homework expectations middle school

ChatGPT for Teachers

Trauma-informed practices in schools, teacher well-being, cultivating diversity, equity, & inclusion, integrating technology in the classroom, social-emotional development, covid-19 resources, invest in resilience: summer toolkit, civics & resilience, all toolkits, degree programs, trauma-informed professional development, teacher licensure & certification, how to become - career information, classroom management, instructional design, lifestyle & self-care, online higher ed teaching, current events, homework in middle school: building a foundation for study skills.

Homework in Middle School: Building a Foundation for Study Skills

In the middle school years, students begin to experience the benefits of homework, though it is difficult to determine how much good it does, particularly at a given age. And there is some debate on how much homework students need to receive that benefit.

Duke University’s Harris Cooper, one of the leading researchers on homework, says students enjoy genuine academic benefits from homework, including better comprehension and retention of subject matter. However, while the benefit is clear for high school students and beyond, the degree to which homework helps middle school students is a matter of some contention.

Homework starts to prove its value for middle school students.

It’s difficult to tell if homework helps high achievers do well, or if they do their homework because they are high achievers.
It’s challenging to determine how much homework students actually do. Most homework studies rely on self-reported data, which means students can easily misstate the quantity of time they spend on homework.
Many studies use test scores to measure academic success, which, as many researchers point out, is an inherently problematic form of measurement.

Teachers should assign an appropriate amount of homework

While there is still much discussion on the effectiveness of homework, research asserts that the 10-minute rule per grade level holds true for middle school students. This means that students might receive anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes of homework each evening.

In middle school, students’ higher academic achievement starts to correlate with completing homework. However, this correlation fades if homework lasts longer than that. Indeed, giving more than 90 minutes of homework has been shown to have detrimental effects on students.

Students need time away from their studies to relax and engage in social, extracurricular and family activities. When given too much homework, students lose this time and suffer the effects of stress and sleep deprivation, which has proved to reduce academic performance.

Purposeful assignments

Teachers who give homework must consider the purpose and value of the assignments. While elementary school homework can build confidence and engage students in the subject matter, middle school homework needs a more specific purpose.

Certain subjects require practice homework, such as vocabulary, which often requires drills. Other homework requires reading or more complicated skill work. Still, there is a growing belief among researchers that even when homework serves a clear and distinct purpose, less is more.

Homework should be clearly connected to learning outcomes and shouldn’t overwhelm students so much they are unable to actively participate in their lives beyond the walls of the classroom. Teachers should carefully consider how much practice students need and design homework to effectively meet those goals within the shortest duration possible.

Ultimately, even if the benefit margin is small for middle school students, there are other advantages of completing homework. Some researchers argue that at least anecdotally, students develop important study skills that will benefit them in high school and college, and they learn the value of time management and responsibility.

Caitrin Blake has a BA in English and Sociology from the University of Vermont and a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Colorado Denver. She teaches composition at Arapahoe Community College.

Lincoln Middle School

Report an Absence
Chromebook Incident Report
Family Engagement
Rent a Facility
Homework Policies

Page Navigation

Weekly Assignments
Homework Concerns
Brainfuse - Online Tutoring

Lincoln Middle School Homework Policies

Homework is important to student learning at Lincoln Middle School. The purpose of this homework plan is to guide teachers, parents and students in ensuring that homework is meaningful and supports the learning experience for all students. Definition Homework is any activity or assignment directed by the teacher to be performed outside the classroom that may include practicing skills learned in class, reading, studying, projects, or completion of assignments. Rules for Homework

Activities or assignments that students can complete independently. Carefully constructed as to be completed within a reasonable time allotment, with minimal adult help.
Connected to grade level or subject matter curriculum.
Connected to class instruction.
Engaging, purposeful and relevant.

Teacher Guidelines

Review, discuss and return, if collected, homework in a timely manner.
Whenever possible, communicate and coordinate assignments so that students do not receive an overload of homework.
Explain homework assignments to the students prior to the assignment. Teachers shall communicate homework assignments in at least one of the following ways: send a packet home, write assignment on the board, require students to record it, and/or make available through emails, websites or hotlines. The use of a variety of strategies is encouraged.
The teacher will (also) consider a student’s Individualized Education Plan or 504 Plan in regards to homework.
Teach techniques that can help students allocate their time wisely, meet their deadlines, and develop good personal study habits.
Identify the access that students will have to materials for projects and other homework assignments – taking into account affordability, resource materials from the library media center, assistance and tutoring opportunities, and technology resources.
Communicate with parents to inform them about homework expectations, policies, and procedures.
Communicate the extent to which homework influences the student’s overall grades.
Communicate ways in which parents can best assist their children in doing homework independently.
Communicate with parents at the earliest possible opportunity once the student has demonstrated consistent inability to complete homework.

Parent Guidelines

Provide a quiet space and basic materials for homework completion.
Teach techniques that can help children allocate their time wisely, meet their deadlines, and develop good personal study habits.
Monitor time management and productivity.
Review school provided materials (for example Binder Reminder, class handouts, and/or online resources).
Communicate with teachers at the earliest possible opportunity once the child has demonstrated consistent inability to complete homework. If necessary, parents shall attempt to reach accommodation with their child’s teachers regarding homework.
Contact the grade level counselor, assistant principal and then the principal if a solution cannot be reached with a teacher regarding homework.

Student Guidelines

Complete homework as assigned.
Record homework when assigned in class by the teacher.
Seek clarification from teachers when unclear about homework.
Use class time provided for completing classwork and/or starting homework.
Seek assistance from teachers when demonstrating an inability to complete homework.

Scheduling Time and Parameters Middle School Middle school homework may be given Monday through Thursday. Weekends and holidays are primarily reserved for family time. Students may elect to use the weekends to review materials, make up work, complete projects, and enjoy recreational reading. Assignments shall be designed so that the typical student can complete all homework, including time for studying and preparing for exams, in the average minutes shown.

Students taking an extra class should expect to exceed the daily minutes in a proportional manner. For an accelerated course designed to be equivalent to a course at a more advanced grade level, students should expect homework for that class to be consistent with a time expectation for the higher grade level. In addition, students shall be encouraged to allot time to read for pleasure. Reading for pleasure and music practice times are not included in the time parameters shown.

Questions or Feedback? |
Web Community Manager Privacy Policy (Updated) |

The Journal
Vol. 19, No. 1

The Case for (Quality) Homework

Janine Bempechat

Any parent who has battled with a child over homework night after night has to wonder: Do those math worksheets and book reports really make a difference to a student’s long-term success? Or is homework just a headache—another distraction from family time and downtime, already diminished by the likes of music and dance lessons, sports practices, and part-time jobs?

Allison, a mother of two middle-school girls from an affluent Boston suburb, describes a frenetic afterschool scenario: “My girls do gymnastics a few days a week, so homework happens for my 6th grader after gymnastics, at 6:30 p.m. She doesn’t get to bed until 9. My 8th grader does her homework immediately after school, up until gymnastics. She eats dinner at 9:15 and then goes to bed, unless there is more homework to do, in which case she’ll get to bed around 10.” The girls miss out on sleep, and weeknight family dinners are tough to swing.

Parental concerns about their children’s homework loads are nothing new. Debates over the merits of homework—tasks that teachers ask students to complete during non-instructional time—have ebbed and flowed since the late 19th century, and today its value is again being scrutinized and weighed against possible negative impacts on family life and children’s well-being.

Are American students overburdened with homework? In some middle-class and affluent communities, where pressure on students to achieve can be fierce, yes. But in families of limited means, it’s often another story. Many low-income parents value homework as an important connection to the school and the curriculum—even as their children report receiving little homework. Overall, high-school students relate that they spend less than one hour per day on homework, on average, and only 42 percent say they do it five days per week. In one recent survey by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a minimal 13 percent of 17-year-olds said they had devoted more than two hours to homework the previous evening (see Figure 1).

Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of homework assigned to students in grades K–2, and critics point to research findings that, at the elementary-school level, homework does not appear to enhance children’s learning. Why, then, should we burden young children and their families with homework if there is no academic benefit to doing it? Indeed, perhaps it would be best, as some propose, to eliminate homework altogether, particularly in these early grades.

On the contrary, developmentally appropriate homework plays a critical role in the formation of positive learning beliefs and behaviors, including a belief in one’s academic ability, a deliberative and effortful approach to mastery, and higher expectations and aspirations for one’s future. It can prepare children to confront ever-more-complex tasks, develop resilience in the face of difficulty, and learn to embrace rather than shy away from challenge. In short, homework is a key vehicle through which we can help shape children into mature learners.

The Homework-Achievement Connection

A narrow focus on whether or not homework boosts grades and test scores in the short run thus ignores a broader purpose in education, the development of lifelong, confident learners. Still, the question looms: does homework enhance academic success? As the educational psychologist Lyn Corno wrote more than two decades ago, “homework is a complicated thing.” Most research on the homework-achievement connection is correlational, which precludes a definitive judgment on its academic benefits. Researchers rely on correlational research in this area of study given the difficulties of randomly assigning students to homework/no-homework conditions. While correlation does not imply causality, extensive research has established that at the middle- and high-school levels, homework completion is strongly and positively associated with high achievement. Very few studies have reported a negative correlation.

As noted above, findings on the homework-achievement connection at the elementary level are mixed. A small number of experimental studies have demonstrated that elementary-school students who receive homework achieve at higher levels than those who do not. These findings suggest a causal relationship, but they are limited in scope. Within the body of correlational research, some studies report a positive homework-achievement connection, some a negative relationship, and yet others show no relationship at all. Why the mixed findings? Researchers point to a number of possible factors, such as developmental issues related to how young children learn, different goals that teachers have for younger as compared to older students, and how researchers define homework.

Certainly, young children are still developing skills that enable them to focus on the material at hand and study efficiently. Teachers’ goals for their students are also quite different in elementary school as compared to secondary school. While teachers at both levels note the value of homework for reinforcing classroom content, those in the earlier grades are more likely to assign homework mainly to foster skills such as responsibility, perseverance, and the ability to manage distractions.

Most research examines homework generally. Might a focus on homework in a specific subject shed more light on the homework-achievement connection? A recent meta-analysis did just this by examining the relationship between math/science homework and achievement. Contrary to previous findings, researchers reported a stronger relationship between homework and achievement in the elementary grades than in middle school. As the study authors note, one explanation for this finding could be that in elementary school, teachers tend to assign more homework in math than in other subjects, while at the same time assigning shorter math tasks more frequently. In addition, the authors point out that parents tend to be more involved in younger children’s math homework and more skilled in elementary-level than middle-school math.

In sum, the relationship between homework and academic achievement in the elementary-school years is not yet established, but eliminating homework at this level would do children and their families a huge disservice: we know that children’s learning beliefs have a powerful impact on their academic outcomes, and that through homework, parents and teachers can have a profound influence on the development of positive beliefs.

How Much Is Appropriate?

Harris M. Cooper of Duke University, the leading researcher on homework, has examined decades of study on what we know about the relationship between homework and scholastic achievement. He has proposed the “10-minute rule,” suggesting that daily homework be limited to 10 minutes per grade level. Thus, a 1st grader would do 10 minutes each day and a 4th grader, 40 minutes. The National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association both endorse this guideline, but it is not clear whether the recommended allotments include time for reading, which most teachers want children to do daily.

For middle-school students, Cooper and colleagues report that 90 minutes per day of homework is optimal for enhancing academic achievement, and for high schoolers, the ideal range is 90 minutes to two and a half hours per day. Beyond this threshold, more homework does not contribute to learning. For students enrolled in demanding Advanced Placement or honors courses, however, homework is likely to require significantly more time, leading to concerns over students’ health and well-being.

Notwithstanding media reports of parents revolting against the practice of homework, the vast majority of parents say they are highly satisfied with their children’s homework loads. The National Household Education Surveys Program recently found that between 70 and 83 percent of parents believed that the amount of homework their children had was “about right,” a result that held true regardless of social class, race/ethnicity, community size, level of education, and whether English was spoken at home.

Learning Beliefs Are Consequential

As noted above, developmentally appropriate homework can help children cultivate positive beliefs about learning. Decades of research have established that these beliefs predict the types of tasks students choose to pursue, their persistence in the face of challenge, and their academic achievement. Broadly, learning beliefs fall under the banner of achievement motivation, which is a constellation of cognitive, behavioral, and affective factors, including: the way a person perceives his or her abilities, goal-setting skills, expectation of success, the value the individual places on learning, and self-regulating behavior such as time-management skills. Positive or adaptive beliefs about learning serve as emotional and psychological protective factors for children, especially when they encounter difficulties or failure.

Motivation researcher Carol Dweck of Stanford University posits that children with a “growth mindset”—those who believe that ability is malleable—approach learning very differently than those with a “fixed mindset”—kids who believe ability cannot change. Those with a growth mindset view effort as the key to mastery. They see mistakes as helpful, persist even in the face of failure, prefer challenging over easy tasks, and do better in school than their peers who have a fixed mindset. In contrast, children with a fixed mindset view effort and mistakes as implicit condemnations of their abilities. Such children succumb easily to learned helplessness in the face of difficulty, and they gravitate toward tasks they know they can handle rather than more challenging ones.

