why is homework busy work

• Future Students
• Current Students
• Faculty/Staff

News and Media

• News & Media Home
• Research Stories
• School’s In
• In the Media

You are here

More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

More Stories

⟵ Go to all Research Stories

Get the Educator

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Stanford Graduate School of Education

482 Galvez Mall Stanford, CA 94305-3096 Tel: (650) 723-2109

• Contact Admissions
• GSE Leadership
• Site Feedback
• Web Accessibility
• Career Resources
• Faculty Open Positions
• Explore Courses
• Academic Calendar
• Office of the Registrar
• Cubberley Library
• StanfordWho
• StanfordYou

Improving lives through learning

• Stanford Home
• Maps & Directions
• Search Stanford
• Emergency Info
• Terms of Use
• Non-Discrimination
• Accessibility

© Stanford University , Stanford , California 94305 .

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, the homework debate: the case against homework.

This post has been updated as of December 2017.

It’s not uncommon to hear students, parents, and even some teachers always complaining about homework. Why, then, is homework an inescapable part of the student experience? Worksheets, busy work, and reading assignments continue to be a mainstay of students’ evenings.

Whether from habit or comparison with out-of-class work time in other nations, our students are getting homework and, according to some of them, a LOT of it. Educators and policy makers must ask themselves—does assigning homework pay off?

Is there evidence that homework benefits students younger than high school?

The Scholastic article Is Homework Bad? references Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , in which he says, “There is no evidence to demonstrate that homework benefits students below high school age.”

The article goes on to note that those who oppose homework focus on the drawbacks of significant time spent on homework, identifying one major negative as homework’s intrusion into family time. They also point out that opponents believe schools have decided homework is necessary and thus assign it simply to assign some kind of homework, not because doing the work meets specifically-identified student needs.

“Busy work” does not help students learn

Students and parents appear to carry similar critiques of homework, specifically regarding assignments identified as busy work—long sheets of repetitive math problems, word searches, or reading logs seemingly designed to make children dislike books.

When asked how homework can negatively affect children, Nancy Kalish, author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It , says that many homework assignments are “simply busy work” that makes learning “a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience.”

Commenters on the piece, both parents and students, tended to agree. One student shared that on occasion they spent more time on homework than at school, while another commenter pointed out that, “We don’t give slow-working children a longer school day, but we consistently give them a longer homework day.”

Without feedback, homework is ineffective

The efficacy of the homework identified by Kalish has been studied by policy researchers as well. Gerald LeTendre, of Penn State’s Education Policy Studies department points out that the shotgun approach to homework, when students all receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed individually with the student, is “not very effective.”  He goes on to say that, “If there’s no feedback and no monitoring, the homework is probably not effective.”

Researchers from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia had similar findings in their study, “ When Is Homework Worth The Time ?” According to UVAToday, these researchers reported no “substantive difference” in the grades of students related to homework completion.

As researcher Adam Maltese noted, “Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be.” The report further suggested that while not all homework is bad, the type and quality of assignments and their differentiation to specific learners appears to be an important point of future research.

If homework is assigned, it should heighten understanding of the subject

The Curry School of Education report did find a positive association between standardized test performance and time spent on homework, but standardized test performance shouldn’t be the end goal of assignments—a heightened understanding and capability with the content material should.

As such, it is important that if/when teachers assign homework assignments, it is done thoughtfully and carefully—and respectful of the maximum times suggested by the National Education Association, about 10 minutes per night starting in the first grade, with an additional 10 minutes per year after.

Continue reading — The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.

You may also like to read

• The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students
• Ending the Homework Debate: Expert Advice on What Works
• Advice on Creating Homework Policies
• Elementary Students and Homework: How Much Is Too Much?
• Homework in Middle School: Building a Foundation for Study Skills
• Homework Helps High School Students Most — But it Must Be Purposeful

Categorized as: Tips for Teachers and Classroom Resources

Tagged as: Leadership and Administration ,  Pros and Cons ,  Teacher-Parent Relationships

• Certificates in Administrative Leadership
• Teacher Resources for Social-Emotional Develo...
• Degrees and Certificates for Teachers & Educa...

Center for Teaching

Overcoming the “busywork” dilemma.

Posted by Rhett Mcdaniel on Monday, January 11, 2021 in News , Resource .

by Julaine Fowlin, CFT assistant director

What is the busywork dilemma?

The busywork dilemma is where students perceive that assigned learning activities or assessments are not meaningfully contributing to their learning. Instructors put a lot of effort and time into the design and implementation of these activities, which can be very frustrating. Sometimes activities are designed for learning accountability, engagement, and assessment of understanding. These activities may be before, during, or after class. Students’ misinterpretation of these planned activities as busywork often results in them creating ‘hacks’ to complete the work. For example, students who perceive that a Perusall assignment is just to check participation versus to engage critically with an assigned reading may just highlight a few sentences and not put effort into their commentary.

What makes students perceive intentional learning activities as busywork?

The busywork dilemma occurs in both face to face and online classes. However, the dilemma can be magnified in an online course as these activities become more quantifiable in an online space. For example, students may not perceive an in-class discussion as work but may start counting each discussion forum post they have to make.  Recently a Twitter thread explored the anecdotal reports that students feel like they are being assigned more work than before the pandemic.  Some faculty feel that this perception could be due to more accountability and more explicit or transparent expectations. Others reported that in an online environment, it is more difficult for students to coast without their instructors knowing it. On the flip side, students who are already distressed by the pandemic and related challenges are now being asked to learn in new ways online, which can be discouraging even to very hard-working students.. Beckie Supiano also explores this disparity between students and faculty views in her Chronicle of Higher Education article Teaching: What Students are Up Against .

Before the pandemic, a  study done by Firm Faith Watson,   based on 624 open-ended responses of Master’s level students, investigated the types of experiences that students perceived as satisfying and dissatisfying in online courses. Meaningful coursework was ranked the third-highest factor contributing to students’ satisfaction, with course flexibility/convenience being the highest, and instructional method raking second. Interestingly, the number one dissatisfier was Coursework/learning content itself. Comments associated with this dissatisfaction were cases where students could not easily identify the material’s relevance and where the work felt like ‘busywork.’ Thus, eliminating the perception of ‘busy work’ is vital in ensuring that learners have a satisfactory online learning experience.

Dyment et al. (2020) also advocate that we need to re-evaluate our traditional metric-based tools of engagement in online learning, such as focusing on a certain number of posts and replies. Such activities can alienate students as they perceive them as surveillance.  When they asked students what it means to be engaged online, they mentioned things like working on authentic tasks, working in study groups, expanding knowledge through watching related TED talks,, etc.  I will expand on these ideas below.

While students’ reasons for calling intentional learning activities busywork vary, and some are embedded in misconceptions of learning, there are a couple of common pitfalls to avoid.

Avoiding these will allow learners to see the relevance of learning activities explicitly. The theme that transcends these pitfalls is a lack of connection.

Making Connections to Overcome the Busywork Dilemma

Making connections with all teaching and learning elements will help learners see the relevance of the assignments and optimize the learning outcomes. Below I discuss some nodes of connection.

The first node of connection for any assessment/activity is with the course learning objectives . Instructors usually have this in mind, but it helps to illustrate this connection to learners explicitly. Never assume that learners naturally make connections between the course’s goals and expectations with the assessments and activities. Consider including the relevant course objectives in the assessment/activity description. If the assessment/activity is for an overarching purpose, consider explicitly stating the learning goal in the assessment/activity description. Also, reinforce the purpose of the activity several times. For example, in the assessment/activity description on Brightspace, in your syllabus, and when explaining the assignment in a video or synchronous session. I refer to this as meaningful redundancy . In fact, Abby Parish, Director of Education Innovation and Associate Professor of Nursing at Vanderbilt, shared that she has effectively handled the perception of busywork with communication and course navigation. View the archived recording of the Conversation on Teaching with Abby Parish and Marshall Eakin, Professor of History: Overcoming the ‘busywork’ Dilemma: Creating Meaningful Asynchronous Activities for Student Engagement.

