teaching their homework

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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Smart Classroom Management

A Simple, Effective Homework Plan For Teachers: Part 1

So for the next two weeks I’m going to outline a homework plan–four strategies this week, four the next–aimed at making homework a simple yet effective process.

Let’s get started.

Homework Strategies 1-4

The key to homework success is to eliminate all the obstacles—and excuses—that get in the way of students getting it done.

Add leverage and some delicately placed peer pressure to the mix, and not getting homework back from every student will be a rare occurrence.

Here is how to do it.

1. Assign what students already know.

Most teachers struggle with homework because they misunderstand the narrow purpose of homework, which is to practice what has already been learned. Meaning, you should only assign homework your students fully understand and are able to do by themselves.

Therefore, the skills needed to complete the evening’s homework must be thoroughly taught during the school day. If your students can’t prove to you that they’re able to do the work without assistance, then you shouldn’t assign it.

It isn’t fair to your students—or their parents—to have to sit at the dinner table trying to figure out what you should have taught them during the day.

2. Don’t involve parents.

Homework is an agreement between you and your students. Parents shouldn’t be involved. If parents want to sit with their child while he or she does the homework, great. But it shouldn’t be an expectation or a requirement of them. Otherwise, you hand students a ready-made excuse for not doing it.

You should tell parents at back-to-school night, “I got it covered. If ever your child doesn’t understand the homework, it’s on me. Just send me a note and I’ll take care of it.”

Holding yourself accountable is not only a reminder that your lessons need to be spot on, but parents will love you for it and be more likely to make sure homework gets done every night. And for negligent parents? It’s best for their children in particular to make homework a teacher/student-only agreement.

3. Review and then ask one important question.

Set aside a few minutes before the end of the school day to review the assigned homework. Have your students pull out the work, allow them to ask final clarifying questions, and have them check to make sure they have the materials they need.

And then ask one important question: “Is there anyone, for any reason, who will not be able to turn in their homework in the morning? I want to know now rather than find out about it in the morning.”

There are two reasons for this question.

First, the more leverage you have with students, and the more they admire and respect you , the more they’ll hate disappointing you. This alone can be a powerful incentive for students to complete homework.

Second, it’s important to eliminate every excuse so that the only answer students can give for not doing it is that they just didn’t care. This sets up the confrontation strategy you’ll be using the next morning.

4. Confront students on the spot.

One of your key routines should be entering the classroom in the morning.

As part of this routine, ask your students to place their homework in the top left-hand (or right-hand) corner of their desk before beginning a daily independent assignment—reading, bellwork , whatever it may be.

During the next five to ten minutes, walk around the room and check homework–don’t collect it. Have a copy of the answers (if applicable) with you and glance at every assignment.

You don’t have to check every answer or read every portion of the assignment. Just enough to know that it was completed as expected. If it’s math, I like to pick out three or four problems that represent the main thrust of the lesson from the day before.

It should take just seconds to check most students.

Remember, homework is the practice of something they already know how to do. Therefore, you shouldn’t find more than a small percentage of wrong answers–if any. If you see more than this, then you know your lesson was less than effective, and you’ll have to reteach

If you find an assignment that is incomplete or not completed at all, confront that student on the spot .

Call them on it.

The day before, you presented a first-class lesson and gave your students every opportunity to buzz through their homework confidently that evening. You did your part, but they didn’t do theirs. It’s an affront to the excellence you strive for as a class, and you deserve an explanation.

It doesn’t matter what he or she says in response to your pointed questions, and there is no reason to humiliate or give the student the third degree. What is important is that you make your students accountable to you, to themselves, and to their classmates.

A gentle explanation of why they don’t have their homework is a strong motivator for even the most jaded students to get their homework completed.

The personal leverage you carry–that critical trusting rapport you have with your students–combined with the always lurking peer pressure is a powerful force. Not using it is like teaching with your hands tied behind your back.

Homework Strategies 5-8

Next week we’ll cover the final four homework strategies . They’re critical to getting homework back every day in a way that is painless for you and meaningful for your students.

I hope you’ll tune in.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

What to read next:

• A Powerful Way To Relieve Stress: Part One
• A Simple Exercise Program For Teachers
• The Best Time To Review Your Classroom Management Plan
• Why Your New Classroom Management Plan Isn't Working
• 27 Things That Make Your Classroom Management Plan Work

21 thoughts on “A Simple, Effective Homework Plan For Teachers: Part 1”

Good stuff, Michael. A lot of teachers I train and coach are surprised (and skeptical) at first when I make the same point you make about NOT involving parents. But it’s right on based on my experience as a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator the past 17 years. More important, it’s validated by Martin Haberman’s 40 years of research on what separates “star” teachers from “quitter/failure” teachers ( http://www.habermanfoundation.org/Book.aspx?sm=c1 )

I love the articles about “homework”. in the past I feel that it is difficuty for collecting homework. I will try your plan next year.

I think you’ll be happy with it, Sendy!

How do you confront students who do not have their homework completed?

You state in your book to let consequences do their job and to never confront students, only tell them the rule broken and consequence.

I want to make sure I do not go against that rule, but also hold students accountable for not completing their work. What should I say to them?

They are two different things. Homework is not part of your classroom management plan.

Hi Michael,

I’m a first-year middle school teacher at a private school with very small class sizes (eight to fourteen students per class). While I love this homework policy, I feel discouraged about confronting middle schoolers publicly regarding incomplete homework. My motive would never be to humiliate my students, yet I can name a few who would go home thinking their lives were over if I did confront them in front of their peers. Do you have any ideas of how to best go about incomplete homework confrontation with middle school students?

The idea isn’t in any way to humiliate students, but to hold them accountable for doing their homework. Parts one and two represent my best recommendation.:)

I believe that Homework is a vital part of students learning.

I’m still a student–in a classroom management class. So I have no experience with this, but I’m having to plan a procedure for my class. What about teacher sitting at desk and calling student one at a time to bring folder while everyone is doing bellwork or whatever their procedure is? That way 1) it would be a long walk for the ones who didn’t do the work :), and 2) it would be more private. What are your thoughts on that? Thanks. 🙂

I’m not sure I understand your question. Would you mind emailing me with more detail? I’m happy to help.

I think what you talked about is great. How do you feel about flipping a lesson? My school is pretty big on it, though I haven’t done it yet. Basically, for homework, the teacher assigns a video or some other kind of media of brand new instruction. Students teach themselves and take a mini quiz at the end to show they understand the new topic. Then the next day in the classroom, the teacher reinforces the lesson and the class period is spent practicing with the teacher present for clarification. I haven’t tried it yet because as a first year teacher I haven’t had enough time to make or find instructional videos and quizzes, and because I’m afraid half of my students will not do their homework and the next day in class I will have to waste the time of the students who did their homework and just reteach what the video taught.

Anyway, this year, I’m trying the “Oops, I forgot my homework” form for students to fill out every time they forget their homework. It keeps them accountable and helps me keep better track of who is missing what. Once they complete it, I cut off the bottom portion of the form and staple it to their assignment. I keep the top copy for my records and for parent/teacher conferences.

Here is an instant digital download of the form. It’s editable in case you need different fields.

Thanks again for your blog. I love the balance you strike between rapport and respect.

Your site is a godsend for a newbie teacher! Thank you for your clear, step-by-step, approach!

I G+ your articles to my PLN all the time.

You’re welcome, TeachNich! And thank you for sharing the articles.

Hi Michael, I’m going into my first year and some people have told me to try and get parents involved as much as I can – even home visits and things like that. But my gut says that negligent parents cannot be influenced by me. Still, do you see any value in having parents initial their student’s planner every night so they stay up to date on homework assignments? I could also write them notes.

Personally, no. I’ll write about this in the future, but when you hold parents accountable for what are student responsibilities, you lighten their load and miss an opportunity to improve independence.

I am teaching at a school where students constantly don’t take work home. I rarely give homework in math but when I do it is usually something small and I still have to chase at least 7 kids down to get their homework. My way of holding them accountable is to record a homework completion grade as part of their overall grade. Is this wrong to do? Do you believe homework should never be graded for a grade and just be for practice?

No, I think marking a completion grade is a good idea.

I’ve been teaching since 2014 and we need to take special care when assigning homework. If the homework assignment is too hard, is perceived as busy work, or takes too long to complete, students might tune out and resist doing it. Never send home any assignment that students cannot do. Homework should be an extension of what students have learned in class. To ensure that homework is clear and appropriate, consider the following tips for assigning homework:

Assign homework in small units. Explain the assignment clearly. Establish a routine at the beginning of the year for how homework will be assigned. Remind students of due dates periodically. And Make sure students and parents have information regarding the policy on missed and late assignments, extra credit, and available adaptations. Establish a set routine at the beginning of the year.

Thanks Nancie L Beckett

Dear Michael,

I love your approach! Do you have any ideas for homework collection for lower grades? K-3 are not so ready for independent work first thing in the morning, so I do not necessarily have time to check then; but it is vitally important to me to teach the integrity of completing work on time.

Also, I used to want parents involved in homework but my thinking has really changed, and your comments confirm it!