Of course, learning beliefs do not develop in a vacuum. Studies have demonstrated that parents and teachers play a significant role in the development of positive beliefs and behaviors, and that homework is a key tool they can use to foster motivation and academic achievement.

Parents’ Beliefs and Actions Matter

It is well established that parental involvement in their children’s education promotes achievement motivation and success in school. Parents are their children’s first teachers, and their achievement-related beliefs have a profound influence on children’s developing perceptions of their own abilities, as well as their views on the value of learning and education.

Parents affect their children’s learning through the messages they send about education, whether by expressing interest in school activities and experiences, attending school events, helping with homework when they can, or exposing children to intellectually enriching experiences. Most parents view such engagement as part and parcel of their role. They also believe that doing homework fosters responsibility and organizational skills, and that doing well on homework tasks contributes to learning, even if children experience frustration from time to time.

Many parents provide support by establishing homework routines, eliminating distractions, communicating expectations, helping children manage their time, providing reassuring messages, and encouraging kids to be aware of the conditions under which they do their best work. These supports help foster the development of self-regulation, which is critical to school success.

Self-regulation involves a number of skills, such as the ability to monitor one’s performance and adjust strategies as a result of feedback; to evaluate one’s interests and realistically perceive one’s aptitude; and to work on a task autonomously. It also means learning how to structure one’s environment so that it’s conducive to learning, by, for example, minimizing distractions. As children move into higher grades, these skills and strategies help them organize, plan, and learn independently. This is precisely where parents make a demonstrable difference in students’ attitudes and approaches to homework.

Especially in the early grades, homework gives parents the opportunity to cultivate beliefs and behaviors that foster efficient study skills and academic resilience. Indeed, across age groups, there is a strong and positive relationship between homework completion and a variety of self-regulatory processes. However, the quality of parental help matters. Sometimes, well-intentioned parents can unwittingly undermine the development of children’s positive learning beliefs and their achievement. Parents who maintain a positive outlook on homework and allow their children room to learn and struggle on their own, stepping in judiciously with informational feedback and hints, do their children a much better service than those who seek to control the learning process.

A recent study of 5th and 6th graders’ perceptions of their parents’ involvement with homework distinguished between supportive and intrusive help. The former included the belief that parents encouraged the children to try to find the right answer on their own before providing them with assistance, and when the child struggled, attempted to understand the source of the confusion. In contrast, the latter included the perception that parents provided unsolicited help, interfered when the children did their homework, and told them how to complete their assignments. Supportive help predicted higher achievement, while intrusive help was associated with lower achievement.

Parents’ attitudes and emotions during homework time can support the development of positive attitudes and approaches in their children, which in turn are predictive of higher achievement. Children are more likely to focus on self-improvement during homework time and do better in school when their parents are oriented toward mastery. In contrast, if parents focus on how well children are doing relative to peers, kids tend to adopt learning goals that allow them to avoid challenge.

Homework and Social Class

Social class is another important element in the homework dynamic. What is the homework experience like for families with limited time and resources? And what of affluent families, where resources are plenty but the pressures to succeed are great?

Etta Kralovec and John Buell, authors of The End of Homework, maintain that homework “punishes the poor,” because lower-income parents may not be as well educated as their affluent counterparts and thus not as well equipped to help with homework. Poorer families also have fewer financial resources to devote to home computers, tutoring, and academic enrichment. The stresses of poverty—and work schedules—may impinge, and immigrant parents may face language barriers and an unfamiliarity with the school system and teachers’ expectations.

Yet research shows that low-income parents who are unable to assist with homework are far from passive in their children’s learning, and they do help foster scholastic performance. In fact, parental help with homework is not a necessary component for school success.

Brown University’s Jin Li queried low-income Chinese American 9th graders’ perceptions of their parents’ engagement with their education. Students said their immigrant parents rarely engaged in activities that are known to foster academic achievement, such as monitoring homework, checking it for accuracy, or attending school meetings or events. Instead, parents of higher achievers built three social networks to support their children’s learning. They designated “anchor” helpers both inside and outside the family who provided assistance; identified peer models for their children to emulate; and enlisted the assistance of extended kin to guide their children’s educational socialization. In a related vein, a recent analysis of survey data showed that Asian and Latino 5th graders, relative to native-born peers, were more likely to turn to siblings than parents for homework help.

Further, research demonstrates that low-income parents, recognizing that they lack the time to be in the classroom or participate in school governance, view homework as a critical connection to their children’s experiences in school. One study found that mothers enjoyed the routine and predictability of homework and used it as a way to demonstrate to children how to plan their time. Mothers organized homework as a family activity, with siblings doing homework together and older children reading to younger ones. In this way, homework was perceived as a collective practice wherein siblings could model effective habits and learn from one another.

In another recent study, researchers examined mathematics achievement in low-income 8th-grade Asian and Latino students. Help with homework was an advantage their mothers could not provide. They could, however, furnish structure (for example, by setting aside quiet time for homework completion), and it was this structure that most predicted high achievement. As the authors note, “It is . . . important to help [low-income] parents realize that they can still help their children get good grades in mathematics and succeed in school even if they do not know how to provide direct assistance with their child’s mathematics homework.”

The homework narrative at the other end of the socioeconomic continuum is altogether different. Media reports abound with examples of students, mostly in high school, carrying three or more hours of homework per night, a burden that can impair learning, motivation, and well-being. In affluent communities, students often experience intense pressure to cultivate a high-achieving profile that will be attractive to elite colleges. Heavy homework loads have been linked to unhealthy symptoms such as heightened stress, anxiety, physical complaints, and sleep disturbances. Like Allison’s 6th grader mentioned earlier, many students can only tackle their homework after they do extracurricular activities, which are also seen as essential for the college résumé. Not surprisingly, many students in these communities are not deeply engaged in learning; rather, they speak of “doing school,” as Stanford researcher Denise Pope has described, going through the motions necessary to excel, and undermining their physical and mental health in the process.

Fortunately, some national intervention initiatives, such as Challenge Success (co-founded by Pope), are heightening awareness of these problems. Interventions aimed at restoring balance in students’ lives (in part, by reducing homework demands) have resulted in students reporting an increased sense of well-being, decreased stress and anxiety, and perceptions of greater support from teachers, with no decrease in achievement outcomes.

What is good for this small segment of students, however, is not necessarily good for the majority. As Jessica Lahey wrote in Motherlode, a New York Times parenting blog, “homework is a red herring” in the national conversation on education. “Some otherwise privileged children may have too much, but the real issue lies in places where there is too little. . . . We shouldn’t forget that.”

My colleagues and I analyzed interviews conducted with lower-income 9th graders (African American, Mexican American, and European American) from two Northern California high schools that at the time were among the lowest-achieving schools in the state. We found that these students consistently described receiving minimal homework—perhaps one or two worksheets or textbook pages, the occasional project, and 30 minutes of reading per night. Math was the only class in which they reported having homework each night. These students noted few consequences for not completing their homework.

Indeed, greatly reducing or eliminating homework would likely increase, not diminish, the achievement gap. As Harris M. Cooper has commented, those choosing to opt their children out of homework are operating from a place of advantage. Children in higher-income families benefit from many privileges, including exposure to a larger range of language at home that may align with the language of school, access to learning and cultural experiences, and many other forms of enrichment, such as tutoring and academic summer camps, all of which may be cost-prohibitive for lower-income families. But for the 21 percent of the school-age population who live in poverty—nearly 11 million students ages 5–17—homework is one tool that can help narrow the achievement gap.

Community and School Support

Often, community organizations and afterschool programs can step up to provide structure and services that students’ need to succeed at homework. For example, Boys and Girls and 4-H clubs offer volunteer tutors as well as access to computer technology that students may not have at home. Many schools provide homework clubs or integrate homework into the afterschool program.

Home-school partnerships have succeeded in engaging parents with homework and significantly improving their children’s academic achievement. For example, Joyce Epstein of Johns Hopkins University has developed the TIPS model (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork), which embraces homework as an integral part of family time. TIPS is a teacher-designed interactive program in which children and a parent or family member each have a specific role in the homework scenario. For example, children might show the parent how to do a mathematics task on fractions, explaining their reasoning along the way and reviewing their thinking aloud if they are unsure.

Evaluations show that elementary and middle-school students in classrooms that have adopted TIPS complete more of their homework than do students in other classrooms. Both students and parent participants show more positive beliefs about learning mathematics, and TIPS students show significant gains in writing skills and report-card science grades, as well as higher mathematics scores on standardized tests.

Another study found that asking teachers to send text messages to parents about their children’s missing homework resulted in increased parental monitoring of homework, consequences for missed assignments, and greater participation in parent-child conferences. Teachers reported fewer missed assignments and greater student effort in coursework, and math grades and GPA significantly improved.

Homework Quality Matters

Teachers favor homework for a number of reasons. They believe it fosters a sense of responsibility and promotes academic achievement. They note that homework provides valuable review and practice for students while giving teachers feedback on areas where students may need more support. Finally, teachers value homework as a way to keep parents connected to the school and their children’s educational experiences.

While students, to say the least, may not always relish the idea of doing homework, by high school most come to believe there is a positive relationship between doing homework and doing well in school. Both higher and lower achievers lament “busywork” that doesn’t promote learning. They crave high-quality, challenging assignments—and it is this kind of homework that has been associated with higher achievement.

What constitutes high-quality homework? Assignments that are developmentally appropriate and meaningful and that promote self-efficacy and self-regulation. Meaningful homework is authentic, allowing students to engage in solving problems with real-world relevance. More specifically, homework tasks should make efficient use of student time and have a clear purpose connected to what they are learning. An artistic rendition of a period in history that would take hours to complete can become instead a diary entry in the voice of an individual from that era. By allowing a measure of choice and autonomy in homework, teachers foster in their students a sense of ownership, which bolsters their investment in the work.

High-quality homework also fosters students’ perceptions of their own competence by 1) focusing them on tasks they can accomplish without help; 2) differentiating tasks so as to allow struggling students to experience success; 3) providing suggested time frames rather than a fixed period of time in which a task should be completed; 4) delivering clearly and carefully explained directions; and 5) carefully modeling methods for attacking lengthy or complex tasks. Students whose teachers have trained them to adopt strategies such as goal setting, self-monitoring, and planning develop a number of personal assets—improved time management, increased self-efficacy, greater effort and interest, a desire for mastery, and a decrease in helplessness.

Excellence with Equity

Currently, the United States has the second-highest disparity between time spent on homework by students of low socioeconomic status and time spent by their more-affluent peers out of the 34 OECD-member nations participating in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (see Figure 2). Noting that PISA studies have consistently found that spending more time on math homework strongly correlates with higher academic achievement, the report’s authors suggest that the homework disparity may reflect lower teacher expectations for low-income students. If so, this is truly unfortunate. In and of itself, low socioeconomic status is not an impediment to academic achievement when appropriate parental, school, and community supports are deployed. As research makes clear, low-income parents support their children’s learning in varied ways, not all of which involve direct assistance with schoolwork. Teachers can orient students and parents toward beliefs that foster positive attitudes toward learning. Indeed, where homework is concerned, a commitment to excellence with equity is both worthwhile and attainable.

In affluent communities, parents, teachers, and school districts might consider reexamining the meaning of academic excellence and placing more emphasis on leading a balanced and well-rounded life. The homework debate in the United States has been dominated by concerns over the health and well-being of such advantaged students. As legitimate as these worries are, it’s important to avoid generalizing these children’s experiences to those with fewer family resources. Reducing or eliminating homework, though it may be desirable in some advantaged communities, would deprive poorer children of a crucial and empowering learning experience. It would also eradicate a fertile opportunity to help close the achievement gap.

Janine Bempechat is clinical professor of human development at the Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development.

An unabridged version of this article is available here .

For more, please see “ The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2023 .”

This article appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Education Next . Suggested citation format:

Bempechat, J. (2019). The Case for (Quality) Homework: Why it improves learning, and how parents can help . Education Next, 19 (1), 36-43.

Last Updated

License this Content

Latest Issue

Summer 2024.

Vol. 24, No. 3

Submit School Safety Tip (opens in new window)
Staff Directory
Staff Login
Oak Middle School

Homework Guidance

The district homework policy can be found in its entirety HERE , including information about the guiding principles that informed the development of the policy and detailed descriptions of roles and responsibilities for students and families. This document is intended to depict level-specific expectations for educators at the middle level.

Guiding Principles

Shrewsbury’s homework policy is designed to support and empower children, educators and families as they work together to further student learning.

The school district recognizes and affirms that co-curricular activities and other commitments are important aspects of students’ lives that can significantly improve their physical and mental health and well-being. It is a shared responsibility between home and school to ensure that students have balance in their lives while pursuing educational excellence. This policy is intended to help our students achieve that. Further, the district recognizes that vacations, long weekends, and holidays are opportunities to enjoy family time and fun. In order to protect this time for students and staff, the district will implement a “no homework” calendar that specifies times when homework will not be assigned. In addition to promoting family time and recreation, “no homework” periods can provide a respite from new assignments that allows for a focus on other responsibilities or needs, such as religious observances for students with their families, performing community service, or completing college applications.