Utilizing the Backward Design approach will ensure that your assessments and activities align with the learning goals.

Drawing on Dyment et al. (2020), we want to think about our objectives and think about the most meaningful evidence of achievement. As we continue to reimagine teaching and learning during a pandemic, I would like us to borrow a term from business, minimum valuable outcome (MVO). MVO positions a business to prioritize what it wants to achieve at the very least to be successful. In the context of teaching, consider “ if my students leave with nothing else this semester,  I would feel I have achieved my goal if they achieved [X].”  By focusing on the [X], our attention is called to develop activities around the core understandings and will reduce the number of smaller activities students tend to perceive as busywork.

Self-reflection questions

• How can you allow learners to clearly see an explicit link between the course’s goals and activities/assessments?
• How can you rethink engagement by focusing on the core understandings of the course?

The second node of the connection is with the discipline or community of practice . Using the situated learning instructional approach developed by Lave and Wenger can help us to make this connection. Situated learning posits that learning should include contexts that allow learners to be immersed in experiences that resemble real-life applications. These contexts are sometimes referred to as authentic contexts. Situated Learning also views learners as embarking on a journey from novices on the periphery looking into experts who join the center of a community of practice. As they move closer to the center, they become more active and engaged with the discipline’s norms. Every course in our curriculum has some real-life applications, consider including these applications. For example, in a Leading Lines Podcast with Humberto Garcia , associate professor of English at UC-Merced, he shared that by switching a journal activity to a blog post for an audience, students became more engaged. They were no longer just writing for the instructor and for a grade they were writing with a more authentic purpose for a real public audience. Previously students viewed the informal journal writings as busywork, and by adding an authentic component through a blog, the class was dynamically transformed. LaTonya Trotter , assistant professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, expressed similar sentiments in another Leading Lines podcast, as she shared how using a blog helped.

“close the loop between thinking of the classroom as a pretend space and thinking of the classroom as a real space” where knowledge can be applied meaningfully and authentically.”

She also addresses busywork…

[To avoid the notion of busywork, we should think about]  “what are the connections between the kind of things we’re practicing in class. And how might we actually sort of take these things that we’ve practiced and perfect them, and then put them out into the world?”

In tandem with situating the learning, everything that is done outside of class should be connected with what is happening in class ; same for other modalities, everything that is done asynchronously should be connected synchronously if there is a synchronous component. If the course is fully asynchronous, there should be opportunities for the instructor to draw on students’ work. For example, in the Leading Lines podcast interview Humberto Garcia , shared that he provided a list where he told students to write their names if they feel comfortable sharing their ideas on the blog post, and he used these as the basis for synchronous whole-class discussion.

Reflection questions :

• How can you allow learners to see the usefulness and value of what they are learning beyond the classroom?
• How can you allow learners to see the connection between assigned activities and assessments and their overall learning of the course content?

The third node of the connection is with the students. Here Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivation may be useful. The acronym represents four elements proposed by John Keller for fostering and maintaining students’ motivation:  Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS). This model is an excellent complement to connecting with objectives and situated learning. Some of these elements will inherently be included if the assessments/activities are situated and connected to course objectives. This handout from Texas Tech University Includes strategies for each component. It’s also important to note that in 2008 Keller added a fifth element, Volition , to capture the differences in persistence among learners.

Attention : Foster engagement through Perceptual (stimulating senses) or Inquiry (stimulating thinking)

Examples : Games, roleplay, varying modality using videos, humor (with caution), playing ‘devil’s advocate’, posing a problem, sharing a story, or case and asking related questions.

Reflection Question : How can you gain and sustain learners’ attention throughout the course

Relevance : Make the value and importance of the learning material apparent to learners by connecting with their professional and personal interests and past experiences.

Example : Give learners a choice in the activities/assessment, such as selecting topics or presentation format. Include opportunities for sharing previous relevant knowledge.

Reflection Questions : Same as the second node: How can you allow learners to see the usefulness and value of what they are learning beyond the classroom?

•  How can you elicit recall of students’ prior knowledge and experiences in assessments and activities?

Confidence : Provide opportunities for learners to feel they can succeed with instructor scaffold or support and feedback.

Examples: Support students with low stakes formative assessments and feedback that contribute to the mastery of bigger summative assessments. Allow students to set learning goals. Share success stories from former students.

Reflection Question : How can you allow learners to feel that your course is designed for their success, and you are available to support them?

Satisfaction : Foster satisfaction through encouragement, praise, and opportunities for immediate application. Learners tend also to find positive experiences where they interact and work with their peers satisfying.

Example: Use group projects where each learner has a valuable role, small self-graded quizzes with feedback, a checklist where students can peer or self grade.

Reflection Question : How can you allow learners to feel a sense of accomplishment and connection with their peers throughout the course?

Volition : Help learners maintain commitment toward achieving learning goals. Weak volition may result in being easily distracted and they may easily quit. Too high volition may result in excessive study preparation. Assessing volition early in the course is important as added motivational strategies may not be needed for students with satisfactory volition and may waste instructor and students’ time. In some cases, motivated students may be annoyed by excessive strategies ( Keller, 2016 ).

Example: Assess the degree of commitment learners bring to the course; this can be as simple as asking students why they are taking the course and what they hope to achieve.

• During the pandemic, some students may have low volition as they struggle to adapt to a new way of learning, and time management becomes a significant challenge. Some of that challenge is on students to manage. Still, instructors can help by (a) making due dates very clear, (b) building in some kind of pattern in due dates (e.g., discussion forum posts are always due on Mondays and Fridays), and (c) providing students assignments well in advance of due dates so they can work ahead.

All other strategies previously discussed can help with volition while realizing that there is also an intrinsic level that is out of the instructor’s control.

Reflection Question : What is in your control to help learners maintain their goal orientation and task-focus throughout the course?

Keller (2016  p.9),  provides an excellent job aid for motivational strategy design.

I love the advice from

• Dyment, J., Stone, C., & Milthorpe, N. (2020). Beyond busy work: rethinking the measurement of online student engagement. Higher Education Research & Development , 1-14.
• Keller, J. M. (2016). Motivation, learning, and technology: Applying the ARCS-V motivation model. Participatory Educational Research , 3 (2), 1-15.
• Watson, F. F. (2016). Using a two-factor framework to optimize online students’ satisfaction while minimizing their dissatisfaction (Doctoral dissertation). Order No. 10137922. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. (1803636297).

Additional CFT Resources

• Active Learning in Hybrid and Physically Distanced Classrooms
• Just in Time Teaching-JiTT

Tags: Active Learning , busywork , Instructional Design , socially distanced teaching

Leave a Response

Teaching guides.

Quick Links

• Services for Departments and Schools
• Examples of Online Instructional Modules

Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

Print article

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

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

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

Homework haterz

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

Nothing more than common kid bellyaching?

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

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

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

How much is too much?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less is often more

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

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

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

More family time

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

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

Homes Nearby

Homes for rent and sale near schools

How families of color can fight for fair discipline in school

Dealing with teacher bias

The most important school data families of color need to consider

Yes! Sign me up for updates relevant to my child's grade.

Please enter a valid email address

Thank you for signing up!

Server Issue: Please try again later. Sorry for the inconvenience

Our websites may use cookies to personalize and enhance your experience. By continuing without changing your cookie settings, you agree to this collection. For more information, please see our University Websites Privacy Notice .

