The past few years I’ve been experimenting with my little guinea pigs – er – students.  Three years ago I decided that so much time was spent on homework, checking it, reading answers, going over problems, that I would be able to get much more done in class if I did away with it.  After all, I get a precious 46 minutes a day with these kids.  Do I want to spend that time on bookkeeping or do I want to interact with them in a more educationally profound way?  How often do you get to work with the guidance, aid, and encouragement of an “expert” in the field?  Why waste that time?

Of course my students are used to homework, they barely grumble when they get an assignment over the weekend.  The idea of not having homework is as scary as it is exciting.  There are lots of uncertainties.  Will they be able to keep up with the coursework?  Will their grades be impacted?  How will it affect their performance on standardized tests?

They were concerned and rightly so.  This whole thing is to do what is best for them.  Sure, maybe I put making them better people above making them experts at applying the Pythagorean Theorem, but I mean which would you rather inherit the world?

To allay their fears I talk to them about my reasoning and my ideas.  I explain what I believe will be accomplished.  I show them some articles on the topic.  We go over the research.  Now that I’ve done it a few times I can bring in former students to share their experiences.  See, not only am I trying to teach them math more efficiently, but I want to teach them how they can affect their world and how to deal with contrary beliefs in a fairly rigid and established system.  I want to teach them that they are not small.

But let’s put that aside because what you really want to know as parents and educators is how does not having homework affect students’ grades?  Did their grades improve or decline? 

Well as much as I wish I could say definitively that they improved, I cannot.  For one, any evidence I have is anecdotal.  This was not a scientifically designed and controlled experiment.  These are students – not guinea pigs after all.  Secondly, giving students no homework in one class will not have enough impact on their free time to really affect change.  Students will not be able to fully explore their world, their relationships, and themselves because they didn’t spend twenty minutes on math homework.  In fact when I shared with my plan with colleagues, another teacher was happy that our students would have time to tackle additional homework for him.  I believe he was joking but you wouldn’t put it past him if you knew him.

So did they improve at all?  No.  Not their grades – but possibly their quality of life and then indirectly their quality of character.  And isn’t that the ultimate goal?  Chances are the quadratic formula is going to play no role in their life but the intangible things they learn in school, it’s those things that will shape them into adults that thrive.

Here’s the thing though.  Their grades didn’t decline either.  Mostly.  What I found is for the majority of students, homework had no bearing on their grades.  C students remained C students.  A students continued to get A’s.  And the D- students, those that really could use the practice?  They weren’t doing homework anyway.

Now there were a handful of students whose grades slipped.  Some students slack off towards the end of the year anyway so I can’t say for sure it was the lack of homework, but I can’t say it wasn’t.  Comparison to a control group would be helpful but how controlled can a group of adolescents be anyway?

I had a few students say they wanted homework, that they wanted to make sure they knew the material.  And in that statement lies my point.  I told my students that just because I didn’t assign homework doesn’t mean they can’t do work at home.  They have a workbook, they have a textbook.  They could open up either and do some problems.  I’m not telling anyone not to do work.  I’m just not telling them they have to do work.

You see, by taking control of our kids’ time we’re really stealing their lives.  We’re keeping them from being self-sufficient, from learning how to survive in the world, from being able to decide for themselves what needs to be done and what is worth doing. 

Is tonight’s homework worth doing?  Are you going to get something out of it?  Is it going to enrich your education or better you as a person?  Is there something more worthwhile you could be doing with your time?  If there is, do it.  Then tomorrow explain to your teacher what you decided and why.  And if they had a good solid childhood, having been buried in homework or not, they will be able to look past the perceived slight and congratulate you on a life well led.  I know I would.

Soon I will have strategies for dealing with long assignments and overzealous teachers. In the meantime, feel free to share you thoughts and experience with homework.

To comment on all aspects of schooling and the state of our education system or to find an outlet for your creative endevours, head over to FailingStudents.org.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rethinkinghomework.htm

After spending most of the day in school, children are typically given additional assignments to be completed at home.  This is a rather curious fact when you stop to think about it, but not as curious as the fact that few people ever stop to think about it. 

