e.g. homework

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Clue: Homework, e.g.

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problem is easy to <solve /to be solved> [active or passive?]

• Thread starter truthguy
• Start date Oct 18, 2012
• Oct 18, 2012

Moderato con anima (English Only)

I think the issue is whether the verb is used transitive or intransitively. So, sentences similar to your maths problem ones would be: This book reads well (intransitive use of read ) Someone can read this book easily (transitive use of read ) -> This book can be read easily (passivisation) or This book is easy to read . I prefer the original sentence ('... easy to solve') because it is more direct. I don't like your sentences about concrete because 'use' seems unnecessary. I would say Concrete is produced for building purposes If you want 'use', I might turn it into a noun: Concrete is produced for use in the building industry .  

Beryl from Northallerton

Senior member.

However, I think logically, it should be "This is math problem is easy to be solved." Right? I don't think so, truthguy (not even once the errant ' is ' has been removed). For example, I usually see a sentence like: "This math problem is easy to solve." This would be one of the natural ways of expressing this idea in English. We also have, 'the m. problem is easily solved' . nb. "This m. problem is to be solved." is usually an imperative (a command). eg. homework: ' The problem is to be solved by next Monday. ' or more likely 'the solution is to be on my desk by next Monday.'  

Yeah， the "is" was a typo. I 've already removed it. Sorry about that. Thank you. Do you have any opinions for the sentence about concrete?  

Thank you natkretep.  

7 Apps That Can Do Your Homework Much Faster Than You

In the field of educational technology, some apps might be getting too smart.

More and more apps are delivering on-demand homework help to students, who can easily re-purpose the learning tools to obtain not just assistance, but also answers. Whether or not that’s cheating—and how to stop it—is one of the concerns surrounding a new app that can solve math equations with the snap of a camera . While the software has inspired teachers to create real-world homework problems that can’t be automatically solved , that strategy doesn’t hold up to other apps that tap into real-life brains for solutions.

Here’s a look at 7 apps that can do your homework for you, and what they have to say about cheating:

Price : Free Availability : iOS, Android app coming in early 2015

The new, seemingly magic app allows users to take pictures of typed equations, and then outputs a step-by-step solution. As of Wednesday, the app is the number one free app on the App Store. But the biggest issue, one teacher argues , isn’t if students will use the app to cheat, because many will. Rather, it’s about how teachers will adapt. A PhotoMath spokeswoman said educators have welcomed the app with positive reviews, but the software remains “quite controversial.”

“We didn’t develop PhotoMath as a cheating tool. We really wanted kids to learn,” said Tijana Zganec, a sales and marketing associate at tech company MicroBlink, which created PhotoMath. “If you want to cheat, you will find a way to cheat. But if you want to learn, you can use PhotoMath for that.”

Whether you’re a high schooler with eight periods of classes or a college student tackling dozens of credits, there’s one thing you’ve got for sure: a mess of assignments. iHomework can help you keep track of all your work, slicing and dicing it in a variety of ways. Sorting it by due date, week, month, or by course, the app is more organized than a Trapper Keeper. And in integrating data from Questia, you can link your reading material to your assignments so you don’t have to dig through a pile of papers to find the right information.

A scheduling feature can help you keep track of those random bi-weekly Thursday labs, and you can even mark the location of your courses on a map so you don’t end up on the wrong side of campus. And finally, with iCloud syncing, you can access all this information on whatever Apple-compatible device you’re using at the moment — no need to dig for your iPad.

Google Apps for Education

Taking the search giant’s suite of free browser-based apps and sandboxing them so they are safe for school use, Google Apps for Education is an excellent alternative to the mainstream installable productivity software, but this one has a perk that almost school board will love—it’s free. Packaging together favorites like Gmail, Hangouts, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Drive with Classroom, a digital hub for organizing assignments and sending feedback, the goal of this collection is to make learning a more collaborative process.

Though Google Apps for Education is cloud-hosted, the programs can be used offline, ideal for when your student needs to escape the internet and work distraction-free. And since it works on any device, it also helps students avoid buying overly expensive hardware. That means more money for extracurricular activities.

Price: Free, but some homework services require payment Availability: iOS and Android

HwPic is a tutoring service that allows students to take send pictures of their homework to tutors, who will then respond within minutes to your questions with a step-by-step solution. There’s even an option to expedite the answers if a student is in a hurry. HwPic Co-Founder Tiklat Issa said that the app was initially rejected by Apple’s App Store, which believed it would promote cheating, but he successfully argued that just because someone uses the app in a way that it’s not meant to be used doesn’t mean the app should be punished.

Issa added that HwPic prohibits cheating in its terms and conditions. Tutors don’t solve homework that has words like “Quiz” or “Exam,” and they often know if a student is sending a photo during a test if they’ve paid for expedited answers, and if the photo is dim, blurry and taken under a desk. “We’ve minimized cheating,” said Issa. “We haven’t eliminated it. That’s kind of unrealistic.”

Wolfram Alpha

Price : $2.99 Availability : iOS and Android

Wolfram Alpha is similar to PhotoMath, only that it targets older students studying high levels of math and doesn’t support photos. The service also outputs step-by-step solutions to topics as advanced as vector calculus and differential equations, making it a popular tool for college students.

“It’s cheating not doing computer-based math, because we’re cheating students out of real conceptual understanding and an ability to drive much further forward in the math they can do, to cover much more conceptual ground. And in turn, that’s cheating our economies,” said Conrad Wolfram, Wolfram Research’s Director of Strategic Development, in a TEDx Talk . “People talk about the knowledge economy. I think we’re moving forward to what we’re calling the computational knowledge economy.”

Homework Helper

Price: Free Availability: iOS and Android

Chinese Internet search company Baidu launched an app called Homework Helper this year with which students can crowdsource help or answers to homework. Users post a picture or type their homework questions onto online forums, and those who answer the questions can win e-coins that can be used to buy electronics like iPhones and laptops.

The app has logged 5 million downloads, much to the dismay of many some parents who argue that the students spend less time thinking about challenging problems. A Homework Helper staffer admitted to Quartz , “I think this is a kind of cheating.”

Price: Free, but some homework services require payment Availability: iOS

Slader is a crowdsourcing app for high school and college students to post and answer questions in math and science. While students can post original homework for help, many questions in popular textbooks have already been answered on the app, according to Fast Company . An Illinois high school said earlier this year that it suspected students were using the service to cheat on their math homework.

Slader argues that it’s “challenging traditional ideas about math and education,” and said that the ideas behind its app “aren’t a write-off to teachers,” according to its blog . Slader told San Francisco media outlet KQED that it shouldn’t be dismissed as a cheating tool, but rather considered a way for students to access real-time help.

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How to Do Homework: 15 Expert Tips and Tricks

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Everyone struggles with homework sometimes, but if getting your homework done has become a chronic issue for you, then you may need a little extra help. That’s why we’ve written this article all about how to do homework. Once you’re finished reading it, you’ll know how to do homework (and have tons of new ways to motivate yourself to do homework)!

We’ve broken this article down into a few major sections. You’ll find:

• A diagnostic test to help you figure out why you’re struggling with homework
• A discussion of the four major homework problems students face, along with expert tips for addressing them
• A bonus section with tips for how to do homework fast

By the end of this article, you’ll be prepared to tackle whatever homework assignments your teachers throw at you .

So let’s get started!

How to Do Homework: Figure Out Your Struggles 

Sometimes it feels like everything is standing between you and getting your homework done. But the truth is, most people only have one or two major roadblocks that are keeping them from getting their homework done well and on time. 

The best way to figure out how to get motivated to do homework starts with pinpointing the issues that are affecting your ability to get your assignments done. That’s why we’ve developed a short quiz to help you identify the areas where you’re struggling. 

Take the quiz below and record your answers on your phone or on a scrap piece of paper. Keep in mind there are no wrong answers! 

1. You’ve just been assigned an essay in your English class that’s due at the end of the week. What’s the first thing you do?

A. Keep it in mind, even though you won’t start it until the day before it’s due  B. Open up your planner. You’ve got to figure out when you’ll write your paper since you have band practice, a speech tournament, and your little sister’s dance recital this week, too.  C. Groan out loud. Another essay? You could barely get yourself to write the last one!  D. Start thinking about your essay topic, which makes you think about your art project that’s due the same day, which reminds you that your favorite artist might have just posted to Instagram...so you better check your feed right now. 

2. Your mom asked you to pick up your room before she gets home from work. You’ve just gotten home from school. You decide you’ll tackle your chores: 

A. Five minutes before your mom walks through the front door. As long as it gets done, who cares when you start?  B. As soon as you get home from your shift at the local grocery store.  C. After you give yourself a 15-minute pep talk about how you need to get to work.  D. You won’t get it done. Between texts from your friends, trying to watch your favorite Netflix show, and playing with your dog, you just lost track of time! 

3. You’ve signed up to wash dogs at the Humane Society to help earn money for your senior class trip. You: 

A. Show up ten minutes late. You put off leaving your house until the last minute, then got stuck in unexpected traffic on the way to the shelter.  B. Have to call and cancel at the last minute. You forgot you’d already agreed to babysit your cousin and bake cupcakes for tomorrow’s bake sale.  C. Actually arrive fifteen minutes early with extra brushes and bandanas you picked up at the store. You’re passionate about animals, so you’re excited to help out! D. Show up on time, but only get three dogs washed. You couldn’t help it: you just kept getting distracted by how cute they were!

4. You have an hour of downtime, so you decide you’re going to watch an episode of The Great British Baking Show. You: 

A. Scroll through your social media feeds for twenty minutes before hitting play, which means you’re not able to finish the whole episode. Ugh! You really wanted to see who was sent home!  B. Watch fifteen minutes until you remember you’re supposed to pick up your sister from band practice before heading to your part-time job. No GBBO for you!  C. You finish one episode, then decide to watch another even though you’ve got SAT studying to do. It’s just more fun to watch people make scones.  D. Start the episode, but only catch bits and pieces of it because you’re reading Twitter, cleaning out your backpack, and eating a snack at the same time.