Hi Meredith,

I’ll be sure and write about this topic in an upcoming article (or work it into an article). 🙂

Overall, this article provides valuable insights and strategies for teachers to implement in their classrooms. I look forward to reading Part 2 and learning more about how to make homework a simple and effective process. Thanks

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Rethinking Homework for This Year—and Beyond

A schoolwide effort to reduce homework has led to a renewed focus on ensuring that all work assigned really aids students’ learning.

I used to pride myself on my high expectations, including my firm commitment to accountability for regular homework completion among my students. But the trauma of Covid-19 has prompted me to both reflect and adapt. Now when I think about the purpose and practice of homework, two key concepts guide me: depth over breadth, and student well-being.

Homework has long been the subject of intense debate, and there’s no easy answer with respect to its value. Teachers assign homework for any number of reasons: It’s traditional to do so, it makes students practice their skills and solidify learning, it offers the opportunity for formative assessment, and it creates good study habits and discipline. Then there’s the issue of pace. Throughout my career, I’ve assigned homework largely because there just isn’t enough time to get everything done in class.

A Different Approach

Since classes have gone online, the school where I teach has made a conscious effort as a teaching community to reduce, refine, and distill our curriculum. We have applied guiding questions like: What is most important? What is most transferable? What is most relevant? Refocusing on what matters most has inevitably made us rethink homework.

We have approached both asking and answering these questions through a science of learning lens. In Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning , the authors maintain that deep learning is slow learning. Deep learning requires time for retrieval, practice, feedback, reflection, and revisiting content; ultimately it requires struggle, and there is no struggle without time.

As someone who has mastered the curriculum mapping style of “get it done to move on to get that next thing done,” using an approach of “slow down and reduce” has been quite a shift for me. However, the shift has been necessary: What matters most is what’s best for my students, as opposed to my own plans or mandates imposed by others.

Listening to Students

To implement this shift, my high school English department has reduced content and texts both in terms of the amount of units and the content within each unit. We’re more flexible with dates and deadlines. We spend our energy planning the current unit instead of the year’s units. In true partnership with my students, I’m constantly checking in with them via Google forms, Zoom chats, conferences, and Padlet activities. In these check-ins, I specifically ask students how they’re managing the workload for my class and their other classes. I ask them how much homework they’re doing. And I adjust what I do and expect based on what they tell me. For example, when I find out a week is heavy with work in other classes, I make sure to allot more time during class for my tasks. At times I have even delayed or altered one of my assignments.

To be completely transparent, the “old” me is sheepish in admitting that I’ve so dramatically changed my thinking with respect to homework. However, both my students and I have reaped numerous benefits. I’m now laser-focused when designing every minute of my lessons to maximize teaching and learning. Every decision I make is now scrutinized through the lens of absolute worth for my students’ growth: If it doesn’t make the cut, it’s cut. I also take into account what is most relevant to my students.

For example, our 10th-grade English team has redesigned a unit that explores current manifestations of systemic oppression. This unit is new in approach and longer in duration than it was pre-Covid, and it has resulted in some of the deepest and hardest learning, as well as the richest conversations, that I have seen among students in my career. Part of this improved quality comes from the frequent and intentional pauses that I instruct students to take in order to reflect on the content and on the arc of their own learning. The reduction in content that we need to get through in online learning has given me more time to assign reflective prompts, and to let students process their thoughts, whether that’s at the end of a lesson as an exit slip or as an assignment.

Joining Forces to Be Consistent

There’s no doubt this reduction in homework has been a team effort. Within the English department, we have all agreed to allot reading time during class; across each grade level, we’re monitoring the amount of homework our students have collectively; and across the whole high school, we have adopted a framework to help us think through assigning homework.

Within that framework, teachers at the school agree that the best option is for students to complete all work during class. The next best option is for students to finish uncompleted class work at home as a homework assignment of less than 30 minutes. The last option—the one we try to avoid as much as possible—is for students to be assigned and complete new work at home (still less than 30 minutes). I set a maximum time limit for students’ homework tasks (e.g., 30 minutes) and make that clear at the top of every assignment.

This schoolwide approach has increased my humility as a teacher. In the past, I tended to think my subject was more important than everyone else’s, which gave me license to assign more homework. But now I view my students’ experience more holistically: All of their classes and the associated work must be considered, and respected.

As always, I ground this new pedagogical approach not just in what’s best for students’ academic learning, but also what’s best for them socially and emotionally. 2020 has been traumatic for educators, parents, and students. There is no doubt the level of trauma varies greatly ; however, one can’t argue with the fact that homework typically means more screen time when students are already spending most of the day on their devices. They need to rest their eyes. They need to not be sitting at their desks. They need physical activity. They need time to do nothing at all.

Eliminating or reducing homework is a social and emotional intervention, which brings me to the greatest benefit of reducing the homework load: Students are more invested in their relationship with me now that they have less homework. When students trust me to take their time seriously, when they trust me to listen to them and adjust accordingly, when they trust me to care for them... they trust more in general.

And what a beautiful world of learning can be built on trust.

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Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

Posted in Voices+Opinion

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Do your homework

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Help your students succeed in exams with these targeted and teacher-tested homework strategies

Source: © Natalia Smu/Shutterstock

Targeted homework tasks can be a student’s (and their teacher’s) best friend when it comes to exam performance

Homework plays a vital role in consolidating in-class learning. Effective science homework provides the extension to learning that students need to succeed, and gives us vital data to inform our planning. An EEF study on the impact of homework in secondary schools  says that regular homework can have the same positive effect as five additional months in the classroom, as well as ‘enabling pupils to undertake independent learning to practise and consolidate skills and revise for exams’. That said, getting students to complete homework is no mean feat.

There are multiple strategies we can implement to ensure homework has meaning and students appreciate the benefits of homework in their learning. This is especially useful when they’re preparing for exams.

Strategies to engage your students

A few strategies have worked well for me with exam classes.

I deliver the homework in chunks (eg half termly), clearly explaining the rationale. As an example, my year 11 chemistry students performed poorly on electrolysis and titration calculation in their mock exams so, after reteaching, I wanted to ensure they rehearsed the concepts. As part of the homework they had to repeat tasks on these concepts. We then reviewed and adjusted the plan as a class to focus on their weaker areas.

I give praise often. Students love rewards in whatever form. I always discuss what rewards the class prefers. You can use stickers, certificates, etc.

It’s important to be flexible. An exam year can be a stressful time for students and so flexibility is key. I ask my students about the minimum they could manage. They feel valued and part of the decision-making process, making them more likely to complete it.

Identify students/parents/carers who need support. With some of my students, I had the most success in this area by meeting with or emailing their parents/carers and providing strategies for completion, such as doing the homework every Saturday at a specific time. An email every so often to check how they are doing goes a long way.

Using online platforms

When I was a faculty lead, homework was a key focus for our department and so we did some research into online retrieval platforms which were easy to manage, self-marking and provided both students and teachers with information on learning gaps. We found several platforms to fit our criteria, such as quizzing platforms,  Kay Science  – great for missed learning catch up, revision and intervention for small groups – and  Carousel – that helps students embed long-term knowledge. We then took a few key steps to increase buy-in.

Often students struggled with passwords, regardless of ease, so we booked laptops for all classes and the teacher modelled logging in, and checked every student could log in and complete a task. At times students would say they didn’t know the answers, but often this was because they’d not watched the videos. So we reminded them to do that first. There was also a short video of how to log in on the school’s homework platform for extra support.

We mapped homework to the curriculum. Students had to be familiar with the content, so homework tasks supplemented in-class learning.

We did everything we could to minimise barriers. All students who had a record of incomplete homework were encouraged to attend homework club and we allowed extensions in case they just forgot. The barriers to completing homework varied between households and sometimes a conversation to identify them and offer support was all that was needed.

The senior leadership team knew what platform we were using, so they could discuss it with all students, parents and governors. We also presented the chosen retrieval platform to parents and carers to increase buy-in.

Over time we noticed a spike in submissions as students got more familiar with the platform. Teachers praised students who showed the most progress, which meant previously disengaged students felt successful and motivated to complete more tasks.

Thandi Banda

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The role of homework

Homework seems to be an accepted part of teachers’ and students’ routines, but there is little mention of it in ELT literature.

The role of homework is hardly mentioned in the majority of general ELT texts or training courses, suggesting that there is little question as to its value even if the resulting workload is time-consuming. However, there is clearly room for discussion of homework policies and practices particularly now that technology has made so many more resources available to learners outside the classroom.

Reasons for homework

• Attitudes to homework
• Effective homework
• Types of homework
• Homework is expected by students, teachers, parents and institutions.
• Homework reinforces and helps learners to retain information taught in the classroom as well as increasing their general understanding of the language.
• Homework develops study habits and independent learning. It also encourages learners to acquire resources such as dictionaries and grammar reference books. Research shows that homework also benefits factual knowledge, self-discipline, attitudes to learning and problem-solving skills.
• Homework offers opportunities for extensive activities in the receptive skills which there may not be time for in the classroom. It may also be an integral part of ongoing learning such as project work and the use of a graded reader.
• Homework provides continuity between lessons. It may be used to consolidate classwork, but also for preparation for the next lesson.
• Homework may be used to shift repetitive, mechanical, time-consuming tasks out of the classroom.
• Homework bridges the gap between school and home. Students, teachers and parents can monitor progress. The institution can involve parents in the learning process.
• Homework can be a useful assessment tool, as part of continual or portfolio assessment.