It becomes even more curious, for that matter, in light of three other facts:

1.  The negative effects of homework are well known.  They include children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest in learning.  Many parents lament the impact of homework on their relationship with their children; they may also resent having to play the role of enforcer and worry that they will be criticized either for not being involved enough with the homework or for becoming too involved.

2.  The positive effects of homework are largely mythical.  In preparation for a book on the topic, I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through the research.  The results are nothing short of stunning.  For starters, there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school.  For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement.  At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied.  Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.

3.  More homework is being piled on children despite the absence of its value.  Over the last quarter-century the burden has increased most for the youngest children, for whom the evidence of positive effects isn’t just dubious; it’s nonexistent. 

It’s not as though most teachers decide now and then that a certain lesson really ought to continue after school is over because meaningful learning is so likely to result from such an assignment that it warrants the intrusion on family time.   Homework in most schools isn’t limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important.  Rather, the point of departure seems to be:  “We’ve decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week).  Later on we’ll figure out what to make them do.”

I’ve heard from countless people across the country about the frustration they feel over homework.  Parents who watch a torrent of busywork spill out of their children’s backpacks wish they could help teachers understand how the cons overwhelmingly outweigh the pros.  And teachers who have long harbored doubts about the value of homework feel pressured by those parents who mistakenly believe that a lack of afterschool assignments reflects an insufficient commitment to academic achievement.  Such parents seem to reason that as long as their kids have lots of stuff to do every night, never mind what it is, then learning must be taking place.

What parents and teachers need is support from administrators who are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom.  They need principals who question the slogans that pass for arguments:  that homework creates a link between school and family (as if there weren’t more constructive ways to make that connection!), or that it “reinforces” what students were taught in class (a word that denotes the repetition of rote behaviors, not the development of understanding), or that it teaches children self-discipline and responsibility (a claim for which absolutely no evidence exists).

Above all, principals need to help their faculties see that the most important criterion for judging decisions about homework (or other policies, for that matter) is the impact they’re likely to have on students’ attitudes about what they’re doing.  “Most of what homework is doing is driving kids away from learning,” says education professor Harvey Daniels.  Let’s face it:  Most children dread homework, or at best see it as something to be gotten through.  Thus, even if it did provide other benefits, they would have to be weighed against its likely effect on kids’ love of learning.

*

So what’s a thoughtful principal to do?

1.  Educate yourself and share what you’ve learned with teachers, parents, and central office administrators.  Make sure you know what the research really says – that there is no reason to believe that children would be at any disadvantage in terms of their academic learning or life skills if they had much less homework, or even none at all.  Whatever decisions are made should be based on fact rather than folk wisdom.

2.  Rethink standardized “homework policies.”  Requiring teachers to give a certain number of minutes of homework every day, or to make assignments on the same schedule every week (for example, x minutes of math on Tuesdays and Thursdays) is a frank admission that homework isn’t justified by a given lesson, much less is it a response to what specific kids need at a specific time.  Such policies sacrifice thoughtful instruction in order to achieve predictability, and they manage to do a disservice not only to students but, when imposed from above, to teachers as well.

3.  Reduce the amount – but don’t stop there.  Many parents are understandably upset with how much time their children have to spend on homework.  At a minimum, make sure that teachers aren’t exceeding district guidelines and that they aren’t chronically underestimating how long it takes students to complete the assignments.  (As one mother told me, “It’s cheating to say this is 20 minutes of homework if only your fastest kid can complete it in that time.”)  Then work on reducing the amount of homework irrespective of such guidelines and expectations so that families, not schools, decide how they will spend most of their evenings.

Quantity, however, is not the only issue that needs to be addressed.  Some assignments, frankly, aren’t worth even five minutes of a student’s time.  Too many first graders are forced to clip words from magazines that begin with a given letter of the alphabet.  Too many fifth graders have to color in an endless list of factor pairs on graph paper.  Too many eighth graders spend their evenings inching their way through dull, overstuffed, committee-written textbooks, one chapter at a time.  Teachers should be invited to reflect on whether any given example of homework will help students think deeply about questions that matter.  What philosophy of teaching, what theory of learning, lies behind each assignment?   Does it seem to assume that children are meaning makers — or empty vessels?  Is learning regarded as a process that’s mostly active or passive?  Is it about wrestling with ideas or mindlessly following directions? 

