Studies show Homework is Counterproductive... so why do we allow it??

[Anonymous]

Do our students receive too much homework? There are several private schools (and some public) in the county that pride themselves on giving lots of homework to its students.
Do parents at these schools ever push back against these policies? They don't seem smart.

A Stanford University 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.

Do we care? Studies around the world show that there is no empirical data that proves more homework equals greater success or information retention. Curious as to what you guys think.

[Anonymous]

I'm a high school teacher. My students who were admitted to top schools (Ivy League and MIT) were all "stressed", had a marked "reduction in health" in the form of more colds, probably due to lack of sleep, and had "less time for friends." I don't think these kids would do it any differently if they had to go through high school again. A lot of my former kids keep in contact with me, and the kids who worked the hardest in high school are now very happy in college.

Do you want your kid's high school experience to be the peak of his/her life, a golden time of social popularity and relaxation? Paying less attention to homework will help make that happen. But I think learning when to choose mild discomfort for the sake of delayed gratification is a wise skill to enforce.

You do you.

[Anonymous]

OP, you must be talking about little kids. There is no way a person can be successful in, for example, AP Calculus, without doing homework. Kids who don't do homework in high school are the burnouts.

[Anonymous]

OP, what age group was the study done on? I'd like to know more about how the study was conducted.

What I see and hear about here in the DC area (MoCo, DC, Fairfax, Arlington and privates) is a vast range of homework quality, quantity and content. What does "too much homework" mean to you?

[Anonymous]

My kids (3 in ES) go to a no homework school. I'm all for it.

[Anonymous]

The problem is that certain subjects require practice to get better (e.g., math and reading) while others do not (e.g., a lot of the busywork kids are forced to do). We should be focusing our homework efforts on those areas that really benefit from additional practice and cutting out the BS.

[Anonymous]

The "no homework, except to read" policy is nothing new. Many counties have implemented this philosophy in ES particularly the younger grades.

Part of the no-homework drive is the lack of textbooks...which has been discussed ad nauseum before. Without books, there is no formal reference, examples, basis, etc and that makes it hard for parents to help with homework.
The other part is that teachers, administration, and counselors found that many kids (esp those for low income families) didn't have the parental guidance/help with homework so these kids were practicing (relearning) math problems, for example, incorrectly. This made for additional work for teachers to un-do their mistakes.
So day in, day out, week by week, month after month you have this cumulative effect of kids spelling words with no oversight by mom or dad. Or guessing at math problems. And the like.

It was becoming completely counter-productive.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm a teacher, and these "homework studies" really don't make sense to me.

Plenty of studies, and certainly my own personal experience, have shown that "time on task" DOES improve student performance.

The more I have my students write, the better they get at writing. They develop writing stamina. Even if they just copy sentences, their handwriting becomes more fluent, and then they can write more fluidly when it is time to compose something original.

So I wonder just what these "studies" were actually measuring. Did they compare kids who had been giving writing/composition homework (that was graded for accuracy and completion) frequently versus kids who received no homework, and then test them on a test measuring composition ability? My sense is they probably didn't. They probably didn't ask about the quality of homework at all. Usually these studies measure time spent on homework, or math fact worksheets etc. And then test kids on a standardized multiple choice test that doesn't measure writing.

I know from experience that my students make much better growth in a year's time, if I assign quality writing homework 3x each week. There have been years I skipped that, because it's a pain to collect and correct. But my students don't make as much progress then, because (I believe) they aren't getting enough writing time.

[Anonymous]

I think you really need to separate the debate for elementary and high school students.

[Anonymous]

OP, your goals for your child determine whether the effects your "studies" found render homework "counterproductive" or not. If you don't care about top academic performance and the doors that will open, then yeah, I guess homework is "counterproductive."

[Anonymous]

NP here but there is absolutely no research that has demonstrated any benefit to homework whatsoever *at the elementary level.* Research has shown benefit for high schoolers. Jury still out for middle school.

All you supposed teachers saying otherwise, I hope you are not teaching *my* children that anecdotes =data. As teachers, I would hope you could put your supposed research and educational skills I am trusting you to instill in my children and take the two seconds to plug some keywords into google scholar to see what the *actual published scholarly research* says on the matter to inform your opinions.
I've heard the horror stories about hours of homework given at some PGCPS elementaries (particularly the TAG schools) and they just make me want to cry. Completely and utterly inappropriate. And not evidence-based at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. My students who were admitted to top schools (Ivy League and MIT) were all "stressed", had a marked "reduction in health" in the form of more colds, probably due to lack of sleep, and had "less time for friends." I don't think these kids would do it any differently if they had to go through high school again. A lot of my former kids keep in contact with me, and the kids who worked the hardest in high school are now very happy in college.