Attitudes to homework Teachers tend to have mixed feelings about homework. While recognising the advantages, they observe negative attitudes and poor performance from students. Marking and giving useful feedback on homework can take up a large proportion of a teacher’s time, often after school hours.

• Students themselves complain that the homework they are given is boring or pointless, referring to homework tasks that consist of studying for tests, doing workbook exercises, finishing incomplete classwork, memorising lists of vocabulary and writing compositions. Where this is actually the case, the negative effects of homework can be observed, typified by loss of interest and a view of homework as a form of punishment.
• Other negative effects of poorly managed homework include lack of necessary leisure time and an increased differential between high and low achievers. These problems are often the cause of avoidance techniques such as completing homework tasks in class, collaborating and copying or simply not doing the required tasks. In turn, conflict may arise between learners, teachers, parents and the institution.

Effective homework In order for homework to be effective, certain principles should be observed.

• Students should see the usefulness of homework. Teachers should explain the purpose both of homework in general and of individual tasks.
• Tasks should be relevant, interesting and varied.
• Good classroom practice also applies to homework. Tasks should be manageable but achievable.
• Different tasks may be assigned to different ability groups. Individual learning styles should be taken into account.
• Homework should be manageable in terms of time as well as level of difficulty. Teachers should remember that students are often given homework in other subjects and that there is a need for coordination to avoid overload. A homework diary, kept by the learner but checked by teachers and parents is a useful tool in this respect.
• Homework is rarely co-ordinated within the curriculum as a whole, but should at least be incorporated into an overall scheme of work and be considered in lesson planning.
• Homework tends to focus on a written product. There is no reason why this should be the case, other than that there is visible evidence that the task has been done.
• Learner involvement and motivation may be increased by encouraging students to contribute ideas for homework and possibly design their own tasks. The teacher also needs to know how much time the students have, what facilities they have at home, and what their preferences are. A simple questionnaire will provide this data.
• While homework should consolidate classwork, it should not replicate it. Home is the outside world and tasks which are nearer to real-life use of language are appropriate.
• If homework is set, it must be assessed in some way, and feedback given. While marking by the teacher is sometimes necessary, peer and self-assessment can encourage learner independence as well as reducing the teacher’s workload. Motivating students to do homework is an ongoing process, and encouragement may be given by commenting and asking questions either verbally or in written form in order to demonstrate interest on the teacher’s part, particularly in the case of self-study and project work.

Types of homework There are a number of categories of useful and practicable homework tasks.

• Workbook-based tasks Most published course materials include a workbook or practice book, mainly including consolidation exercises, short reading texts and an answer key. Most workbooks claim to be suitable for both class and self-study use, but are better used at home in order to achieve a separation of what is done in class and at home. Mechanical practice is thus shifted out of class hours, while this kind of exercise is particularly suited to peer- or self-checking and correction.
• Preparation tasks Rarely do teachers ask learners to read through the next unit of a coursebook, though there are advantages in involving students in the lesson plan and having them know what is coming. More motivating, however, is asking students to find and bring materials such as photographs and pictures, magazine articles and realia which are relevant to the next topic, particularly where personalisation or relevance to the local context requires adaptation of course materials.
• Extensive tasks Much can be gained from the use of graded readers, which now often have accompanying audio material, radio and TV broadcasts, podcasts and songs. Sometimes tasks need to be set as guidance, but learners also need to be encouraged to read, listen and watch for pleasure. What is important is that learners share their experiences in class. Extensive reading and listening may be accompanied by dictionary work and a thematic or personalised vocabulary notebook, whereby learners can collect language which they feel is useful.
• Guided discovery tasks Whereas classroom teaching often involves eliciting language patterns and rules from learners, there is also the option of asking learners to notice language and make deductions for themselves at home. This leads to the sharing of knowledge and even peer teaching in the classroom.
• Real-world tasks These involve seeing, hearing and putting language to use in realistic contexts. Reading magazines, watching TV, going to the cinema and listening to songs are obvious examples, offering the option of writing summaries and reviews as follow-up activities. Technology facilitates chat and friendship networks, while even in monolingual environments, walking down a shopping street noticing shop and brand names will reveal a lot of language. As with extensive tasks, it is important for learners to share their experiences, and perhaps to collect them in a formal or informal portfolio.
• Project work It is a good idea to have a class or individual projects running over a period of time. Projects may be based on topics from a coursebook, the locality, interests and hobbies or selected individually. Project work needs to be guided in terms of where to find resources and monitored regularly, the outcome being a substantial piece of work at the end of a course or term of which the learner can claim ownership.

Conclusion Finally, a word about the Internet. The Web appears to offer a wealth of opportunity for self-study. Certainly reference resources make project work easier and more enjoyable, but cutting and pasting can also be seen as an easy option, requiring little originality or understanding. Conferring over homework tasks by email can be positive or negative, though chatting with an English-speaking friend is to be encouraged, as is searching for visual materials. Both teachers and learners are guilty of trawling the Net for practice exercises, some of which are untried, untested and dubious in terms of quality. Learners need guidance, and a starting point is to provide a short list of reliable sites such as the British Council's  LearnEnglish  and the BBC's Learning English  which provide a huge variety of exercises and activities as well as links to other reliable sources. Further reading Cooper, H. Synthesis of Research on Homework . Educational Leadership 47/3, 1989 North, S. and Pillay, H. Homework: re-examining the routin e. ELT Journal 56/2, April 2002 Painter, L. Homework . English Teaching Professional, Issue 10, 1999 Painter, L. Homework . OUP Resource Books for Teachers, 2003

First published in October 2007

Mr. Steve Darn I liked your…

Mr. Steve Darn I liked your method of the role of the homework . Well, I am one of those laggard people. Unfortunately, when it comes to homework, I definitely do it. Because, a student or pupil who understands new topics, of course, does his homework to know how much he understands the new topic. I also completely agree with all of Steve Darn's points above. However, sometimes teachers give a lot of riff-raff homework, just like homework is a human obligation. This is a plus. But in my opinion, first of all, it is necessary to divide the time properly, and then to do many tasks at home. Only then will you become an "excellent student" in the eyes of the teacher. Although we live in the age of technology, there are still some people who do not know how to send homework via email. Some foreign teachers ask to send tasks by email. Constant email updates require time and, in rare cases, a fee. My above points have been the cause of constant discussions.

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Teaching with Homework

Introduction

The debate of whether or not schools assign too much homework has been around for about as long as schools have. Over the years, experts have changed their opinions about whether schools should lower or raise the number of assignments they give, leaving teachers often confused. Recently many schools have banned homework altogether, but many other schools stand firmly against this practice. Those against excess allotment assert that it could lead to unhealthy stress levels and sleep deprivation, especially for older students. However, older students are the ones that reap the most benefits from the practice. Homework does ultimately create extra work for teachers to grade and for parents to help, but are the student-learning benefits strong enough to outweigh all else?

Nearly every school in the world has assigned some form of homework to its students. As a result, plenty of articles, studies, and activities exist to provide educators with the best strategies.

Lesson Plan

• Why Do Homework : McGill University provides this packet of ten lesson plans, teaching students the importance of completing homework. The first lesson introduces the benefits of completing assignments, and includes a contract and journal. Each lesson plan references a set of worksheets that teachers can use to keep track of their lessons, and to distribute to their students. With these lessons, kids can better understand the purposes of their work and further motivate themselves at home.
• Improving Assignments : Education World provides this short lesson plan intended for grades 5-12. This plan allows teachers to take student input into account by opening up discussions on the effectiveness of homework assignments. Teachers can use this lesson halfway through or towards the end of the school year to gain adequate feedback from their students. Allowing students to feel partially in control of their assignments through lesson plans like this one can motivate them in the future.
• Learning to Be Your Own Coach : This plan from the New York Times’ Learning Network offers a plan for teaching students self-sufficiency in completing assignments. The page includes a warm-up, activity, and blurb entailing strategies for going further. It also provides links to resources including worksheets and case studies that teachers can use in addition to the activity. 
• The Cult of Homework : The Atlantic published this article addressing the debate of homework allotment. Many researchers suggest a strong correlation between homework and better performances on tests among older students. This finding fits with the commonly cited “10-minute rule,” which suggests that educators should assign about 10 minutes of homework per night, per grade level, giving a first grader 10 minutes per night, 20 minutes for a second grader, and so on. The article also examines the other side of the argument, citing countries such as Japan and Denmark, which it says perform better academically than the United States and assign less work.
• How Homework Can Boost Learning : Forbes provides this incredibly insightful article about distributing homework in grade schools. The article tackles different perspectives about the issue, taking into account the different ways that teachers can assign and the effects on different groups of students. The author acknowledges low-income and less-educated families, citing research that finds a positive correlation between such assignments and student performance. With such families, homework allows parents opportunities to become more involved in their children’s schoolwork. Researchers find that homework as a whole improves performance among middle and high schools, but not elementary schools. However, similar studies have found that math practice proves more effective in helping elementary schoolers than any other age group. In turn, teachers should consider carefully how the types of tasks they are appointing are affecting each of their students.
• Is Banning Homework a Good Idea? In this article, McRel International’s Howard Pitler responds to a recent policy at a Quebec elementary school, banning homework. The author goes on to discuss whether or not schools should be banning such assignments. He references four pieces of advice for teachers when assigning, and with these strategies, acknowledges the influence of parental pressure for teachers to give out more chores. Many parents view assignments as a way to show rigor. As a result, teachers can feel tempted to assign students “busy work.” Pitler provides yet another list of strategies for teachers to deal with this kind of pressure and make the best of the students’ homework time.