4.  Change the default.  Ultimately, it’s not enough just to have less homework or even better homework.  We should change the fundamental expectation in our schools so that students are asked to take schoolwork home only when a there’s a reasonable likelihood that a particular assignment will be beneficial to most of them.  When that’s not true, they should be free to spend their after-school hours as they choose.  The bottom line:  No homework except on those occasions when it’s truly necessary.  This, of course, is a reversal of the current default state, which amounts to an endorsement of homework for its own sake, regardless of the content, a view that simply can’t be justified.

5.  Ask the kids.  Find out what students think of homework and solicit their suggestions – perhaps by distributing anonymous questionnaires.  Many adults simply assume that homework is useful for promoting learning without even inquiring into the experience of the learners themselves!  Do students find that homework really is useful?  Why or why not?  Are certain kinds better than others?  How does homework affect their desire to learn?  What are its other effects on their lives, and on their families?

6.  Suggest that teachers assign only what they design.  In most cases, students should be asked to do only what teachers are willing to create themselves, as opposed to prefabricated worksheets or generic exercises photocopied from textbooks.  Also, it rarely makes sense to give the same assignment to all students in a class because it’s unlikely to be beneficial for most of them.  Those who already understand the concept will be wasting their time, and those who don’t understand will become increasingly frustrated.  There is no perfect assignment that will stimulate every student because one size simply doesn’t fit all.  On those days when homework really seems necessary, teachers should create several assignments fitted to different interests and capabilities.  But it’s better to give no homework to anyone than the same homework to everyone.

7.  Use homework as an opportunity to involve students in decision-making.   One way to judge the quality of a classroom is by the extent to which students participate in making choices about their learning.  The best teachers know that children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.  Students should have something to say about what they’re going to learn and the circumstances under which they’ll learn it, as well as how (and when) their learning will be evaluated, how the room will be set up, how conflicts will be resolved, and a lot more.

What is true of education in general is true of homework in particular.  At least two investigators have found that the most impressive teachers (as defined by various criteria) tend to involve students in decisions about assignments rather than simply telling them what they’ll have to do at home.  A reasonable first question for a parent to ask upon seeing a homework assignment is “How much say did the kids have in determining how this had to be done, and on what schedule, and whether it really needed to be completed at home in the first place?” 

A discussion about whether homework might be useful (and why) can be valuable in its own right.  If opinions are varied, the question of what to do when everyone doesn’t agree – take a vote?  keep talking until we reach consensus?  look for a compromise? – develops social skills as well as intellectual growth.  And that growth occurs precisely because the teacher asked rather than told.  Teachers who consult with their students on a regular basis would shake their heads vigorously were you to suggest that kids will always say no to homework – or to anything else that requires effort.  It’s just not true, they’ll tell you.  When students are treated with respect, when the assignments are worth doing, most kids relish a challenge.

If, on the other hand, students groan about, or try to avoid, homework, it’s generally because they get too much of it, or because it’s assigned thoughtlessly and continuously, or simply because they had nothing to say about it.  The benefits of even high-quality assignments are limited if students feel “done to” instead of “worked with.”

8.  Help teachers move away from grading.  Your faculty may need your support, encouragement, and practical suggestions to help them abandon a model in which assignments are checked off or graded, where the point is to enforce compliance, and toward a model in which students explain and explore with one another what they’ve done — what they liked and disliked about the book they read, what they’re struggling with, what new questions they came up with.  As the eminent educator Martin Haberman observed, homework in the best classrooms “is not checked – it is shared.”  If students conclude that there’s no point in spending time on assignments that aren’t going to be collected or somehow recorded, that’s not an argument for setting up bribes and threats and a climate of distrust; it’s an indictment of the homework itself.

9.  Experiment.  Ask teachers who are reluctant to rethink their long-standing reliance on traditional homework to see what happens if, during a given week or curriculum unit, they tried assigning none.  Surely anyone who believes that homework is beneficial should be willing to test that assumption by investigating the consequences of its absence.  What are the effects of a moratorium on students’ achievement, on their interest in learning, on their moods and the resulting climate of the classroom?  Likewise, the school as a whole can try out a new policy, such as the change in default that I’ve proposed, on a tentative basis before committing to it permanently.