Neag School of Education

How to use homework to support student success.

• by: Sandra Chafouleas
• January 13, 2022
• Community Engagement

Editor’s Note: Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Sandra Chafouleas shares insights on supporting students’ homework during the pandemic in the following piece, which originally appeared  in Psychology Today , where she publishes a blog.

COVID has brought many changes in education. What does it mean for homework?

School assignments that a student is expected to do outside of the regular school day—that’s homework. The general guideline is 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level beginning after kindergarten. This amounts to just a few minutes for younger elementary students to up to 2 hours for high school students.

The guidance seems straightforward enough, so why is homework such a controversial topic? School disruptions, including extended periods of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, have magnified the controversies yet also have provided an opportunity to rethink the purpose and value of homework.

Debates about the value of homework center around two primary issues: amount and inequity.

First, the amount of assigned homework may be much more than the recommended guidelines. Families report their children are stressed out over the time spent doing homework. Too much homework can challenge well-being given the restricted time available for sleep, exercise, and social connection. In a 2015 study , for example, parents reported their early elementary children received almost three times the recommended guidelines. In high school, researchers found an average of three hours of homework per night for students living in economically privileged communities.

“ Debates about the value of homework center around two primary issues: amount and inequity.”

Second, homework can perpetuate inequities. Students attending school in less economically privileged communities may receive little to no homework, or have difficulty completing it due to limited access to needed technology. This can translate into fewer opportunities to learn and may contribute to gaps in achievement.

There isn’t a ton of research on the effects of homework, and available studies certainly do not provide a simple answer. For example, a 2006 synthesis of studies suggested a positive influence between homework completion and academic achievement for middle and high school students. Supporters also point out that homework offers additional opportunities to engage in learning and that it can foster independent learning habits such as planning and a sense of responsibility. A more recent study involving 13-year-old students in Spain found higher test scores for those who were regularly assigned homework in math and science, with an optimal time around one hour—which is roughly aligned with recommendations. However, the researchers noted that ability to independently do the work, student effort, and prior achievement were more important contributors than time spent.

Opponents of homework maintain that the academic benefit does not outweigh the toll on well-being. Researchers have observed student stress, physical health problems, and lack of life balance, especially when the time spent goes over the recommended guidelines. In a survey of adolescents , over half reported the amount and type of homework they received to be a primary source of stress in their lives. In addition, vast differences exist in access and availability of supports, such as internet connection, adult assistance, or even a place to call home, as 1.5 million children experience homelessness in the United States

The COVID-19 pandemic has re-energized discussion about homework practices, with the goal to advance recommendations about how, when, and with whom it can be best used. Here’s a summary of key strategies:

Strategies for Educators

Make sure the tasks are meaningful and matched..

First, the motto “ quality over quantity ” can guide decisions about homework. Homework is not busy-work, and instead should get students excited about learning. Emphasize activities that facilitate choice and interest to extend learning, like choose your own reading adventure or math games. Second, each student should be able to complete homework independently with success. Think about Goldilocks: To be effective, assignments should be just right for each learner. One example of how do this efficiently is through online learning platforms that can efficiently adjust to skill level and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Ensure access to resources for task completion.

One step toward equity is to ensure access to necessary resources such as time, space, and materials. Teach students about preparing for homework success, allocating classroom time to model and practice good study habits such as setting up their physical environment, time management, and chunking tasks. Engage in conversations with students and families to problem-solve challenges When needed, connect students with homework supports available through after-school clubs, other community supports, or even within a dedicated block during the school day.

Be open to revisiting homework policies and practices.

The days of penalizing students for not completing homework should be long gone. Homework is a tool for practicing content and learning self-management. With that in mind, provide opportunities for students to communicate needs, and respond by revising assignments or allowing them to turn in on alternative dates. Engage in adult professional learning about high-quality homework , from value (Should I assign this task?) to evaluation (How should this be graded? Did that homework assignment result in expected outcomes?). Monitor how things are going by looking at completion rates and by asking students for their feedback. Be willing to adapt the homework schedule or expectations based on what is learned.

Strategies for Families

Understand how to be a good helper..

When designed appropriately, students should be able to complete homework with independence. Limit homework wars by working to be a good helper. Hovering, micromanaging, or doing homework for them may be easiest in the moment but does not help build their independence. Be a good helper by asking guiding questions, providing hints, or checking for understanding. Focus your assistance on setting up structures for homework success, like space and time.

Use homework as a tool for communication.

Use homework as a vehicle to foster family-school communication. Families can use homework as an opportunity to open conversations about specific assignments or classes, peer relationships, or even sleep quality that may be impacting student success. For younger students, using a daily or weekly home-school notebook or planner can be one way to share information. For older students, help them practice communicating their needs and provide support as needed.

Make sure to balance wellness.

Like adults, children need a healthy work-life balance. Positive social connection and engagement in pleasurable activities are important core principles to foster well-being . Monitor the load of homework and other structured activities to make sure there is time in the daily routine for play. Play can mean different things to different children: getting outside, reading for pleasure, and yes, even gaming. Just try to ensure that activities include a mix of health-focused activities such as physical movement or mindfulness downtime.

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accredits the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Read more about CAEP Accreditation, including the programs covered and the accountability measures .

Some content on this website may require the use of a plug-in, such as  Adobe Acrobat Viewer .

• Support the Neag School

Neag School of Education 249 Glenbrook Road, Unit 3064 Charles B. Gentry Building Storrs, CT 06269-3064

860-486-3815 [email protected]

Is homework a necessary evil?

After decades of debate, researchers are still sorting out the truth about homework’s pros and cons. One point they can agree on: Quality assignments matter.

By Kirsten Weir

March 2016, Vol 47, No. 3

Print version: page 36

• Schools and Classrooms

Homework battles have raged for decades. For as long as kids have been whining about doing their homework, parents and education reformers have complained that homework's benefits are dubious. Meanwhile many teachers argue that take-home lessons are key to helping students learn. Now, as schools are shifting to the new (and hotly debated) Common Core curriculum standards, educators, administrators and researchers are turning a fresh eye toward the question of homework's value.

But when it comes to deciphering the research literature on the subject, homework is anything but an open book.

The 10-minute rule

In many ways, homework seems like common sense. Spend more time practicing multiplication or studying Spanish vocabulary and you should get better at math or Spanish. But it may not be that simple.

Homework can indeed produce academic benefits, such as increased understanding and retention of the material, says Duke University social psychologist Harris Cooper, PhD, one of the nation's leading homework researchers. But not all students benefit. In a review of studies published from 1987 to 2003, Cooper and his colleagues found that homework was linked to better test scores in high school and, to a lesser degree, in middle school. Yet they found only faint evidence that homework provided academic benefit in elementary school ( Review of Educational Research , 2006).

Then again, test scores aren't everything. Homework proponents also cite the nonacademic advantages it might confer, such as the development of personal responsibility, good study habits and time-management skills. But as to hard evidence of those benefits, "the jury is still out," says Mollie Galloway, PhD, associate professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. "I think there's a focus on assigning homework because [teachers] think it has these positive outcomes for study skills and habits. But we don't know for sure that's the case."

Even when homework is helpful, there can be too much of a good thing. "There is a limit to how much kids can benefit from home study," Cooper says. He agrees with an oft-cited rule of thumb that students should do no more than 10 minutes a night per grade level — from about 10 minutes in first grade up to a maximum of about two hours in high school. Both the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association support that limit.

Beyond that point, kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress.

In a recent study of Spanish students, Rubén Fernández-Alonso, PhD, and colleagues found that students who were regularly assigned math and science homework scored higher on standardized tests. But when kids reported having more than 90 to 100 minutes of homework per day, scores declined ( Journal of Educational Psychology , 2015).