5. Your teacher asks you to stay after class because you’ve missed turning in two homework assignments in a row. When she asks you what’s wrong, you say: 

A. You planned to do your assignments during lunch, but you ran out of time. You decided it would be better to turn in nothing at all than submit unfinished work.  B. You really wanted to get the assignments done, but between your extracurriculars, family commitments, and your part-time job, your homework fell through the cracks.  C. You have a hard time psyching yourself to tackle the assignments. You just can’t seem to find the motivation to work on them once you get home.  D. You tried to do them, but you had a hard time focusing. By the time you realized you hadn’t gotten anything done, it was already time to turn them in. 

Like we said earlier, there are no right or wrong answers to this quiz (though your results will be better if you answered as honestly as possible). Here’s how your answers break down: 

• If your answers were mostly As, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is procrastination. 
• If your answers were mostly Bs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is time management. 
• If your answers were mostly Cs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is motivation. 
• If your answers were mostly Ds, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is getting distracted. 

Now that you’ve identified why you’re having a hard time getting your homework done, we can help you figure out how to fix it! Scroll down to find your core problem area to learn more about how you can start to address it. 

And one more thing: you’re really struggling with homework, it’s a good idea to read through every section below. You may find some additional tips that will help make homework less intimidating. 

How to Do Homework When You’re a Procrastinator  

Merriam Webster defines “procrastinate” as “to put off intentionally and habitually.” In other words, procrastination is when you choose to do something at the last minute on a regular basis. If you’ve ever found yourself pulling an all-nighter, trying to finish an assignment between periods, or sprinting to turn in a paper minutes before a deadline, you’ve experienced the effects of procrastination. 

If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re in good company. In fact, one study found that 70% to 95% of undergraduate students procrastinate when it comes to doing their homework. Unfortunately, procrastination can negatively impact your grades. Researchers have found that procrastination can lower your grade on an assignment by as much as five points ...which might not sound serious until you realize that can mean the difference between a B- and a C+. 

Procrastination can also negatively affect your health by increasing your stress levels , which can lead to other health conditions like insomnia, a weakened immune system, and even heart conditions. Getting a handle on procrastination can not only improve your grades, it can make you feel better, too! 

The big thing to understand about procrastination is that it’s not the result of laziness. Laziness is defined as being “disinclined to activity or exertion.” In other words, being lazy is all about doing nothing. But a s this Psychology Today article explains , procrastinators don’t put things off because they don’t want to work. Instead, procrastinators tend to postpone tasks they don’t want to do in favor of tasks that they perceive as either more important or more fun. Put another way, procrastinators want to do things...as long as it’s not their homework! 

3 Tips f or Conquering Procrastination 

Because putting off doing homework is a common problem, there are lots of good tactics for addressing procrastination. Keep reading for our three expert tips that will get your homework habits back on track in no time. 

#1: Create a Reward System

Like we mentioned earlier, procrastination happens when you prioritize other activities over getting your homework done. Many times, this happens because homework...well, just isn’t enjoyable. But you can add some fun back into the process by rewarding yourself for getting your work done. 

Here’s what we mean: let’s say you decide that every time you get your homework done before the day it’s due, you’ll give yourself a point. For every five points you earn, you’ll treat yourself to your favorite dessert: a chocolate cupcake! Now you have an extra (delicious!) incentive to motivate you to leave procrastination in the dust. 

If you’re not into cupcakes, don’t worry. Your reward can be anything that motivates you . Maybe it’s hanging out with your best friend or an extra ten minutes of video game time. As long as you’re choosing something that makes homework worth doing, you’ll be successful. 

#2: Have a Homework Accountability Partner 

If you’re having trouble getting yourself to start your homework ahead of time, it may be a good idea to call in reinforcements . Find a friend or classmate you can trust and explain to them that you’re trying to change your homework habits. Ask them if they’d be willing to text you to make sure you’re doing your homework and check in with you once a week to see if you’re meeting your anti-procrastination goals. 

Sharing your goals can make them feel more real, and an accountability partner can help hold you responsible for your decisions. For example, let’s say you’re tempted to put off your science lab write-up until the morning before it’s due. But you know that your accountability partner is going to text you about it tomorrow...and you don’t want to fess up that you haven’t started your assignment. A homework accountability partner can give you the extra support and incentive you need to keep your homework habits on track. 

#3: Create Your Own Due Dates 

If you’re a life-long procrastinator, you might find that changing the habit is harder than you expected. In that case, you might try using procrastination to your advantage! If you just can’t seem to stop doing your work at the last minute, try setting your own due dates for assignments that range from a day to a week before the assignment is actually due. 

Here’s what we mean. Let’s say you have a math worksheet that’s been assigned on Tuesday and is due on Friday. In your planner, you can write down the due date as Thursday instead. You may still put off your homework assignment until the last minute...but in this case, the “last minute” is a day before the assignment’s real due date . This little hack can trick your procrastination-addicted brain into planning ahead! 

If you feel like Kevin Hart in this meme, then our tips for doing homework when you're busy are for you. 

How to Do Homework When You’re too Busy

If you’re aiming to go to a top-tier college , you’re going to have a full plate. Because college admissions is getting more competitive, it’s important that you’re maintaining your grades , studying hard for your standardized tests , and participating in extracurriculars so your application stands out. A packed schedule can get even more hectic once you add family obligations or a part-time job to the mix. 

If you feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once, you’re not alone. Recent research has found that stress—and more severe stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression— are a major problem for high school students . In fact, one study from the American Psychological Association found that during the school year, students’ stress levels are higher than those of the adults around them. 

For students, homework is a major contributor to their overall stress levels . Many high schoolers have multiple hours of homework every night , and figuring out how to fit it into an already-packed schedule can seem impossible. 

3 Tips for Fitting Homework Into Your Busy Schedule

While it might feel like you have literally no time left in your schedule, there are still ways to make sure you’re able to get your homework done and meet your other commitments. Here are our expert homework tips for even the busiest of students. 

#1: Make a Prioritized To-Do List 

You probably already have a to-do list to keep yourself on track. The next step is to prioritize the items on your to-do list so you can see what items need your attention right away. 

Here’s how it works: at the beginning of each day, sit down and make a list of all the items you need to get done before you go to bed. This includes your homework, but it should also take into account any practices, chores, events, or job shifts you may have. Once you get everything listed out, it’s time to prioritize them using the labels A, B, and C. Here’s what those labels mean:

• A Tasks : tasks that have to get done—like showing up at work or turning in an assignment—get an A. 
• B Tasks : these are tasks that you would like to get done by the end of the day but aren’t as time sensitive. For example, studying for a test you have next week could be a B-level task. It’s still important, but it doesn’t have to be done right away.
• C Tasks: these are tasks that aren’t very important and/or have no real consequences if you don’t get them done immediately. For instance, if you’re hoping to clean out your closet but it’s not an assigned chore from your parents, you could label that to-do item with a C.

Prioritizing your to-do list helps you visualize which items need your immediate attention, and which items you can leave for later. A prioritized to-do list ensures that you’re spending your time efficiently and effectively, which helps you make room in your schedule for homework. So even though you might really want to start making decorations for Homecoming (a B task), you’ll know that finishing your reading log (an A task) is more important. 

#2: Use a Planner With Time Labels

Your planner is probably packed with notes, events, and assignments already. (And if you’re not using a planner, it’s time to start!) But planners can do more for you than just remind you when an assignment is due. If you’re using a planner with time labels, it can help you visualize how you need to spend your day.

A planner with time labels breaks your day down into chunks, and you assign tasks to each chunk of time. For example, you can make a note of your class schedule with assignments, block out time to study, and make sure you know when you need to be at practice. Once you know which tasks take priority, you can add them to any empty spaces in your day. 

Planning out how you spend your time not only helps you use it wisely, it can help you feel less overwhelmed, too . We’re big fans of planners that include a task list ( like this one ) or have room for notes ( like this one ). 

#3: Set Reminders on Your Phone 

If you need a little extra nudge to make sure you’re getting your homework done on time, it’s a good idea to set some reminders on your phone. You don’t need a fancy app, either. You can use your alarm app to have it go off at specific times throughout the day to remind you to do your homework. This works especially well if you have a set homework time scheduled. So if you’ve decided you’re doing homework at 6:00 pm, you can set an alarm to remind you to bust out your books and get to work. 

If you use your phone as your planner, you may have the option to add alerts, emails, or notifications to scheduled events . Many calendar apps, including the one that comes with your phone, have built-in reminders that you can customize to meet your needs. So if you block off time to do your homework from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, you can set a reminder that will pop up on your phone when it’s time to get started. 

This dog isn't judging your lack of motivation...but your teacher might. Keep reading for tips to help you motivate yourself to do your homework.

How to Do Homework When You’re Unmotivated 

At first glance, it may seem like procrastination and being unmotivated are the same thing. After all, both of these issues usually result in you putting off your homework until the very last minute. 

But there’s one key difference: many procrastinators are working, they’re just prioritizing work differently. They know they’re going to start their homework...they’re just going to do it later. 

Conversely, people who are unmotivated to do homework just can’t find the willpower to tackle their assignments. Procrastinators know they’ll at least attempt the homework at the last minute, whereas people who are unmotivated struggle with convincing themselves to do it at a ll. For procrastinators, the stress comes from the inevitable time crunch. For unmotivated people, the stress comes from trying to convince themselves to do something they don’t want to do in the first place. 

Here are some common reasons students are unmotivated in doing homework : 

• Assignments are too easy, too hard, or seemingly pointless 
• Students aren’t interested in (or passionate about) the subject matter
• Students are intimidated by the work and/or feels like they don’t understand the assignment 
• Homework isn’t fun, and students would rather spend their time on things that they enjoy 

To sum it up: people who lack motivation to do their homework are more likely to not do it at all, or to spend more time worrying about doing their homework than...well, actually doing it.

3 Tips for How to Get Motivated to Do Homework

The key to getting homework done when you’re unmotivated is to figure out what does motivate you, then apply those things to homework. It sounds tricky...but it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it! Here are our three expert tips for motivating yourself to do your homework. 

#1: Use Incremental Incentives

When you’re not motivated, it’s important to give yourself small rewards to stay focused on finishing the task at hand. The trick is to keep the incentives small and to reward yourself often. For example, maybe you’re reading a good book in your free time. For every ten minutes you spend on your homework, you get to read five pages of your book. Like we mentioned earlier, make sure you’re choosing a reward that works for you! 