*

Principals deal with an endless series of crises; they’re called upon to resolve complaints, soothe wounded egos, negotiate solutions, try to keep everyone happy, and generally make the trains (or, rather, buses) run on time.  In such a position there is a strong temptation to avoid new initiatives that call the status quo into question.  Considerable gumption is required to take on an issue like homework, particularly during an era when phrases like “raising the bar” and “higher standards” are used to rationalize practices that range from foolish to inappropriate to hair-raising.  But of course a principal’s ultimate obligation is to do what’s right by the children, to protect them from harmful mandates and practices that persist not because they’re valuable but merely because they’re traditional.

For anyone willing to shake things up in order to do what makes sense, beginning a conversation about homework is a very good place to start.

RESOURCES

We are awash in articles and books that claim homework is beneficial – or simply take the existence or value of homework for granted and merely offer suggestions for how it ought to be assigned, or what techniques parents should use to make children complete it.  Here are some resources that question the conventional assumptions about the subject in an effort to stimulate meaningful thinking and conversation.

Barber, Bill.  “Homework Does Not Belong on the Agenda for Educational Reform.”  Educational Leadership, May 1986: 55-57.

Bennett, Sara, and Nancy Kalish. The Case Against Homework:  How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It (New York:  Crown, 2006).

Buell, John. Closing the Book on Homework: Enhancing Public Education and Freeing Family Time.  (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).

Dudley-Marling, Curt.  “How School Troubles Come Home:  The Impact of Homework on Families of Struggling Learners.”  Current Issues in Education [On-line] 6, 4 (2003).

Hinchey, Patricia.  “Rethinking Homework.”  MASCD [Missouri Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development] Fall Journal, December 1995: 13-17.

Kohn, Alfie.  The Homework Myth:  Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006).

Kralovec, Etta, and John Buell. The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning  (Boston:  Beacon Press, 2000).

Samway, Katharine.  “’And You Run and You Run to Catch Up with the Sun, But It’s Sinking.’”  Language Arts 63 (1986): 352-57.

Vatterott, Cathy.  “There’s Something Wrong With Homework.” Principal, January-February 2003: 64.

Waldman, Ayelet.  “Homework Hell.”  Salon.com.  October 22, 2005.

Copyright © 2007 by Alfie Kohn. This article may be downloaded, reproduced, and distributed without permission as long as each copy includes this notice along with citation information (i.e., name of the periodical in which it originally appeared, date of publication, and author’s name). Permission must be obtained in order to reprint this article in a published work or in order to offer it for sale in any form.

• Experience with homework, good or bad.
• Tips for efficient homework competition.
• Excellent homework assignments.
• Horrible homework assignments.
• Anything and everything you’d like to say.

Most textbooks have a electronic version, whether it’s on cd or online, it’s available to those who ask (maybe to those who ask A LOT in some cases). So get a hold of it and for those end of the chapter questions, the ones that are asking for straight facts – not the ones that ask you to actually think and respond, those are worthwhile, just cut and paste your answers. Then you have a neatly typed homework assignment that any teacher would love.

Disclaimer: Of course those questions, as badly designed as they are, are meant to make you read the chapter. Do not use this trick as an excuse not to do your reading.

So now in the comment section below, please share. Keep in mind kids of all ages will be exposed to this so be appropriate, thanks.

The Homework Debate
by Johanna Sorrentino

Every school day brings something new, but there is one status quo most parents expect: homework. The old adage that practice makes perfect seems to make sense when it comes to schoolwork. But, while hunkering down after dinner amongst books and worksheets might seem like a natural part of childhood, there’s more research now than ever suggesting that it shouldn’t be so.

Many in the education field today are looking for evidence to support the case for homework, but are coming up empty-handed. “Homework is all pain and no gain,” says author Alfie Kohn. In his book The Homework Myth, Kohn points out that no study has ever found a correlation between homework and academic achievement in elementary school, and there is little reason to believe that homework is necessary in high school. In fact, it may even diminish interest in learning, says Kohn.