"At all grade levels, doing other things after school can have positive effects," Cooper says. "To the extent that homework denies access to other leisure and community activities, it's not serving the child's best interest."

Children of all ages need down time in order to thrive, says Denise Pope, PhD, a professor of education at Stanford University and a co-founder of Challenge Success, a program that partners with secondary schools to implement policies that improve students' academic engagement and well-being.

"Little kids and big kids need unstructured time for play each day," she says. Certainly, time for physical activity is important for kids' health and well-being. But even time spent on social media can help give busy kids' brains a break, she says.

All over the map

But are teachers sticking to the 10-minute rule? Studies attempting to quantify time spent on homework are all over the map, in part because of wide variations in methodology, Pope says.

A 2014 report by the Brookings Institution examined the question of homework, comparing data from a variety of sources. That report cited findings from a 2012 survey of first-year college students in which 38.4 percent reported spending six hours or more per week on homework during their last year of high school. That was down from 49.5 percent in 1986 ( The Brown Center Report on American Education , 2014).

The Brookings report also explored survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which asked 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students how much homework they'd done the previous night. They found that between 1984 and 2012, there was a slight increase in homework for 9-year-olds, but homework amounts for 13- and 17-year-olds stayed roughly the same, or even decreased slightly.

Yet other evidence suggests that some kids might be taking home much more work than they can handle. Robert Pressman, PhD, and colleagues recently investigated the 10-minute rule among more than 1,100 students, and found that elementary-school kids were receiving up to three times as much homework as recommended. As homework load increased, so did family stress, the researchers found ( American Journal of Family Therapy , 2015).

Many high school students also seem to be exceeding the recommended amounts of homework. Pope and Galloway recently surveyed more than 4,300 students from 10 high-achieving high schools. Students reported bringing home an average of just over three hours of homework nightly ( Journal of Experiential Education , 2013).

On the positive side, students who spent more time on homework in that study did report being more behaviorally engaged in school — for instance, giving more effort and paying more attention in class, Galloway says. But they were not more invested in the homework itself. They also reported greater academic stress and less time to balance family, friends and extracurricular activities. They experienced more physical health problems as well, such as headaches, stomach troubles and sleep deprivation. "Three hours per night is too much," Galloway says.

In the high-achieving schools Pope and Galloway studied, more than 90 percent of the students go on to college. There's often intense pressure to succeed academically, from both parents and peers. On top of that, kids in these communities are often overloaded with extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs. "They're very busy," Pope says. "Some kids have up to 40 hours a week — a full-time job's worth — of extracurricular activities." And homework is yet one more commitment on top of all the others.

"Homework has perennially acted as a source of stress for students, so that piece of it is not new," Galloway says. "But especially in upper-middle-class communities, where the focus is on getting ahead, I think the pressure on students has been ratcheted up."

Yet homework can be a problem at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well. Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, Internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs, says Lea Theodore, PhD, a professor of school psychology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. They are less likely to have computers or a quiet place to do homework in peace.

"Homework can highlight those inequities," she says.

Quantity vs. quality

One point researchers agree on is that for all students, homework quality matters. But too many kids are feeling a lack of engagement with their take-home assignments, many experts say. In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful.

"Students are assigned a lot of busywork. They're naming it as a primary stressor, but they don't feel it's supporting their learning," Galloway says.

"Homework that's busywork is not good for anyone," Cooper agrees. Still, he says, different subjects call for different kinds of assignments. "Things like vocabulary and spelling are learned through practice. Other kinds of courses require more integration of material and drawing on different skills."

But critics say those skills can be developed with many fewer hours of homework each week. Why assign 50 math problems, Pope asks, when 10 would be just as constructive? One Advanced Placement biology teacher she worked with through Challenge Success experimented with cutting his homework assignments by a third, and then by half. "Test scores didn't go down," she says. "You can have a rigorous course and not have a crazy homework load."

Still, changing the culture of homework won't be easy. Teachers-to-be get little instruction in homework during their training, Pope says. And despite some vocal parents arguing that kids bring home too much homework, many others get nervous if they think their child doesn't have enough. "Teachers feel pressured to give homework because parents expect it to come home," says Galloway. "When it doesn't, there's this idea that the school might not be doing its job."

Galloway argues teachers and school administrators need to set clear goals when it comes to homework — and parents and students should be in on the discussion, too. "It should be a broader conversation within the community, asking what's the purpose of homework? Why are we giving it? Who is it serving? Who is it not serving?"

Until schools and communities agree to take a hard look at those questions, those backpacks full of take-home assignments will probably keep stirring up more feelings than facts.

Further reading

• Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1–62. doi: 10.3102/00346543076001001
• Galloway, M., Connor, J., & Pope, D. (2013). Nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81 (4), 490–510. doi: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469
• Pope, D., Brown, M., & Miles, S. (2015). Overloaded and underprepared: Strategies for stronger schools and healthy, successful kids . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Letters to the Editor

• Send us a letter

Futurity is your source of research news from leading universities.

• About Futurity
• Universities
• Environment

Despite debates, homework is still ‘essential’ for kids

(Credit: Getty Images )

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein.

“It’s always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work,” says Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too.

The National Network of Partnership Schools, which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program.

For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class , a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

“We’re not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them ,” says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework.

Here, Epstein discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the “no-homework” approach gets wrong:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units.

For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we’ve asked teachers what’s the best homework you’ve ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas.

To be clear, parents should never be asked to “teach” seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It’s always the student’s homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way.

Our data show that with “good” assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, “I learned what’s happening in the curriculum.” It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools, a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families “attend” with them whether a teacher can “see” the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter’s elementary school doesn’t assign homework until third grade. What’s your take on “no homework” policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. “No homework” does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement. However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this “result.”

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students’ parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students’ families.

We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I’m thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just “do the next three examples on page 38.” Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education .

Source: Vicky Hallett for Johns Hopkins University

Bonds with teachers boost interest in math class

To get kids into science, engage the whole family, these messages boost preschool learning activities at home, stay connected. subscribe to our newsletter..

Add your information below to receive daily updates.

• Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

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

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

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

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

Should we get rid of homework?

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

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

Mr. Kang argues:

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

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• September 7 BSTN kicks off the year on a high note
• September 4 Girls’ varsity field hockey falls to Saint Ignatius in low-scoring affair
• September 3 Photo essay: Girls’ varsity tennis gives Terra Linda a Giant surprise with 7-0 win
• September 1 Varsity football grinds in season-opening win over San Leandro
• August 31 Girls’ varsity field hockey dominates Pleasant Valley
• August 25 BTSD kicks off new school year on right note
• August 25 The foundation of democracy: Voting education in school
• July 12 Utopia or Dystopia? The hidden history of Bay Area cults
• June 29 Public protests and perspectives
• June 27 Reflejando otra vez con los ELD seniors
• June 27 A letter to sophomores: how to run next year’s marathon
• June 22 What it means to be a Giant

Redwood Bark

Stressing the issue of busy work.

Henrik Vraanes May 11, 2023

Throughout my time as a student, I have noticed that as I have progressed through school, there has been more and more homework. However, a lot of it is just busy work that doesn’t help me better understand the material. It feels as if homework is simply a waste of my time. Instead teachers should carefully assign necessary homework instead of giving assignments that become busy work. When teachers assign less homework to students, they will begin to feel less stress in their lives and begin to perform better in class and life.

When it comes down to stress, Healthline claims that “more than 70 percent of students said they were ‘often or always stressed over schoolwork,’ with 56 percent listing homework as a primary stressor.”

 This overwhelming statistic demonstrates the damage that homework overload can cause in a student’s life.