Please see the list of “no homework” dates HERE . For a calendar view of the “no homework”dates, click HERE .For “no homework” periods, homework shall not be assigned on the school day prior to the “no homework” date(s), and no assignments will be due and no tests or other assessments that require studying will occur on the school day following the “no homework” date(s).

Homework is defined as tasks that are assigned by teachers to be completed by students outside of class time, including work done using pencil and paper and/or digital tools. These tasks include, but are not limited to: skills practice; reading; viewing of video content; studying or preparation for quizzes or tests; creating written, audio, or visual content; and completion of reports or projects.

Purposes of Homework

Research affirms the importance of independent reading, skills practice, and the development of learning routines for young children, and the value of regular homework assignments for older students. The purposes of homework in the Shrewsbury Schools are to practice newly taught skills, review previously mastered skills, develop independent study habits, and motivate students to pursue personal goals.

Learner Variability

Every learner is different, and variability among students should be expected. Homework should encourage personal reflection. Educators are empowered with the flexibility to match assignments to meet a child’s individual needs.

Homework Policy Components

1. frequency of homework assignments.

All students in Grades 1-12 are expected to spend time on homework. Due dates assigned by teachers may vary according to the nature of the assignment; for example, assignments could be due the next day, by the end of the week, or could be part of a longer-term project. Students in Grades 5-12 may also have homework assigned over the weekend at the discretion of the teacher. Weekend assignments are considered as one night of homework per the time guidelines below. Long-term projects must be assigned so that there are at least two weekends, not including “no homework” dates, before a project is due.

Administrators and educators at each grade span will provide guidance regarding how students can communicate requests for extensions of homework due dates. Reasonable accommodations will be provided through extensions for due dates with regard to absences related to student illness, family obligations, religious observances, etc. Flexibility to respond to other student-specific situations will be provided as appropriate, with the goal of promoting student academic progress in light of personal circumstances. Schools and educators will communicate what supports are available for students who need assistance with completing homework, as well as consequences for students who do not meet homework expectations.

2. Time Guidelines By Grade Level

The guidelines below provide for the approximate maximum amount of focused time that homework assignments should take each night. It is understood that different students will require different amounts of time based on a variety of factors. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to speak with their child’s teacher(s) if homework is routinely taking much more or much less time than called for in the guidelines.

Required reading assignments are included within the time allotments at each grade level. Because reading is crucial to academic success, voluntary reading beyond homework time guidelines is encouraged.

● Grade 5: 50 minutes Monday-Friday ● Grades 6-8: 60-90 minutes Monday-Friday

3. Accommodating Religious Observances by Students

Per School Committee Policy #291, students who miss school or cannot complete homework due to any religious observance will be provided with the opportunity to make up work without penalty. Families are encouraged to communicate with educators regarding any situation where religious observances may impact their student’s attendance or homework completion.

4. Educator Responsibilities

As they consider options for homework, educators will: ● Communicate expectations to students for how the assignment should be completed and the learning goal(s) being addressed (e.g., practicing a new skill, preparing for an assessment, etc.) ● Consider the amount of time an assignment will require in order to align with the targets for time spent each night on homework, including special projects. ● Establish objectives and guidelines for special projects, including any expectations for parent/caregiver participation. ● Be clear about the appropriate use of technology tools, including artificial intelligence, so that students and parents/caregivers understand what is expected regarding academic integrity.

● With as much advance notice as possible, communicate all assignments and due dates to students and post them as required, and provide time for students to record them where students use a paper planning tool. ● Model homework strategies and provide exemplars to clarify expectations as appropriate throughout the school year.

● Establish a system for recording and monitoring homework completion and quality, including reading assignments. ● Review homework and provide feedback in a timely manner. Feedback does not require grading or responding in writing to every homework assignment; educators are expected to communicate frequently enough to signal whether the quality of the homework is meeting expectations and whether there are concerns about missing assignments or late submissions, so that the student has an opportunity to improve.

● Ensure that resources and materials required for homework projects are easily obtained by the student, and work with families and school administration as needed to ensure that no student will be unable to complete an assignment due to lack of financial resources. ● Provide ways for parents and caregivers to communicate with teachers about homework, using translation tools where appropriate. ● Notify parents/caregivers when poor homework quality or missing assignments are cause for concern, using translation tools where appropriate. ● Assign long term projects so that the completion time includes more than one weekend (not including “no homework” dates), and is not limited to a school vacation period. ● Discuss homework practices with colleagues and align them with these policy guidelines; while it is not expected that homework assignments are identical forall students, the volume and types of homework assigned to students in the same grade level should be consistent across different teachers and teacher teams. ● Work with students to provide flexibility in order to promote quality completion of assignments while responding to student needs. This may include extending deadlines where warranted and using strategies to accommodate individual situations. ● Follow the guidelines in the District Curriculum Accommodation Plan (DCAP) and meet all legal requirements of a student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) or Section 504 Accommodation Plan that may be related to homework.

Educators are strongly encouraged to periodically consider student feedback regarding the homework they assign and to include options where students have opportunities for self-direction where appropriate. Further, having choice develops motivation and purpose. Where appropriate, give students responsibility for setting and monitoring progress toward personal learning goals and provide choice of topics, methods, tools, etc. to demonstrate understanding and empower students.

Welcome to Oak Middle School
Contact Information
Start & End Times
Directions/Locations/Maps
DESE/NCLB Report Card
School/District Report Card for Oak (opens in new window)
OMS School Council
Parent Drop off/Pick up Information
Forms & Information
Mental Health & Wellness Resources
SPS Concussion Manual
Sports Sign Up
Online Sports Payment
Online Activity Fee Payment Trouble Shooting
Clubs and Special Programs
Trimester Schedule
Delays, Dismissals & Cancellations
Important Dates & Events
School Year Calendar
Oak Latin Class Newsletter
Oak French Class Newsletter
Oak Spanish Class Newsletter
OMS Weekly Update
Design Lab Update
Mailing List
Oak Middle School Student Handbook 2024-2025
Mental Health and Wellness Resources
Forms, Applications & Downloads
Oak Health Awareness Posters 2018
Drug Awareness Gallery Dear Daughter
Media Center (opens in new window)
Nursing/Health Office
PTO (opens in new window)
SYFS-Healthy Living, Healthy YOU (opens in new window)
1:1 Technology Program
PTO Calendar Raffle (opens in new window)
Starry Night PTO Sponsored Dance
Shrewsbury Fair Trade Fundraiser
PTO Sponsored Spelling Bee
Media Center
SPS LTS Nurses Timesheet (opens in new window)
Forms for Staff
Oak Staff Handbook 2023-24
2023-24 Faculty Meeting Dates
Oak Paraprofessional Timesheet
Physical Education
Health Education (opens in new window)
World Language-Spanish
World Language-French
World Language-Latin
World Language-Chinese
Lunch Menu (opens in new window)
iPad License Rules
SPS Concussion Policy (opens in new window)
Prevention Education Regarding the Use of Alcohol, Tobacco/Nicotine, and Drugs by Students (opens in new window)
Prohibition of the Use of Alcohol, Tobacco/Nicotine, and Drugs by Students (opens in new window)
Report Card Habits of Work and Learning (HOWLS) Rubics
Translating report cards on the PowerSchool Parent Portal
Supply Lists
Oak Site Map
Work Permits

This site provides information using PDF, visit this link to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software .

—— Page Template ——

Homework Guidelines

Homework refers to assignments that students are expected to complete outside of the class period. This does not include long-term projects or assignments. This includes reading assignments, problem sets, papers, or studying for tests, quizzes, and other assessments.

The Howard County Public School System supports students in maintaining and extending their learning. The appropriate design, use, and evaluation of homework assignments, used to inform progress and provide opportunities for independent practice, are part of achieving that goal. Some courses or instructors may choose not to assign homework.

Features of Homework

Purposeful: Students understand why they are completing homework. Homework is grounded in and expands upon skills and knowledge students have learned in the classroom.
Appropriate: Homework should be designed so that all students can experience success in independent completion of assignments. Accommodations will be provided as outlined in students’ IEPs and Section 504 Plans.
Informational: Homework is one tool schools have available to them that allows parents to be included in their child’s day-to-day school experiences.
Flexible: Assignments can be successfully completed with resources that are readily available within timeframes that have flexible deadlines when possible.

Homework will incorporate the following criteria:

Each school year, schools will communicate the school’s homework procedures with all stakeholders.
Students, parents, and teachers should communicate about scheduled and actual homework completion times to ensure realistic expectations for the completion of assignments.
Homework will be planned so students see the relationship of their homework to intended learning targets, see meaning in their assignments, have a clear understanding of the procedures and due dates, understand how their homework is evaluated, and understand how they can use feedback on homework to improve understanding. Teaching staff will ensure that students understand the purpose of assignments and how they connect to classroom learning.
Teachers are legally required to ensure that homework is accommodated/modified as necessary in accordance with students’ IEPs and Section 504 Plans. Classwork and homework accommodations must be provided per students’ IEPs and Section 504 Plans. Students should not be penalized for failure to complete classwork or homework when accommodations are not provided. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) best practices should be used when assigning homework.
Teachers will provide feedback on homework assignments.
Students may have more than one teacher. Therefore, teams of teachers will discuss homework activities and projects in order to follow grade level homework duration guidelines. Canvas tools will be made available as one option to help teachers coordinate major projects and exams. Teachers will be understanding of student circumstances and should tailor homework assignments with flexible due dates when possible so that students can complete homework tasks throughout the week based on their individual schedules.
Students must be given a non-electronic option for homework completion and submission. Assignments cannot be due beyond regular school hours or be required to be submitted electronically. While electronic submission can be utilized it cannot be required.
Homework assignments may not be assigned or due on a day schools are closed due to inclement weather or unplanned closures.
Homework may not be assigned over the summer for any courses, nor winter or spring breaks for middle or high school courses.
A student may make up and receive a recorded grade for homework not completed due to the observance of a religious holiday. Students returning from a religious holiday observance will have an equal number of school days to complete make-up work.
Reading lists and additional resources will be available during the breaks, as well as throughout the school year, as a service to students who want an opportunity to improve reading and mathematics skills. Families will be provided with access to resources to supplement reading and mathematics instruction for students.

Grades Pre-K – 2

Amount of Homework: No more than 20 minutes of homework per night will be assigned. In Pre-K and Kindergarten there will be no assignments that must be submitted to the teacher.
Purpose of Homework: Homework provides practice opportunities for skill development.
Families are encouraged to read to or with their children nightly.
Families are encouraged to practice grade appropriate math facts or related activities on a nightly basis.
Teaching staff will be provided with opportunities to meet as teams to schedule assignments so that students do not regularly have more than 20 minutes of homework each night

Grades 3 – 5

Amount of Homework: No more than 30 minutes required per night in grade 3; 40 minutes in grade 4; and 50 minutes in grade 5.
Purpose of Homework: Homework reflects daily instruction, reinforces previously taught skills, prepares students for future lessons, and/or promotes creativity.
Teaching staff will be provided with opportunities to meet as teams to schedule assignments so that students do not regularly have more than 30 minutes of homework required per night in grade 3; 40 minutes in grade 4; and 50 minutes in grade.

Grades 6 – 8

Amount of Homework: For the purposes of determining number of hours of homework per week or day, teachers should include reading of course material, studying of course material, and practicing skills taught in course (e.g., rehearsing a musical instrument). Time spent on long-term projects should also be included when determining number of hours of homework; however, these projects do not constitute homework for grading purposes. Each instructor may assign an average of, at most, one hour of homework per week. Not all classes will require homework. Some classes might require students to spend more or less time on homework than is typical.
Purpose of Homework: Homework assignments will reinforce curriculum through tasks that contribute to learning and understanding. These may reinforce previously taught skills, prepare students for future lessons, extend learning, promote creativity, and/or be a reflection on the student’s day at school.
Teaching staff will be provided with opportunities to meet as teams to schedule assignments so that students do not regularly have more than one hour of homework each week per instructor. It is recommended that the school principal or designee work with teaching staff to facilitate this collaboration.