Informational Sites

• Research Spotlight on Homework : National Education Association’s (NEA’s) page blueprints the best homework practices in education. This page assesses the different studies conducted, suggesting that educators “ take into account grade-specific and developmental factors when determining the amount and kind of homework.” The article weighs both sides of the debate, citing several studies throughout, and includes helpful references and related links surrounding the issue. This source does a good job of presenting the homework debate from a very neutral point of view. Educators can use this resource to gain a better understanding of the issue before picking a stance.
• Effective Practices : Reading Rockets writers Kathy Ruhl and Charles Hughes comprised this article based on research on teaching practices with students with learning disabilities. In the article, Ruhl and Hughes outline the most and least effective practices when assigning homework. The article addresses homework’s four innate purposes: practice, preparation, studying, and elaboration. This article provides insight for teachers on how, what, and when to assign.
• Designing Meaningful Assignments : The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development details the difficulty of finding a balance when addressing different student needs when assigning homework. Teachers should avoid issuing dull, or busywork, but such a feat proves harder than expected. This article provides tips and insight for teachers in assigning more meaningful work that can most improve a student’s learning. These strategies encourage teachers to empower their students’ with creativity and freedom, further motivating the students to take charge of their own education.

Homework’s purpose is to reinforce classroom topics, but oftentimes shortened classes can interrupt such protocol. Many claim that introducing topics for homework can put pressure on parents and marginalize less educated families. But these tasks can also teach students lessons in responsibility and self-sufficiency. Overall, teachers should find a healthy balance of work and cater it towards their students’ ages. After all, many of them are still kids.

Additional Resources

• Developing Good Habits : Mali Anderson from Parents.com offers six strategies for laying a foundation for children’s good study habits. Parents and educators need to find a balance of control by sitting students down to do their homework, but leaving them to complete it on their own. This resource is intended for parents and educators of younger students. Educators can share this resource with parents in order to improve students’ habits and performances on assignments. 
• Should Students Have Homework? : Suzanne Tingley from Western Governors University criticizes homework practices in America. With the type of assignments that most teachers allot, she cites, assignments do not necessarily develop students’ mastery in a topic, but rather train them for tackling standardized tests. The article suggests that schools do not necessarily need to assign nightly, but feel pressured to because it is “what [schools] have always done. She encourages teachers to think carefully about their policies, praising the quality of lessons over the quantity.
• The School That Banned Homework : The Washington Post covered this story, checking in on a Vermont elementary school that banned homework six months earlier. The school reported positive results and even found that kids are reading more on their own now than they did when teachers assigned them readings. Educators can look to this school’s approach when considering whether or not to lessen the influx of assignments on their students. With the trend of lowering homework levels gaining in popularity in recent years, it is important that educators learn about the schools whose policies succeeded.

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Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should we get rid of homework? Why, or why not?

Is homework an outdated, ineffective or counterproductive tool for learning? Do you agree with the authors of the paper that homework is harmful and worsens inequalities that exist between students’ home circumstances?

Or do you agree with Mr. Kang that homework still has real educational value?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do? Do you think the amount is appropriate, too much or too little? Is homework, including the projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or, in your opinion, is it not a good use of time? Explain.

In these letters to the editor , one reader makes a distinction between elementary school and high school:

Homework’s value is unclear for younger students. But by high school and college, homework is absolutely essential for any student who wishes to excel. There simply isn’t time to digest Dostoyevsky if you only ever read him in class.

What do you think? How much does grade level matter when discussing the value of homework?

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

If you were a teacher, would you assign homework? What kind of assignments would you give and why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

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The Value of Parents Helping with Homework

Dr. selena kiser.

• September 2, 2020

The importance of parents helping with homework is invaluable. Helping with homework is an important responsibility as a parent and directly supports the learning process. Parents’ experience and expertise is priceless. One of the best predictors of success in school is learning at home and being involved in children’s education. Parental involvement with homework helps develop self-confidence and motivation in the classroom. Parents helping students with homework has a multitude of benefits including spending individual time with children, enlightening strengths and weaknesses, making learning more meaningful, and having higher aspirations.

How Parental Involvement with Homework Impacts Students

Parental involvement with homework impacts students in a positive way. One of the most important reasons for parental involvement is that it helps alleviate stress and anxiety if the students are facing challenges with specific skills or topics. Parents have experience and expertise with a variety of subject matter and life experiences to help increase relevance. Parents help their children understand content and make it more meaningful, while also helping them understand things more clearly.

Also, their involvement increases skill and subject retention. Parents get into more depth about content and allow students to take skills to a greater level. Many children will always remember the times spent together working on homework or classroom projects. Parental involvement with homework and engagement in their child’s education are related to higher academic performance, better social skills and behavior, and increased self-confidence.

Parents helping with homework allows more time to expand upon subjects or skills since learning can be accelerated in the classroom. This is especially true in today’s classrooms. The curricula in many classrooms is enhanced and requires teaching a lot of content in a small amount of time. Homework is when parents and children can spend extra time on skills and subject matter. Parents provide relatable reasons for learning skills, and children retain information in greater depth.

Parental involvement increases creativity and induces critical-thinking skills in children. This creates a positive learning environment at home and transfers into the classroom setting. Parents have perspective on their children, and this allows them to support their weaknesses while expanding upon their strengths. The time together enlightens parents as to exactly what their child’s strengths and weaknesses are.

Virtual learning is now utilized nationwide, and parents are directly involved with their child’s schoolwork and homework. Their involvement is more vital now than ever. Fostering a positive homework environment is critical in virtual learning and assists children with technological and academic material.

Strategies for Including Parents in Homework

An essential strategy for including parents in homework is sharing a responsibility to help children meet educational goals. Parents’ commitment to prioritizing their child’s educational goals, and participating in homework supports a larger objective. Teachers and parents are specific about the goals and work directly with the child with classwork and homework. Teachers and parents collaboratively working together on children’s goals have larger and more long-lasting success. This also allows parents to be strategic with homework assistance.

A few other great examples of how to involve parents in homework are conducting experiments, assignments, or project-based learning activities that parents play an active role in. Interviewing parents is a fantastic way to be directly involved in homework and allows the project to be enjoyable. Parents are honored to be interviewed, and these activities create a bond between parents and children. Students will remember these assignments for the rest of their lives.

Project-based learning activities examples are family tree projects, leaf collections, research papers, and a myriad of other hands-on learning assignments. Children love working with their parents on these assignments as they are enjoyable and fun. This type of learning and engagement also fosters other interests. Conducting research is another way parents directly impact their child’s homework. This can be a subject the child is interested in or something they are unfamiliar with. Children and parents look forward to these types of homework activities.

Parents helping students with homework has a multitude of benefits. Parental involvement and engagement have lifelong benefits and creates a pathway for success. Parents provide autonomy and support, while modeling successful homework study habits.

• #homework , #ParentalInvolvement

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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How to Edit a PDF [For Teachers]

Teachers are the real heroes because they do much more than their job description. They have the ultimate responsibility of catering to their students' diverse needs. One of their many tasks involves creating PDFs for lectures and tests, which they need to print and distribute as assignments. This means they go beyond their primary teaching duties, learning how to work with PDFs and editing tools to create a better learning environment for their students. However, editing PDFs is not easy.

I understand this struggle firsthand, having experienced moments of frustration when I desperately needed to edit PDFs but didn't know how. Fortunately, I've managed to overcome these challenges, and I'm here to share the knowledge of how to edit a PDF for teachers.

How Editing PDFs Can Help You with Your Teaching

Teachers already have a lot on their plate, juggling the diverse needs of their students. They need to identify when students are struggling, provide individualized attention, and create an environment that helps everyone perform better. Teaching is a highly demanding profession that is often underrated and underappreciated.

PDFs are a great resource for teachers, helping them to streamline their workflow and maximize their efficiency. For teachers who aren't making use of PDFs, the workload can be even more overwhelming, as they have to manage many tasks manually. Teachers make use of PDFs and editing tools in various scenarios to enhance their teaching efficiency and improve the learning experience for their students. Here are some common scenarios:

Creating and Distributing Lecture Notes:

Teachers prepare comprehensive lecture notes in PDF format to ensure consistency and easy distribution. By editing PDFs, they can update and refine these notes regularly to keep the content current and relevant.

Designing and Administering Tests and Quizzes:

Tests and quizzes are often created in PDF format to maintain a uniform layout. Teachers can edit these PDFs to add new questions, modify existing ones, or tailor the tests to different levels of difficulty for various student groups.

Developing Assignment Sheets and Homework:

Assignment sheets and homework are commonly distributed as PDFs. Editing tools allow teachers to customize these documents with specific instructions, due dates, and additional resources.

Annotating Student Work:

Teachers often receive student submissions in PDF format. They can use PDF editing tools to annotate these documents with comments, corrections, and feedback, making the review process more efficient and clear.