So why does this technique work? Using small rewards more often allows you to experience small wins for getting your work done. Every time you make it to one of your tiny reward points, you get to celebrate your success, which gives your brain a boost of dopamine . Dopamine helps you stay motivated and also creates a feeling of satisfaction when you complete your homework !  

#2: Form a Homework Group 

If you’re having trouble motivating yourself, it’s okay to turn to others for support. Creating a homework group can help with this. Bring together a group of your friends or classmates, and pick one time a week where you meet and work on homework together. You don’t have to be in the same class, or even taking the same subjects— the goal is to encourage one another to start (and finish!) your assignments. 

Another added benefit of a homework group is that you can help one another if you’re struggling to understand the material covered in your classes. This is especially helpful if your lack of motivation comes from being intimidated by your assignments. Asking your friends for help may feel less scary than talking to your teacher...and once you get a handle on the material, your homework may become less frightening, too. 

#3: Change Up Your Environment 

If you find that you’re totally unmotivated, it may help if you find a new place to do your homework. For example, if you’ve been struggling to get your homework done at home, try spending an extra hour in the library after school instead. The change of scenery can limit your distractions and give you the energy you need to get your work done. 

If you’re stuck doing homework at home, you can still use this tip. For instance, maybe you’ve always done your homework sitting on your bed. Try relocating somewhere else, like your kitchen table, for a few weeks. You may find that setting up a new “homework spot” in your house gives you a motivational lift and helps you get your work done. 

Social media can be a huge problem when it comes to doing homework. We have advice for helping you unplug and regain focus.

How to Do Homework When You’re Easily Distracted

We live in an always-on world, and there are tons of things clamoring for our attention. From friends and family to pop culture and social media, it seems like there’s always something (or someone!) distracting us from the things we need to do.

The 24/7 world we live in has affected our ability to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time. Research has shown that over the past decade, an average person’s attention span has gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds . And when we do lose focus, i t takes people a long time to get back on task . One study found that it can take as long as 23 minutes to get back to work once we’ve been distracte d. No wonder it can take hours to get your homework done! 

3 Tips to Improve Your Focus

If you have a hard time focusing when you’re doing your homework, it’s a good idea to try and eliminate as many distractions as possible. Here are three expert tips for blocking out the noise so you can focus on getting your homework done. 

#1: Create a Distraction-Free Environment

Pick a place where you’ll do your homework every day, and make it as distraction-free as possible. Try to find a location where there won’t be tons of noise, and limit your access to screens while you’re doing your homework. Put together a focus-oriented playlist (or choose one on your favorite streaming service), and put your headphones on while you work. 

You may find that other people, like your friends and family, are your biggest distraction. If that’s the case, try setting up some homework boundaries. Let them know when you’ll be working on homework every day, and ask them if they’ll help you keep a quiet environment. They’ll be happy to lend a hand! 

#2: Limit Your Access to Technology 

We know, we know...this tip isn’t fun, but it does work. For homework that doesn’t require a computer, like handouts or worksheets, it’s best to put all your technology away . Turn off your television, put your phone and laptop in your backpack, and silence notifications on any wearable tech you may be sporting. If you listen to music while you work, that’s fine...but make sure you have a playlist set up so you’re not shuffling through songs once you get started on your homework. 

If your homework requires your laptop or tablet, it can be harder to limit your access to distractions. But it’s not impossible! T here are apps you can download that will block certain websites while you’re working so that you’re not tempted to scroll through Twitter or check your Facebook feed. Silence notifications and text messages on your computer, and don’t open your email account unless you absolutely have to. And if you don’t need access to the internet to complete your assignments, turn off your WiFi. Cutting out the online chatter is a great way to make sure you’re getting your homework done. 

#3: Set a Timer (the Pomodoro Technique)

Have you ever heard of the Pomodoro technique ? It’s a productivity hack that uses a timer to help you focus!

Here’s how it works: first, set a timer for 25 minutes. This is going to be your work time. During this 25 minutes, all you can do is work on whatever homework assignment you have in front of you. No email, no text messaging, no phone calls—just homework. When that timer goes off, you get to take a 5 minute break. Every time you go through one of these cycles, it’s called a “pomodoro.” For every four pomodoros you complete, you can take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

The pomodoro technique works through a combination of boundary setting and rewards. First, it gives you a finite amount of time to focus, so you know that you only have to work really hard for 25 minutes. Once you’ve done that, you’re rewarded with a short break where you can do whatever you want. Additionally, tracking how many pomodoros you complete can help you see how long you’re really working on your homework. (Once you start using our focus tips, you may find it doesn’t take as long as you thought!)

Two Bonus Tips for How to Do Homework Fast

Even if you’re doing everything right, there will be times when you just need to get your homework done as fast as possible. (Why do teachers always have projects due in the same week? The world may never know.)

The problem with speeding through homework is that it’s easy to make mistakes. While turning in an assignment is always better than not submitting anything at all, you want to make sure that you’re not compromising quality for speed. Simply put, the goal is to get your homework done quickly and still make a good grade on the assignment! 

Here are our two bonus tips for getting a decent grade on your homework assignments , even when you’re in a time crunch. 

#1: Do the Easy Parts First 

This is especially true if you’re working on a handout with multiple questions. Before you start working on the assignment, read through all the questions and problems. As you do, make a mark beside the questions you think are “easy” to answer . 

Once you’ve finished going through the whole assignment, you can answer these questions first. Getting the easy questions out of the way as quickly as possible lets you spend more time on the trickier portions of your homework, which will maximize your assignment grade. 

(Quick note: this is also a good strategy to use on timed assignments and tests, like the SAT and the ACT !) 

#2: Pay Attention in Class 

Homework gets a lot easier when you’re actively learning the material. Teachers aren’t giving you homework because they’re mean or trying to ruin your weekend... it’s because they want you to really understand the course material. Homework is designed to reinforce what you’re already learning in class so you’ll be ready to tackle harder concepts later.

When you pay attention in class, ask questions, and take good notes, you’re absorbing the information you’ll need to succeed on your homework assignments. (You’re stuck in class anyway, so you might as well make the most of it!) Not only will paying attention in class make your homework less confusing, it will also help it go much faster, too.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking to improve your productivity beyond homework, a good place to begin is with time management. After all, we only have so much time in a day...so it’s important to get the most out of it! To get you started, check out this list of the 12 best time management techniques that you can start using today.

You may have read this article because homework struggles have been affecting your GPA. Now that you’re on the path to homework success, it’s time to start being proactive about raising your grades. This article teaches you everything you need to know about raising your GPA so you can

Now you know how to get motivated to do homework...but what about your study habits? Studying is just as critical to getting good grades, and ultimately getting into a good college . We can teach you how to study bette r in high school. (We’ve also got tons of resources to help you study for your ACT and SAT exams , too!)

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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E-homework is widening the gap for disadvantaged students

Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Curtin University

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More and more teachers are turning to technology when assigning homework. But while e-homework can make out-of-class learning more fun and interactive, research suggests that it might further disadvantage students from low socio-economic families.

What is e-homework?

E-homework is the practice of using digital hardware and software such as iPads, laptop computers and smartphones with internet connectivity in homework assignments.

It requires that students have access to, and are familiar with, a growing number of educational programs, apps and technologies. These can include new and emerging technologies such as global positioning systems (GPS), satellite imagery , GPS geocaching experiences, augmented reality and 3D virtual world adventures.

E-homework has many advantages: it’s engaging and motivating for students, and simple and efficient for teachers to use.

Increasing the gap

But a Victorian parliamentary inquiry last month found that e-homework assignments may be contributing to widening the gap between our richest and poorest students.

The inquiry noted:

A lack of technology in the home can hamper the ability of students to complete their homework and also participate in class discussion the following day.

A submission to the inquiry by Good Shepherd Youth and Family Service stated:

Technology is now intrinsic to a great deal of the learning pursued in schools, but is placing inequitable, and at times unsustainable, financial pressure on some families.

The submission cited the case of a 10-year-old boy who was unable to do maths homework as it required access to the educational website Mathletics and his mother couldn’t afford to pay their internet bill. Aside from affecting the boy’s participation and performance in school, the situation also contributed to increased family stress and conflict.

Teachers often assume, quite wrongly, that contemporary schoolchildren have ubiquitous access to technology and the internet. But 2011 ABS data shows that only 55% of families in the lowest income bracket with children under the age of 15 have access to the internet. In comparison, 95% of equivalent families in the highest income bracket have access.

A Smith Family report found that children who did not have access to the internet at home felt excluded. They struggled to participate fully in class and homework activities.

The report found that the high cost associated with learning technologies was the main reason that families did not invest in technology tools with internet access. What’s more, one in five parents surveyed said they had insufficient knowledge of how they worked.

The report found that this lack of digital literacy of low socio-economic parents further contributed to widening the gap between children from rich and poor families.

International research has also clearly established that homework assignments given by teachers, particularly e-homework, are often too difficult for some students from non-English-speaking backgrounds and those with physical or intellectual disabilities, or learning difficulties such as dyslexia.

The benefits of e-homework

Despite the disadvantages that e-homework poses to some students, it’s not surprising that teachers are drawn to the idea of increasingly assigning e-homework.

E-homework is motivating and engaging for students. Research shows that young people enjoy the convenience of anywhere, anytime access to web-based homework, as well as the instant feedback features that many online systems provide.

Online homework tasks can allow students to practise particular skills and provide them with multiple attempts to complete homework questions.

It has also been found to help lift student achievement. Researchers from a US university found that switching from weekly quizzes to online homework for undergraduate chemistry classes significantly improved student success in the course.

The research found that students were highly likely to complete the e-homework and to feel that it was worth the effort. Three-quarters of the students surveyed said that their study habits were more consistent with e-homework. Over 85% wanted to continue to do homework online.

Educators see e-homework as a useful way to increase student learning engagement without also increasing teachers’ heavy workload. E-homework cuts down on the time it takes to distribute, collect and grade homework.

The Australian Curriculum’s emphasis on critical and creative thinking and the implementation of “ digital solutions ” may also have contributed to the increase in teachers assigning e-homework in Australia.

Increasing access

So how do we ensure that all students can reap the benefits of e-homework?

According to the Good Shepherd submission to the Victorian parliamentary homework inquiry, the first step for schools is to stop assuming that all students have access to digital technology at home.