Grades 9 – 12

Amount of Homework: For the purposes of determining number of hours of homework per week or day, teachers should include reading of course material, studying of course material, and practicing skills taught in course (e.g., rehearsing a musical instrument). Time spent on long-term projects should also be included when determining number of hours of homework; however, these projects do not constitute homework for grading purposes. Each instructor may assign an average of, at most, one and a half hours of homework per week. Not all classes will require homework. Some classes might require students to spend more or less time on homework than is typical.
An upper limit of seven to fourteen hours of homework a week is suggested for each high school student. Some classes might require students to spend more or less time on homework than is typical.
Expectations of Homework: The goals and expectations for homework will be clear and include opportunities for student input. As appropriate, flexibility and student choice will be considered in the assignment of homework duration, rigor, product, and weight in grading. A syllabus is recommended for distribution at the beginning of every semester outlining each course’s requirements, including regular assignments, projects, possible due dates, and procedures for requesting feedback on assignments.
English Language Arts
Mathematics
Elementary Science
Secondary Science
Elementary Social Studies
Secondary Social Studies
Career and Technical Education
Digital Education
English for Speakers of Other Languages
Gifted and Talented
Health Education
Instructional Technology
Library Media
Physical Education
World Language Program
What Your Child Will Learn Guides

Use These 22 Classroom Rules for Middle School To Help Your Students Learn and Succeed

These 8th Grade @kmsknights not only understood the assignment, they created it! They wanted a fun way to establish and remember their classroom rules and it appears they succeeded! Kenwood Middle School is where The Best choose to be! pic.twitter.com/JQySih9TeM — Jeremiah Davis (@KMS_Davis) September 10, 2022

Otherwise, you can watch the video below. It contains a retelling of the article.

22 Classroom Rules For Middle School

1. be prepared to learn, 2. show respect for other students, the teacher, and yourself.

Respect can further be broken down into some of the more specific rules explained below, such as paying attention to the speaker, waiting your turn to participate, using kind words when speaking to others, and keeping your hands to yourself.

3. Show Respect For Your Classroom

4. pay attention and participate, 5. actively listen to the person speaking.

Actively listening to the speaker is another middle school classroom rule you may want to add. This one is related to paying attention, but takes it just a step farther. Rather than just looking at the person speaking, students should be thinking about what they are saying.

6. Raise Your Hand and Wait to Speak

Middle schoolers have a lot to say. And, while it is good to have them participating in your lessons, it can become overwhelming and difficult for everyone to stay focused if students are simply calling out their answers whenever they want.

When students raise their hand and wait to be called on, not only is the classroom more chaotic, but you as the teacher can try to make sure that all students get an opportunity to share, not only those who are the loudest.

7. Come to Class Ready to Learn

Coming to class ready to learn is more than simply having all the required materials. While it is certainly important to have your homework, textbook, computer, a writing utensil, and any other necessary materials, truly being ready to learn is more of a mindset.

When explaining this classroom rule to students, discuss how when you’re ready to learn, your mind is available to focus on instruction. Help them learn to leave their worries and concerns at the door so that they can focus on what they are learning.

8. Arrive on Time

Still, the expectation needs to be that students will arrive to class on time. After the initial transition period, there is no reason students should be in the classroom before the bell rings (or the designated time).

Hold a discussion with students about moving quickly between classes, taking quick restroom breaks when needed, and making sure they get where they’re supposed to be on time.

9. Use Kind and Appropriate Language

The expectation should also be that students will use appropriate language in the classroom. This means no swearing or cursing. You could help students understand this by reminding them that they shouldn’t say anything they wouldn’t want to say in front of their grandmother, grandfather, or another adult in their family.

In addition to watching their language, students should also work to make sure that the words they say are kind. Unkind words or teasing should never be tolerated.

Words can hurt students, and middle school is such an important and impressionable time in a student’s life. Work with the students in your class to discuss how unkind words can hurt and can have such a negative impact on a student’s feelings of self-worth.

10. Keep Your Hands to Yourself

11. no cheating or plagiarizing.

Teaching middle school is a different world from working with younger students. With 1st graders, for example, you may just be introducing chapter books. Learn more about the best chapter books for 1st graders in this article .

Likewise, when taking a test, help students understand the importance of keeping their eyes on their own paper and demonstrating what they know and understand—not what a friend knows and understands.

12. Respect Alternative Viewpoints

Middle schoolers can be opinionated. Help students realize that it is OK to have their own opinions in the classroom and to disagree with what others think.

However, also stress that respectfully disagreeing is important. A respectful debate about an issue is fine, but shaming, belittling, or showing intolerance for another student’s opinion should not be tolerated.

13. Complete and Turn in Your Work on Time

Middle schoolers are now juggling more assignments from multiple teachers. They may need a little assistance prioritizing assignments and coming up with a schedule to get things done, but the expectation should always be for work to be turned in on time.

14. Ask for Permission to Leave the Classroom

Once students reach middle school, they’re feeling older, more independent, and freer. Some students may try to take advantage of their new-found freedom and simply walk out of the classroom when they need to use the restroom or get a drink of water.

While it is important to make sure students get bathroom or water breaks when needed, students should still be required to ask for permission before leaving the room. You don’t want them to abuse their privileges or leave at an inopportune time when they’ll miss an important direction.

If you’d like to minimize students distracting others in the room to ask to use the bathroom or get a drink, consider coming up with hand signs that your students can show you to ask to leave the room and take care of their needs.

15. Leave Cell Phones and Other Electronic Devices Off

When you set the expectation that phones are away and out of sight during class, students will be less likely to try to sneak a quick peek. Some teachers even make a cell phone box where students must place their phone at the beginning of class and then grab it once class is over.

16. Use Equipment Safely

Teaching students how to use equipment and tools safely is also important. Depending on the subject you teach, you may not have any special equipment. However, some teachers, particularly in science labs, have a lot of equipment that students must know how to use.

17. No Food or Drinks in the Classroom

18. no name calling.

If students disagree with what another student says, they can still show their disagreement without calling them names or being unkind.

19. Use an Inside Voice

Middle schoolers are loud. A classroom full of middle schoolers can get extremely loud if everyone isn’t using their inside voices. Remind students that everyone is close enough in the classroom that no one should need to yell, especially is just one person is talking at a time.

For example, when students are working with the people at their table, they should be using a whisper voice. When students are sharing something with the entire class, their voice can be a bit louder at a presentation level, and if students are supposed to be working independently or taking a test, they shouldn’t be talking at all.

20. Try to Help Yourself Before Asking Someone Else

Some middle schoolers may be quick to say that they don’t understand the directions or that they need help completing an assignment. While asking for help can be a good thing, students should make sure they’ve tried to understand the assignment before asking the teacher or a classmate for help.

21. Always Try Your Best

A positive classroom rule to have in place is to always try your best. Help your students see that you believe in them and want them to show how much they know. You won’t be able to see how far students have come if they don’t try their best.

22. Have Fun!

Also talk about ways you can make learning fun for all in the classroom. Can you develop special silent cheers when a classmate solves a problem correctly? Plan class parties when a huge goal is reached?

Your students can help you develop some ideas that can make the entire learning process more fun and enjoyable for everyone.

How Should Classroom Rules be Taught?

It is also very important to remind students of the classroom rules.

Reviewing classroom rules and procedures pic.twitter.com/Kzxw5XiIsD — Cammie Anderson (@SMS_Anderson) August 9, 2022

Center for American Progress

Homework and Higher Standards

Report PDF (736 KB)

How Homework Stacks Up to the Common Core

CAP analysis found that homework is generally aligned to Common Core State Standards, but additional policy changes would make it more valuable.

Education, Education, K-12, Modernizing and Elevating the Teaching Profession

Media Contact

Mishka espey.

Senior Manager, Media Relations

[email protected]

Government Affairs

Madeline shepherd.

Senior Director, Government Affairs

Introduction and summary

For as long as homework has been a part of school life in the United States, so too has the debate over its value. In 1900, a prominent magazine published an article on the evils of homework titled, “A National Crime at the Feet of Parents.” 1 The author, Edward Bok, believed that homework or too much school learning outside the classroom deprived children of critical time to play or participate in other activities at home. The very next year, California, influenced by those concerns, enacted a statewide prohibition on homework for students under the age of 15. 2 In 1917, the state lifted the ban, which has often been the case as districts have continually swung back and forth on the issue. 3

InProgress Stay informed on the most pressing issues of our time.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

More than 100 years later, homework remains a contentious issue, and the debate over its value rages on, with scholars coming down on both sides of the argument. Homework skeptic Alfie Kohn has questioned the benefit of homework, arguing that its positive effects are mythical, and in fact, it can disrupt the family dynamic. 4 He questions why teachers continue to assign homework given its mixed research base. Taking the opposite view, researchers Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering have voiced their support for purposeful homework that reinforces learning outside of school hours but still leaves time for other activities. 5

In 1989, prominent homework scholar Harris Cooper published a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies on homework in a survey that found a correlation between homework and performance on standardized tests, but only for certain grade levels. According to Cooper’s research, for students in late-elementary grades through high-school, there was a link between homework and improved standardized test performance. However, there was no evidence of the same correlation for younger students. 6 Even without a connection to academic achievement, Cooper still recommended assigning homework to younger students because it helps “develop good study habits, foster positive attitudes toward school, and communicate to students the idea that learning takes work at home as well as school.” 7

Far from academia, parents—not surprisingly—are some of homework’s most ardent supporters and, also, its most vocal critics. For better or worse, many parents help or are involved in their child’s homework in some way. As a result, homework can shape family dynamics and weeknight schedules. If a child receives too much homework, or only busywork, it can cause stress within families and resentment among parents. 8 Some parents report spending hours each night helping their children. For instance, a 2013 article in The Atlantic detailed a writer’s attempt to complete his 13-year-old daughter’s homework for a week. The headline simply read: “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me.” 9 The father reported falling asleep trying to thoughtfully complete homework, which took around three hours per night. 10 On the other hand, some parents appreciate the glimpse into their child’s daily instruction and value homework’s ability to build positive learning habits.

It is no surprise that the debate over homework often spills onto the pages of newspapers and magazines, with calls to abolish homework regularly appearing in the headlines. In 2017, the superintendent of Marion County Public Schools in Florida joined districts in Massachusetts and Vermont in announcing a homework ban. To justify his decision, he used research from the University of Tennessee that showed that homework does not improve student achievement. 11 Most recently, in December 2018, The Wall Street Journal published a piece that argued that districts were “Down With Homework”—banning it, placing time caps or limiting it to certain days, or no longer grading it—in order to give students more time to sleep, read, and spend time with family. 12

Given the controversy long surrounding the issue of homework, in late spring 2018, the Center for American Progress conducted an online survey investigating the quality of students’ homework. The survey sought to better understand the nature of homework as well as whether the homework assigned was aligned to rigorous academic standards. Based on the best knowledge of the authors, the CAP survey and this report represent the first-ever national study of homework rigor and alignment to the Common Core State Standards—rigorous academic standards developed in a state-led process in 2010, which are currently in place in 41 states and Washington, D.C. The CAP study adds to existing research on homework by focusing on the quality of assignments rather than the overall value of homework of any type. There are previous studies that considered parental involvement and the potential stress on parents related to homework, but the authors believe that this report represents the first national study of parent attitudes toward homework. 13

For the CAP study, the authors used the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) online survey tool to collect from parents their child’s actual homework assignments. Specifically, as part of the survey, the authors asked parents to submit a sample of their child’s most recent math or language arts homework assignment and have the child complete questions to gauge if the assignment was challenging, as well as how long it took to complete the assignment. In all, 372 parents responded to the survey, with CAP analyzing 187 homework assignments.

Admittedly, the methodological approach has limitations. For one, it’s a convenience sample, which means people were not selected randomly; and broadly speaking, the population on the MTurk site is younger and whiter than the U.S. population as a whole. However, research has shown that MTurk yields high-quality, nationally representative results, with data that are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. 14

In addition, the homework sample is not from a single classroom or school over the course of a year; rather, it is a snapshot of homework across many classrooms during the span of a few weeks in May 2018. The assumption is that looking at assignments from many classrooms over a short period of time helps to construct a composite picture of mathematics and language arts homework.

Moreover, the design of the CAP study has clear advantages. Many of the previous existing studies evaluated homework in a single district, whereas the CAP study draws from a national sample, and despite its limitations, the authors believe that the findings are robust and contribute significantly to the existing research on homework.

Three key findings from the CAP survey:

Homework is largely aligned to the Common Core standards. The authors found that the homework submitted is mostly aligned to Common Core standards content. The alignment index that the authors used evaluated both topic and skill. As previously noted, the analysis is a snapshot of homework and, therefore, does not allow the authors to determine if homework over the course of a year covered all the topics represented in the standards.
Homework is often focused on low-level skills in the Common Core standards, particularly in the earlier grades. While the authors’ analysis shows that there was significant alignment between Common Core and the topics represented in the homework studied, most of the assignments were fairly rote and often did not require students to demonstrate the full depth of knowledge required of the content standards. There was clear emphasis on procedural knowledge, and an even stronger emphasis on memorization and recall in language arts. Common Core content standards, on the other hand, require students to demonstrate deeper knowledge skills, such as the ability to analyze, conceptualize, or generate. 15
Homework frequently fails to challenge students. Nearly half of the parents who responded to the CAP survey reported that homework is too easy for their child. In particular, parents of primary-grade children were most likely to agree or strongly agree that the homework assignment they submitted was too easy for their child.