Compiling and Sharing Resource Packs:

Teachers compile various resources, such as reading materials, research articles, and supplementary notes, into a single PDF document. This consolidated resource pack is then shared with students for easy access.

Updating Syllabi and Course Outlines:

Course outlines and syllabi are often distributed as PDFs. Teachers can easily edit these documents to reflect any changes in the curriculum, course schedule, or policies.

Among the functionalities outlined above, certain advanced features necessitate a membership subscription. While Adobe offers these capabilities, its membership fees are comparatively high, posing a financial challenge for many educators. However, I've uncovered that WPS PDF presents a more economical alternative, boasting comprehensive features. Priced at only $2.33 per month, with additional discounts tailored for teachers, it delivers exceptional value.

Furthermore, WPS PDF extends a seven-day trial period, granting teachers the opportunity to explore its offerings before committing to a subscription.

By choosing WPS PDF, teachers can access a powerful suite of tools designed to simplify their tasks and enhance their productivity without straining their budgets. And it is such an intuitive software that teachers can easily learn how to edit a PDF on mobile phones with WPS Office .

How to Edit a PDF [For Lesson Planning]

Lesson planning itself involves a lot of thinking and evaluation, and it is only natural to find the need to edit your lesson plans. If you are working on a PDF, here's how you can do it with ease using WPS Office:

Annotation and Highlighting: This feature empowers teachers to highlight or annotate important information during lesson planning, enabling a more focused and effective teaching approach. With the ability to emphasize key concepts and add insightful comments, educators can enhance the clarity and impact of their instructional materials.

Step 1 : To utilize the annotation or highlighting tools, navigate to the Comment tab in WPS PDF.

Step 2 : Click on the "Highlight" button and then use your cursor to select the text you wish to highlight.

Step 3 : To change the highlight color, click on the small arrow within the Highlight option to explore more color options.

Step 4 : Explore the Comment tab to discover additional annotation tools available in WPS PDF, such as "Drawing tools", "Shape Annotations", and others.

Page Organization: WPS PDF facilitates seamless page organization for teachers, ensuring smooth lesson flow and easy access to essential content. With intuitive tools for rearranging and grouping pages, educators can create structured lesson plans tailored to their teaching objectives.

Step 1 : To rearrange or organize pages in your PDF, go to the Page tab in the WPS PDF toolbar.

Step 2 : To rearrange pages, left-click and hold the page you want to move to another position. The selected page border will turn red, and a red thick line will appear to assist in repositioning pages.

Step 3 : Once positioned, drop the page next to the red thick line, and the pages will now be arranged in their new order.

Find & Replace : WPS PDF simplifies lesson planning by offering a robust Find & Replace feature. Teachers can swiftly locate specific content and make necessary adjustments, ensuring accuracy and coherence in their instructional materials.

Step 1 : The "Find and Replace" tool is available in the "Home" ribbon. Click on it to open the Find and Replace window on the right side of the WPS PDF interface.

Step 2 : Now, simply search for a term that you wish to find in the PDF, and then use other editing tools to replace the content.

I believe teachers of all subjects would find this method incredibly useful. It's always beneficial to stay ahead of the plan and align your lessons accordingly. However, there are times when lessons don’t go as planned due to unexpected holidays or surprise quizzes. In these instances, adjustments to lesson plans become necessary, whether to redo certain sections or add more content.

WPS Office is a lifesaver in such scenarios. It provides teachers with the flexibility to make quick and easy edits to their lesson plans. The ability to seamlessly update PDFs and other documents ensures that educators can adapt to changes without hassle, maintaining the flow of their teaching while accommodating any unexpected disruptions.

How to Edit a PDF [For Grading & Feedback]

Grading your students' papers and leaving feedback is important for building their confidence and helping them improve. In the digital age where education often takes place online, teachers and students can interact more naturally and efficiently using digital tools. Here's how to edit PDF documents for grading using WPS Office:

Commenting Tools : With WPS PDF, teachers gain access to commenting tools for adding remarks, notes, or explanations directly onto the document, facilitating detailed feedback on students assignment or coursework.

Step 1 : To add a comment to your PDF documents, visit the "Comment" tab and then click on the "Text Comment" button.

Step 2 : Now, go to the position where you want to add a comment and click on the document to place the comment box. Then simply add explanations or comments on the student's work.

Step 3 : To change the font size or color of the comment, use the hover menu right above the comment box.

Save and Share : After finishing grading and offering feedback, teachers can save the updated PDF containing annotations and comments. Then, you can electronically share it with the students via email or a learning platform for prompt feedback delivery.

Step 1 :  After completing all remarks and corrections on the PDF, if teachers wish to preserve the changes in a separate PDF, they can access the Menu button at the top left and select the "Save as" option.

Step 2 : Once the PDF has been saved, navigate to the "Fill & Sign" tab and then click on the "Send via Email" button.

Step 3 : The Share & Collaborate window will pop open, select the preferred email client. This will open the email client with the PDF attached; simply enter the student's email and share the PDF.

Grading is such a repetitive and automated task that it's only natural for teachers to occasionally miss or make an error in the grading of a student. While it might seem like a small mistake to a teacher, it can mean a lot to the student.

WPS Office's AI tools will  grading fast and easy, significantly reducing the chances of errors. Teachers can quickly update grades and add relevant comments without going through extra trouble. Plus, assignments and feedback can be shared online, eliminating the need for exchanging physical papers. This method ensures accuracy and provides a seamless way to communicate with students, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the grading process.

How to Edit a PDF [For Archiving]

Organizing and teaching go hand in hand because when everything is in order, the teaching experience becomes more enjoyable and effective. Disorganization can disrupt the flow of lessons and create unnecessary stress. To maintain a seamless teaching process, it's essential to keep your materials well-organized. One effective way to achieve this is by archiving your lesson plans, assignments, and other important documents. Here's how you can edit your PDFs for archiving using WPS Office:

Text Editing : Using WPS PDF, teachers can modify text within PDF documents to incorporate new sections or questions, streamlining the process of updating or adjusting their materials without necessitating the creation of a new version.

Step 1 : If you want to add a new section to the PDF, click on the "Add text" button in the Edit ribbon, then place the cursor where you want to add the new section and left-click and then enter the contents of the new section.

Step 2 : To customize the font, WPS PDF opens the "Edit PDF" pane on the right while adding text, where you can customize the font in the Text Properties section.

Step 3 : To erase a section, click on the "Wipe Off" option in the Edit ribbon, and use your cursor to select the area you wish to erase.

Bookmarking : Bookmarking PDFs allows for easier navigation. With WPS PDF, teachers can utilize the bookmark feature to create bookmarks within the document, facilitating easy access to specific pages or sections for efficient archiving and document management.

Step 1 : Click on the "Add Bookmark" option in the Edit ribbon to create a new bookmark in your PDF. This will open the Bookmark pane on the left side of the WPS PDF interface.

Step 2 : Give your bookmark a name, and to edit its properties, right-click to open the view bookmark options.

Digital Signatures : With WPS PDF, teachers can effortlessly add signatures to PDF documents, ensuring authenticity and integrity verification for archived files.

Step 1 : If you're adding a digital signature for the first time in WPS PDF, start by clicking the "Add Signature" button in the Fill & Sign ribbon.

Step 2 : A window for PDF Signature will appear, where students can make a new digital signature by drawing, typing, or uploading an image of their signature. After creating the signature, click "OK".

Step 3 : Your cursor will turn into a digital signature. Put it anywhere in the document and adjust its size using the border.

Archiving, although an inevitable and integral task, can be time-consuming and prone to errors when done manually. Important documents, lesson plans, and student records need to be organized and stored efficiently and with this signing method teachers can be assured about the safekeeping of the student’s assignments.

How to Edit a PDF [For Resource-Sharing]

Teachers usually have nothing to hide, but as exam season approaches, it's essential for them to take extra steps to ensure that exam papers don't get leaked and grades remain confidential. This is crucial for maintaining trust and integrity in the educational system. If you have something you want to keep confidential from your students or colleagues, follow these steps for resource sharing:

Password Protection : Preparing coursework can be time-consuming, and ensuring its security to prevent copying or safeguard sensitive information like student details is crucial. With WPS PDF, you can achieve both efficiently by encrypting your PDF documents.

Step 1 : Click on the "Encrypt" button in the Protect tab to keep your PDF contract safe from people who shouldn't see it.

Step 2 : In the encryption window, tick the box that says “Set the open password” to create a password. This password will stop anyone from opening the file without permission.

Step 3 : If you don't want others to edit or copy your PDF contracts, you can also set a password for that by checking the “Set password of editing and extracting” checkbox.

Extract Text : With this feature, teachers can easily pull text from PDF files, making it simpler to reuse content or add it into other documents or communication tools when working with colleagues.

Step 1 : To extract text from a PDF, go to the Home tab and choose the "Extract Text" option from the ribbon.

Step 2 : The Extract Text window will open, and WPS PDF will begin extracting text from the PDF. Once done, you can click "Copy" to copy the content to the clipboard.

Step 3 : To edit the PDF content, click on "Edit" and use your keyboard to make changes.