Do you want your kid's high school experience to be the peak of his/her life, a golden time of social popularity and relaxation? Paying less attention to homework will help make that happen. But I think learning when to choose mild discomfort for the sake of delayed gratification is a wise skill to enforce.

You do you.

It's funny, because IMO my classmates from high school like the ones you describe- top grades, went into ivies- I think high school and college WERE the peak of their lives. They have all, almost universally, languished post-college, or even during college, with their academic skills not really preparing them for the real world. They are all still, in our mid-30s, perpetual students, unmarried, no kids, far away from family, and don't seem to have much social life, always chasing their next degree. Or they went into a lucrative and prestigious field like finance and are completely miserable, but with lots of money to burn to try and placate their misery.
I guess there is room for different definitions of success. But I kind of shudder at your implication that your kids who decide to forgo the "mild discomfort" you describe are somehow on an inferior track in, like, LIFE, and really hope you don't ever teach one of my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

All you supposed teachers saying otherwise, I hope you are not teaching *my* children that anecdotes =data. As teachers, I would hope you could put your supposed research and educational skills I am trusting you to instill in my children and take the two seconds to plug some keywords into google scholar to see what the *actual published scholarly research* says on the matter to inform your opinions. [/quote

Supposed teacher here. Honestly, I am pretty skeptical of educational "research". The standards for scholarly research are questionable to me. Not a lot of control groups, not a lot of randomization, a whole lot of confounding variables. It is hard to perform double blind studies with placebo groups when you are dealing with kids in school.

The years I give more writing assignments, and grade them and provide feedback, my students are better at writing by the end of the year. The more writing tasks I give them, the more time they spend writing, the better they are at writing. To maximize time on task, I assign simple writing projects for them to do as homework. I make sure that these writing tasks are within their capability (and since I teach beginner ESL classes, sometimes that means they are just copying sentences for handwriting practice at the start of the year -- but that's OK).

I don't have faith in these studies that say this level of homework is ineffective, because it contradicts my years of experience. It also contradicts everything I know about learning the piano. The more time my kids spend practicing their piano playing at home, the better they get at playing piano. It also contradicts everything I know about playing soccer. The more time kids spend playing soccer, the better they get at playing soccer.

It contradicts everything I know about math remediation, too. I have a child who is having trouble with math, so I'm taking her three times a week yo practice math skills. She sits and does remedial worksheets in math three times a week -- the more times she works on math problems, the better she is getting in math!

So I really question the "research" behind this theory that homework is counterproductive. I could believe that SOME types of homework are counterproductive. Stuff you don't understand; stuff that is pages and pages of boring drill you have already mastered; stuff that is not at all at your level. Sure, that can be useless.

[Anonymous]

Of course it's true that the more you practice something, the better you will get at that activity. That is self-evident.
The problem is that after so many hours, you reach a point of diminishing returns where the marginal benefit you'd receive for another minute of math worksheets is less than the benefit you'd receive from doing something else that helps with brain development- exercise/sports, rest, eating, or building relationships with family and friends.
So you might get 1% better at math for doing another worksheet at 8pm. But you'd improve by 10% if you just stopped and went to bed. The brain needs time to rest and process everything it's absorbed.
The research DOES show benefits to homework at the high school level, but none at the elementary level. You may be right that the studies are not perfect. But until a perfect study is designed and the results are published, it is all we have. And it is possible to draw broad conclusions from a large body of imperfect studies. Such as the fact that we should not take for granted that excessive homework is always, 100% better. That is what the NEA has done- taken a moderate (if not evidence-based) approach of recommending 10 minutes a night per grade that balances the perspectives of both sides of this debate.

[Anonymous]

My child's 3rd grade teacher had a minimal homework policy this past year and it was fantastic. They usually had 1 math worksheet per night. Occasionally there was an English assignment instead. Some days there was nothing. It never took more than 15 min. The teacher also allowed them to work on homework assignments in class if they finished their other work early. There was no reading log. It made our home life so much better.

My other child was in K and they got a calendar at the beginning of each month with an assignment to do each weekday. Most were super easy. "Draw a picture of a helper in the community" or "Draw a picture that solves the problem 3 + 2 = " We usually did a whole week in one sitting and it would take us 15 min. Once we did the whole month in a day. It was great!

Both kids did great academically. My 3rd grader got straight A's at the end of the year and my K was reading at the 2nd grade level (she started out at the equivalent of the end of K).

Anyway, in my kids having little to no homework had no negative impacts and made our evenings less stressful. Now, I'm not sure how that would translate for kids struggling academically.

One of the teachers told me that some of the students don't have parents who can help them with their homework or aren't around to help them and make them do the work. Some of it is language barriers, some of it is work schedules and in the minority of cases it is just indifference. The teacher felt that it wasn't fair to the kids to give a lot of homework and then punish the kids that just couldn't get it done by giving them a low mark.