Good Shepherd recommends that schools provide at-school computers that are set aside for non-teaching use, and create specialised homework spaces at school.

The submission also stresses the importance of Student Resource Packages that provide for the technology required by schools.

The submission recommends that when the Education Maintenance Allowance ceases at the end of this year, the Victorian government creates a new “Participation Package” for parents with Health Care Cards that includes a specific technology allowance.

In order to prevent a focus on technology from further disadvantaging low socio-economic students, it’s vital that teachers understand that their students have varying needs, capabilities and levels of access to resources and materials. To ensure that all students are able to succeed, teachers need to have a greater understanding of the role that the “home” plays in homework.

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How to create digital homework that students love

By Laura McClure on April 26, 2016 in TED-Ed Innovative Educators , TED-Ed Lessons

US History teacher Jennifer Hesseltine combined TED-Ed Lessons with an interactive blackboard to create a digital homework space that students love.

Let’s redesign homework. When’s the last time your students got excited to do homework? Or said things like, “Wow…just WOW. It is amazing how much is out there that we just don’t know about”? What if every homework assignment could expand a student’s worldview while engaging a kid’s natural curiosity? One middle school teacher took on this challenge — so you don’t have to.

For her  TED-Ed Innovation Project , US History teacher  Jennifer Hesseltine  created a digital homework space that students love. Here are her step-by-step instructions on how you can do it too:

1. Go to TED-Ed and create a lesson . This will be your next homework assignment.

You can either create a lesson using any engaging video of your choice, or simply customize an existing TED-Ed Original  or TED-Ed Select  lesson. If you need help creating a lesson, read this . If you need help customizing a lesson, read this .

2. Create space for lessons in your current learning management system. This is your new digital homework space.

Give this homework space a fun title and a quick description. For inspiration, check out mine  on Padlet. You don’t have to use Padlet — your school’s current interactive learning tools will probably work fine for this project. For more options, check out a few teacher-recommended apps  or try the free tools for teachers from Google, Apple and Microsoft.

3. Add your TED-Ed lesson to your digital homework space using the customized lesson link.

If you need help sharing a customized lesson link,  read this . Easy, right? You can complete Steps 1-3 of this project today.

“Wow…just WOW. It is amazing how much is out there that we just don’t know about.” — 8th grade student after watching the  TED-Ed Lesson: “Exploring other dimensions ”

4. Add and remove lessons often from your digital homework space to keep the content fresh and exciting for students.

Students love TED-Ed lessons and the opportunity to learn. Here are a few quotes from my students on a midyear class survey:

• “TED-Ed videos are more fun than normal homework assignments.”
• “One pro about watching a TED-Ed homework video is that you get to answer the questions while you watch the video.”
• “One pro about watching a TED-Ed homework video is that I get to choose what videos to watch. I’m learning about things that interest me.”

5. Take the opportunity in class to highlight the latest lessons.

I always take 5-10 minutes to show students the new lessons I have added (and always make sure to tell them about my favorites).

6. Share the link to your digital homework space once with students at the beginning of the school year.

Your students will have access to any of your recommended TED-Ed Lessons for the remainder of the school year. I gave my students a list of due dates for the entire school year so that students can plan ahead to complete the assignments.

7. Be prepared for student engagement and student feedback.

Students will likely start going directly to the TED-Ed website and giving you ideas of which lessons they would like to see on the homework space, and/or they will want to create some lessons of their own! As a matter of fact…a few of my students have helped to create homework lessons.

An example of a lesson inspired by an 8th grade student (who approached me with the video and created the questions in the “Think” section) is “Francine’s Interview.” This student’s lesson, as one would imagine, is a favorite among her peers.

Send reminders to students about upcoming homework assignments since the assignment due dates are not on a regular schedule (i.e. — due every day, or every other day). Students forget about upcoming assignments since the assignments are all digital, and the due dates are spaced more than one week apart.

Prepare for students who either do not have internet access, or have a difficult time accessing a working computer/piece of technology outside of school. We need to work together to figure out times each week for them to access their homework. I have been very flexible with students in this regard, and will continue to work with these students to be sure that they have a fair opportunity to complete the homework assignments.

• If you have questions about how to replicate this project , please reach out to me on Twitter. 

This article is part of the TED-Ed Innovation Project series, which highlights 25+  TED-Ed Innovation Projects  designed by educators, for educators, with the support and guidance of the  TED-Ed Innovative Educator  program. You are welcome to share, duplicate and modify projects under  this Creative Commons license  to meet the needs of students and teachers. To get started, click here to take the first step.

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

She can be reached at [email protected] .

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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?

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Better Understand Students’ Progress with the “Show My Work” Tool in WebAssign

Author: Michael Lafreniere is an Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering Technology and Mathematics at Ohio University-Chillicothe.

Evaluating students’ progress to make sure they truly understand your course material becomes increasingly difficult in a virtual classroom. There’s a need for students to share their thinking and receive feedback to confirm they understand the problem-solving steps required to complete an exercise accurately.

Explore the following strategies to check student understanding in your virtual course. To see them in action, watch the video.

Assess Students’ Progress with Virtual Tools

The Show My Work feature within WebAssign allows me, as a professor, to gather insight into my students thinking. I get to peer into their foundational understanding of the concepts I want them to learn.

Then I affirm their work as valid or needing some remediation by providing feedback within the Show My Work feature, with steps or information they may be missing. This helps me confirm students are attempting to understand the material instead of guessing at the answer.

In WebAssign , I can enable Show My Work on a variety of assignments (e.g., homework, quiz, lab, exam) or questions . The following strategies can be applied to different categories of assignments, with tips for grading students’ work.

Assignments

Ideally, I like to reserve the last assignment in a chapter or learning module for the Show My Work assignment. The goal is to gather and synthesize the student’s learning into one submission to confirm their conceptual understanding.

I determine how many Show My Work questions to include based on what learning outcome I’m seeking to validate, and how much grading time I have set aside for each course. Not all questions include Show My Work, so it needs to be enabled.

For example, if my assignment covers one core concept, I won’t use Show My Work for each question since I can gauge student understanding from reviewing only one or two questions. I also consider the time it takes to review each Show My Work submission and provide valuable feedback.

Show My Work can also be used to gather student work generated while completing take-home exams .

In my course, students submit their work is in a problem-solving presentation video. Students record and submit their version of the randomized exam question I’ve designated for them, and they record themselves solving the problem—complete with narration. I use Show My Work to manually enter their score based on their video response.

WebAssign Tip: Refer your students to the student help guide page for Show My Work to guide them through how to use the tool.

My assignments always use the “ optional ” setting in the Show My Work feature so I can assign points to students based on their video response. This allows me to control the point allocation for each question where I enable Show My Work.

My students are informed in the assignment instructions to submit their work even though it’s optional (they choose the option if they want the points—or not).

I create a feedback rubric for my assignments to save grading time and provide valuable feedback to students who made common errors. You can also provide feedback before the assignment due date.

WebAssign Tip: You can require Show My Work responses and automatically give students points for uploading their work. If you find a student’s answer is incomplete, you can always edit or remove their points after their submission.

Help Students Learn How to Show Their Work

For each module or learning lesson, I require a student submission that allows them to show their work. Whether it be for one problem or a few, students are expected to communicate their thinking beyond solely providing an answer. This can cause some students to hesitate and resist (even requesting they take a zero).

So, I introduce this Show My Work submission process with a problem that will be well within the student’s ability to construct a solution and “talk” through it. Once I’ve confirmed they know how to submit their work, more problems follow for students to expand on their thinking and learning.

Looking for More WebAssign Tips?

Visit the WebAssign Instructor Support Site for additional training resources, technical support, online help and more.

Be sure to follow us on social media for timely tips and advice throughout the term.

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Parental Involvement in Middle School: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of the Strategies That Promote Achievement

Early adolescence is often marked by changes in school context, family relationships, and developmental processes. In the context of these changes, academic performance often declines, while at the same time the long-term implications of academic performance increase. In promoting achievement across elementary and secondary school levels, the significant role of families, family-school relations, and parental involvement in education has been highlighted. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on parental involvement in education during middle school, this research has not been systematically examined to determine which types of involvement have the strongest relation with achievement. The authors conducted a meta-analysis on the existing research on parental involvement in middle school to determine whether and which types of parental involvement are related to achievement. Across 50 studies, parental involvement was positively associated with achievement, with the exception of parental help with homework. Involvement that reflected academic socialization had the strongest positive association with achievement. Based on the known characteristics of the developmental stage and tasks of adolescence, strategies reflecting academic socialization are most consistent with the developmental stage of early adolescence.

Early adolescence and entry into middle school reflect change on multiple levels. The middle school years coincide with key changes in adolescent development, including biological and cognitive growth, social development, and renegotiations of family relationships, especially the parent-adolescent relationship ( Adams & Berzonsky, 2003 ; Grolnick, Price, Beiswenger, & Sauck, 2007 ; Keating, 2004 ; Lerner & Steinberg, 2004 ; Smetana, Campione-Barr, & Daddis, 2004 ; Steinberg & Silk, 2002 ). Further, the middle school context reflects a significant change compared to elementary school, including a larger, more bureaucratic system with many more teachers, peers, and curricular choices ( Dauber & Epstein, 1989 ; Eccles & Harold, 1996 ; Hill & Chao, 2009 ). In the context of such changes and development, adolescents’ academic performance often declines ( Barber & Olsen, 2004 ; Eccles, 2004 ; Gutman & Midgley, 2000 ), while at the same time, the long-term implications of achievement for educational and occupational attainment increase ( Eccles & Harold, 1993 ). The confluence of these developmental and contextual changes at early adolescence increases the risk that students may not reach their potential and heightens the need to identify sources of support.