Based on these key findings, CAP recommends that states, districts, and schools improve the quality of homework and increase opportunities for students to practice rigorous grade-level content at home. Specifically, the authors—drawing from this survey and other existing research on homework—recommend the following actions to improve the role of homework in education:

Schools and districts should develop homework policies that emphasize strategic, rigorous homework. In many cases, the homework debate is limited and short-sighted. Currently, many arguments focus on whether or not students should have homework at all, and there are entire school districts that have simply banned homework. Instead of debating the merits of banning homework, reformers and practitioners should focus on improving the rigor and effectiveness of all instructional materials, including

Districts, schools, and teachers should ensure that the total amount of homework students receive does not exceed the 10-minute rule—that is to say, no more than 10 minutes of homework multiplied by the student’s grade level. 16 According to research, any more than that can be counterproductive. 17 Also, too much homework may be an unnecessary burden on families and parents. Homework should be engaging and aligned to Common Core standards, which allow students to develop deeper-level learning skills—such as analysis or conceptualization—that help them increase retention of content.

Districts and schools should periodically audit homework to make sure it is challenging and aligned to standards. Rather than implementing homework bans, district policymakers and school principals should regularly review examples of homework assignments to ensure that it is aligned to grade-level standards and requires students to demonstrate conceptual learning. In instances where the district or school finds that homework assignments are not aligned or take too much or too little time to complete, they should help teachers improve homework assignments by recommending instructional materials that may make it easier for them to identify appropriate, grade-level homework assignments.
Schools and districts should provide access to technology and other supports that can make it easier for students to complete rigorous schoolwork at home. Technology can also provide additional support or scaffolding at home, allowing more students to complete homework without help from adults or older siblings. For instance, programs such as the Khan Academy can give students rigorous homework that’s aligned to Common Core standards. 18 Unfortunately, many households across the nation still do not have adequate access to devices or internet at home. Schools and districts should consider options to ensure that all students can benefit from technology and broadband. Greater access to technology can help more students benefit from continual innovation and new tools. While most of these technologies are not yet research-based, and the use of devices may not be appropriate for younger children, incorporating new tools into homework may be a low-cost method to improve the quality of student learning.
Curriculum reform and instructional redesign should focus on homework. There are many states and districts that are reforming curriculum or adopting different approaches to instruction, including personalized learning. Curriculum reform and personalized learning are tied to greater academic outcomes and an increase in motivation. Homework should also be a focus of these and other efforts; states and districts should consider how textbooks or other instructional materials can provide resources or examples to help teachers assign meaningful homework that will complement regular instruction.

The findings and recommendations of this study are discussed in detail below.

Homework must be rigorous and aligned to content standards

All homework is not created equal. The CAP study sought to evaluate homework quality—specifically, if homework is aligned to rigorous content standards. The authors believe that access to grade-level content at home will increase the positive impact of adopting more rigorous content standards, and they sought to examine if homework is aligned to the topics and skill level in the content standards.

The 10-minute rule

According to Harris Cooper, homework is a valuable tool, but there is such a thing as too much. In 2006, Cooper and his colleagues argued that spending a lot of time on homework can be counterproductive. He believes that research supports the 10-minute rule—that students should be able to complete their homework in no more than 10 minutes multiplied by their grade. For example, this would amount to 20 minutes for a second-grade student, 50 minutes for a fifth-grade student, and so on. 19

The Common Core, developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, established a set of benchmarks for “what students should know and be able to do” in math and language arts by the end of the academic year in kindergarten through high school. 20 The math standards focus on fewer concepts but in more depth and ask students to develop different approaches to solve similar problems. In language arts, the standards moved students away from narrative-based assignments, instead concentrating on using evidence to build arguments and reading more nonfiction.

The Common Core is not silent in the cognitive demand needed to demonstrate mastery for each standard. 21 For example, a second grade math standard is “[s]olve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately.” For this standard, a second-grader has not mastered the standard if they are only able to identifying the name and value of every.

Remember, apply, integrate: Levels of cognitive demand or depth of knowledge

There are numerous frameworks to describe levels of cognitive skills. One of the most prominent of these models, Bloom’s taxonomy, identifies six categories of cognition. The original levels and terms were knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation; however, these terms have changed slightly over time. 22 Learning does not necessarily follow a linear process, and certainly, all levels of cognitive demand are important. Yet these categories require individuals to demonstrate a different level of working knowledge of a topic. With the advent of standards-based reform, the role of cognitive skill—particularly in the area of assessment—has become a much more explicit component of curriculum materials.

Over the past two decades, cognitive science has shown that individuals of any age retain information longer when they demonstrate deeper learning and make their own meaning with the content—using skills such as the abilities to conjecture, generalize, prove, and more—as opposed to only committing ideas to memory or performing rote procedures, using skills such as the ability to memorize or recall.

In essence, Common Core created rigorous expectations to guide the instruction of students in all states that chose to adopt its standards. These standards aimed to increase college preparedness and make students more competitive in the workforce. Policymakers, advocates, and practitioners hoped that Common Core would create greater consistency in academic rigor across states. In addition, with the classroom and homework aligned to these standards, many anticipated that students would graduate from high school prepared for college or career. As of 2017, 41 states and the District of Columbia have adopted and are working to implement the standards, although many of these states have modified them slightly. 23

In this study, the authors evaluated homework to determine if it was aligned to Common Core standards in two ways: First, does it reflect grade-level content standards; second, does it require students to use skills similar to those required to demonstrate proficiency in a content area. This multitiered approach is critical to evaluating alignment between standards and instruction—in this case homework. Instruction must teach content and help students develop necessary levels of cognitive skill. Curricula for each grade should include instructional materials that are sequenced and rigorous, thus enabling students to develop an understanding of all content standards.

In spring 2018, the Center for American Progress used Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to administer a survey. MTurk is a crowdsourcing marketplace managed by Amazon; it allows organizations to virtually administer surveys for a diverse sample. 24 The CAP survey asked parents to submit a sample of their child’s most recent math or language arts homework assignment and complete a few questions to gauge if the assignment was challenging, as well as how long it took for the student to complete the assignment. A total of 372 parents responded to the survey, and CAP analyzed 187 homework assignments.

Of the 372 parents who participated in the survey, 202, or about 54 percent of respondents, submitted samples of their child’s homework assignment. The researchers dropped a total of 15 homework submissions from analysis either because the subject matter was not math or language arts—but rather, science, music, or social studies—or because the authors could not examine the specific content, for example, in cases where parents only provided a copy of the cover of a textbook. Of the remaining homework samples submitted, 72 percent (134 samples) focused on mathematics content, while the remaining 28 percent (53 samples) represented language arts content.

Of the 372 responding parents, 234—or 63 percent—were female, and 126—or 37 percent—were male. Forty-eight percent of parents responding to the survey were under the age of 34, while almost 90 percent of respondents were under the age of 45. There was an unequal distribution of parents representing elementary and secondary grade levels. Seventy-one percent of the total sample were parents with students in primary (K-2) and elementary (3-5) grades. (See Methodology section below)

Based on the analysis, the authors’ drew the following conclusions:

Homework is largely aligned to Common Core standards, especially the topics in the standards

The authors found that the submitted homework, for the most part, was aligned to Common Core standards content or within the so-called “good” range based on content expert evaluations. As described in the Methodology, the authors used an alignment index that does not require a homework assignment to exactly mirror the content standards—both topic and skill level—for evaluators to note that it is within a good range. For context, the study’s alignment index has a range of 0.00 to 1.00, where 0.00 indicates no content in common whatsoever between the two descriptions—perfect misalignment—and 1.00 indicates complete agreement between the two descriptions—perfect alignment. Generally speaking, what one might call “good” alignment for instruction tends to range on the alignment index between 0.4 and 0.6, with a measure of 0.5 serving as a median indicator of good alignment.

The analysis is a snapshot of homework and, therefore, does not allow the authors to determine if homework over the course of a year covered all required standards. In other words, it is difficult to say how many of the standards for a given grade are covered across a full school year, simply because of the limited sample of assignments.

The alignment index evaluates both topic and skill, but there was particular alignment in topic areas. For instance, there was a strong emphasis in the topic areas of number sense and operations for primary math homework. When combined with the third-most emphasized topic, measurement, these three areas accounted for more than 90 percent of primary mathematics homework content. The actual math content standards for the primary grades also placed heavy emphasis on the topic areas of number sense, operations, and measurement—though they accounted for only about 80 percent of primary math content.

In general, across all age groups, math homework was more closely aligned to content standards—both topic and skill level—than language arts. The alignment results for middle school math were particularly strong, at 0.56, based on 27 homework samples. The stronger alignment among math homework samples may be in part due to the fact that there were more math assignments in the sample than language arts assignments. Larger samples offer more opportunities to show alignment. As a result, smaller samples may underestimate alignment.

The table below presents the alignment indices, which were calculated using the homework samples collected for each grade band.

Homework is often focused on low-level skills in the standards, particularly in younger grades

While the authors’ analysis shows that there was significant alignment in the topic of standards and homework assignments, most of the homework did not require students to demonstrate the full depth of knowledge required of content standards. The analysis uncovered an emphasis on procedural knowledge, with an even stronger emphasis on memorization and recall in language arts. Content standards, on the other hand, require students to demonstrate deeper-knowledge skills, such as the ability to analyze, conceptualize, or generate.

Of five performance expectation categories across math and language arts that the authors used to measure alignment between standards and homework, there was a disproportionate emphasis on skills that require a lower level of knowledge or understanding. In grades K-2, for instance, the content standards emphasize the performance expectations of “procedures,” or computation, and “demonstrate,” or understanding, but the homework samples submitted primarily emphasized the procedures level of performance expectation. Similarly, homework for grades three through five focused almost entirely on the performance expectation of procedures, rather than standards that emphasized both procedures and demonstrate. 25

As seen with the middle school grades, high school math standards—despite a continued emphasis on procedures—show increased emphasis on the more challenging performance expectations of “demonstrate understanding” and “conjecture, generalize, prove.” Interestingly, this shift toward more challenging performance expectations is most visible for the topic areas of geometric concepts and functions, in both the standards and the homework samples submitted by parents of high school students.

Parents report that homework frequently does not challenge students

Nearly half of parents that participated in the survey reported that homework does not challenge their child. In particular, parents of primary-grade children were most likely to agree or strongly agree that the homework assignment they submitted was too easy for their child—58 percent for language arts and 55 percent for math.

Parents’ opinions about homework difficulty varied between mathematics and language arts assignments. Forty-eight percent of parents who submitted a mathematics assignment and 44 percent of parents who submitted a language arts assignment reported that it was too easy for their child. There was some variance across grade spans as well. As noted above, parents of primary-grade children were most likely to find the homework assignments too easy for their child. Meanwhile, parents that submitted high school math homework were also more likely to agree or strongly agree that the assignments were too easy, with 50 percent agreeing or strongly agreeing and only 33 percent disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with the statement. While there were clear trends in parent opinions, it is important to acknowledge that the sample size for each subset was small.

The comments of surveyed parents echoed this finding. One parent noted that “most homework that they are assigned seems like nothing more than busy work.” Another parent said: “The homework is not strong enough to build conceptual knowledge. It assumes that the child already has that knowledge.” Meanwhile, another parent commented: “Homework is way oversimplified and they don’t seem to spend much time on it. It’s a bit sad that English and math don’t seem to require what they used to. I remember much longer and harder worksheets to complete when I was a child.” 26

Weak homework samples

Within the sample of homework assignments, there were some that fell short of rigorous. For instance, one assignment listed 24 pairs of numbers—three and nine, 24 and 21, and so on—and asked the student to circle the smaller number in order to build numbers sense. While homework can be critical when establishing foundational knowledge, repetitive activities such as this often fail to engage students and, instead, overemphasize rote learning. Asking a student to list or name a number of a lesser value, for instance, would make this assignment more interactive.

A second example from kindergarten asked a student to create an uppercase and lowercase letter “f” by filling in dots with paint. The parent who submitted it highlighted the limited utility of the assignment, emphasizing that it does not hold students to high expectations. What’s more, the homework only gave the student two opportunities to practice writing the letter, both in a nonauthentic way. Indeed, the assignment focused more on filling in circles than it did constructing letters. While this task might help build a kindergartener’s hand-eye coordination, it does little to support language arts.

Exemplary homework samples

While many of the assignments submitted focused on procedures and, for math, computation, it is worth acknowledging some of the more exemplary types of homework included in the samples. These offer examples of how homework can challenge students, engage rigorous cognitive processes, and demonstrate that content standards at all levels—not just middle and high school—can support challenging homework that pushes students to think critically.

For example, one math homework assignment asked a student to identify which individuals possessed each of four groups of shapes based on the following description:

Ally, Bob, Carl, and Dana each have a set of shapes.

Bob has no triangles.
The number of rectangles that Dana has is the same as the number of triangles that Carl has.

This example is interesting on two counts. First, the assignment goes beyond procedure, requiring the student to analyze the various sets of shapes in order to determine which set belongs to which individual. It is also interesting insofar as it demonstrates a common real-world situation: There is usually more than one way to solve a problem, and sometimes, there is more than one correct answer.