This method will work great for teachers who want to preserve the confidentiality of certain documents, as it ensures that sensitive information remains secure and accessible only to authorized individuals. Teachers have a professional responsibility to uphold ethical standards in their teaching abilities, which includes maintaining the confidentiality of student records, assessments, and other confidential documents.

By utilizing digital platforms for sharing homework and other course materials online, teachers can effectively safeguard sensitive information while still providing students with the resources they need to succeed. This approach promotes transparency, accountability, and professionalism in educational practices, reinforcing trust and confidence in teachers' ethical conduct.

How to Edit a PDF [For Distributing Homework]

At this point in time, online classes have become more common than ever, proving to be more efficient, with students performing better as they have better access to lectures. However, an effective hybrid system is what works best, blending the benefits of both in-person and online instruction. In this model, teachers share everything and resources online, including homework assignments. You can share the homework to your student through WPS PDF easy shareability and editing capabilities as demonstrated below:

Adding Links and Attachments : With WPS PDF, teachers can add hyperlinks or attachments to their PDFs, incorporating extra resources or instructions for homework. For instance, you can link online articles, videos, or supplementary materials to provide more context or support.

Step 1 : To attach a file to your PDF, click the "Attachment" button in the Edit tab, then position your cursor where you want the file in the PDF and left-click.

Step 2 : Locate the file on your computer and select it to attach it to the PDF form.

Step 3 : Similarly, to add a link to your PDF, click on the "Link" button in the Edit tab, then place the cursor on the PDF where you want to place the link and left-click.

Step 4 : The Create Link dialog will open, where you can customize the link style in the Facade section.

Step 5 : In the Link Action section, choose from one of the four options. For example, if you select "Open URL", when a student clicks the link, the URL will open in their preferred browser.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) PDF : OCR capability empowers the conversion of scanned documents or image PDFs into editable and searchable text PDFs, proving invaluable for educational purposes, particularly with handwritten assignments or scanned worksheets. This conversion enables seamless addition of comments, annotations, or corrections before sharing the homework with students.

Step 1 : To perform OCR on a scanned PDF, navigate to the "Convert" tab and choose "OCR PDF".

Step 2 : A dialog box for OCR PDF will pop up. Click on "Perform OCR".

Step 3 : WPS PDF will initiate the OCR process, which may require some time.

Step 4 : After the OCR is finished, the scanned PDF becomes editable with WPS PDF.

WPS PDF has become a game-changer for crafting engaging lesson plans. By integrating links to online resources directly into the PDF, we enhance the depth of our materials while saving students valuable time. The OCR function is truly invaluable for scanned documents, enabling effortless conversion of written work into editable PDFs. This facilitates seamless annotation and feedback before distributing assignments. Additionally, it's incredibly useful for archiving assignments for future reference.

Enhance Your Teaching Process with AI PDF

PDFs already provide a tremendous advantage for teachers by streamlining and enhancing their work. Learning to edit PDFs can significantly increase efficiency and organization. Now, imagine the added benefits when PDFs are integrated with AI. The question naturally arises “where to find free PDF editing software”.  WPS Office offers a powerful, free resource where teachers can easily access AI-integrated PDFs. The final step is for educators to discover the endless possibilities this technology offers. Here's how AI-enhanced PDFs can transform the teaching and learning experience:

Streamlined Document Creation

Automated Formatting : AI tools ensure consistent formatting, saving teachers valuable time on manual adjustments.

Template Recommendations : AI suggests templates for various documents, such as lesson plans, tests, and worksheets, speeding up the creation process.

Personalized Learning Materials

Adaptive Resources : AI analyzes student performance to help teachers create personalized learning materials tailored to individual needs.

Dynamic Worksheets : AI generates worksheets that adjust in difficulty based on student progress, keeping them engaged and challenged.

Efficient Grading and Feedback

Automated Grading : AI grades assignments and tests instantly, providing immediate feedback and freeing up teachers' time for personalized instruction.

Performance Analysis : AI offers detailed reports on student performance, helping teachers identify areas of strength and areas needing improvement.

Time-Saving Automation

Routine Task Automation : AI automates routine tasks such as scheduling, reminders, and notifications, allowing teachers to focus more on teaching.

Resource Distribution : AI manages the distribution of materials, ensuring that students receive the right documents at the right time.

Student Benefits

Instant Feedback : Students receive immediate feedback on assignments, helping them understand their mistakes and learn more effectively.

Enhanced Engagement : Interactive PDFs with AI features make learning more engaging and interactive, capturing students' interest and fostering a deeper understanding of the material.

Accessible Resources : Students can easily access and interact with AI-enhanced PDFs on various devices, facilitating learning anytime, anywhere.

Advanced Features of WPS Office: For Teachers!

WPS Office is not an exclusive office suite tailored to a particular group of people; it caters to everyone, including teachers, who can reap significant benefits from its features. From free PowerPoint templates and smart forms to a versatile screen recorder, WPS Office offers everything teachers need to enhance their teaching and administrative tasks. With WPS Office, educators can create a more efficient, engaging, and productive learning environment without the hassle of learning a new software.

Diverse PowerPoint Templates :

WPS Office offers a wide array of professionally designed PowerPoint templates, all available for free. Whether preparing a presentation for work, school, or personal use, these templates help create visually appealing slideshows that captivate audiences. Teachers can utilize these templates to craft engaging lessons, making their teaching more effective and visually stimulating.

Smart Forms for Administrative Efficiency :

The smart form feature in WPS Office is a highly convenient tool for teachers, streamlining various administrative tasks. With customizable templates and interactive elements such as checkboxes and text fields, educators can easily create forms for surveys, assessments, and feedback collection. This tool simplifies the process of gathering and analyzing information, allowing teachers to focus more on their students.

Screen Recorder for Enhanced Learning :

The screen recorder feature in WPS Office is invaluable for teachers, enabling them to create instructional videos, tutorials, and presentations effortlessly. Teachers can capture their computer screens, annotate recordings, and add voiceover narration, producing engaging and informative lessons for their students. The flexibility to record the entire screen or specific windows, along with seamless sharing options, makes this feature perfect for enhancing the learning experience in any educational setting.

FAQs about Editing a PDF

Q1. how can i edit pdf files for free on any iphone.

Step 1 : Open the PDF in WPS Office on your iPhone.

Step 2 : Tap the "Edit" button at the top left of the screen.

Step 3 : You'll see tabs at the bottom for "Edit Text", "Edit Image", "Mark", and "Page Management".

Step 4 : If you want to highlight or underline, go to the "Mark" tab.

Step 5 : To change text, go to "Edit Text" and select the text you want to change.

Step 6 : For images, go to "Edit Image" to rotate, replace, or delete them.

Q2. How can I edit a PDF document without converting to Word or any other software?

Yes. For efficient PDF editing without the need for conversion to Word, WPS Office provides a direct solution. It enables the insertion of text, images, and highlights directly within the PDF document. Furthermore, its compatibility across various platforms and cost-effectiveness make it a favorable choice for teachers.

Q3. How can I edit any PDF File on my Laptop / PC?

Here's a simple guide to modify your PDF on your laptop or PC using the WPS Office:

Step 1 : Open WPS Office on your computer and choose the PDF file you want to modify.

Step 2 : Visit the "Edit” Tab in the WPS PDF. Here, you can find multiple editing options.

Step 3 : Click on "Add Text" in the Edit ribbon, then place the cursor where you wish to add text in your PDF and left-click.

Step 4 : You can also add pictures in your PDF using the “Add Picture” feature in the Edit Ribbon.

Step 5 : Teachers can highlight feedback, mistakes, and sections in a PDF using the “Highlight” option in the “Comment” tab. Simply select the text using the cursor that you wish to highlight.

Empowering Educators: How WPS Office Simplifies Teaching Tasks

Teaching is one of the most underappreciated and undervalued professions, and I know this firsthand from having had some truly remarkable teachers and mentors whose worth became evident as we grew older. Their legacy continues with us, shaping who we are today. It's remarkable to see how WPS Office acknowledges the tremendous efforts teachers put in and seeks to give back by easing their workload.

AI plays a significant role in this regard, offering ready-made templates tailored for teachers' needs. If teachers know how to edit a PDF for teachers, their lives can become much simpler. WPS Office provides unparalleled ease in managing and editing PDFs, making it the ideal tool for educators.

So, download WPS Office now and experience how it can transform your teaching experience, making your job easier and more efficient.

• 1. How to Add a Line in Word [For Teachers]
• 2. How to Edit a PDF [For Students]
• 3. How to Create a Fillable Form in Word [For Teachers]
• 4. How to edit resumes in pdf format in WPS Office
• 5. 10 Free Ppt Templates for Education Download & Edit
• 6. 10 Professional Teaching Presentation Examples for Teachers Teach with Ease and Style!

15 years of office industry experience, tech lover and copywriter. Follow me for product reviews, comparisons, and recommendations for new apps and software.

Schools won't be allowed to teach children that they can change their gender ID, reports say

​​​​​​​Schools will also be told not to teach children any form of sex education until the age of nine.

Wednesday 15 May 2024 07:22, UK

Teachers in English schools will not be allowed to teach children that they can change their gender identity, according to reports.

Age limits are also set to be imposed for the first time on when children can be taught sex education.

The Times reports that education ministers will warn schools in England today that gender identity is "highly contested" and that teaching the issue could have "damaging implications".