In promoting achievement across elementary and secondary school levels, theories, research, and policies have identified the significant role of families, family-school relations, and parental involvement in education ( Fan & Chen, 2001 ; Hill & Chao, 2009 ; Seginer, 2006 ). Indeed, family-school relations and parental involvement in education have been identified as a way to close demographic gaps in achievement and maximize students’ potential ( Dearing, Kreider, Simpkins, & Weiss, 2006 ; Hampton, Mumford, & Bond, 1998 ; Hara, 1998 ). As such, federal policies like the No Child Left Behind Act ( NCLB; 2002 ) mandate parental involvement in education and family-school relations across elementary and secondary school levels. Despite consensus about the importance of families and schools working together across developmental stages, extant theories of parental involvement in education have been based on elementary school students and elementary school contexts and do not account for the changes associated with middle school and early adolescent development ( Hill & Taylor, 2004 ; Hill, Tyson, & Bromell, 2009 ). Indeed, some research has demonstrated that the strength of the relation between parental involvement and achievement declines between elementary and middle schools (e.g., Singh et al., 1995 ). Whereas some aspects of parental involvement in education may decline in amount or in effectiveness during middle school, like involvement at school ( Singh et al., 1995 ; Stevenson & Baker, 1987 ), other aspects of involvement that are not accounted for in extant frameworks may increase in significance ( Chao, Kanatsu, Stanoff, Padmawidjaja, & Aque, 2009 ). Therefore, it is imperative to identify the extent to which parental involvement in education is positively related to achievement for middle school students and which types of involvement are most effective.

In the last two decades, the amount of research on parental involvement in education, especially for middle school, has increased exponentially, but it has produced often competing findings. For example, some research has demonstrated that parental involvement in education is positively associated with adolescents’ academic outcomes throughout middle and high school (e.g., Catsambis, 2001 ; Hill et al., 2004 ). However, other research found that parental involvement is not related to achievement (e.g., Balli, Wedman, & Demo, 1997 ; Bronstein, Ginsberg, & Herrera, 2005 ). This growing but disaggregated body of research has used a variety of methods, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions for middle school. Although recent meta-analyses have focused on parental involvement (e.g., Fan & Chen, 2001 ; Jeynes, 2003 , 2005 ), these meta-analyses did not consider the developmental stage of students as a unique factor in their analyses. These studies collapsed across research from prekindergarten through high school. Further, whereas Jeynes (2007) focused on secondary schools, this meta-analysis collapsed across middle and high schools and was limited to urban contexts. Unlike the high school years, when parents have gained experience with supporting more autonomous adolescents and larger, more bureaucratic schools, the middle school years reflect a renegotiation for schools, families, and students. Therefore, identifying the most effective strategies in middle school will guide programs and policies so that they can promote the most effective strategies ( Hill et al., 2009 ). To this end, we conducted a meta-analysis of the existing research on parental involvement in middle school and situate our findings within existing theories and frameworks and within the developmental context of early adolescence. This meta-analysis addressed two broad questions. First, what is the strength of the relation between parental involvement in education and achievement during middle school? Second, which types of involvement have the strongest positive relation with achievement?

Parental Involvement in Education: Definitions and Frameworks

Although there are numerous definitions of parental involvement in education, we define it as “parents’ interactions with schools and with their children to promote academic success” ( Hill et al., 2004 , p. 1491). This is somewhat broader than the definition articulated in the NCLB, which is “the participation of parents in regular, two-way, and meaningful communication involving student academic learning and other school activities” ( No Child Left Behind Act, 2002 , §9101). Consistently included in the extant theories, frameworks, and assessments are home-based and school-based involvement strategies (e.g., Kohl, Lengua, McMahon, & the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2000 ; Seginer, 2006 ). Further, such a distinction is useful as it distinguishes policy-relevant realms—home and school. The most widely cited among existing frameworks is Epstein’s ( 1987 ; Conners & Epstein, 1995 ; Epstein & Sanders, 2002 ), which includes school-based involvement strategies (e.g., volunteering at school, communication between parents and teachers, and involvement in school governance); home-based involvement strategies, including engaging in educational activities at home; school support for parenting (e.g., parent training programs); and involvement between the school and community agencies. Second, the framework undergirding Comer’s (1995) School Development Program has also informed research in this field. Comer’s framework also includes school-based involvement —such as parent-teacher conferences, volunteering and being present in the school, and participation in school governance—and home-based involvement , such as parental reinforcement of learning at home. Finally, Grolnick and Slowiaczek (1994) articulated a three-pronged framework: First, behavioral involvement includes both home-based and school-based involvement strategies, such as active connections and communication between home and school, volunteering at school, and assisting with homework. Second, cognitive-intellectual involvement reflects home-based involvement and includes parental role in exposing their children to educationally stimulating activities and experiences. Finally, personal involvement includes attitudes and expectations about school and education and conveying the enjoyment of learning, which reflects parental socialization around the value and utility of education.

Within an elementary school context, school-based involvement is associated with children’s achievement, because such involvement is likely to include visits to the classroom and interactions with children’s teachers. Such interactions and exposure increase parents’ knowledge about the curriculum, enhance social capital, and increase the effectiveness of involvement at home ( Comer, 1995 ; Epstein, 2001 ; Hill & Taylor, 2004 ). Further, interactions between parents and teachers may increase mutual respect and increase teachers’ perceptions about how much parents value education ( Comer, 1995 ; Epstein, 2001 ). However, in middle school, school-based involvement has been shown to change from assisting in the classroom to attendance at school activities ( Seginer, 2006 ). This latter type of school-based involvement is less likely to provide middle school parents with information about pedagogy and classroom content or the opportunity to create mutual respect between parents and teachers. Therefore, its relation with academic outcomes may be weaker.

Home-based involvement has been advocated because it affirms the knowledge and instruction received at school ( Comer, 1995 ), provides assistance and clarification with homework ( Cooper, 1989 ), provides structure for free time and homework time ( Fan & Chen, 2001 ), includes visiting museums and other educational venues ( Reynolds & Gill, 1994 ), and enhances and encourages motivations ( Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995 ). In addition, as part of home-based involvement, parents can supplement instruction through educationally based, cognitively stimulating activities ( Chao, 2000 ; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994 ). However, by middle school, many parents feel less able to assist with homework or provide activities and experiences that increase their adolescents’ knowledge or achievement ( Dauber & Epstein, 1993 ). Therefore, the amount and type of home-based involvement that is effective may be reduced during the middle school years ( Seginer, 2006 ). Yet another reason why parental involvement might change in significance is that aspects of the middle school structure do not support home- and school-based involvement strategies in the same way as in elementary school.

Middle School Context and Parental Involvement

The middle school context presents a number of challenges that may undermine parents’ ability to be effectively involved in their adolescents’ education and work productively with schools ( Dauber & Epstein, 1989 ; Hill & Chao, 2009 ; Sanders & Epstein, 2000 ). First, middle schools are large and complex, often making it difficult for parents to figure out how to become effectively involved. Second, middle school teachers instruct a large number of students, making it difficult for teachers to develop and maintain productive relations with the parents of each student. Further, the departmentalization or specialization of instruction by academic subject results in teachers having fewer interactions with individual students ( Dornbusch & Glasgow, 1996 ; Eccles & Harold, 1996 ). Third, and in conjunction with the previous point, the increase in the number of teachers each student has across subjects makes it difficult for parents to know whom to contact to obtain information about their adolescents’ progress. Fourth, the complexity of curricular choices and the often obscured nature of course tracking in middle school further complicate parental involvement ( Hill & Taylor, 2004 ). Not only does the middle school context impact the types of involvement that matter, adolescents’ development itself impacts how parents can maintain involvement and its effectiveness ( Hill & Chao, 2009 ).

Early Adolescent Development and Parental Involvement in Education

The types of parental involvement used and the nature of the relation between parental involvement and achievement may be influenced by characteristics of early adolescent development and family dynamics during adolescence. As has been outlined extensively elsewhere ( Adams & Berzonsky, 2003 ; Lerner & Steinberg, 2004 ), adolescence is marked by dramatic cognitive development and the development of conceptualizations of the self as an autonomous, efficacious individual. Cognitively, adolescents have an increased ability to consider multiple dimensions of problems simultaneously when making decisions ( Keating, 2004 ). In addition, adolescents have an increased ability to anticipate the results and consequences of their actions and decisions ( Halpern-Felsher & Cauffman, 2001 ), learn from their successes and failures and apply that knowledge to future problem solving, and strategically coordinate the pursuit of multiple goals ( Byrnes, Miller, & Reynolds, 1999 ).

Each of these abilities enables adolescents to play a more active role in their education and educational decisions. These cognitive changes may increase adolescents’ sense of efficacy, ability to make decisions about course selection, and ability to understand how courses and extracurricular activities are related to goals and aspirations in the immediate time frame and for the future and thereby decrease their need for direct parental involvement. That is, more direct involvement strategies, such as school-based involvement and direct homework assistance, may be needed less and thus are less effective ( Seginer, 2006 ). Indeed, students’ increased sense of autonomy is associated with their desire to not have their parents visit the school ( Stevenson & Baker, 1987 ). Often parents interpret students’ desire for autonomy as a cue to reduce more direct forms of parental involvement, such as home- and school-based involvement ( Prescott, Pelton, & Dornbusch, 1986 ).

In addition to cognitive development, parent-adolescent relationships undergo a transformation and renegotiation during adolescence as they become less hierarchical and are characterized by increased bidirectional communication ( Collins & Laursen, 2004 ; Steinberg & Silk, 2002 ). Early adolescence is marked by the need for a realignment of roles and expectations as adolescents question their parents’ authority ( Grolnick et al., 2007 ; Smetana et al., 2004 ) and as parents attempt to set boundaries and communicate expectations while promoting healthy independence. Parental influence often becomes more indirect. Parents’ beliefs about adolescents’ abilities, skills, and potential shape adolescents’ own beliefs, which influence their performance ( Bleeker & Jacobs, 2004 ; Jones & Schneider, 2009 ).

As parental influence becomes more indirect and promotes the use of adolescents’ developing decision-making skills, strategies for involvement in education should change as well. For early adolescence, parental involvement may entail communicating parental expectations for education and its value or utility, linking schoolwork to current events, fostering educational and occupational aspirations, discussing learning strategies with children, and making preparations and plans for the future—that is, academic socialization. We hypothesize that involvement that scaffolds adolescents’ burgeoning decision-making and problem solving skills and elucidates linkages between their schoolwork and future goals may be more strongly linked to achievement in middle school than is home- or school-based involvement. Parental involvement in education that reflects academic socialization allows parents to maintain their involvement while also affirming adolescents’ autonomy, independence, and advancing cognitive abilities.