When students experience stress, it can lead to many different problems, including lack of focus and other mental health problems which can negatively impact a student’s well-being. 

Joseph Lathan, a University of California San Diego (UCSD) professor, spoke to this sentiment. 

“Research showed that excessive homework is associated with high-stress levels, physical health problems, and lack of balance in children’s lives; 56 percent of the students in the study cited homework as a primary stressor in their lives,” Lathan said.

 This statistic further illustrates the burden that homework brings upon students, something that is harmful towards their mental health. Many Redwood students claim that homework is the most dominant form of anxiety in their lives. Even worse, homework loads can be changed by teachers themselves, meaning that the stress that students are dealing with is very preventable.

According to a 2023 Bark survey, 40 percent of Redwood students surveyed said they felt very stressed about homework. Additionally, 39 percent of students said their burnout and lack of motivation was due to unnecessary assignments. Both of these statistics give insight into students’ minds that deal with useless homework every day. Redwood teachers should make a change by filtering out all of the unnecessary homework assignments and instead give reduced and concise homework assignments that truly benefit students.

A student, teacher, or parent may argue that homework is helpful toward education, and thus busy work should be assigned to students every night. They may claim that this allows for further learning at home, including developing skills like time management, priorities, and effort. While these skills are all very important for the future of students, meaningless work being assigned for homework is not the way to do it. Students’ time could be better used for doing meaningful homework assignments that will further help them in the following class, along with building skills that are used later in life. When a teacher gives students more freedom and better opportunities to learn, they can find meaning in homework.

All the unimportant busy work that is given to a student could be better used in reviewing for a test or doing something one loves. Instead, teachers use homework as an excuse to bombard students with work that just ends up being a chore, which does not further prepare students for the following class. When a teacher gives students more freedom, along with better opportunities to learn, students are then able to find a use for homework.

Henrik Vraanes is a senior and is in his third year writing for The Redwood Bark. He is the sports editor for the Redwood Bark. He enjoys golfing at McInnis...

View this profile on Instagram The Redwood Bark (@ theredwoodbark ) • Instagram photos and videos

On Thursday, Sept. 5, at 5:30 p.m., the annual Back to School Night (BTSN) opened in the gym with varsity cheer and Advanced Performance Workshop...

After winning their first two games of the season, girls’ varsity field hockey faced a mighty challenge on Wednesday, Sep. 4, going up against...

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, the girls’ varsity tennis team hosted Terra Linda for their third match of the season. Despite the sweltering heat,...

Varsity football grinds in season-opening win over San Leandro

The power of a piercing

Concerning trends and evolving interactions: A new social media reality

• Our Mission

Homework vs. No Homework Is the Wrong Question

Does your school have a homework policy? How does your school ensure that teachers don’t overload students with busy work?

The real question we should be asking is, "What do we believe should happen after the end of the school day to help ensure that students retain what they have learned and are primed to learn more?" Any answer with the word, "work" in its name, as in "homework," is not typically going to be met with eagerness or enthusiasm by students.

Ideally, we want children to understand that they are always learners. In school, we refer to them as "students" but outside of school, as children, they are still learners. So it makes no sense to even advertise a "no homework" policy in a school. It sends the wrong message. The policy should be, "No time-wasting, rote, repetitive tasks will be assigned that lack clear instructional or learning purposes."

A realistic homework strategy should be a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year. But it should also reflect a considered school policy and not simply be up to each individual teacher to carry out according to his or own theory of student learning. Another advantage of this approach is to ensure that individual children are not inadvertently overloaded with demands from teachers who may not know what other teachers are asking of the same student. This is a particular concern in secondary schools.

Home Activities That Matter the Most

Children should be encouraged to read, write, perform arithmetic, better understand the world around them in terms of civics, science, and the arts, and, of course, develop their people skills -- their emotional intelligence. This encouragement should be part of everyday family interactions outside of school, and the school should provide developmental guidance to all parents, in the appropriate languages, to help them do this. For some children, specialized guidance will be needed, and this, too, should be provided proactively to parents.

Some parents will select focused programs or after-school experiences to help foster their children's learning in one or more of the aforementioned areas. To promote equity within and across schools, communities should think about how to make these kinds of experiences available to all children in high-quality ways -- without undue or unrealistic expense to families.

Of course, some teachers will have specific, creative ideas about how learning can be enhanced at home, in the context of particular units of study in school. Maybe what we need is a new word for all this. Instead of "homework," how about "continued learning" or "ongoing growth activities?"

Parents Playing Their Part

Finally, students' learning would be greatly enhanced by schools taking a clear stance about supporting good parenting. My colleague Yoni Schwab and I have written about the importance of parents focusing on parenting as a priority, and secondarily working on assisting schools with educational issues (Elias, M. J., and Schwab, Y., 2004).

Aspects of good parenting that could be encouraged by schools include workshops, family nights, and discussion series on ways to promote:

• Children's social-emotional and character development
• Parents spending more time directly interacting with their kids in enjoyable ways
• Parents visibly showing how much they value the importance of education and effort
• Parents monitoring their children's use of and exposure to electronic media
• Children's "continued learning" in as many possible opportunities during everyday household routines
• Above all, schools should remind parents to never lose sight of modeling for their children the value of close relationships, support, caring, and fun. That is the most important home work of all.

Elias, M. J., and Schwab, Y. (2004). What About Parental Involvement in Parenting? The Case for Home-Focused School-Parent Partnerships. Education Week, 24 (8), 39,41.

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

• Student information
• Faculty/Staff information

We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you. Your selection is stored in a browser cookie which you can remove at any time using “Clear all personalization” below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

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

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

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

A balancing act

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

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

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

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

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

High-performing paradox

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

Student perspectives

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

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

Media Contacts

Denise Pope, Stanford Graduate School of Education: (650) 725-7412, [email protected] Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected]

5 Signs Your Kids are Doing Busywork, Not Useful Homework

• March 26, 2024
• Homeschooling FAQS , Homeschooling methods , Why Homeschool (Reasons)

In this article, we’ll talk about what busywork is and how it’s different from helpful homework .

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post. If you want to do my course on how to homeschool, click here .

We’ll also identify the signs of busywork.

Then, we’ll identify useful work and time-wasting activities in class.

Finally, we’ll examine why some curriculum (or teachers) assign busywork.

Let’s dive in and get started!

Affiliate links are used in this post. 

What is Busywork

Busywork is material in a curriculum that might take much of your child’s attention and time but doesn’t give them any educational value.

Even though a child might look extremely busy, they’re not learning much from the work they’re doing.

The work is often given to keep students occupied.

Simultaneously, little thought is given to the educational content of the material.

Some teachers think busywork is useful if substitute teachers take a class and don’t want to introduce new material until the old teacher is back.

However, this is often only useful for the teachers and fails to use students’ precious time .

If busywork is given to reiterate a concept that’s already been learned, it’s arguable it’s not busywork but useful homework.

Signs Its Busywork, Not Useful Work

There are a few signs that your child’s work isn’t useful work they can learn from, but busywork.

Below, we look at five signs that could indicate your child is doing busywork .

1. It’s Been Done Before

One of the hallmarks of busywork is repetition .

If your child has done the work several times before, it could be a time-wasting activity.

While children sometimes need repetition to learn a concept (such as a difficult math problem or some reading words), work is often assigned far too often.

It’s like children do a lot of overkill homework .

It’s much better to let children go outside to run around and enjoy the air instead of embittering them toward education by making it mind-numbingly repetitious.

2.     Busywork Doesn’t Further Education

The purpose of education is often to further our knowledge in specific areas.

At the point where children are not furthering their education, we must question whether it’s educational, or just busywork.

