To help, the Education Department said in May that it would hand out funds to states, colleges, college-access groups and other organizations for efforts to boost FAFSA completion rates. So far, $43 million has been disbursed to more than 300 entities across the country, according to an ED spokesperson.

Across the country, organizations and states have used that money to raise awareness about the form, to hire more staff who can reach out directly to students and to host FAFSA completion events, among other uses. In Kentucky, state officials held a 12-hour FAFSAthon . Other groups have held raffles as a way to entice students to come to a FAFSA event.

Here’s how groups in three states—Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia—worked to boost FAFSA completion this summer.

Staffing Up in Alabama

It’s been a busy summer for Chandra Scott, executive director of the college access nonprofit Alabama Possible. The organization, which runs a FAFSA help desk, has fielded 167 phone calls. Last year, they received 131 calls for the entire year. When staffers on the help desk aren’t answering those calls, they are reaching out directly to students who started but didn’t complete the FAFSA.

Applications in Alabama are down by about 15.5 percent. That’s one of the largest gaps in the country, but it has shrunk by about 5.9 percentage points since the end of May as the application rate ticked up 7.9 percentage points. So far, 52.1 percent of the high school Class of 2024 has completed the FAFSA, which ranks Alabama among the top 20 states.

“At least we know we’re going in the right direction, and our efforts are paying off,” Scott said, though she’s not expecting the completion gap to close much further.

Alabama Possible received about $250,000 from the Education Department’s FAFSA fund, which it spent on staffing up its help desk and ramping up marketing efforts about the application. Scott said that organizations like hers fill in the gap for students who don’t have access to their counselors once schools close for the summer, so having the money to hire more counselors was critical.

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“Giving us the ability to meet the needs of those students and those families has paid off in dividends,” she said. “It shows in our FAFSA completion numbers.”

‘Tenacity’ in Mississippi

Nearly 60 percent of graduating seniors in Mississippi have completed the FAFSA. The state’s completion rate—58.3 percent—ranks the highest among the states. At the end of May, the state had ranked 15th, as only 44.3 percent had filled out the form.

Mississippi saw some of the nation’s highest gains this summer in terms of closing its gaps and boosting completion rates. Even so, applications are down by 13.4 percent from last year.

Historically, Mississippi’s FAFSA completion rate is near the top. Last year, nearly 70 percent of the state’s graduating seniors completed the form. This year, cracking 60 percent would be a success, said Kierstan Dufour, director of external training and partnerships at the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a college-access organization that offers one-on-one support to students and families as they complete the application.

Woodward Hines received $379,000 from the Education Department for FAFSA completion events. Dufour said that’s funded 70 community events across the state, including one on Monday, at churches, businesses and schools. The foundation also expanded its hours, partnered with community colleges and ran radio ads, including on different religious stations, to let students in rural areas know they could get money for college by filling out the FAFSA.

“Tenacity is what we’re doing,” Dufour said.

The summer increase in FAFSA completions was expected, she said, because Mississippi students depend heavily on the Pell Grant. “We’re a poor state, so we naturally need to have the FAFSA completed,” she added.

Dufour attributed this summer’s “dramatic” increase to a collective effort across nonprofits, schools and businesses to support students with the application. The additional funding helped as well. Without it, the organization wouldn’t have been able to run ads or offer appointments in the evenings or on weekends.

“We would have been able to do only a very small fraction,” Dufour said. “We would have still chipped away at it. We would have still held appointments, but it would have been in a center or virtually in the traditional 8-to-5 hours. This allowed us to quadruple the influence of advisers to students across the state.”

Declaring an Emergency in West Virginia

Sarah Tucker, chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, closely watched the state’s FAFSA completion rates as students struggled to access the glitchy application. When the rate wasn’t increasing, she went to Governor Jim Justice, who later declared a state of emergency over the FAFSA issues at the end of April. At the time, applications were down by about 40 percent from the previous year.

The declaration suspended FAFSA requirements for state financial aid programs. Typically, students would have to complete the form in order to access state funds such as the merit-based Promise scholarship, under which eligible students can receive up to $5,500. About 43,540 students have since received the Promise scholarship or state grant aid, up from 31,867 students in the previous year, Tucker told state lawmakers over the weekend.

Tucker told Inside Higher Ed that the emergency declaration spurred “even more dramatic changes.” Enrollment numbers at state colleges ticked up, along with deposits from students to secure their spot. West Virginia lawmakers built on the emergency declaration in May, sending more than $80 million to the state’s colleges and universities to shore up their budgets and provide direct support to students. Through it all, Tucker’s office continued to host FAFSA workshops—more than 200 so far—and reach out to students to raise awareness.

West Virginia officials launched a marketing campaign, including this billboard, to include students to fill out the aid application.

West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System

The state used a $500,000 grant from the Education Department to launch an advertising campaign that included digital, television and radio ads as well as billboards that were placed along interstates and some smaller roads.

Through Aug. 16, about 50 percent of West Virginia high school seniors who graduated this year have completed the form. Still, applications are down by nearly 16 percent from the previous cycle—the highest gap in the country, according to NCAN. That gap has narrowed since the end of May, when applications were down 20.8 percent. To catch up to where the state was at this point last year, Tucker said 6,000 more students would have to complete the application.

“Six thousand students in a state like West Virginia is a heck of a lot of students,” Tucker said. “I do think these things have helped significantly, and there’s a big bump there in June when, you know, all of these different initiatives took place. Compared to where we were in February and March, I’m much more confident that everything we have done has had an impact and will continue to have an impact.”

But Tucker worries about the students who haven’t filled out the FAFSA and won’t end up in the workforce. That group, which she said is “too large,” has been a focus of hers. But she knows boosting the college-going rate is “an uphill battle.”

“We’ve got to figure out how to get more students to think about what their options and opportunities are,” she said. “If it’s the military, great. If it’s a great-paying job, great. If it’s going to college, great, but they have to do something … I think probably one of the reasons that I reacted as strongly as I did about the FAFSA was because this is just another obstacle for those kids that we’ve worked so hard to try to get to go to college.”

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Kamala Harris has put the Democrats back in the race

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Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion, Immigration and More

She wants to protect the right to abortion nationally. Here’s what else to know about her positions.

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By Maggie Astor

• Published July 21, 2024 Updated Aug. 24, 2024

With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation’s voters.

She has a long record in politics: as district attorney of San Francisco, as attorney general of California, as a senator, as a presidential candidate and as vice president.

Here is an overview of where she stands.

Ms. Harris supports legislation that would protect the right to abortion nationally, as Roe v. Wade did before it was overturned in 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

After the Dobbs ruling, she became central to the Biden campaign’s efforts to keep the spotlight on abortion, given that Mr. Biden — with his personal discomfort with abortion and his support for restrictions earlier in his career — was a flawed messenger. In March, she made what was believed to be the first official visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice president.

She consistently supported abortion rights during her time in the Senate, including cosponsoring legislation that would have banned common state-level restrictions, like requiring doctors to perform specific tests or have hospital admitting privileges in order to provide abortions.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, she argued that states with a history of restricting abortion rights in violation of Roe should be subject to what is known as pre-clearance for new abortion laws — those laws would have to be federally approved before they could take effect. That proposal is not viable now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe.

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