In this meta-analysis, we examine the relative association between three types of parental involvement in education and academic achievement. Home-based involvement includes strategies like communication between parents’ and children about school, engagement with school work (e.g., homework help), taking children to events and places that foster academic success (i.e., museums, libraries, etc.), and creating a learning environment at home (e.g., making educational materials accessible, such as books, newspapers, educational toys). School-based involvement includes visits to school for school events (e.g., PTA meetings, open houses, etc.), participation in school governance, volunteering at school, and communication between parents and school personnel. Finally, academic socialization includes communicating parental expectations for education and its value or utility, linking school-work to current events, fostering educational and occupational aspirations, discussing learning strategies with children, and making preparations and plans for the future.

Ethnic Variations in Parental Involvement in Education

In addition to outlining types of parental involvement strategies, prior research has demonstrated ethnic differences in mean levels of parental involvement strategies ( Baker & Stevenson, 1986 ; Kohl et al., 2000 ), parents’ beliefs about involvement ( Lareau, 1987 ; Lynch & Stein, 1987 ), and the relations between parental involvement and academic outcomes (e.g., Hill et al., 2004 ; Hill & Craft, 2003 ). African Americans, in particular, have had a long and tumultuous history with American schools ( Cross, 2003 ; Spencer, Cross, Harpalani, & Goss, 2003 ). Whereas African American cultural heritage has placed an emphasis on the value and utility of education, discrimination and bias experienced at school by many African Americans has resulted in a mistrust of school and teachers by many African American parents ( Lareau, 1987 ; Ogbu, 1978 ). These historical and contemporary experiences may influence the nature of parental involvement and its influence. This is heightened during adolescence, because it is a time when African American students are grappling with their own ethnic identity ( Hughes et al., 2006 ).

Prior research on ethnic differences in parental involvement has been mixed. Some research found that the relation between involvement and achievement is stronger for African Americans than European Americans ( Hill et al., 2004 ), whereas others found that the relation is weaker (e.g., Seyfried & Chung, 2002 ). In a meta-analysis across prekindergarten to 12th grade, ethnicity had a negligible effect ( Fan & Chen, 2001 ). Another meta-analysis found that the relation was positive for ethnic minorities (i.e., collapsing across African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans), but the strength of the relation was not compared across ethnicity ( Jeynes, 2007 ). Although much has been written about ethnic differences in levels and types of involvement, it is unclear whether to expect the relation between involvement and achievement to vary across ethnicity.

The Meta-Analysis

The current investigation used meta-analytic techniques to synthesize the results of the existing empirical literature to determine the extent to which parental involvement is positively associated with achievement outcomes in middle school and which types of involvement have the strongest relation. We expect that involvement characterized as academic socialization will have the strongest positive relation with achievement outcomes as it empowers adolescents to act semiautonomously and understand the consequences and purposes of their actions; home-based and school-based involvement will have smaller relations. To assess the empirical evidence of ethnic variations in the relation between parental involvement and achievement, we examined differences between African Americans and European Americans in an exploratory manner.

Extant Literature

To limit the potential cohort effects, we restricted our review of the literature to those studies published between 1985 and 2006. The exhaustive search of the extant literature published since 1985 produced 50 empirical reports (or articles). This set of reports represents 127 correlations and 82 beta coefficients for the relation between different types of parent involvement and an array of achievement outcomes. These reports represent three types of studies:

Note . GPA = grade point average.

Note . GPA = grade point average; PTO = parent-teacher organization; HLM = hierarchical linear modeling; SES = socioeconomic status.

Note . SEM = structural equation modeling; GPA = grade point average.

Note . NLSY = National Longitudinal Survey of Youth; LSAY = Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Youth; GPA = grade point average; AFQT = Armed Forces Qualification Test Score.

When multiple articles use the same dataset, they pose the risk of lack of independence and overrepresentation of the data in the meta-analysis. When they provided enough information to calculate an effect size, these effect sizes were averaged using the shifting unit of analysis approach across all effect sizes and included in the meta-analysis. In addition, there were 5 studies that included middle school students and either older or younger students and 1 study that used regression analyses but did not include correlations (see Table 8 ).

Note . GPA = grade point average; PTO = parent-teacher organization.

Literature Search Procedures

To conduct a comprehensive review of the literature, we searched the major databases that catalogue research abstracts. These included PsychInfo, ERIC, Dissertation Abstracts International, and Sociological Abstracts. Due to the paucity of literature focusing solely on parental involvement in middle school as a primary emphasis, extensive hand searches were also conducted for the following journals to identify articles that included parental involvement in education as a secondary focus and thereby might have been missed in the database search. The following journals were hand searched: American Education Research Journal, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal for Research on Adolescence, and Review of Education Research .

The searches were conducted by combining terms reflecting middle school populations with terms reflecting parental involvement in education. The following terms and phrases were used to reflect parental involvement in education: parent involvement, parent-school partnership, parent-school relation*, family-school partnership, family-school involvement, parental involvement in education, parenting involvement in school, family-school relation*, family-school involvement, and family involvement in education (the asterisk indicates that all forms of that stem were included; e.g., relation * includes relations, relationship , and relationships ). The search was later expanded to include terms such as parent risk factors , as the initial search demonstrated that many articles examining achievement outcomes in middle school focused on parental influences on nonnormative developmental trajectories for middle school students. To identify studies of middle school samples, we used the following search terms: middle school *, middle school education, middle school transition, junior high, junior high school*, junior high students, junior high transitions , and early adolescence . We combined each middle school term with a parental involvement term and then examined each study to determine whether an achievement outcome was included. Achievement outcomes included grades, course or class grades, grade point averages (GPA), test scores, and placement in advanced courses.

In addition, descendant searches were conducted on major papers in the field. Using the Social Sciences Citation Index, we located articles that cited seminal articles, such as publications outlining the major theories in the field (e.g., Comer, 1995 ; Conners & Epstein, 1995 ; Eccles & Harold, 1996 ; Epstein, 1987 ; Epstein & Sanders, 2002 ; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994 ). In addition, we conducted descendent searches on papers by authors who appeared in our search at least twice. We conducted backward or ancestry searches by examining the reference lists of all papers that resulted from our search. Further, we identified key researchers in the field (defined as having two or more papers in our database; n = 11), contacted them, and requested relevant new work in press and unpublished findings. We received responses with data from 4 of the 11 researchers contacted. To maximize our sample size, we also contacted 4 authors of recent papers that included middle school students combined with other age groups to request correlations for just the middle-school-age sample. We received one response with correlations for the middle-school-age sample for the data reported in Sirin and Rogers-Sirin (2004) .

Criteria for inclusion

The criteria for inclusion of an article in this meta-analysis were threefold. First, the report had to include a measure of parental involvement and academic achievement. Because the focus of this meta-analysis was the relation between parental practices and academic outcomes, we limited the set of research reports to those that measured academic outcomes. Second, the identified research reports needed to be based on middle school samples, which are typically defined as Grades 6 through 8. However, in an attempt to comprehensively account for middle school populations, we used explicit identification as well. For example, when fifth or ninth grade students were included in a study and the authors identified the population as middle school students, these reports were included (e.g., Gutman & Midgley, 2000 ; Marchant, Paulson, & Rothlisberg, 2001 ). Third, the report needed to include correlations (Pearson’s r ), d indexes, or sufficient information to calculate an estimate of the effect size. This included means and standard deviations to calculate the d index as outlined by Rosenthal (1991) . Studies that used a wide variety of statistical analyses were included, such as studies that used structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, regression, and other statistical techniques, provided that the article also included information from which effect sizes could be calculated. Reports were not included in the meta-analysis if they did not include such information and it was not available from the author. However, their findings and the directions of effects were coded to determine whether they provided additional support to the general results of the meta-analysis.

Criteria for exclusion

We eliminated studies that used a broad conceptualization of parental involvement, such as reports that included assessments of general monitoring, parenting styles (i.e., authoritative vs. authoritarian), or discipline in their conceptualization of parental involvement in education, as this meta-analysis focused on the specific strategies parents use to foster achievement on their own and in collaboration with school. In addition, one central goal of this meta-analysis was to determine whether parental involvement in education, as defined by the prevailing theories of parental involvement and family-school relations, was related to achievement among middle school students. Studies were also eliminated if they combined middle-school-age students with other age groups, as the focus of this meta-analysis was on early adolescence and middle school as a unique developmental stage and context. Finally, studies were eliminated that demonstrated a lack of overall face validity (e.g., indicated that their focus was on parental involvement but did not assess parental involvement as defined by the prevailing theories). These criteria for inclusion resulted in 50 articles, reflecting 127 separate correlations.

Coding and Information Retrieved From Research Reports

The coding scheme was developed to extract information about the characteristics of the sample, type of publication, theories used, conceptualization and measurement of parental involvement and academic outcomes, and results (i.e., effect sizes, information to calculate effect sizes, and general magnitude and direction of the relation between parental involvement and academic outcomes). Each research report was coded by two coders. The primary coder was a developmental psychology graduate student with expertise in parental involvement in education, academic motivation, and academic achievement. The secondary coder was an advanced undergraduate research assistant who received extensive training on the theories and research related to parental involvement in education and the goals of the meta-analysis. After retrieving abstracts from the databases, each coder examined each abstract to determine its relevance. If either coder deemed an abstract was relevant, the full article was retrieved for further coding. Research reports received through communications with key researchers in the field were also included in this round of coding. Both coders extracted information from each report selected for inclusion. Any discrepancies between coders were discussed until consensus was reached. If agreement could not be reached, the disagreement was resolved by Nancy E. Hill. This method of discussing discrepancies until consensus is reached, as a way of assuring intercoder reliability, is consistent with the meta-analysis methodology presented in Rosenthal (1991) . This meta-analysis focused on three types of involvement (home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and academic socialization). Studies were coded for these types of involvement. In addition, several studies created measures of parent involvement that combined several types of involvement into a single construct. The code “general involvement” was used when the report did not specify a specific type of involvement or used a unidimensional construct of parental involvement. In the meta-analysis, the construct general involvement was created for all reports by combining across all indicators of involvement.

Information Retrieved From Research Reports

The main information coded for each article included characteristics of the publication, the independent variables, the sample characteristics, and the outcomes measures of interest.

Characteristics of the publication

First, the authors of the research report and the date of publication were recorded. Next, information about the type of publication or report was recorded. These included peer-reviewed journal articles, dissertations, private reports (i.e., the author provided correlations not originally included in a publication), government reports, conference papers, and unpublished datasets. In addition, the type of study was coded; that is, whether the study was a naturalistic correlational study, controlled for a third variable, used advanced statistics and did not include correlations (i.e., structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling), was an intervention trial, or used public-access datasets.