Similarly, another example asked a student to determine actions that would help students beautify the school. The header of the assignment read, “Make a Decision: Keep Our School Beautiful!” The assignment had various boxes, each with a question above, such as, “Should we recycle?” or “Should we make art?” The assignment asked the student to “(1) think about each choice, (2) consider how each choice would affect them and others in the school community, (3) write their ideas in boxes below.” In doing so, it required primary students to analyze and generate ideas—both of which are skills that promote deeper learning.

Recommendations

Homework offers a valuable window into the curricula, assessment practices, and instructional preferences of teachers. It provides insight into classroom learning as well as the types of knowledge and skills the teacher believes will reinforce that instruction at home.

This analysis shows that the content and value of homework varies. While most homework within the sample was aligned to content standards, there is still a significant need to increase the rigor of homework and create opportunities for students to use higher-order skills.

Overall, schools and districts should pay more attention to homework as a reform lever. A growing body of research shows that homework is connected to learning outcomes, and as a result, schools and districts should ensure that policies help teachers provide meaningful assignments. 27 Based on this survey and the existing research on homework quality, the authors identified recommendations that can help increase the quality of homework:

Schools and districts should develop homework policies that emphasize strategic, rigorous homework

In many cases, the current debate over homework is short-sighted. Many arguments focus on whether or not students should have homework. There are entire school districts that have simply banned homework altogether. However, the debate should move beyond the merit of homework. Research shows that homework is linked to better performance on standardized assessments, especially in higher grades. 28 Many homework scholars also believe that a reasonable homework load can help develop important work habits. 29 Therefore, instead of eliminating homework outright, schools, districts, and advocates should focus on improving its rigor and effectiveness. As discussed throughout, homework should be an extension of instruction during the school day. Accordingly, policymakers and schools must make changes to homework that are in concert with curriculum reform.

Like all instruction, homework should be aligned to states’ rigorous content standards and should engage students in order to promote deeper learning and retention. To do this, homework should ask students to use higher-order skills, such as the ability to analyze or evaluate.

However, schools and districts, rather than simply assigning longer, more complicated assignments to make homework seem more challenging, should make strategic shifts. Homework assignments should be thought-provoking. But there is a such thing as too much homework. Districts and schools should ensure that teachers follow the research-supported 10-minute rule. 30 Also, teachers, schools, and districts should consider resources to set all students up for success when faced with more rigorous home assignments; homework should never be a burden or source of stress for families and parents.

Districts and schools should audit homework to make sure it is challenging and aligned to standards

Rather than implementing homework bans, district policymakers and schools should regularly review homework samples to ensure that they are aligned to grade-level standards, are engaging, require students to demonstrate higher-order skills, and adhere to the 10-minute rule. The audit should review multiple homework assignments from each classroom and consider how much time children are receiving from all subject areas, when appropriate. The district or school should ask for ongoing feedback from students, parents, and guardians in order to collect a comprehensive representation of the learning experience at home.

In instances where the district or school principal finds that homework assignments are not aligned to grade-level standards or take too much or too little time to complete, they should help the school or teachers improve them by recommending instructional materials that may make it easier for teachers to identify appropriate, grade-level homework assignments. In addition, if parents or students identify challenges to complete assignments at home, the district or school should identify solutions to ensure that all students have access to the resources and support they need to complete homework.

Schools and districts should provide access to technology and other supports that make it easier for students to complete homework

Technology can go a long way to improve homework and provide additional support or scaffolding at home. For instance, programs such as the Khan Academy—which provides short lessons through YouTube videos and practice exercises—can give students rigorous homework that is aligned to the Common Core standards. Unfortunately, many households across the nation still do not have adequate access to devices or internet at home. A 2017 ACT survey found that 14 percent of students only have access to one technology device at home. 31 Moreover, federal data from 2013 found that about 40 percent of households with school-age children do not have access to broadband. 32 It is likely that the percentage has decreased with time, but internet access remains a significant problem.

Schools and districts should adopt programs to ensure that all students can benefit from technology and broadband. For instance, Salton City, California, installed a Wi-Fi router in a school bus. Every night, the bus parks near a neighborhood with low internet connectivity, serving as a hot spot for students. 33

Moreover, greater access to technology can help more students benefit from new innovative resources. While most of these technologies are not yet research-based, and the use of devices may not be appropriate for younger children, incorporating new tools into homework may be a low-cost option to improve the quality of student learning. For instance, ASSISTments is a free web-based tool that provides immediate feedback as students complete homework or classwork. It has been proven to raise student outcomes. 34 Other online resources can complement classroom learning as well. There are various organizations that offer students free lessons in the form of YouTube videos, while also providing supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. LearnZillion, for example, provides its users with high-quality lessons that are aligned to the Common Core standards. 35

Curriculum reform and instruction design should focus on homework

There are many states and districts that are engaging in curriculum reform. Many of these recent reform efforts show promise. In an analysis of the curricula and instructional materials used by the nation’s 30 largest school districts, the Center for American Progress found that approximately one-third of materials adopted or recommended by these districts were highly rated and met expectations for alignment. 36

Homework should be a focus of curriculum reform, and states and districts should consider how textbooks or other instructional materials can provide resources or examples to help teachers assign meaningful homework that will complement regular classroom instruction.

Personalized learning—which tailors instruction and learning environments to meet each student’s individual interests and needs—is also gaining traction as a way to increase declining engagement in schools and increase student motivation. 37 These ideas are also relevant to homework quality. A 2010 study found that when students were offered a choice of homework assignment, they were more motivated to do the work, reported greater competence in the assignments, and performed better on unit tests, compared with peers that did not have choice in homework. 38 The study also suggested that offering students a choice improved the rate of completion of assignments. 39 Districts and schools should help implement more student-centered approaches to all instruction—in the classroom and at home.

When it comes to change management, experts often advise to look for low-hanging fruit—the simplest and easiest fixes. 40 In education, homework reform is low-hanging fruit. Research shows that quality homework and increasing student achievement are positively correlated; and yet, the authors’ analysis shows that some schools may not be taking advantage of a valuable opportunity to support student achievement. Instead of mirroring the cognitive demand in rigorous content standards, homework assigned to students is often weak or rote. But it does not have to be this way. More rigorous, insightful homework is out there. Policymakers and schools need to move beyond the debate of whether or not to assign work outside of school hours and do their own due diligence—or, put another way, their own homework—before assigning homework to students in this nation’s schools.

Methodology

As mentioned above, the authors used the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) online survey tool to collect from parents their child’s actual homework assignments. Specifically, as part of the survey, the authors asked parents to submit a sample of their child’s most recent math or language arts homework assignment and have the child complete questions to gauge if the assignment was challenging, as well as how long it took to complete the assignment. In all, 372 parents responded to the survey, with CAP analyzing 187 homework assignments. The submissions of samples were analyzed by a group of analysts under the supervision of John L. Smithson, researcher emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Measuring alignment

The homework samples were reviewed by two teams of content analysts—one for mathematics and one for language arts—who were asked to describe the academic content represented by the submitted homework, as well as the performance expectation. Each team consisted of three analysts who possessed the relevant content expertise and experience in methodology used to gather the descriptive data.

The teams used a taxonomy-based methodology that was developed by education researchers Andrew Porter and John Smithson during Porter’s tenure as director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 41 Researchers both nationally and internationally have subsequently used this approach to content description for decades in order to examine issues of alignment as well as to support program evaluation and inform school improvement efforts.

The U.S. Department of Education also recognizes the validity of this approach. Specifically, the Education Department completes a peer review of states’ annual assessment program’s alignment to state academic content standards. 42 The Porter/Smithson approach is one of a handful of alignment methodologies that has been determined to meet these federal requirements. 43

The Porter/Smithson approach is unique because it defines instructional content as a two-dimensional construct consisting of topic and cognitive demand, or skill. This approach to describing cognitive skill is similar to Bloom’s, which the authors have described above. It has five categories: recall, process, analyze, integrate, and conceptual understanding. The Porter/Smithson approach is the most stringent of alignment indicators, as it looks at both topic and cognitive demand; it is also possibly the most challenging to interpret because the final alignment score considers two dimensions.

The alignment index has a range of 0.00 to 1.00, where 0.00 indicates no content in common whatsoever between the two descriptions—perfect misalignment—and 1.00 indicates complete agreement between the two descriptions—perfect alignment. A measure of 1.00 is exceedingly unlikely, requiring perfect agreement across every cell that makes up the content description. In practice, this is only seen when comparing a document to itself. For instance, very high alignment measures—more than 0.70—have been noted when comparing different test forms used for a particular grade-level state assessment; but those are instances where high alignment is desired. In terms of instructional alignment—in other words, how well instruction is aligned to the standards—a measure of 1.00 is not the goal. For this reason, the authors did not expect any analysis of homework alignment, no matter how well designed, to have a measure of or close to 1.00.

Generally speaking, what one might call “good” alignment for instruction tends to range between 0.4 and 0.6 on the alignment index, with a measure of 0.5 serving as a median indicator of good alignment. The description of the content standards represents the goal of instructional practice—the destination, not the journey. As such, it does not indicate the best path for achieving those goals. The 0.5 indicator measure represents a middle road where teachers are balancing the expectations of the content standards with the immediate learning needs of their students.

Limitations

The authors acknowledge that the analysis has shortcomings. The sample was relatively small and does not directly mirror the national population of parents of elementary and secondary school students. As such, the sample does not necessarily reflect the views or homework experiences of the larger U.S. population.

Limited sample size

The current study analyzes a snapshot of homework across many classrooms, rather than homework from a single classroom or school. The assumption is that looking at individual homework assignments across many classrooms will help to construct a composite picture of mathematics and language arts homework that will be somewhat reflective of the picture one would get from following many classrooms for many days. If the sample is large enough with a wide enough geographical spread, that assumption serves researchers well enough.

For the current study, however, the number of homework samples available for each grade band were, in some cases, quite small—as low as five assignments each for middle and high school language arts. The largest sample sizes were for primary and elementary math, with 47 and 41 homework assignments collected, respectively. However, even 47 is a fairly small sample size for drawing inferences about a full year of homework.

Selection bias

The respondents that participated in this study were a reasonably diverse group in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity, but there are notable differences between the makeup of the parents represented in the study and the makeup of parents of school-age children more generally. Respondents were predominantly female, with women making up almost two-thirds—63 percent—of the sample. They also tended to be parents of younger school-age children, with 71 percent of the respondents reporting on children from the bottom half of the K-12 system—grades K-5. Finally, in terms of race and ethnicity, the sample overrepresented Asian American families and underrepresented African American families. These groups comprised 14 percent and 8 percent of respondents, respectively, compared with national averages of 6 percent and 12 percent.

Because the sample does not well reflect the population of parents of elementary and secondary students, the authors considered possible selection biases that may help to explain the differences in sample and overall population and that may have affected certain members of the population more than others.

For instance, the authors administered the survey using MTurk, which may have skewed the sample. In general, the population on the site is younger and whiter than the U.S. population as a whole. However, research has shown that MTurk yields high-quality, nationally representative results, with data that are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. 44 The researchers also targeted California and Texas in order to increase the diversity of the sample.

In addition, accessibility could have led to selection bias. Despite broad internet access in 2018, there remain families in low-income locales where internet access is not readily available for parents. It is also possible that older parents are less likely to be as active on the internet as younger parents, further contributing to selection bias.

About the authors

Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is also the founder and CEO of The Learning Agency.

Meg Benner is a senior consultant at the Center.

John Smithson is the researcher emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Sarah Shapiro, a former research assistant at the Center for American Progress, for her support developing the survey. They also appreciate the valuable feedback of Catherine Brown, senior fellow for Education Policy at the Center for American Progress; Tom Loveless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Lisette Partelow, director of K-12 Special Initiatives at the Center; and Scott Sargrad, vice president of K-12 Education Policy at the Center.

Conflicts of interest

The author, Ulrich Boser, has a financial relationship with the creators of the online homework tool ASSISTments.

