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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640
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The abstract of the paper is at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220973.2012.745469?journalCode=vjxe20#.Uz6wcPldXHV . It says that homework for high school students has diminishing returns beyond 2 hours a night. http://www.oregonlive.com/kiddo/index.ssf/2013/09/back_to_school_homeworks_benef.htmlHomework's benefits questioned in new study by Amy Wang The Oregonian September 05, 2013 A study published this summer, "Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools," asserts that current homework practices in such schools "sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement, and well-being."
The study's three authors include Mollie Galloway, assistant professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College's Graduate School of Education and Counseling, who says by email:
"As parents, we often make assumptions that homework is good for our kids. We assume it promotes learning, responsibility, study skills, and other positive behaviors. The research on homework is less rosy. There is no evidence that homework at the elementary level enhances student achievement, and at the middle and high school level, our study suggests that too much homework can, in fact, have detrimental physical, mental, and social impacts."
The study, which Galloway conducted with Jerusha Conner of Villanova University and Denise Pope of Stanford University, used data from online and paper surveys of 4,317 students at 10 high-performing high schools in communities with a median household income of more than $90,000 per year.
The students answered questions about homework load, homework usefulness, stress, physical health, time for other activities/endeavors, behavioral engagement (for example, how often they tried as hard as they could in school), and demographic and achievement information.
On average, students said they spent a little over three hours a night on homework, work that they generally found "somewhat" but not "very" useful for learning the material. Most of the students, 72 percent, said they were often or always stressed over schoolwork.
The researchers also found that the more homework students reported doing, the more they reported school stress, physical distress, inability to find time for friends and family, and likelihood of dropping one or more activities. Students also reported many "pointless, mundane" and time-consuming assignments.
When asked why they continued to do homework, many students said they were anxious about disappointing their parents and being punished, threatened or ignored if they did not produce good grades, often defined as straight A's.
The study also noted that:
The benefits of homework appear to plateau at about two hours a night for high school students and that beyond two hours, homework may have "detrimental achievement effects."
Students often find homework less engaging than other out-of-school activities, with the exception of homework that is "authentic" and centers on solving real-world problems.
Homework can diminish the quality of family interactions and foster conflict between school and home.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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What such studies routinely ignore, however, is that what instructors view as "reasonable" and entirely possible in a 1 hour session for a student appropriately placed in the course, may NOT in fact be the case. I know what my DD can do with an hour. I also know that for many of her seemingly high-achieving peers, that same output/level of mastery is more like a 2-4 hour endeavor. At some point, parents are going to need to face the fact that if their child NEEDS to spend four hours a night to manage a pair of AP classes, then that placement is probably a reach for that child (assuming that there isn't a known reason that everyone is aware of and okay with). I'm not convinced that teachers are actually intending for students to spend the kind of time that they are spending-- though to be fair, I'm not really sure what they DO expect in a math class that assigns 30 algebra or geometry problems nightly, or class reading that means more than 50 pages a night. That's going to take most students a long time. Students themselves, of course, have long since cynically decided that teachers ALL seem to believe that their class is: a) the most important thing that the students have ever seen-- or will ever see, and that b) it's the only priority in the student's life. See? Two hours of homework? No problem. This is your only priority, after all.  Not saying that I think teachers DO think that. They don't. But they can be a teeeeeensy bit myopic on this score. Occasionally, I mean.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Apr 2009
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And on the other side of the coin, my DS can take 4 hours to do one hour's worth of work, complaining about how unfair school is, and life in general, moaning, groaning, stalling, getting sidetracked, finding a pencil, finding a piece of paper, finding (or not finding because it's still at school) the book, and so on, ad infinitum.
If he'd actually just sit down and do it, it would take him 15 minutes.
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Joined: Sep 2007
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The findings of this study would seem to argue against tiger parenting as a good strategy.