Characteristics of the sample

Demographic information about samples was gathered and coded, including sample size, ethnic or racial background of the sample, gender of the target child, specific grade levels or ages of adolescents included in the study, socioeconomic status of the families (including parental education level), and any labels that were given to the samples (e.g., “at risk,” “exceptional students”).

Characteristics of the independent variables

Studies were coded and correlations gathered for each type of involvement, along with the effect size for the overall relation between parental involvement and achievement (i.e., general involvement). As mentioned previously, if the research report did not allow for distinctions between the types of involvement, they were coded as having an assessment of general parental involvement.

Characteristics of the dependent variables

The main outcome of interest for this meta-analysis was academic achievement, conceptualized as class grades, GPA, standardized test scores, track placement, and other tests designed to measure achievement.

Information to calculate an effect size

Effect sizes were ascertained from each research report for each relation between a type of parental involvement and the outcomes. A single article could provide more than one effect size if multiple dimensions of parental involvement or multiple outcomes were included. If effect sizes were not included in the research report, information that could be used to calculate an effect size was gathered and input into the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis program (CMA; Version 2.0; Biostat, Englewood, NJ) to calculate the appropriate effect size (e.g., correlations and Cohen’s d index). In calculating the effect size, we incorporated the shifting unit of analysis approach to account for independence assumptions among the variables. According to this approach, all study effect sizes are coded as independent events ( Cooper, 1998 ). Then, when the overall result for the meta-analysis was generated, the effect sizes were weighted in CMA so that each study contributed to the overall finding on the basis of its sample size and other characteristics. The shifting unit of analysis approach takes into account the fact that one study can contribute multiple effect sizes ( Cooper, 1998 ). For example, Marchant et al. (2001) contributed two effect sizes from the same sample: one for the relationship between academic socialization and GPA and one for the relationship between school involvement and GPA. As such, the shifting unit of analysis approach takes the average of these correlations and contributes one effect size for the purposes of examining the relation between general parental involvement and achievement. However, when conducting moderator analyses, the study effect sizes are only examined across the separate categories of the moderator ( Cooper, 1998 ). When analyses of each type of involvement are considered separately, this approach counts one effect size per category. Thus, in the case of Marchant et al. (2001) , when the impact of different forms of parent involvement is examined, each of the two correlations counts independently in the analysis.

Data Integration and Meta-Analysis Plan

We used meta-analytic techniques to calculate the relations between parental involvement and achievement and the 95% confidence interval. A random effects model was used, which extrapolates to the entire possible pool of studies that may potentially examine the relation between parent involvement and achievement. Thus, random effects models make the current meta-analysis generalizable to all possible studies. This is important because it attempts to account for unpublished studies or studies not published in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. In addition to determining whether the relation between parental involvement and achievement was significantly different from zero, we examined the heterogeneity of the distribution of the effect sizes using the Q statistic ( Rosenthal, 1991 ). Heterogeneity may be due to the inclusion of outliers, multiple underlying dimensions within the distribution, or sampling error. We used the significance of the Q w to determine the appropriateness of conducting the moderator analyses. We conducted moderator analyses using meta-analytic strategies to compare the strength of the relations between parental involvement and achievement across the three types of involvement (i.e., school-based, home-based, and academic socialization), which were our planned comparisons. The Q B statistic was used to determine whether the groups of effect sizes for each type of parental involvement differed from each other. Due to potential violations of independence at the sample and item level, studies that used public-access datasets were grouped together. These studies did not include correlation matrices, likely due to the large sample sizes. Rather, authors used a variety of modeling techniques (i.e., multiple and hierarchical regression) to examine the relation between parent involvement and achievement. We examined and reported the range of the betas for these studies, which included an array of control variables in addition to parent involvement items. Finally, we conducted exploratory meta-analyses to examine variations in the relation between parental involvement and achievement between African Americans and European Americans.

Overall Relation Between General Parental Involvement and Achievement

Overall, the meta-analysis of the correlational studies demonstrated a positive relation between general parental involvement and achievement in middle school. The correlations ranged from −.49 to .73; the average weighted correlation across the 32 independent samples was r = .18, 95% confidence interval (CI) = .12, .24, Q (31) = 1,581.10, p < .0001. The distribution of these is represented in the funnel plot in Figure 1 . Because the confidence interval does not include zero, we concluded that the relation between general parental involvement and academic achievement is positive and significantly different from zero. However, due to the size and the significance of the Q statistic, which is an assessment of the hetero-geneity of the distribution of correlations, there is likely more than one underlying construct of parental involvement with differing associations with academic outcomes.

Funnel plot for the random effects model. The trim and fill technique imputes 11 studies to the left of the mean. White circles represent the effect sizes of all samples from studies providing bivariate correlations. Filled circles represent the imputed effect size.

When a meta-analysis is conducted, one common concern is publication bias. That is, the field often has a bias against publishing null results, which may render a meta-analysis based on published studies biased in favor of statistical significance. To prevent this, we attempted to obtain unpublished data from key researchers in the field. However, this is not always possible. To obtain an estimate of the publication bias, the “trim and fill” technique was used to impute potentially missing studies ( Duval, 2005 ; Taylor & Tweedie, 2000 ). The trim and fill technique is based on the assumption that the full set of possible studies on a topic will be distributed symmetrically around a true mean. To estimate the number of plausibly missing studies, the trim and fill method “trims” the outlying studies that do not have a counterpart on the other side of the mean. The mean effect is recalculated, often resulting in a more conservative effect size; the outlying studies are returned, and their counterparts are estimated based on the new mean level effect size. Using this method, we estimated that 11 studies were potentially missing. These imputed studies were each below the mean and had a negative correlation between parental involvement and achievement (see Figure 1 ).

Next, we conducted moderator analyses to determine whether the strength of the relation between parental involvement and achievement varied among the three types of involvement.

Are All Types of Involvement Equally Effective?

All but six samples provided separate correlations for specific types of parental involvement (i.e., they only included assessments of general forms of parental involvement or collapsed across the different types of involvement). To determine the extent to which each type of involvement was similarly related to achievement, we first examined whether the simple relation between each type of involvement and achievement was significantly different from zero. Second, we compared the magnitudes of the relations across type of involvement using the Q B statistic to determine whether one type of involvement was more strongly related to achievement than another.

Average weighted correlations between parental involvement and achievement were positive and significantly different from zero for school-based involvement and academic socialization (See Table 9 ). For home-based involvement, the relation was not significant. The 95% CI included zero, indicating that we could not rule out that the relation between home-based involvement and achievement was not significantly different from zero.

Note . Random effects Q values and point estimates are presented in parentheses. CI = confidence interval.

In comparing the strength of the relations across types of parental involvement, we found that the average weighted correlation for each type of involvement and achievement was significantly different, Q B (2) = 38.10, p < .0001. Three planned contrasts were conducted to examine the differences between types of involvement. These included a comparison between academic socialization and home-based involvement, between academic socialization and school-based involvement, and between home- and school-based involvement. Academic socialization was more strongly related to achievement than was home-based involvement. The average weighted correlation between academic socialization and achievement and between home-based involvement and achievement were r = .39 and .03, respectively; Q B (1) = 36.68, p < .0001. For the comparison between academic socialization and school-based involvement and their relation to achievement outcomes, the relation was also stronger for academic socialization. Whereas the average weighted correlation for academic socialization and achievement was .39, it was .19 for school-based involvement and achievement, Q B (1) = 13.30, p < .0001. Finally, the average weighted correlation between school-based involvement and achievement was stronger than the average weighted correlation between home-based involvement and achievement, Q B (1) = 12.30, p < .0001. In summary, parental involvement in education is positively associated with academic outcomes during middle school. Further, among the types of parental involvement, academic socialization emerged as a critical component of parental involvement in middle school that had the strongest positive relation with achievement.

As further evidence of the differences in the strength of the relations between the types of involvement and achievement, the range of the beta weights were examined for the studies using the public-access dataset (e.g., NELS-88, NLSY, LSAY) that could not be included in the meta-analysis. Indeed, the examination of the range suggests that the relation is stronger and more positive for academic socialization (betas ranged from .00 to .42 for studies using the NELS-88 and .11 for the study using the NLSY), compared to school-based involvement (betas ranged from −.06 to .11 for studies using the NELS-88 and −.02 to .05 for studies using the LSAY) and home-based involvement (betas ranged from −.17 to .08 for studies using the NELS-88 and −.14 to −.11 for studies using the LSAY).

The relation between home-based involvement and achievement was not significant, and it was weaker than the relation between other types of involvement and achievement. The Q statistics for home-based involvement suggest that there may be subtypes of home involvement. Because prior research had suggested that home-based involvement should be positively related to achievement, we attempted to identify which types of home involvement were positively related to achievement and whether some types of involvement had a negative relation.

Are There Subtypes of Home Involvement?

To examine potential multidimensionality among studies of home-based involvement, we examined the types of home-based involvement that were assessed. Prior research suggested that helping with homework is the most controversial type of home-based involvement. Homework help has been shown to both accelerate and interfere with achievement ( Cooper, 1989 , 2007 ; Wolf, 1979 ). The negative relation may be due to parental interference with students’ autonomy, to excessive parental pressure, or to differences between parents and schools in how they present the material. Further, help with homework may be elicited by poor school performance, also resulting in a negative relation between homework help and achievement. Other types of home-based involvement—such as providing educationally enriching activities at home, making books and other educational materials available, and taking children to museums, libraries, the zoo, and other educational outlets—have been shown to have a more consistent positive relation with achievement ( Reynolds & Gill, 1994 ). Therefore, we coded the studies into these two types of home-based involvement and tested the relations with achievement using meta-analytic techniques. There were five correlations representing involvement in activities at home and six correlations representing homework help.

Consistent with our post hoc hypothesis, help with homework was negatively related to achievement, whereas other types of involvement at home were significantly and positively related to achievement. The average weighted correlation between activities at home and achievement was .12 (95% CI = .05, .19), whereas involvement in homework produced a significant but negative average weighted correlation with achievement ( r = −.11; 95% CI = −.25, −.04). These average weighted correlations were significantly different from each other, Q B (1) = 7.61, p < .006. Overall, among the types of home involvement, educationally enriching activities were positively related to achievement, but helping with homework was associated with lower levels of performance.