Ask yourself if your child would gain more if they did something else like spending the time:

• doing physical education
• playing outdoors and enjoying nature or
• with family.

If children attend school, much of their time is already eaten away by their schoolwork.

Busywork takes away valuable time with parents but doesn’t give children anything in return .

Unfortunately, busywork is a favorite of some teachers .

They have to keep kids busy while they are stuck inside a building.

‘They need something to do!’ says the teacher.

However, if children could follow their interests, they wouldn’t have to be assigned material that didn’t further their education.

To be clear, this is an inherent criticism of the setup of school classrooms and models.

(Often, students are given a video which some teachers pass off as ‘educational’.

Don’t be fooled into thinking videos are always – or even often – educational.

Many are just time-wasters where children learn nothing.)

3. It’s Irrelevant to the Subject

Sometimes children are given time-wasting work to do that’s irrelevant to the subject .

They might be handed sheets of work on things they’ve never studied or things that are too simple or hard for them.

While some might be useful, many are irrelevant busywork activities designed to fill up time at the end of the classroom period.

(I recently heard of a teacher who was himself studying a course at a tertiary institution and assigned his high school students busywork so they could research his homework for him!)

4. It’s Boring

Another way to identify busywork is when you see students doing something they’re not interested in.

They remain on a base level of functioning , trying to get through the monotonous work they’ve been given.

Surely, learning shouldn’t work like this!

Children – especially young children – learn best when they’re interested in a subject .

They learn best when they’re exploring the world around them.

This is because it activates more of the brain to help with the task.

Children integrate previous learning and add to their knowledge as they do this.

So, unless absolutely necessary, stay away from curricula that tend to bore children instead of engendering them with a love of learning.

5.     Your Child is Too Advanced for Their Class

Some children might find teacher handouts or activities busywork, while others might benefit from the work.

That is, it might not be busywork for some, but if you have a gifted child, they may already know the work.

A customized education like homeschooling is a great option if you have a child who’s particularly frustrated at the slow pace of work they’ve been given at school.

Homeschooling allows children to work at their own pace in every subject.

They can follow their interests and study what truly fascinates them.

Why Teachers Assign Busywork

Teachers assign busywork for a few reasons.

Some of these are fair enough, while others indicate lazy teachers who don’t care about their students.

• Sometimes substitute teachers assign busywork because they don’t know what the regular teacher is up to in the curriculum the children follow. Staff shortages mean teachers may be changed from time to time. The substitute teacher may not want to ‘mess up the curriculum’ by teaching something that hasn’t been taught before. So, they assign busywork.
• Proper work takes preparation. This can be time-consuming for teachers, and the best teachers will do this work. However, the worst teachers won’t care about their class and will arrive unprepared. This is another hallmark of substitute teachers (and who can blame them) because who wants to put in hours of preparation for a class you’ll only be teaching for a day or two?
• A teacher who doesn’t care if her class is interested in the work they’re doing won’t prepare for the day. If a student is unfortunate enough to have a teacher like this for a whole year, they can expect to emerge from that year having learned little of what they might have had if they had a teacher with more pizazz.
• They’re exhausted. Sometimes, teachers are exhausted from a hard term, and they are hanging out for a break. We all have days when, even if we’re usually a good worker, we put in a bad day’s work on specific days. For teachers, their exhaustion days come at the end of the week, after an excursion, or towards the end of the term. For example, teachers tend to hand out more busywork the day before Christmas break than the first day of school.

What You Can Do

If parents want to involve their children in education that will help them learn more, consider creating activities for your children yourself.

You don’t need a teacher to give your children educational experiences!

This is what a lot of homeschooling parents do.

They take their children’s education into their own hands, and they certainly haven’t seen any negative test scores as a result .

What you can do to stop the busywork

If you’ve identified that your child has too much busywork at school, you have two popular options:

• Talk to their teacher about a more individualized homework plan
• Homeschool your children

A good way to tackle too much busywork is to talk to your child’s teacher and ask them to reassess the amount of homework they’re assigning your child.

Maybe they’ll be willing to personalize your child’s homework or exempt them from it entirely.

Unfortunately, some teachers assign the same homework to all their students and want all their students to do the work, even if they know the material.

Over the years, this wastes a huge amount of time.

The Homeschool Option

This is when homeschooling could be a great option.

Many people homeschool their children because they get frustrated with the amount of time they spend doing busy work at school .

They see that their children will learn so much more if they can study at their own pace with an individualized, self-paced curriculum .

For this reason, gifted children make up a large proportion of homeschoolers, as home education allows them to put their busy minds to work with more of a challenge than most schools can give them.

(You can find out more about homeschooling at this link.)

I Was Homeschooled – A Great Experience

I’m a homeschool graduate myself, and I love homeschooling.

You can read about my experience here .

As I now look at homeschooling my own son, I wonder if it would be enjoyable and if our family could afford it .

I aired these concerns to my parents, and my mother said she loved homeschooling us.

My dad said the years he spent homeschooling were – by far –  the happiest years of his life.

They said that parents might have to give up some things in life to homeschool (having said this, they thrived financially on one income), but it’s so worth it!

And you get back so much in return.

Does More Homework Give Students Better Grades?

Many people believe there is a correlation between students’ time spent on books and their marks.

But this is a huge misconception .

This is what Alfie Kohn, an education author, said on the topic:

[N]o research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school .  In fact, there isn’t even a positive correlation between, on the one hand, having younger children do some homework (vs. none), or more (vs. less), and, on the other hand, any measure of achievement.  If we’re making 12-year-olds, much less five-year-olds, do homework, it’s either because we’re misinformed about what the evidence says or because we think kids ought to have to do homework despite what the evidence says .

Furthermore, too much homework can actually lower test scores !

So, we must be careful when assigning work to our children.

We need to change the way we think about the work we give our students by realizing these things don’t always lead to learning in our students.

What is Homework or Useful Work

Homework differs from busywork in that it continues a child’s learning from where it left off in the classroom.

In school, students can take work home, learn at their own pace, and discover concepts they must work on.

In a homeschool situation, useful work adds to a child’s learning.

So they don’t reach the end of the lesson and realize they’ve learned nothing new.

Of course, students may need to repeat concepts in different ways.

This happens in subjects like chemistry, mathematics, and vocabulary.

However, this repetition is normal in some subjects.

Indeed a lot of concepts are taught effectively when students repeat ideas multiple times .

(Like Latin curriculum programs . There’s lots of repetition in them.)

To better understand chemistry math problems, students benefit from tackling slightly different problem sets.

This lets them approach the same concept from various angles.

The concept they’re learning might be very difficult, but by the time they’ve done it 10 times, they’ll find they know how to solve it easily.

Note: Parent/family involvement may be for family bonding.

Busywork in Packaged Homeschool Curricula

Sometimes, there’s busywork included in a curriculum that you might buy to homeschool with .

This is because many of these curricula are designed for use in schools.

Parents can circumvent this by buying alternate-year packages if they have a gifted student.

I skip the review lessons in my curriculum BJU Press .

You can also quickly review your child’s work for the day and leave anything that looks like busywork .

If your child always gets 90 to 100 percent on tests, this could be a sign that the work is too easy for them.

Another way to avoid busywork is to choose an eclectic homeschooling method .

This lets you to be flexible about what your children learn .

It allows you to say, ‘We’re going to do this bookwork, leave this bookwork, and go outside and do some garden work later.’

We too often make the mistake that for children to learn, they have to do an ‘educational’ activity. Like a workbook or assignment. But this isn’t true because learning happens all the time! Learning happens best when we incorporate interest-based learning in the subject. Don’t worry if you can’t quantify your children’s knowledge through testing or other grading methods. Chances are they’ll be taking a lot in. And maybe even understand more than they ever did when filling out a worksheet!