Tom Loveless, “How Well Are American Students Learning?” (Washington: Brown Center on Education Policy , 2014), available at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2014-Brown-Center-Report_FINAL-4.pdf .
Seema Mehta, “Some schools are cutting back on hoomework,” Los Angeles Times , March 22, 2009, available at http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/22/local/me-homework22 .
Alfie Kohn, “Rethinking Homework,” Principal , January/February 2007, available at https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/rethinking-homework/ .
Robert J. Marzano and Debra J. Pickering, “The Case For and Against Homework,” Educational Leadership 64 (6) (2007): 74–79, available at http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx .
Michael Winerip, “Homework Bound,” The New York Times , January 3, 1999, available at https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/03/education/homework-bound.html .
Marzano and Pickering, “The Case For and Against Homework.”
Brian P. Gill and Seven L. Schlossman, “Villain or Savior? The American Discourse on Homework, 1850-2003,” Theory Into Practice 43 (3) (2004): 174–181, available at http://www.history.cmu.edu/docs/schlossman/Villiain-or-Savior.pdf .
Karl Taro Greenfeld, “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me,” The Atlantic , October 2013, available at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/my-daughters-homework-is-killing-me/309514/ .
Fox News, “Florida students in Marion County will no longer be assigned homework, superintendent says,” July 13, 2017, available at https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-students-in-marion-county-will-no-longer-be-assigned-homework-superintendent-says ; Kate Edwards, “East Tennessee schools consider ‘no homework policy’,” WJHL, September 13, 2016, available at https://www.wjhl.com/news/east-tennessee-schools-consider-no-homework-policy/871720275 .
Tawnell D. Hobbs, “Down With Homework, Say U.S. School Districts,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2018, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-homework-its-the-new-thing-in-u-s-schools-11544610600 .
Marzano and Pickering, “The Case For and Against Homework”; Gill and Schlossman, “Villain or savior?”.
Matthew J. C. Crump, John V. McDonnell, and Todd M. Gureckis, “Evaluating Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research,” PLOS ONE 8 (3) (2013): 1–18, available at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057410&type=printable .
Common Core requires students to demonstrate conceptual understanding of topics and use the information to analyze and make their own meaning. The abilities to analyze, conceptualize, and generate denote higher-order cognitive skills. The authors describe hierarchies of cognitive skills later in the report. Many of the standards use these verbs to describe what is expected. Common Core State Standards Initiative, “About the Standards,” available at http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/ (last accessed January 2019).
Robert J. Marzano and Debra J. Pickering, “The Case For and Against Homework.”
Khan Academy, “Common Core,” available at https://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore (last accessed February 2019).
Common Core State Standards Initiative, “What are educational standards?”, available at http://www.corestandards.org/faq/what-are-educational-standards/ (last accessed January 2019).
William G. Huitt, “Bloom et al.’s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain” (Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University, 2011), available at http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.pdf .
Solomon Friedberg and others, “The State of State Standards Post-Common Core” (Washington: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2018), available at http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/(08.22)%20The%20State%20of%20State%20Standards%20Post-Common%20Core.pdf .
Amazon Mechanical Turk, “Home,” available at https://www.mturk.com/ (last accessed January 2019).
Common Core State Standards Initiative, “Read the Standards,” available at http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/ (last accessed February 2019).
Center for American Progress survey administered on Amazon Mechanical Turk, May 2018, full survey results on file with the authors.
Lauraine Genota, “‘Homework Gap’ Hits Minority, Impoverished Students Hardest, Survey Finds,” Education Week , September 19, 2018, available at https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2018/09/homework_gap_education_equity_ACT_survey.html .
John B. Horrigan, “The numbers behind the broadband ‘homework gap’,” Pew Research Center, April 20, 2015, available at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/the-numbers-behind-the-broadband-homework-gap/ .
Nichole Dobo, “What to do for kids with no internet at home? How about parking a wifi-enabled school bus near their trailer park?”, The Hechinger Report , December 23, 2014, available at https://hechingerreport.org/kids-no-internet-home-parking-wifi-enabled-school-bus-near-trailer-park/ .
Alison Duffy, “Study Shows WPI-developed Math Homework Tool Closes the Learning Gap,” Worcester Polytechnic Institute, October 24, 2016, available at https://www.wpi.edu/news/study-shows-wpi-developed-math-homework-tool-closes-learning-gap .
Sean Cavanagh, “LearnZillion Going After District Curriculum Business, Aims to Compete With Big Publishers,” EdWeek Market Brief, June 6, 2018, available at https://marketbrief.edweek.org/marketplace-k-12/learnzillion-going-district-curriculum-business-aims-compete-big-publishers/ .
Lisette Partelow and Sarah Shapiro, “Curriculum Reform in the Nation’s Largest School Districts” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018), available at https://americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/DistrictCurricula-report3.pdf .
TNTP, “The Opportunity Myth” (New York: 2018), available at https://tntp.org/assets/documents/TNTP_The-Opportunity-Myth_Web.pdf ; Gallup, “Gallup Student Poll: Measure What Matters Most for Student Success,” available at https://www.gallup.com/education/233537/gallup-student-poll.aspx?utm_source=link_newsv9&utm_campaign=item_211028&utm_medium=copy&_ga=2.248421390.86741706.1543204564-175832835.1543204564 (last accessed January 2019).
Erika A. Patall, Harris Cooper, and Susan R. Wynn, “The Effectiveness and Relative Importance of Choice in the Classroom,” Journal of Educational Psychology , 102 (4) (2010): 896–915, available at https://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/JOURNALS/E101100P.pdf .
Jeremy Eden and Terri Long, “Forget the strategic transformation, going after the low-hanging fruit reaps more rewards,” The Globe and Mail, June 24, 2014, available at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/bagging-simple-cheap-ideas/article19311957/ .
U.S. Department of Education, “A State’s Guide to the U.S. Department of Education’s Assessment Peer Review Process” (Washington: 2018), available at https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/saa/assessmentpeerreview.pdf .
Ellen Forte, “Evaluating Alignment in Large-Scale Standards-Based Assessment Systems” (Washington: Council of Chief State School Officers, 2017) available at https://ccsso.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/TILSA%20Evaluating%20Alignment%20in%20Large-Scale%20Standards-Based%20Assessment%20Systems.pdf .
Kevin J. Mullinix and others, “The Generalizability of Survey Experiments,” Journal of Experimental Political Science 2 (2) (2015): 109–138, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/generalizability-of-survey-experiments/72D4E3DB90569AD7F2D469E9DF3A94CB .

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here . American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Ulrich Boser

Former Senior Fellow

Senior Consultant

John Smithson

Our Mission

Assigning More Meaningful Math Homework

A small set of problems or even one substantial problem can be enough to supplement classroom instruction.

As a math teacher of more than 23 years, I have had the habit, almost like a muscle memory repetition, of assigning daily math homework for my middle school students. It wasn’t until recently that I paused to reflect, “Why am I assigning this?” The easy answer is, “My students need to practice to develop their skills.”

If I dig a bit deeper into the “why,” I wonder, “Are all of my students benefiting from this assignment? Did I assign an appropriate amount and level of problems? What resources do my students have or not have to be successful with this assignment? Is the assignment meaningful or busywork?”

Consider the following suggestions for making math homework more meaningful.

3 Ways to Create More Meaningful Math Homework

1. Think quality over quantity. The National Council for Teachers of Mathematics Homework page of tips for teachers suggests, “Only assign what’s necessary to augment instruction. If you can get sufficient information by assigning only five problems, then don’t assign fifty.”

Worksheets and problem sets from textbook publishers might contain dozens of problems that repeat the same concepts. It is OK to assign part of a page, such as “p. 34 #s 3, 5, and 17.” I tell my middle school students, “I handpicked these particular problems because they capture the objective of today’s lesson.” When students know that their teacher carefully “handpicked” a problem set, they might pay more attention to the condensed assignment because it was tailored for them.

Even one problem can be sufficient. Robert Kaplinsky, cofounder of Open Middle , routinely shares on X (formerly Twitter) single problems that are really engaging and give students a good chance to practice skills.

The depth and exploration that can come from one single problem can be richer than 20 routine problems. You might be surprised by how much depth can be inspired by a single problem.

2. Consider choice and variety. It’s unrealistic to create a personalized daily homework assignment for each student in your class. Student voice and choice can be applied to your preexisting assignments without your having to re-create the homework wheel.

Traditional assignments can be modified by offering students choice. This might look like “ Choose any five of these problems ,” or take this tip from educator Peter Liljedahl and designate problems as “mild, medium, or spicy” and let students pick their level for that assignment.

Offering homework level choice also promotes a culture of growth mindset through messaging like “You might choose mild problems for this lesson; however, tomorrow you might feel you’re ready for a medium level.” Level choice can vary day to day—your math level is not fixed.

Daily homework can also be spiced up by offering a variety of types of assignments. Consider assigning problems that go beyond providing a single number answer. Here are a few examples to get students thinking beyond just getting a particular problem right:

When simplifying (4 + 5) x 5 - 3, what is the first step?
When simplifying (4 + 5) x 5 - 3, Ali got the answer 18. What advice do you have for her?
Write your own order of operations problem with a solution of 42.

Check out these websites for even more creative ways to vary homework:

Three-Acts Math Tasks
Open Middle
Would You Rather Math

3. Remember, accountability doesn’t have to result in a grade. There is a major difference between assigning homework for a grade and assigning homework purely for practice. When a grade is the result of an assignment, the stakes get higher for the student.

In the February 2023 Washington Post article “ A deep dive into whether—and how—homework should be graded ,“ former teacher Rick Wormeli wrote, “When early attempts at mastery are not used against them, and accountability comes in the form of actually learning content, adolescents flourish.” If homework is truly for practice, this is an opportunity for students to make mistakes and take risks without the fear of a penalty.

Even if homework is graded as a completion grade, there are considerations of equity and meaningfulness of the practice.

Consider the following questions when deciding to give a completion grade for a homework assignment: Do all students have a home environment that is supportive of homework? Do some students have additional support, such as tutors or parents, to help them get the homework completed? Would students copy homework assignments from each other just to earn the completion grade?

If not grades, then how do we hold students accountable for practicing outside of class?

Student presentations and discussions are a way to check for understanding of an assignment and to let students know you expect them to attempt the problems. This might look like a debate in which students take sides on how to approach a problem . Alternatively, students could post their work on the board to share their strategies with the class or discuss their solutions in small groups. Communicating their mathematical thinking deepens their understanding .

Education consultants Ashley Marlow and Katie Novak write in their Edutopia article “ Making Math Accessible for All Students ” (July 2022), “When students have opportunities to think, reason, explain, and model their thinking, they are more readily able to develop a deep understanding of mathematics beyond rote memorization. The goal is for all students to experience success in higher learning of mathematics—requiring those reasoning and sense-making skills and increasing engagement.”

The next time you’re planning your lessons and assignments, pause and reflect on the meaningfulness of the homework assignment. Could it be shorter but more in-depth? Can students have a choice in their work? Will students find value in doing the work even if it is not for a grade? You might find that students take more ownership and care in their homework if it’s more meaningful to them.

Postcards from Gulag

Photographs from the remnants of the gulag archipelago, watchtower, perm-36, perm krai.

Perm-36 is allegedly the only Gulag camp that has been turned into a museum. While this is not strictly true (there are other former camps that have been partly preserved) and Perm-36 is heavily reconstructed, the museum has conserved an important part of the Soviet camp system, especially from its latter era after the death of Stalin. Perm-36 camp operated from the 1940s until the last days of the Soviet Union, and it was meant mainly for the political prisoners and dissidents. Among the dense forests of Russia near the Ural mountains stands a solitary watchtower of the former camp. Behind it, inside the zona , one finds relics of the barracks, but somehow the tower itself, a symbol as poignant as barbed wire, communicates the utter isolation of Gulag victims.

Perm Krai Capital of Culture

Support of regional and other partners
Working groups
Policy papers
Newsletters
Main themes
Social and cultural integration
Citizenship and civil society
Historical heritage
Music and cinema

Youth policy

External Cooperation
Testimonials

Project initators:

“ Cultural Planning will help to ensure the Perm region will remain distinctive and unique” , Mr. Protasevich said. “It will mean planning ways to support and preserve our heritage, developing appealing opportunities for artists and musicians regardless of age, and generating education and employment. It will mean building a creative community with a buzz.”

“Some of the identified objectives of “Perm krai international:young journalists@school” project include facilitating greater communication and cooperation among young community and official organizations in Perm krai”, said the Vice-Minister of Perm krai.

“Perm Krai International: young journalistes@school”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The international children festival of theatre arts “Long Break”

What is the international child festival of theatre arts “Long Break”? It is a real holiday for young spectators and their parents. The international child festival of theatre arts “Long Break” will be hold from the 30th of April to the 5th of May. It will be in Perm and Lysva. It will be hold under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Culture, Youth Politics and Mass Communications of Perm Krai. The program of the festival is prepared by Russian and foreign experts of child theatre. There are the most interesting for children events of the world arts. The “Long Break” familiarizes children with actual artists. It is the platform where people communicate with people using the language of modern arts which is understandable for a new generation.

The festival “The White Nights in Perm”

The participants of the festival of land art “Ural Myths” will create art objects using natural materials. The objects will have the same mythological idea.
During the festival of bears “MedveDay” the masters Teddy-makers will tell gripping stories about a symbol of the city. They will organize some exhibitions of teddy bears and they will give master classes.

The exhibition “Mammoth’s track” will gather mammoths from different corners of Russia on Perm’s territory. There will be even a famous mammoth Dima.
And at last the international festival of street arts «Open sky» will represent the various program: carnival processions, a 5-day master class «Mask Art», street shows and performances, performances of Russian and foreign street theatres.

