Stop Homework

Researchers in Canada just released the results of the first study ever on homework and concluded that homework has no value through 6th grade. “”For elementary school, especially for the primary grades, I am down on homework entirely,” said Linda Cameron, one of the authors of the study and a former kindergarten teacher. According to thestar.com, the study also found:

* Not only does homework cut into family time, it becomes a primary source of arguments, power struggles and is disruptive to building a strong family, including putting strain on marriages.
* A large number of children in kindergarten are assigned homework, most of it “drill and practice.”
* 28 per cent of Grade 1 students and more than 50 per cent of Grade 2 students spend more than 20 minutes on homework daily.
* While there’s no real difference in the attitude of children toward homework, Ontario parents definitely feel more negative about it than others across the country.
* More than three-quarters of parents with children in Grade 4 and under help their children with homework. But, by Grade 4, only half of parents feel they are competent enough to do so.
* Parents are unsure about the benefits of homework; by Grade 5, just 20 per cent of parents feel it has a “positive effect on achievement.”
* Half of children in junior kindergarten are enthusiastic about homework; by Grade 6, it drops to just 6 per cent and by Grade 12, just 4 per cent.

The researchers also came across several themes from parent comments – that homework is too difficult or the assignment unclear, that it cuts into family time and causes stress at home and that children are left with little time to play.

A study released in December concludes that soon-to-be middle school math teachers in the U.S. are ill prepared for the task. “Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally,” said William H. Schmidt, a Michigan State University researcher who conducted the study…. In Mr. Schmidt’s study, U.S. teachers scored significantly lower than those in all countries except Mexico on knowledge tests in algebra and functions, which are considered critically important for teaching middle school math.” Read the article in edweek here.

A few blog entries ago, I wrote about how assigning a grade of zero is unfair and should be abolished. Now, a School District in Iowa has begun abolishing the zero. When the Superintendent visited the high schools last week, she suggested that an F range from 50 to 60 instead of zero to 60. “Some teachers are really wrestling with, ‘I don’t want to give them 50 out of 100 points,’ and to those teachers I say, ‘Fine, you don’t have to. Go to a different grading scale, like 5-4-3-2-1-0,’” the Superinendent said. “We’re not saying give them half credit. We’re saying, give them the F. Just don’t kill them with the F.” Read the story here.

According to a press release issued by the Brookings Institute, the 2007 Brown Center Report on American Education finds that homework DOES NOT improve scores on standardized math tests. Read the report, titled How Well Are American Students Learning? The report’s authors also could find no evidence that “the amount of time spent learning mathematics, either while receiving instruction or doing homework, is related to the amount of math that students actually know.”

According to an article in The New York Times, the National Endowment for the Arts released a report showing that as students read less for fun, their reading test scores are declining. In addition, “performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.”

One of the reasons kids don’t read for pleasure, according to a 2006 study by Scholastic/Yankelovich is homework.

So many readers have pointed me to an article in the Wall Street Journal How Homework Is Hurting Our Family by Jeff Opdyke that I’m posting it here. He begins:

I hate school!

Yes, I know that’s a bit immature for someone 41 years old. But it’s true. I hate school — so much so that my wife, Amy, and I have hired a college student to help our fifth-grade son manage his schoolwork a few times a week.

It’s not that we can’t do the work with him, or that we don’t want to. Just this evening we helped him study for a reading test, and over the weekend I was quizzing him on customary and metric units of measurement one day and biological definitions the next.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written about Needham, Massachusetts high school in this blog before (here and here) and I was happy to see an article in today’s New York Times, titled “A Principal Who Cracks Down on Stress.” The principal, Paul Richards, whom I interviewed for The Case Against Homework, has, among other things, asked teachers to have homework-free weekends and holidays, has stopped publishing the honor roll in the local newspaper, has greatly reduced summer homework, and has pulled together a stress committee which is starting to come up with additional recommendations. Richards has worked extensively with Denise Clark Pope of Stanford’s Stressed Out Students. Pope, whom I also interviewed for The Case Against Homework and whom I was on a panel with several months ago, is the author of Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, a book that should be read by every teacher, administrator, and parent.

And, be sure to read the Missive on Academic Stress, written by the principal of Needham High to the Parents. This is no quick fix, but an excellent model for tackling stress. You should copy it and send it to the principal of your child’s school.

A math teacher at Hilliard Memorial Middle School in Ohio has started assigning homework to parents. Her rationale: “It’s stressing the importance of schoolwork, and it’s good for the kids to say they know something that their parents don’t.” According to an article in The Columbus Dispatch, the “assignments ask students to show their parents how to solve the problems. Then, both parent and child work the problems. Parents are not required to complete the assignments and students can use their siblings, neighbors or teachers, but [the teacher] prefers Mom and Dad do the work.” Read the article here.

(Here are my earlier posts about teachers assigning homework to parents: original, followup.)