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Joined: Dec 2012
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From where I stand if they used school time more efficiently they wouldn't need homework. I think it is not my job to do the work the teacher's didn't get time to do. I have enough trouble getting other stuff done.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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BINGO. I really don't think that "homework" is justifiable at all below the high school level.
I know of local kindergarten students who have an hour or more a night.
(Truly)
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Mar 2013
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My school district has been trying to lower the amount of homework at all levels including H.S. and to insist that certain weekends (often long weekends) are homework "free". They have done extensive study of this issue and the situation has improved particularly in the elementary the past few years.
BUT and here is the big BUT..
Honors and AP Classes (particular AP classes) don't have to follow these homework rules. Because those classes are optional and only for those who can work at that level. Of course it's those kids that had and still have the insane homework loads.
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Joined: Mar 2013
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BINGO. I really don't think that "homework" is justifiable at all below the high school level.
I know of local kindergarten students who have an hour or more a night.
(Truly) An hour of K homework a night seems quite excessive. My kids had a homework packet in K handed out Monday due Friday. Average kids took about an hour a week to do the package. The work was broken in work for each day, but many kids just sat down and completed the whole thing on Monday. Much of it was handwriting practice. I realized that K homework was primary used for two reasons. First is to get the kids into the "habit" of doing homework. Second is it keeps the parents in the loop of their child's ability better than just sending home reports. K homework was expected to be supervised, and parents who watch/help their kids with these assignments are much more aware of their child's strengths and weaknesses. As to homework before H.S. I think they need to have some, if only to teach the kids the study habits before grades matter so much. Teaching kids how to manage their time, keep track of homework and is a skill that doesn't come naturally to all kids. Doesn't mean they kids need to be buried in busywork.
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Joined: Jul 2012
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As to homework before H.S. I think they need to have some, if only to teach the kids the study habits before grades matter so much. Teaching kids how to manage their time, keep track of homework and is a skill that doesn't come naturally to all kids. Doesn't mean they kids need to be buried in busywork. Why wouldn't they just teach that stuff within school? Philosophically, I'm highly skeptical of the value of any homework. Parentosophically, I like seeing some to at least satisfy my curiosity and know if DS is getting stuff at a reasonable level.
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Joined: May 2009
Posts: 647
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I find it remarkable how widely the homework load varies among the teachers at my son's school. The science teacher doesn't believe in homework for middle schoolers and very rarely gives it. My son has learned more in her class than in his other classes combined this year. It is amazing how much learning she packs into her time with them.
Then there is the English teacher. He spends the entire time doing next to nothing. But he expected them to do NaNoWriMo in November--which was two hours every night (every single night including weekends!) just for English for that month.
We are homeschooling math this year, but last year when we didn't, you could count on an hour each night. For some reason the lecture took the entire class period and the teacher never had the kids do practice problems in class--so it would come home and my son had no idea how to do the problems because he had never actually done them before--it would take me 5 minutes to explain and have him do a problem on his own and then he was good to go. Now why couldn't the teacher do it that way?
Foreign language seems to be the only place where the homework is consistent, manageable, and purposeful. He gets maybe 10-20 minutes each night.
The thing that really bothers me is that his school "academizes" art and electives. There is homework every night in art, and it frequently involves *writing* of all things. Really? And the elective my son is taking this semester has several hours of homework each week even though school policy is not to have homework in electives. I don't understand why they can't get this stuff done in class.
And to top it off, the school imposes requirements on nonschool time. Kids are required to participate in a certain number of hours of after school activities and community service.
This is for 8th grade, BTW.
I agree with HowlerKarma that teachers might not know how long it will take a novice with lower that adult level processing speed to do what they assign. I've found as a homeschooler that for most assignments it will take my kids 2-4 times longer than it takes me to do the same amount of work.
I also agree with puffin that teachers aren't using class time efficiently. It's just easier to mess around in class and have the parents enforce the real learning. At least that's how it looks to me.
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