If asked, school staff should teach the "biological facts" about sex, the government will say, The Times adds.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has become concerned gender identity is becoming "embedded" in schools as an uncontested fact, the newspaper says.

Under other proposals, schools will be told not to teach children any form of sex education until year 5, when pupils are aged nine.

The plans will also rule out any explicit conversations about sex until the age of 13, The Times report also says.

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Thirteen would also be the age threshold for pupils to be taught about contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and abortion.

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The new guidance is reportedly part of the government's response to concerns children are receiving age-inappropriate relationships, sex and health education (RSHE).

Schools will reportedly be required to provide parents with samples of the material their children will be taught.

RSHE became compulsory in all English schools in September 2020.

The existing guidance outlines broad lesson modules, stating primary school children should be taught about alternative types of families and healthy relationships.

Secondary-school-aged children are taught more complex topics, including puberty, sexual relationships, consent, unsafe relationships, and online harms.

The Department for Education said it could not confirm the newspaper reports, and that it would not speculate on leaks.

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How to teach your kids body boundaries, consent to keep them safer throughout their lives, a tough topic, but starting age-appropriate lessons very young decreases chances of child abuse, research shows.

Courtney Friedman , Anchor/Reporter

Robert Samarron , Photojournalist

Ken Huizar , Photojournalist

SAN ANTONIO - – These days you hear the word ‘boundaries’ a lot when talking about well-being.

What does that mean?

Boundaries are rules or expectations you put in place that make you feel safe, respected or free to be yourself.

One type of boundary is consent, the ability and right to decide who is allowed in your personal space.

Parents and experts say it’s important to teach kids these concepts as early as possible, so they are less likely to be taken advantage of, either in relationships or by perpetrators.

This topic can be a difficult and uncomfortable thing to think about, but many people believe this is a major key to forming a future generation that is more confident, secure and free from abuse.

‘We’re teaching them how to be safe’

San Antonio mom Kati Zech embraces the love and chaos of motherhood, with a 4-year-old, 2-year-old and another due in the fall.

“I can lose sleep over thinking about safety and making sure we’re teaching them how to be safe,” Zech said.

That’s why she and her husband Jordan make time daily, to teach their little ones about physical boundaries.

It’s not an easy task with toddlers.

“My oldest son has a lot of energy and he is going to be more aggressive, playfully. And so we’re really trying to teach him to respect other people’s bodies. He’s okay if you want to come up and wrestle with him, but not every kid’s like that,” Zech said.

Her hope is that these teachings will allow him to also form his own boundaries.

“Then he’ll know if he doesn’t like something, he’s allowed to also say, ‘Hey, I don’t like that. Don’t do that,’” Zech said.

Those lessons come with simple yet specific body awareness.

“It’s even teaching them, ‘This is your body and these are the parts of your body that are just for you. Nobody else is going to touch them,’” she said.

Zech knows these concepts are worth teaching, because they will lead her kids to healthy relationships.

‘You can never read someone else’s mind’

That thought process is echoed by Dr. Jennifer Gunsaulus . She’s a sociologist, intimacy speaker, relationship coach, author, and survivor.

“There’s that basic body autonomy and body respect in others. It’s so simple and so profound,” Gunsaulus said.

Animated and passionate, Gunsaulus focuses most on young adults and safe dating relationships.

“Talking to your teenagers about, ‘You can never read someone else’s mind. You can never assume what someone else wants or likes,’” she said.

Gunsaulus understands the things she’s teaching at a very personal level.

“I experienced situations and sexual contacts where I was feeling pushed and pushed and I said ‘I don’t want to do that’ and I was pushed and I said, ‘Alright I guess we’re doing this,’” she said.

At the time, she had a foundation built on boundaries, so she was able to understand that those boundaries had been violated.

“I knew I didn’t do anything wrong. I know I had clearly communicated that. Held him responsible and said, ‘what was that?’” she said.

Gunsaulus said that preparation and self-confidence can eliminate shame, which often festers into silence and a possible lifetime of trauma.

“When you set that up from a young age of being like, ‘No if anyone else does this, they are the bad one, not you.’ You don’t end up taking on that shame,” Gunsaulus explained.

Gunsaulus wants other young adults to have those skills too, with age-appropriate lessons.

“You start that at a young age, it is so normal to them that no one touches them without their agreement, and if someone does, they know it’s wrong and then they go talk to someone about it. That’s just their normal way of viewing the world and then they also know, ‘I don’t do that to anyone else,’” she said.

There are fun and easy metaphors she offers parents who are teaching young kids.

“I say, ‘Think about cats.’ Cats are really good about teaching consent. Dogs, not so much, because you can touch and they’ll take anything. But cats, they’ll let you know. They put up their boundaries. I remember a while ago our friend’s son was like, ‘Fluffy scratched me’ and they said ‘Well, what were you doing?’ ‘Petting fluffy’ ‘Did fluffy want to be pet?’ ‘No,’” Gunsaulus chuckled.

‘Embrace the awkward’

She coaches young adults on what to say when laying down their boundaries.

“Embrace the awkward! I can’t emphasize this enough. To put up a boundary is to say something like, ‘Oh no I don’t feel comfortable doing that because I want to enjoy this situation. I want to enjoy you, I want to be with you, and I want to feel comfortable,’” she said.

Embracing the awkward also goes for parents and caregivers trying to make sure older kids know how to be respected physically.

“Anything you’re afraid to talk about, say that. ‘I feel awkward doing this. I feel vulnerable. My parents didn’t do this for me but I love you so much, I want to do things differently,” Gunsaulus said.

That honesty creates confidence they can rely on when they go out into the world.

“They’re at a party, they’re in high school, they’re in college, they’re off on their own. You’ve taught them the skills of how to reflect on something in a situation, how to handle difficult things so they can make the healthiest choices for them,” Gunsaulus said.

Without these tools, kids can end up in some scary situations.

‘How can we prevent it if we’re not addressing it’

Now here’s the part when we talk about a subject that feels icky: child sexual abuse.

As uncomfortable as this topic is, society has to start talking about it, because that’s the first step to stopping it.

“How can we even prevent it if we’re not addressing it?,” said Randy McGibeny, the president and CEO of ChildSafe.

ChildSafe is a nationally recognized organization in San Antonio, that offers support to children who have been abused or traumatized.

McGibeny said getting into that uncomfortable space as adults could actually cause systematic solutions for our future generations.

“If we don’t address the issue and we’re not honest about saying words like child sexual abuse, we’re not normalizing the issue. We create a safer environment for children to feel like maybe they can come forward, that ‘I am going to be listened to, that I am going to be believed,’” McGibeny explained.

He said perpetrators prevail by silencing victims, so our voices are what will stop their crimes.

It all starts with prevention and the role parents or caregivers can play, starting when our kids are young.

“The evidence and the research shows that the earlier you start to have these conversations with young children, the better outcome it has for preventing child abuse,” McGibeny said.

Those age-appropriate lessons include learning the anatomical names of body parts, instead of using nicknames. That reduces body shame and allows kids to be very specific if they have to explain that someone violated them.

Other safety lessons mean breaking habits many people grew up with.

“We would leave my grandmother’s house and my parents would be like, ‘Oh, go give your grandmother a kiss or go give them a kiss’. That’s not necessarily a safe thing. It teaches children that they don’t have control over their bodies. And so what am I telling you? That I’m forcing you to go and hug or touch somebody, that maybe you don’t feel comfortable hugging or touching?” McGibeny said.

If kids clearly don’t want to give hugs and kisses, maybe ask them if they want a fist-bump or a wave instead. He said, give them a choice, and they’ll remember that.

“We’re not saying the way you grew up is wrong. It’s just we know better now about how to keep our kids safe. We know just through research,” he said.

That research has allowed ChildSafe to find solutions when it comes to prevention.

“We have a primary preventative program here at Child Safe, where we do go into the community and we will work with children around having those conversations. We will work with adults and teach adults how to have those conversations,” McGibeny said.

If you can’t make it in person, all you have to do is jump online.

“This is a live webinar,” McGibeny said showing the website. “So you’re going to actually be able to engage with our staff ask questions do those types of things. Oftentimes we’ll put a report a recorded webinar online as well.”

He also needs families to know, if abuse does happen, ChildSafe has so many resources.

Walking through the halls of ChildSafe, McGibeny said, “Every one of these are therapeutic offices here. We have about 16 full-time therapists.”

It’s a strong team that works to change the trajectory of children’s lives by treating trauma, as well as helping prevent it.

The entire goal is to promote healthy, beautiful relationships sooner than later.

“This will affect their careers. It’ll affect so many different parts of their life, if they can learn how to have boundaries for themselves and have boundaries with other people, then they’re going to succeed in a lot of different ways,” Zech said.

She feels better as a parent knowing she’s consistently doing all she can to prepare them for life’s experiences.

That’s all any parent can ask for: kids who grow up understanding themselves, respecting others, and being able to love safely and fully.

If you or a loved one is a sexual assault survivor, reach out now. Whether the abuse happened recently or years ago, help is waiting.

You can contact ChildSafe at (210) 675-9000 , the Rape Crisis Center at (210) 349-7273 , or call the national helpline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) .

Your strength in reporting can change the future for so many others.