If you’ve ever had a late night argument with your child about completing homework, you probably know first-hand that homework can be a strain on families. In an effort to reduce that stress, there are a growing number of schools which are banning homework.

Mary Jane Cera is the academic administrator for the Kino School, a private, nonprofit kindergarten through 12th grade school in Tucson, AZ which maintains a no homework policy across all grades. The purpose of the policy is to make sure learning remains a joy for their students, not a second shift of work that impedes social time and creative activity. Cera says that when new students are told there will be no homework assignments, they breathe a sigh of relief.

Many proponents of homework argue that life is filled with things we don’t like to do, and that homework teaches self-discipline, time management and other nonacademic life skills. Kohn challenges this popular notion: If kids have no choice in the matter of homework, they’re not really exercising judgment, and are instead losing their sense of autonomy.

At the Kino school, Cera says children often choose to take their favorite parts of school home. “A lot of what we see kids doing is continuing to write in journals, practicing music with their friends, and taking experiments home to show their parents,” she says. Anecdotal information from Kino graduates suggests that the early control over their education continues to serve them well into college; they feel better equipped to manage their time and approach professors with questions.

One of the reasons that we continue to dole out mountains of homework, Kohn says, is our obsession with standardized tests. This concern is especially relevant with the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results placing American students 25th in math and 21st in science. “The standards and accountability craze that has our students in its grip argues for getting tougher with children, making them do more mindless worksheets at earlier ages so that we can score higher in international assessments,” Kohn says. “It’s not about learning, it’s about winning.”

Even if we can agree to the importance of kids doing better on tests like PISA, Kohn says, there is no research to suggest that homework is our ticket to success: our “competitors” in the global marketplace are coming up with the same conclusions about homework. A recent comparative study of kids in China, Japan and two U.S. cities shows there is no correlation between time spent on studying and academic achievement.

So, what’s the solution? The National Parent Teacher Association suggests children in kindergarten through second grade shouldn’t do homework for more than 10-20 minutes a day, and for third through sixth graders the limit is 30-60 minutes a day. Kohn says the question isn’t just “How much homework is too much?” Many parents would be delighted if teachers reduced the amount their children are getting, but he says the quality of those assignments needs to be addressed as well. “Some of this stuff isn’t worth two minutes of their children’s time.”

Kohn believes that the “default” setting for schools should be no homework, but that if evening work was assigned on occasion, it better be for a good reason. That means repetitive practice problems from 500-page textbooks get tossed out the window. Instead, Kohn says parents should be asking two fundamental questions:

Does this assignment make kids more excited about the topic and learning in general?
Does this assignment help kids to think more deeply about questions that matter?
For parents who want to probe deeper into the quality of homework their child is getting, Kohn says the first step is to check the school’s policy. In the case where poorly designed homework is being given, it’s time to talk to the teacher, sit down with the principal, write a letter to the editor, and/or speak up at the next school board meeting. “It makes sense to do this with other parents,” he says. “Ten parents saying that homework does more harm than good are hard to ignore.”

Wherever the homework debate goes next, be it the front pages or on the back burner, it’s worth taking a moment to examine if we’re asking the right questions about our child’s education. The good news is, it’s never too late to start.

By Doug Gavel

The gauntlet hit the floor with a bang during last week’s Askwith Education Forum on “The Homework Wars” sponsored by the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and moderated by Emily Rooney, host of “Greater Boston” on WGBH Television.

Calling it the great “black hole of learning,” educational researcher Etta Kralovec presented her case for reducing, if not abolishing homework in the nation’s public schools. “Homework simply doesn’t make sense in this brave new constructivist world of teaching and learning,” Kralovec stated.

“When work goes home, teachers have little control over who does the work,” she continued. “Teachers [are] unable to scaffold new knowledge for students, and [are] unaware of each student’s true educational progress.

“American kids are crying out to us for some kind of intervention, and I think you only need to look at the tragedy at Columbine [in which 14 students and one teacher were killed at a Colorado high school last year] to say American kids are not very happy right now.”