The IX International festival “Heavenly Fair of Ural”

From the 26th to the 3rd of July the IX International festival “Heavenly Fair of Ural” takes place in Kungur. There will be a fight for the I Privolzhski Federal Disctrict Cup for aerostatics and the VII Perm Krai Open Cup for aerostatics.This year Kungur won’t hold rating competitions which results are taking into general account of the pilots. They counted on creating entertainment activities “Air battles over Kungur”. There will be the representatives of sub-units of ultralight aviation, detachment of parachute troops and water means. All the battles will take place straight over the city. And natives will take part in the festival too.According to initial data 15 aeronauts and about 50 ultralight aviation pilots expressed willingness to take part at the festival. And a dirigible pilot confirmed his participation.Ultralight aviation pilots will take part in the “Air games” within the festival. As last year a campsite of ultralight aviation will base in an area near a village Milniki.

Our Twitter

Blog at WordPress.com.

Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Subscribe Subscribed
Copy shortlink
Report this content
View post in Reader
Manage subscriptions
Collapse this bar

Solikamsk city Cam

This HD live webcam takes you to the city Solikamsk in the Russian Perm Krai . The online stream shows you the intersection of the major street Severnaya and Molodezhnaya street, including the local time and weather in Solikamsk. This city is one of the oldest towns in the Krai, with a rich heritage seen in many historical buildings such as the governor's house, the oldest civil building in the Northern Urals area, and the magnificent Trinity Cathedral, both buildings of the 17th century. Among its museums is the Salt Museum as Solikamsk has been a major producer of salt in Russia. To locate this city on our map, please scroll down the page.

Map of Solikamsk, Russia

Perm Krai Webcams

Dzerzhinsky city dis….

Russia / Perm Krai

Random Webcams

Oldehoofsterkerkhof….

Netherlands / Friesland

Bad Langensalza Town…

Germany / Thuringia

Waikiki Beach

Usa / Hawaii

Freedom Monument, Ri…

Latvia / Riga

Barnstable Cam, Cape…

Usa / Massachusetts

Perham Railroad East…

Usa / Minnesota

Hippos, Dvur Králové…

Czech Republic / Hradec Králové

Pompplein Cam

Netherlands / North Holland

Fort Pannerden Cam, …

Netherlands / Gelderland

Bergamo Skyline Cam…

Italy / Lombardy

Kirov Square, Ust-Ku…

Russia / Irkutsk Oblast

Paperboy Prince Love…

Usa / New York

Arkhangelsk City Hall Cam
Kvartal Entuziastov, Ufa
Belsky Bridge, Ufa
Asha Town, Russia
Apelsin Fusion Café Cam
Swallow's Nest Castle, Haspra
Sushi Restaurant in Irkutsk
Kirov Square, Ust-Kut
Kirova Street
Kaluga Drama Theatre
Gagarin Bridge
Sushi City Restaurant
Stop Sovetskaya Square
Uspensky Cathedral
Lenin Square, Khabarovsk
Ulitsa Leningradskaya
Khabarovsk City View
Maxi Mall, Khabarovsk
Susaninskaya Square Cam, RU
Novorossiysk Cam
Parus Health Resort, Anapa
Gelendzhik Bay, Russia
Victory Square, Zheleznogorsk
Moscow City River Cam, Russia
Moscow Church of Christ
Crossroads Dekabristov - Khachaturyan
Badoo office, Moscow
Cafeteria in Moscow
YesPizza Cam, Moscow
Dodo Pizza, Zelenograd
Northern Bypass PVP 6
Ice Skating Rink, SNEZH.KOM
Waltz of Flowers Park, Klin
Gagarin Square Cam, Moscow
Inter-Sever Entrance Cam, RU
Mosdisplay Shop Cam, Russia
Dodo Pizza Suschevsky Val
Kibercar Workshop Cam, RU
Indoor wave pool, Akvamir
Thermal Block Pool Cam, Akvamir
Children’s Aquaplay, Akvamir
Manta Slide Cam, Akvamir
Lyubinsky Avenue Cam, Omsk
Metro Bridge Cam, Omsk
Dzerzhinsky City District, RU
Vladivostok Centre, Russia
Hairdresser in Kazan
Bauman Street Cam, Kazan
Nevsky Prospect
Church on Spilled Blood
Cruiser Aurora
Liteyny Avenue
Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Peter and Paul Fortress
Vasilyevsky Island
St. Petersburg Panorama
Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor
Petrovskaya Embankment, RU
Malaya Sadovaya Street
Metro Gostiny Dvor
Dvortsoviy Bridge
Gakkelevskaya Street
Church Assumption of Mary
Stolle Bakery & Café
Vosstaniya Square
Nevsky Avenue, St. Petersburg
Peterhof Grand Palace
Lakhta Center
2 Berega Pizzeria, St. Petersburg
Kolomyazhskiy Avenue
Griboyedov Channel
Lakhta Center View
Flower Shop Cam, Russia
Prospekt Nauki Cam, RU
Take Off Surf Club Cam
Komendantskay Square Cam, Russia
Admiralty Embankment Cam, RU
Keb House & Good Coffee Cam
First Fighting School Cam
Rubinstein Street Cam, Ru
Prospekt Prosveshcheniya
Central Square Cam, Mirny
Golden Symbol Yacht Harbour
City Panorama, Sevastopol
Sunken Ships Monument
Povstalykh Square
Sochi Railway Station
Sochi Railway Station 2
Sochi Seaport Cam
Sochi Seaport Cam 2
Sochi Arts Museum
Gorky Gorod Ski Resort
Sanatorium Knowledge
Shopping Mall Cam
Sochi Main Road
Moremoll Cam
Constitution Street, Sochi
Flag Square, Sochi
Central Beach, Sochi 
Sochi Main City Road
Gorky Gorod
Gorky Gorod Main Square
Mountain Olympic Village
Rosa Khutor Mountain
Rosa Valley Cam, Russia
Riviera Beach Cam, Sochi
Dagomys Cam, Sochi
Mayak Beach Water Park
Dagomys Beach
Zimniy Theatre, Sochi
Zhemchuzhina Hotel View
Gorki Gorod 2200
Zhemchuzhina Hotel Cam 2
Gazprom Tourist Center
Lenin Street
Sport youth school №1
Savior Church, Sochi
Sochi International Airport
Sochi River
Sochi Marine Station
Mayak Beach
Navaginskaya Street
Gorkogo Street
Playroom Cam, Sochi
Hotel Imeretinskiy View
Kislovodsk Fortress, Russia
New Cathedral Square, Tomsk
Restaurant in Volgograd
Volgograd Railway Station, Ru
Pizza-Fabrika Cam, Yaroslavl
LADA Car Dealer Cam, Yaroslavl

Port of Hamburg Cam

Germany / Hamburg

Brasov City

Romania / Brasov

Oldehove Tower

Notre dame paris cam.

France / Île-de-France

Privacy Policy
Get Your Cam

IMAGES

Homework Expectations Letter by Christy's Teaching Tools
Homework
Five Expectations for your middle school students
Classroom Expectations
Homework Workbook
Classroom Expectations

VIDEO

3rd Grade Curriculum Night 2023-2024
Hallway Behavior Video
Middle school advice video( homework,classes, ect)
Superintendent's Spotlight: Homework
Middle school teachers warming up for their job #teacherlife #middleschool #teacher
says it in the middle of a good day👺 #art #youtubeshorts #shorts #school #friends #youtube #cute

COMMENTS

What's the Right Amount of Homework?
Learn how homework affects elementary, middle and high school students, and what teachers and parents can do to support learning at home. Find out the research-based guidelines, tips and challenges of assigning and completing homework.
Middle School Homework: Creating a Foundation for Learning
Learn how homework can help middle school students improve their academic skills and study habits, but also how too much homework can be harmful. Find out the 10-minute rule per grade level and the research-based recommendations for teachers.
Middle School Homework Guidelines
Homework is an important part of education. The conscientious completion of homework has a positive impact on a student's success in school. Teachers, students, and parents have the responsibility to work as a team in order to realize the maximum benefit of homework. The Shared Decision Making Committees of Iroquois and Van Antwerp Middle Schools … Continue reading "Middle School Homework ...
PDF Homework Motivation, Strategies and Support for Middle and High School
Middle and High School General Homework Tips for Parents Make sure your child has a quiet, well-lit place to do homework. ... out a printed summary of homework expectations or post it on the class Web site at the beginning of the school year or new semester. Review the expectations together and have your child keep the sum-
PDF Homework: A Guide for Parents
This handout explains the benefits and challenges of homework for parents and children, and provides strategies for supporting homework completion and quality. It also suggests how to communicate with teachers and establish routines and incentives for homework.
Homework / Homework Policies
Homework is any activity or assignment directed by the teacher to be performed outside the classroom that may include practicing skills learned in class, reading, studying, projects, or completion of assignments. Rules for Homework. Activities or assignments that students can complete independently. Carefully constructed as to be completed ...
The Case for (Quality) Homework
Homework can improve learning, but only if it is developmentally appropriate and well-designed. Learn how homework affects children's learning beliefs and behaviors, and how parents can help.
10 Ways to Help Your Child Succeed in Middle School
Find tips and advice on how to help your child with schoolwork, homework, and other challenges in middle school. Learn about the physical, emotional, and social changes that middle schoolers go through and how to support them.
Homework
HOMEWORK. Homework Guidance. The district homework policy can be found in its entirety HERE, including information about the guiding principles that informed the development of the policy and detailed descriptions of roles and responsibilities for students and families.This document is intended to depict level-specific expectations for educators at the middle level.
10 Ways to Help Your Child Succeed in Middle School
Support Homework Expectations. During the middle school years, homework gets more intense and the time spent will probably be longer than during the elementary years, usually a total of 1 to 2 hours each school night. ... Homework, sports, after-school activities, texting, TVs, computers, ...
Homework Guidelines
Learn about the definition, rationale, features, and criteria of homework in Howard County Public School System. Find out the amount and purpose of homework for different grade levels and the expectations of homework for students and teachers.
The 22 Best Classroom Rules for Middle School You'll Want to Try
Learn how to teach and enforce 22 classroom rules for middle school students that promote respect, responsibility, and learning. Find examples, tips, and a video to help you create a positive and productive learning environment.
Using High Expectations to Boost Students' Sense of Belonging
Create frequent low- or no-stakes retrieval practice opportunities for your students to help them study. Spaced practice: Teach students to study for 20 minutes at a time over three days instead studying in a one-hour block. Spaced practice, by allowing a bit of forgetting in between sessions, creates stronger long-term memory.
PDF Homework Solutions Guide
STRICTER HOMEWORK POLICIES Middle school students often face more exacting standards about how homework should be completed and the ... either hand out a printed summary of homework expectations or post it on the class Web site at the beginning of the school year or semester. Review the expectations together and have your child keep the summary in
Homework and Grading Policy
5. Homework Guidelines in Middle School Grades (6-8) In the Middle School grades, in addition to reading, research indicates that there are benefits to a moderate amount of meaningful, specific and deliberate homework to develop independent work habits, cultivate a sense of responsibility and help reinforce and enhance learning expectations.
Homework and Higher Standards
The alignment results for middle school math were particularly strong, at 0.56, based on 27 homework samples. ... or recommended by these districts were highly rated and met expectations for ...
More Meaningful Math Homework
3 Ways to Create More Meaningful Math Homework. 1. Think quality over quantity. The National Council for Teachers of Mathematics Homework page of tips for teachers suggests, "Only assign what's necessary to augment instruction. If you can get sufficient information by assigning only five problems, then don't assign fifty.". Worksheets ...
Grades and Homework
Homework Expectations, Grade Scale, and Assessment SPS information about The Source The Source is a resource that displays student assessment scores (grades), attendance, library info and current school year grades for secondary students. Elementary student grades are not displayed on the Source at this time. SPS information on Schoology Schoology offers powerful new technology at all […]
Fuller Middle School
The community of Fuller Middle Schools is committed to the academic, social, physical, and emotional development of every student. This commitment is supported by a philosophy based on differentiation, participation, high expectations, cooperation and respect for all.
Watchtower, Perm-36, Perm Krai
Perm-36 is allegedly the only Gulag camp that has been turned into a museum. While this is not strictly true (there are other former camps that have been partly preserved) and Perm-36 is heavily reconstructed, the museum has conserved an important part of the Soviet camp system, especially from its latter era after the death of Stalin.
Live Perm Krai Webcams, Russia
Perm Krai (Russian: Пе́рмский край) is a federal subject in Russia (Krai), spanning from the east of the East European Plain to the western part of the Middle Ural Mountains. The live webcams will show around this region, renowned for its first-class ballet, and the significant collection of ancient art including the rich local art in museums such as the Perm State Art Gallery.
Youth policy
Project initators: Alexandre Protasevich is a Minister for Culture and Youth of Perm krai with 20 years institutional experience at all levels within the cultural project management. He works at the Ministry of Culture since 2008 and has worked in cultural field in the public sector for 15 years in Russia. Mr Protasevich is now…
Live Webcam Solikamsk, Perm Krai, Russia
Traffic. This HD live webcam takes you to the city Solikamsk in the Russian Perm Krai. The online stream shows you the intersection of the major street Severnaya and Molodezhnaya street, including the local time and weather in Solikamsk. This city is one of the oldest towns in the Krai, with a rich heritage seen in many historical buildings ...