Live Science | Cari Nierenberg
A Texas teacher’s note to parents about her newly implemented “no formal homework policy” in her second-grade class went viral last week, opening up the floodgates for parents, teachers and school administrators to weigh in on this controversial topic.
In the note, teacher Brandy Young told parents that her students’ only homework would be work that they did not finish during the school day.
Instead of having kids spend time on homework, parents should “spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success,” Young said. She recommended that parents “eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early,” strategies that she suggests are more closely tied to a child’s success in the classroom than doing homework.
Young’s rationale for her new policy, as she explained in her note, was that “research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance.” [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]
Live Science spoke with three educators who have conducted research on homework and student performance to fact-check this statement, and to find out what studies have shown about homework’s positive and negative effects.
Keys to student success
It’s accurate to suggest that studies have found no correlation between homework in elementary school and a student’s academic performance, but there is one important exception worth mentioning, said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.
Research has shown that free reading, or allowing students to read whatever books they want, does improve their academic performance, Pope said. Some elementary school teachers assign free reading as homework, but kids and parents do not always perceive these assignments as true homework that must be completed, she explained. [Best Science-y Books for Kids]
In middle school, the evidence shows a slight correlation between doing homework and academic achievement, but further improvement fades after a middle-school student has spent 60 to 90 minutes a night doing homework, said Pope, who is also the co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization that works with schools and families to develop research-based strategies that engage kids and keep them healthy.
But it’s tricky to draw conclusions from homework studies, because these studies use such varied ways of measuring a student’s academic performance, Pope said. Some researchers use standardized test scoresto measure achievement, while others use students’ grade-point averages, she said.
Another variable that can complicate the results of homework studies is that it’s hard to know who is actually doing the assignment when it’s taken home, Pope said. For example, a student could get help from a parent, tutor, sibling or classmate to complete the work.
In high school, there is a strong correlation between students who do 2 hours of homework a night and higher levels of academic achievement, but again, this improvement fades when students exceed the 2-hour threshold, Pope told Live Science. [Top 5 Benefits of Play]
Originally published on Live Science.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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