The controversial theory outlined by Kralovec and political economist John Buell, who co-authored the book “The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning” (Beacon Press, 2000), raised more than a few eyebrows among fellow panelists and about 100 audience members at Longfellow Hall.

Assistant Professor of Education Janine Bempechat, author of “Getting Our Kids Back on Track: Educating Kids for the Future” (Jossey-Bass, 2000), cogently presented the opposing perspective, arguing that the benefits of homework far outweigh the drawbacks.

“We have no one to blame but ourselves when we find that the national discourse on homework has embraced extreme positions,” Bempechat said. “We come to this in part because we have adopted a very narrow and shortsighted view of the benefits of homework.

“The assignment of homework, over time, serves to foster the kinds of qualities that are critical to learning — persistence, diligence, and the ability to delay gratification,” she continued. “These [skills] become increasingly necessary as students graduate to higher levels of scholarship in middle school, high school, and beyond.”

Kim Marshall, AB ‘69, EdM ‘81, the principal of Mather School in Boston, added a practical “real life” perspective to the discussion, telling panelists that although it makes “little difference academically” for elementary school children, “homework is a reality” for almost all students and can be an asset if assigned properly. “Homework should be useful, aligned with the curriculum, and kids should be able to do it alone,” he said.

Marshall told the audience he believes homework teaches students responsibility and “sends a powerful message to parents that the school means business.”

Those arguments drew a passionate response from Kralovec, who began researching the topic when she conducted a two-year study of high school dropouts for the Maine Department of Education in the early 1990s, concluding that homework was a major reason why many students left school.

“The most troubling aspect of our work has been confronting the scanty, inconclusive evidence that homework claims are based on,” she said.

“Homework research is plagued by what I like to call the ‘fishing expedition problem’ — if researchers go looking for links between homework and academic achievement, they are likely to find something.”

Kralovec questioned the existence of credible empirical evidence proving that homework improves academic performance. She also quoted statistics indicating that only 15 percent of American school children are happy in the classroom and “everyone else suffers a little bit.”

Bempechat accused Kralovec of pandering to those contemporary theorists who advocate shielding younger children from stress and failure. “There is a growing view that if students have a high self-esteem they will do well in school, when in fact the opposite is true,” she claimed. “[New studies indicate that] students need to struggle in order to develop qualities that all teachers like to see in the classroom.

“The reality is we are living through a period of massive underachievement in our nation’s schools,” Bempechat stated. “We cannot simultaneously bewail the dismal performance of American students on every successive international comparison of academic achievement and then complain that we give our children too much homework!”

Kravolec’s co-author Buell suggested that homework increases the “achievement gap” between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds. “Schools can expand the quality of economic opportunities, but they can also entrench privilege,” he explained. Buell expressed doubts that students perform better simply because schools are demanding more from them.

“Both students and parents are more likely to engage in fulfilling work and enjoy a high quality of life when each also knows that schools and workplaces do not and cannot demand work without end,” he said.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/motivation/2007/12/an_interesting_little_conversa.html

Homework Debate

An interesting conversation is evolving around Katie’s Dec. 11 post about the value of homework. The parents who commented seem to think there is too much of it and most of it is just busy work that won’t necessarily help students become better learners.

I must say I stand smack in the middle of this debate. As the father of four children–ages 4, 10, 13, and 15–there are some nights, especially when I am maxed out doing a million tasks, that a child’s plea for help on homework irritates me. Why does the school assign so much homework? Why can’t my kid understand the concepts better? What’s wrong with the teacher?

But on other nights, I genuinely enjoy helping my kids with homework, especially if it involves writing assignments or math problems. Helping them reach a new level of articulation on an essay or to solve a math problem is actually fun and rewarding. I do not see it as “busy work.” Rather, I see it as reinforcing what they learn during the day, much like athletes practice skills on their own, outside of regular practices or games.

Homework also teaches skills that are important later in life, such as organization and time management. I have seen one of my kids go from someone who was completely disorganized and managed his time very poorly to now doing a solid, if not perfect, job of knowing what homework he has and when it is due and then figuring how much time it will take to complete it. And homework assignments have helped him get to that point.