Rebecca Devitt

Most adults don't particularly want to relive their schooling experience on a daily basis. They would gladly move on to a new life devoid of homework and teachers. Very, very few adults will passionately blog about their schooling some 15 years after graduating. This makes Rebecca Devitt somewhat unique. As it happens, she was homeschooled. And she loved it. Still does. And she wishes every kid could get a taste of homeschooling at its very best. Her website How Do I Homeschool , is a springboard for parents to see what a life of homeschooling could be for both them & their children. When she's not blogging Rebecca is still homeschooling her-adult-self by learning Latin, growing weird vegetables and most importantly looking after her two children Luke & Penny. She has a husband Tristan and is a participant at Wollongong Baptist Church. She's also written a book about why parents should homeschool called 'Why on Earth Homeschool' .

Related Posts

What is Unschooling? (Unschooling vs Homeschooling Methods)

Classical Homeschool Method: An IN-DEPT Introduction

10 Benefits of Debating in Classrooms: Importance of Debate in Education

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name  *

Email  *

Add Comment

I accept the Privacy Policy

Post Comment

BLOG | PODCAST NETWORK | ADMIN. MASTERMIND | SWAG & MERCH | ONLINE TRAINING

• Meet the Team
• Join the Team
• Our Philosophy
• Teach Better Mindset
• Custom Professional Development
• Livestream Shows & Videos
• Administrator Mastermind
• Academy Online Courses
• EDUcreator Club+
• Podcast Network
• Speakers Network
• Free Downloads
• Ambassador Program
• Free Facebook Group
• Professional Development
• Request Training
• Speakers Network Home
• Keynote Speakers

Is It Homework or Busy Work?

Chad Ostrowski December 7, 2016 Blog , Innovate Better , Lead Better

It’s The Age Old Debate.

Depending on which camp you belong to, you are either starting to get fired up about students needing practice at home, OR you are thinking “down with homework!”

To be honest, I see the merit of both arguments and there is a lot of research out there that supports practice and also says additional work doesn’t improve student outcomes. I could reference and review all of this research but you probably don’t want to read it and I’d really like to get to my primary point here. The real debate shouldn’t be “practice v. no homework.” It should be about what KIND of work you are assigning.

Is What You’re Assigning Worthwhile for YOU and Your Learners?

Instead of taking a firm stance on either side of this argument, I’m gong to propose a new one. I don’t think the argument should be “homework v. no homework.” I think it should be “meaningful v. busy work”. I cringe when I hear about homework quotas or required amounts of assigned work that is to be done at home for students.

Your students are the victims of these mandates.

Is the homework you are assigning worth it? Most of the time we end up creating assignments out of thin air, with very little thought or planning in terms of continued growth or mastery from the classroom. When homework is mandated, the purpose of this work is diminished.

Homework (or as as a mentor of mine once called it, “Continued Learning Opportunities”) should either extend knowledge from the classroom in short amounts (seriously like 15 – 20 minutes tops) OR it should help students complete unfinished work they did not get to during the allotted time.

Yes…this means some students won’t have homework if they finished their class work. But why should they? Just because you want something else to grade?? It doesn’t make any sense. If they accomplished what you feel the needed to accomplish, they’re good. The question is, did you assign what was needed to get them where they need to be?

Questions to Ask When Assigning Homework:

Is it worth the student’s time? – If the homework is meaningless repetition and does not extend learning or help the student complete learning they started in class, its probably not worth their time.

Is it worth your time? – I know some of you are saying, “I just do homework for participation.” But if no corrective feedback or meaning is given to the actual work being done, is it worth your time to assess and grade the work?

Is it busy work or meaningful work? –  If the homework you are assigning was manufactured to exist “just because it is supposed to,” save yourself and your students the time and pitch it. If the assigned work doesn’t have meaning or thoughtful purpose, quit wasting your learner’s time, and quit wasting yours!

In My Classroom.

For my students, homework is only assigned to them if they fail to complete an assignment during normal class time. Even then they are given the opportunity to complete it the next day. It is only when they are not able to complete it during class time during a given week that it becomes homework.

This creates a culture and environment where students end up assigning themselves homework and owning their decision to not utilize their classroom time properly. This increases ownership and makes the learning more meaningful. The learning opportunities provided to my students are laid out and put into a mastery based system  so that their entire learning journey is mapped out and clear to them. This journey does not require busy work, or “extra” practice, because that is built into the system.

Next Time You Want to “Make” Homework for Your Students

Please think about what you are actually assigning them. Think about the meaning and the purpose behind it. And most importantly, ask yourself, “is this helping my students learn more, or just keeping them busy?”

Homework: An Hour a Day Is All the Experts Say

Too much homework can be counterproductive..

Posted April 20, 2015

• What Is Stress?
• Take our Burnout Test
• Find a therapist to overcome stress

How much time does your teen spend doing busy school work each night? According to a recent study, if it's more than one hour… then it's too much. A study from Spain published in the Journal of Educational Psychology by the American Psychological Association found that spending more than one hour on math and science homework can be counterproductive. Students seem to gain the most benefit when a small amount of homework is consistently assigned, rather than large portions assigned at once.

The study examined the performance of 7,725 public and private school students (mean age 13.78 years). Students answered questions about the frequency of homework assigned and how long it took them to complete assignments. Researchers looked at standardized tests to examine academic performance in math and science. They found that students in Spain spent approximately one to two hours per day doing homework. Compare that to studies that indicate American students spent more than three hours a day doing homework!

Researchers found that teachers who assigned 90-100 minutes of homework per day had students who performed poorer on standardized tests than those with less homework. However when teachers consistently assigned small amounts of homework students scored nearly 50 points higher on standardized test than those who had daunting amounts of homework. Another interesting finding from this study was students who were assigned about 70 minutes of homework, of which they needed help from someone else to complete, scored in the 50th percentile on standardized tests. Whereas those who were assigned the same amount of homework, but could do it independently, scored in the 70th percentile. So clearly, not only is the amount of homework assigned of importance, but so is the ability to master it independently.

There are several possible explanations for these findings. First, teachers may be using homework as a means to cover what was not completed in class. So rather than practicing concepts taught in class, students are left to self-teach material not covered in class. Homework should supplement learning, and not be used as a tool to keep up with a curriculum pacing guide. Another explanation for testing gains is those who work to master material independently experience more academic success.

The study out of Spain supports findings from another study published a year ago published in the Journal of Experimental Education which found that too much homework can have a negative impact on teens’ lives outside of the academic setting. In this study, researchers surveyed 4,317 American high school students’ perceptions about homework, in relation to their well-being and behavioral engagement in school work. On average, these students reported spending approximately 3.1 hours of homework each night—a far reach from the hour per night recommendation by the first study.

This second study found that too much homework can be counterproductive and diminish the effectiveness of learning. The negative effects of lots of homework can far outweigh the positive ones. Researchers found that a lot of homework can result in:

Students reported high levels of stress associated with school work. Below is the breakdown of student responses.

56% of students in this study reported that homework was a primary source of stress 43% of students in this study reported that tests were another source of stress 33% of students in this study reported that pressure to get good grades was a source of stress

• Physical Problems:

Students reported that homework led to:

poor sleep frequent headaches gastro intestinal problems weight loss/gain.

• Social life problems.

How can students expect to spend time with others when they are too busy completing homework? Students reported that having too much school work keeps them from spending time with friends and family.

Plus too much school work keep them from participating in extra-curricular activities and engaging in activities they enjoy doing. Interestingly, many students reported that homework was a “pointless” or “mindless” way to keep their grades up. In other words… it was "busy" work.