Copyright 2024 by KSAT - All rights reserved.

About the Authors

Courtney friedman.

Courtney Friedman anchors KSAT’s weekend evening shows and reports during the week. Her ongoing Loving in Fear series confronts Bexar County’s domestic violence epidemic. She joined KSAT in 2014 and is proud to call the SA and South Texas community home. She came to San Antonio from KYTX CBS 19 in Tyler, where she also anchored & reported.

Robert Samarron

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What can famu’s philanthropic setback teach us about donor due diligence.

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Florida A&M University entrance sign. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty ... [+] Images)

On May 4, 2024, Florida A&M University (FAMU) announced a historic donation of $237.75 million to the institution from the Isaac Batterson Family 7th Trust and Batterson Farms CEO Gregory Gerami. Messages came rolling in from across the larger Historically Black College and University (HBCU) community and beyond, with a great deal of excitement in the air. However, it did not take long before things fell apart with many questions surfacing about the legitimacy of the gift and the donor.

In the past, the donor promised gifts to two other institutions of higher education ( Coastal Carolina University and Miles College ), and did not follow through. The Batterson Farms’ website had very little information on it and some content that didn’t make sense, such as a co-CEO with no connection to the organization. 1 Questions surfaced as to the value of the stocks gifted — with skeptics wondering how the small Hemp-focused company could carry enough value to support the donation.

FAMU “paused” the gift, the Vice President of Institutional Advancement Shawnta Friday-Stroud resigned, the FAMU board of trustees has launched an investigation into the gift process, and FAMU president Larry Robinson took responsibility for letting his excitement get ahead of doing the due diligence needed for a gift of this size. Specifically, Robinson told the FAMU board of trustees, “I take full responsibility for this matter and the ensuing fallout.” He added , “I saw in this unprecedented gift the potential to serve our students and our athletic programs in ways unimaginable at that time. It would truly be transformational, I believed. I wanted it to be real and ignored the warning signs along the way. There was no personal gain, but the impact on our students and our university would have been extraordinary,”

The situation at FAMU provides ample lessons for institutions of higher education, presidents, fundraising professionals, and members of boards of trustees. I talked with experts on leadership and fundraising to garner their thoughts on the various aspects of the situation.

Walter Kimbrough, former president of Dillard University and Philander Smith College.

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From the perspective of Walter Kimbrough , former president of both historically Black Dillard University and Philander Smith College, “The major issue I find in the FAMU situation based on reports is that the general counsel was not involved in the gift negotiations. If you have counsel, use them! Lawyers are going to be somewhat risk averse, so a gift like this would have raised lots of questions, which would have prevented this mishap. In addition, any kind of contract or agreement that is signed should have a place for legal to sign off. The gift agreement shared via the media does not appear to indicate any legal review. Every gift does not require this kind of scrutiny but one of this magnitude really needed it.” Kimbrough added, “The [general counsel] at FAMU was our [general counsel] at Dillard for a number of years when I was president. She is very detail oriented, thorough, and conservative. None of the reports indicated she was involved in the review of this gift, and based on personal experience, there was no way she would have signed off. She would have saved them their current heartburn and embarrassment.”

Tyrone Freeman , an expert on philanthropy and a faculty member in the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University Indianapolis, offered advice for managing large gifts for colleges and universities more generally. He shared that institutions need:

• A board-approved and adopted strategic plan to help with vetting a gift's alignment with institutional values and priorities;
• Board-approved and adopted gift acceptance policies and procedures outlining what gifts will/will not be accepted and the processes involved in implementing, including involved parties (e.g., president, board of trustees, legal counsel, finance, advancement, acceptance/naming committees, etc.);
• Open communication and proper vetting of the gift and the donor; and
• An assessment of the donor relationship.

Tyrone Freeman, professor, Indiana University Indianapolis

Freeman added, “That non-disclosure agreement (NDA) should have been a big red flag. Anonymity is one thing (but not at play [in this situation] because the donor wanted to speak at commencement) and there are processes for managing that, but even still all proper parties within the institution would be aware.” He wondered, “Why is the donor so secretive regarding what can or cannot be known regarding the basics of the gift's origins, sources, and scale? If a donor has a problem with engaging board leaders, finance, legal, etc., institutions have to push back and explain their protocols. And they must be willing to say no, even in the face of tempting transformational gifts!”

Freeman also put forth some very important questions for consideration that are essential for engaging with any donors. Specifically, he asked:

• Has proper time been invested to truly understand the donor, motivations/interests, connections?
• Did anyone visit the company? 2
• Did university prospect researchers or legal counsel look into the company/person?
• Did they contact the other universit[ies] whose gift[s] [were] rescinded?”

William Broussard , an expert on HBCU fundraising and the Vice President of University Advancement at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Foundation, focused his comments on the stressors that public, regional universities face, and in particular, those that public HBCUs face due to lack of resources . He stated, “Limited resources means limited staff expertise, so more complicated giving methods must necessarily draw in the expertise of volunteer foundation or university board members. It appears possible that very few board members knew about the gift, which means that the university relied on staff expertise only, or primarily, which can lead to big mistakes if current staff lacks the necessary expertise. Private universities with large endowments have entire staffs of individuals who handle such complicated procedures…and those positions are highly compensated.”

Broussard also pointed out that the Dean of the Business School was serving as the Vice President of Advancement — two highly intensive jobs within a university setting. He shared, “While many advancement professionals come to the field from various educational and professional backgrounds and can train very quickly to be effective fundraisers and engagement staff, at the executive level, there is a specific body of knowledge and expertise that takes many decades to learn and become experts at executing. Placing individuals without proper experience and credentials into executive positions in fundraising can have disastrous results that can harm an institution’s reputation and run afoul of state and federal law, leading to fines and indictments of unsuspecting staff.”

Fundraising positions have highly detailed job descriptions and expertise requirements. Broussard expressed concern that FAMU appointed someone with little fundraising experience to the chief fundraising position at the institution. He advised, “The field of university advancement must be taken every bit as seriously as academic affairs, student life, athletics, and business and finance, and people in those positions must bring in a certain level of expertise AND commit to growing their knowledge through continuing education and professional development. By design, a full-time employee asked to take on another full-time job with completely different professional requirements and expectations is being set up to fail, as this simply cannot be done … in one area or the other, the work, and the institution, ultimately, will suffer.” Of note, Friday-Stroud, the Vice President of Advancement, has ample prior experience but fundraising [beyond her role as dean] is not addressed in her institutional bio .

Brandy Jackson, expert on African American fundraising.

Brandy Jackson , an expert on African American fundraising, agrees with Broussard, stating “Although this issue may be viewed as a fail to FAMU, this crisis should be looked at as an opportunity for FAMU to revamp and transform its fundraising practices and specific gift agreements operations. The goal moving forward should be dedicated to hiring an elite advancement professional who is experienced in closings gifts and has a passion [for] taking FAMU to the next level.”

As these experts have emphasized, comprehensive legal and financial reviews, clear communication, and adherence to established gift acceptance policies are crucial to safeguarding the integrity and future of educational institutions. FAMU’s experience underscores the necessity for rigorous scrutiny and transparency in managing large donations, offering a valuable opportunity for the university and others to strengthen their fundraising practices and ensure they are prepared to handle such transformative gifts responsibly. According to Freeman, “We all want [gifts to be real], especially for an HBCU given their fraught history of underfunding by state governments and paternalistic funding from private philanthropy. But skepticism and protocols should come long before exuberance.”

1 The website has since been scrubbed of any leadership information. Information was present on Wednesday, May 15, 2024.

2 This question is especially important given the donor connection was allegedly based upon an interest in FAMU's agricultural expertise given the company's agricultural products.

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Watch CBS News

Education package, bill boosting annual minimum wage increase on their way to Gov. Tim Walz's desk for signature

By Caroline Cummings

Updated on: May 16, 2024 / 6:20 AM CDT / CBS Minnesota

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A large education policy package and a bill that would boost the annual minimum wage increase are on their way to Gov. Tim Walz's desk for signature after the state House approved the measures Wednesday.

Lawmakers are nearing the finish line — they must complete the work of the regular legislative session next Monday, according to the Minnesota Constitution. In both chambers, they debated some of the final bills of the year throughout the day.

In the House, they cleared four pieces of legislation by early Wednesday evening, including a  120-page education package  that includes requiring school districts to develop cellphone policies to limit their impact on learning, a one-year delay for schools to comply with a new law  banning American Indian mascots  and mental health instruction for students in fourth through 12th grade, among other provisions. 

There are also adjustments to the "READ Act" approved last year and the legislation prohibits book bans in public libraries.

Separately, another measure would increase the minimum wage yearly adjustment so it's linked to inflation, capped at 5%. That's more than the annual boost of 2.5% in current law, but a scaled-back approach to increase the minimum wage from another proposal this year which sought to up it to  $15 an hour  statewide starting this summer. 

In that same bill, employers with  30 or more workers  will soon be required to disclose salary ranges when posting a job opening. 

Democrats have majorities in both chambers and both bills were approved on a party-line vote.

• Minnesota Senate
• Minnesota Legislature
• Minnesota House

Caroline Cummings is an Emmy-winning reporter with a passion for covering politics, public policy and government. She is thrilled to join the WCCO team.

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