But like most things in life, the key is balance. Teachers should not stop assigning homework simply because most students (and many parents) don’t like it. But they should also not assign an overwhelming amount of it.

And, frankly, at this time of the year, when kids are looking forward to spending time with their friends on their winter breaks and families have a lot going on, teachers should use some common sense and lighten up a bit on the homework. At least that’s one father’s opinion.

Homework wars provoke debate: Experts face off over importance of after-school assignments

By Doug Gavel

The gauntlet hit the floor with a bang during last week’s Askwith Education Forum on “The Homework Wars” sponsored by the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and moderated by Emily Rooney, host of “Greater Boston” on WGBH Television.

Calling it the great “black hole of learning,” educational researcher Etta Kralovec presented her case for reducing, if not abolishing homework in the nation’s public schools. “Homework simply doesn’t make sense in this brave new constructivist world of teaching and learning,” Kralovec stated.

“When work goes home, teachers have little control over who does the work,” she continued. “Teachers [are] unable to scaffold new knowledge for students, and [are] unaware of each student’s true educational progress.

“American kids are crying out to us for some kind of intervention, and I think you only need to look at the tragedy at Columbine [in which 14 students and one teacher were killed at a Colorado high school last year] to say American kids are not very happy right now.”

The controversial theory outlined by Kralovec and political economist John Buell, who co-authored the book “The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning” (Beacon Press, 2000), raised more than a few eyebrows among fellow panelists and about 100 audience members at Longfellow Hall.

Assistant Professor of Education Janine Bempechat, author of “Getting Our Kids Back on Track: Educating Kids for the Future” (Jossey-Bass, 2000), cogently presented the opposing perspective, arguing that the benefits of homework far outweigh the drawbacks.

“We have no one to blame but ourselves when we find that the national discourse on homework has embraced extreme positions,” Bempechat said. “We come to this in part because we have adopted a very narrow and shortsighted view of the benefits of homework.

“The assignment of homework, over time, serves to foster the kinds of qualities that are critical to learning — persistence, diligence, and the ability to delay gratification,” she continued. “These [skills] become increasingly necessary as students graduate to higher levels of scholarship in middle school, high school, and beyond.”

Kim Marshall, AB ‘69, EdM ‘81, the principal of Mather School in Boston, added a practical “real life” perspective to the discussion, telling panelists that although it makes “little difference academically” for elementary school children, “homework is a reality” for almost all students and can be an asset if assigned properly. “Homework should be useful, aligned with the curriculum, and kids should be able to do it alone,” he said.

Marshall told the audience he believes homework teaches students responsibility and “sends a powerful message to parents that the school means business.”

Those arguments drew a passionate response from Kralovec, who began researching the topic when she conducted a two-year study of high school dropouts for the Maine Department of Education in the early 1990s, concluding that homework was a major reason why many students left school.

“The most troubling aspect of our work has been confronting the scanty, inconclusive evidence that homework claims are based on,” she said.

“Homework research is plagued by what I like to call the ‘fishing expedition problem’ — if researchers go looking for links between homework and academic achievement, they are likely to find something.”

Kralovec questioned the existence of credible empirical evidence proving that homework improves academic performance. She also quoted statistics indicating that only 15 percent of American school children are happy in the classroom and “everyone else suffers a little bit.”

Bempechat accused Kralovec of pandering to those contemporary theorists who advocate shielding younger children from stress and failure. “There is a growing view that if students have a high self-esteem they will do well in school, when in fact the opposite is true,” she claimed. “[New studies indicate that] students need to struggle in order to develop qualities that all teachers like to see in the classroom.

“The reality is we are living through a period of massive underachievement in our nation’s schools,” Bempechat stated. “We cannot simultaneously bewail the dismal performance of American students on every successive international comparison of academic achievement and then complain that we give our children too much homework!”

Kravolec’s co-author Buell suggested that homework increases the “achievement gap” between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds. “Schools can expand the quality of economic opportunities, but they can also entrench privilege,” he explained. Buell expressed doubts that students perform better simply because schools are demanding more from them.

“Both students and parents are more likely to engage in fulfilling work and enjoy a high quality of life when each also knows that schools and workplaces do not and cannot demand work without end,” he said.