When is homework beneficial? If homework is used as a tool to facilitate learning and reinforce concepts taught in the classroom then it enriches students academic experience. While homework does serve a purpose, so does having a life outside of school. Sometimes social development can be just as important as academic development. So the answer may be helping youth find a balance between school and social life.

Journal Reference:

Rubén Fernández-Alonso, Javier Suárez-Álvarez, José Muñiz. Adolescents’ Homework Performance in Mathematics and Science: Personal Factors and Teaching Practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2015; DOI:10.1037/edu0000032

Raychelle Cassada Lohman n , M.S., LPC, is the author of The Anger Workbook for Teens .

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

How Much Homework is Too Much?

When redesigning a course or putting together a new course, faculty often struggle with how much homework and readings to assign. Too little homework and students might not be prepared for the class sessions or be able to adequately practice basic skills or produce sufficient in-depth work to properly master the learning goals of the course. Too much and some students may feel overwhelmed and find it difficult to keep up or have to sacrifice work in other courses.

A common rule of thumb is that students should study three hours for each credit hour of the course, but this isn’t definitive. Universities might recommend that students spend anywhere from two or three hours of study or as much as six to nine hours of study or more for each course credit hour. A 2014 study found that, nationwide, college students self reported spending about 17 hours each week on homework, reading and assignments. Studies of high school students show that too much homework can produce diminishing returns on student learning, so finding the right balance can be difficult.

There are no hard and fast rules about the amount of readings and homework that faculty assign. It will vary according to the university, the department, the level of the classes, and even other external factors that impact students in your course. (Duke’s faculty handbook addresses many facets of courses, such as absences, but not the typical amount of homework specifically.)

To consider the perspective of a typical student that might be similar to the situations faced at Duke, Harvard posted a blog entry by one of their students aimed at giving students new to the university about what they could expect. There are lots of readings, of course, but time has to be spent on completing problem sets, sometimes elaborate multimedia or research projects, responding to discussion posts and writing essays. Your class is one of several, and students have to balance the needs of your class with others and with clubs, special projects, volunteer work or other activities they’re involved with as part of their overall experience.

The Rice Center for Teaching Excellence has some online calculators for estimating class workload that can help you get a general understanding of the time it may take for a student to read a particular number of pages of material at different levels or to complete essays or other types of homework.

To narrow down your decision-making about homework when redesigning or creating your own course, you might consider situational factors that may influence the amount of homework that’s appropriate.

Connection with your learning goals

Is the homework clearly connected with the learning goals of your students for a particular class session or week in the course? Students will find homework beneficial and valuable if they feel that it is meaningful . If you think students might see readings or assignments as busy work, think about ways to modify the homework to make a clearer connection with what is happening in class. Resist the temptation to assign something because the students need to know it. Ask yourself if they will actually use it immediately in the course or if the material or exercises should be relegated to supplementary material.

Levels of performance

The type of readings and homework given to first year students will be very different from those given to more experienced individuals in higher-level courses. If you’re unsure if your readings or other work might be too easy (or too complex) for students in your course, ask a colleague in your department or at another university to give feedback on your assignment. If former students in the course (or a similar course) are available, ask them for feedback on a sample reading or assignment.

Common practices

What are the common practices in your department or discipline? Some departments, with particular classes, may have general guidelines or best practices you can keep in mind when assigning homework.

External factors

What type of typical student will be taking your course? If it’s a course preparing for a major or within an area of study, are there other courses with heavy workloads they might be taking at the same time? Are they completing projects, research, or community work that might make it difficult for them to keep up with a heavy homework load for your course?

Students who speak English as a second language, are first generation students, or who may be having to work to support themselves as they take courses may need support to get the most out of homework. Detailed instructions for the homework, along with outlining your learning goals and how the assignment connects the course, can help students understand how the readings and assignments fit into their studies. A reading guide, with questions prompts or background, can help students gain a better understanding of a reading. Resources to look up unfamiliar cultural references or terms can make readings and assignments less overwhelming.

If you would like more ideas about planning homework and assignments for your course or more information and guidance on course design and assessment, contact Duke Learning Innovation to speak with one of our consultants .

Sat 7 Sept 2024

2024 newspaper of the year

@ Contact us

Your newsletters

I’m a teacher and believe that homework should be banned

California's trying to pass a law banning homework - we should too..

It’s clear that parents are fed up with the amount of homework their children are expected to do every day after school. From as early as reception, children are saddled with often hours of homework a day. Amidst juggling extra-curricular activities, tuition and simply spending time together as a family, it feels like homework is leaving less and less time for children – and their parents – to have a life beyond school.

It’s little wonder that calls to ban homework entirely are growing throughout the western world.

Most recently, the state of California was reported as being close to passing a law to outlaw homework, in order to limit stress for pupils and parents. The Healthy Homework Act, which requires teachers to consider if homework requires parental support and access to technology, has passed both chambers but awaits approval from the state governor.

In the battle against homework, it’s often teachers who are the supposed bad guys – the authoritarian figures in the background inflicting hours of pointless tasks upon our students just for our own amusement. But as a secondary school teacher of eight years, I’m here to tell you that I’m no fan of homework either.

In fact, I’ll let you into a secret: many of us teachers who issue homework in line with the policy of the schools we work at agree that homework should be banned too. It’s not just parents and kids.

My career has taught me that the best learning happens in a classroom under the supervision of a qualified and competent teacher who knows their subject, not an overburdened parent struggling to remember their own decades-old schooling while trying not to burn the fish fingers.

In my view, home is for other types of learning. There is so much for kids to absorb when they are free to actually have a conversation with a family member, to help a parent cook a new recipe or to play outside with a sibling. Often these can be more important than what children get out of doing hours of homework a night.

Then, of course, you have the emotional toll on children with developing brains and bodies that need nurturing (and resting) rather than overburdening.

In 2023, almost two thirds of children reported feeling anxious due to school and the most prominent factor in their stress, experienced by 55 per cent of children, was homework.

There is already a mental health epidemic among young people, fuelled by cuts to vital public services, the legacy of the pandemic and overstretched schools which simply can’t continue to plug the gaps where the state constantly fails.

Teachers like me are paying for parents' lack of discipline

Giving children the space they need to simply have a childhood once they leave the school gates – to play games, to relax, to socialise – would be far more beneficial for their emotional wellbeing than lumbering an extra hour of geography or science onto their already long school day.

But as ever in our fiercely divided nation, homework has the most catastrophic impact on the households that are already struggling.

I’ve seen with my own eyes how the attainment gap widens when some students have quiet, calm homes to study in, and others are living in cramped housing without even a bed of their own let alone a desk. Or when pupils are juggling caring for younger siblings with cooking dinner because their parents are taking extra shifts to make ends meet.

I’ve witnessed the stress inflicted on students who face endless detentions and punishments for incomplete homework, when really the reason behind these missed tasks was out of their control.

The class divide is already so impenetrable within the classroom. So how can we expect homework to do anything but exacerbate the issue? Some children have state of the art tablets and laptops at their disposable (not to mention educated, wealthy parents with enough stability to actually be present in the evenings).

Others have the dwindling data on their mum’s old phone that they need to share with five siblings – and parents who are more concerned with figuring out where the next meal is coming from than book reports and times tables.

In an ideal world in which every young person had the same resources at their disposal, maybe homework wouldn’t be so bad. But we live in a system on its knees thanks to the economic policies of successive governments that have made life progressively harder for the most disadvantaged.

If we really care about tackling inequality, we need to realise that it is unfair to assign a portion of our young people’s daily learning to be done at home. We forget that “home” looks so different for each child.

Nadeine Asbali is a secondary school teacher in London

Most Read By Subscribers