In summary, parental involvement is positively related to achievement in middle school. Further, parental involvement characterized as academic socialization has the strongest and most positive relation and helping with homework has the strongest negative association with achievement. Other types of home-based and school-based involvement demonstrated significant positive relations with achievement. However, the strength of these relations was more moderate. Our final two questions were whether the relations between parental involvement and achievement varied across ethnicity and whether any evidence on the direction of effect can be ascertained from the results of the five intervention studies and the two longitudinal studies.

Ethnic differences in the relation between involvement and achievement

Although most studies did not provide separate correlations for each ethnic group, 15 studies did provide such information for African Americans and European Americans. Six studies and 7 samples provided data from African American participants, and 9 studies with 11 samples provided data for European Americans. The overall weighted correlations suggested similarities across ethnicities in the strength of the relation. For African Americans, the average weighted correlation was .11 (95% CI = .05, .17); for European Americans, it was .19 (95% CI = .09, .29). Whereas each was positive and significantly different from zero, they were not significantly different from each other, Q B (1) = 1.80, ns , suggesting that the strength of the relation is similar between African Americans and European Americans. 1

Attempts at discerning directions of effect and causality from longitudinal and intervention studies

Much debate in psychological research has focused on the ability to discern directions of effects (e.g., Duncan, Magnusson, & Ludwig, 2004 ). Duncan et al. suggested that research capitalize on natural experiments, use longitudinal designs, and use quasi-experimental designs as a way to attempt to establish causality and directions of effect. Longitudinal and experimental studies are presented in Tables ​ Tables3 3 and ​ and4. 4 . As can be seen, longitudinal studies show a moderate positive relation between parental involvement at Time 1 and achievement at Time 2. Further, five studies employed an experimental design that attempted to increase parental involvement in education—specifically, involvement in homework—and in turn, increase adolescents’ school performance.

The studies that used experimental designs to examine the impact of parent training for homework were evaluated using meta-analytic techniques to determine the nature of the relation. The weighted mean d index was .21 and was not statistically different from zero (95% CI = −.54, .98). The weighed mean correlations is .11 (95% CI = −.26, .44). However, the test of the distribution of d indexes was very large and significant, Q w (3) = 15,074.48, p < .0001. Part of the heterogeneity may be due to the fact that these studies were extremely different in terms of design. Ideally, moderator analyses could be conducted to determine whether there were subtypes of homework help that were differently related to achievement, given the heterogeneity in the distribution of correlations; however, three of the five intervention studies explicitly stated that parents were given multiple types of instructions, precluding our ability to examine subtypes. Based on the intervention studies, parental involvement in homework shows a minor effect on achievement, according to the d index.

Overall Summary

Overall, parental involvement during middle school is positively related to achievement. However, the types of involvement in which parents engage matter. Among the types of involvement, parental involvement that creates an understanding about the purposes, goals, and meaning of academic performance; communicates expectations about involvement; and provides strategies that students can effectively use (i.e., academic socialization) has the strongest positive relation with achievement. Involvement pertaining to homework assistance and supervising or checking homework was the only type of involvement that was not consistently related with achievement. Whereas school-based involvement—including visiting the school, volunteering at school, and attending school events—was moderately positive in its association with achievement, our evidence suggests that the most salient type of parental involvement is involvement that relates to achievement, results in socialization around the goals and purposes of education, and provides adolescents with useful strategies that they can use in semiautonomous decision making.

In the face of declines in academic achievement during middle school and increased barriers associated with maintaining parental involvement with adolescents (who are increasingly autonomous and independent) and in middle schools (that are larger and more bureaucratic), the synthesis of the extant literature confirms that parental involvement is positively associated with achievement. Moreover, through this meta-analysis, we identified a specific type of involvement, namely academic socialization, that has the strongest positive relation with achievement during middle school. School-based involvement was also positively related to achievement, but less strongly so. Finally, the results for home-based involvement were mixed. Involvement that entailed assisting with homework was not consistently associated with achievement, whereas other types of home-based involvement were positively related to achievement.

Academic socialization includes parents’ communication of their expectations for achievement and value for education, fostering educational and occupational aspirations in their adolescents, discussing learning strategies with children, and making preparations and plans for the future, including linking material discussed in school with students’ interests and goals. An adolescent’s ability to engage in logical and analytic thinking, problem solving, planning, and decision making increase during adolescence ( Halpern-Felsher & Cauffman, 2001 ; Keating, 2004 ). Further, it is during adolescence that goals, beliefs, and motivations are internalized and such inner processes shape adolescents’ academic performance and course selection ( Wigfield, Byrnes, & Eccles, 2006 ). Academic socialization includes the types of strategies that will scaffold adolescents’ burgeoning autonomy, independence, and cognitive abilities. In addition, this type of involvement represents developmentally appropriate strategies of involvement, as it fosters and builds upon the development of internalized motivation for achievement, focuses on future plans, provides a link between school work and future goals and aspirations, and is consistent with the needs of middle school students. Further, it provides young adolescents with the tools to make semiautonomous decisions about their academic pursuits.

In addition to being developmentally appropriate for adolescents, academic socialization strategies are developmentally appropriate for middle school contexts. One of the largest challenges for middle school teachers in their attempts to involve parents is the large number of parents with whom they must develop relationships. Middle school teachers instruct many more students than elementary school teachers. Moreover, because students have multiple teachers, it is difficult for parents to develop productive relationships with their adolescent’s teachers ( Hill & Chao, 2009 ). Academic socialization as a parental involvement strategy is adaptive for middle school contexts because it is not dependent on the development of deep, high-quality relationships with each teacher—a goal that is often not feasible even for the most motivated teacher. It is dependent on parents’ knowledge about how to navigate the middle school context, which is information that can more easily be provided to parents through communications between the school and home and through electronic communications (e.g., Bouffard, 2009 ), and builds upon the relationship between the adolescent and the parent. This type of involvement can be more easily solicited by adolescents as they assess their own needs and direct their interests and trajectories. Further, students’ academic promise may elicit this level of involvement and planning from parents.

School-based involvement was also positively related to achievement, although the relation was weaker than the relation for academic socialization. Whereas prior research and theory have demonstrated the positive effect of school-based involvement ( Comer, 1995 ; Epstein & Sanders, 2002 ; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994 ; Hill, 2001 ; Hill & Craft, 2003 ; Lareau, 1987 ), it is possible that the processes through which school-based involvement has its effect (e.g., increasing social capital or knowledge) are more difficult to realize in middle school. School-based involvement during middle school is less likely to entail involvement directly in one’s child’s classroom. It is more likely to entail assisting teachers with preparation (e.g., bulletin boards, setting up classrooms), fundraising, administrative duties in the office, or committee work. Whereas this type of involvement is important for the functioning of the school, it often does not directly provide parents with knowledge about instructional styles and course content that will facilitate their involvement with their students’ schoolwork. Further, because students have multiple teachers in middle school, parents would need to spend a considerable amount of time at school to build relations with each teacher and spend time in each classroom. Finally, as adolescents become more independent, they do not want their parents to visit the school ( Stevenson & Baker, 1987 ); they want to be trusted that they will manage their responsibilities. That is, adolescents often indicate that they want their parents’ help but do not want their parents to visit the school ( Collins & Laursen, 2004 ; Grotevant, 1998 ). Given adolescents’ increased sense of efficacy, autonomy, and problem-solving skills, they may have a greater role in soliciting the type of involvement they need from their parents, which would make active school-based involvement less effective than other types of involvement.

Home-based involvement entails a range of activities from supporting achievement by providing appropriate structure and intellectually engaging materials in the home to monitoring and checking homework. The provision of an educationally supportive home environment consistently has been shown to be positively related to achievement ( Chao et al., 2009 ; Reynolds & Gill, 1994 ). In contrast, helping with homework has been shown to both accelerate and interfere with achievement ( Cooper, 1989 , 2007 ; Wolf, 1979 ). The negative relation may be due to parental interference with students’ autonomy, to excessive parental pressure, or to differences in how parents and schools present the material. On the contrary, supporting a student who is having trouble completing or understanding homework can deepen and further the student’s understanding of the material. The meta-analysis of the extant literature demonstrated that, on the whole, parental assistance with homework is not consistently associated with achievement. It is plausible that, rather than undermining achievement, parental engagement in homework is elicited by poor school performance, which also results in a negative relation between homework help and achievement.

Attempts at disentangling the direction of effect are futile with correlational research. Longitudinal, natural, and experimental designs provide the best context for social scientists to infer causality or direction of effect ( Duncan et al., 2004 ). The synthesis of interventions designed to increase the amount and quality of parental involvement in homework demonstrated only a weak association between homework help and achievement, and in some cases a negative effect. Whereas in some cases parents’ direct involvement in homework may rescue a failing student, the provision of support and structure that enable middle school students to function semiautonomously, understand the value and utility of education for their future, and understand how the knowledge gained at school links to their interests, talents, and current events seems most significant.

In the context of these consistent findings showing that parental involvement in education is positively associated with achievement during middle school (with the exception of homework help), there are a number of limitations to the existing literature that give us some pause in the confidence we have in our conclusions and provide fruitful ground for future research. First, we have attempted to be careful in our discussion of the findings to refrain from making causal inferences. Whereas most theories suggest that parental involvement improves achievement, there is also a growing body of literature that points to the motivating effect of prior achievement in increasing or decreasing levels of parental involvement ( Eccles, 2007 ; Hoover-Dempsey, Ice, & Whitaker, 2009 ). For example, the negative relation between parental homework help and achievement may reflect parents’ appropriate response for children who are not performing well, rather than demonstrating that parental homework help undermines achievement. Further, adolescents’ increased cognitive abilities, sense of efficacy, and confidence may result in soliciting advice and involvement from parents, which also impacts our understanding of the nature of the dynamic relation between involvement and achievement. Second, the studies included in this meta-analysis reflect incredible heterogeneity in measurement and study design. Indeed, based on our review of the literature, there is not a standard measure of involvement that is used consistently in studies of middle school families. Rarely does one see the same measure used across studies ( Hill & Tyson, 2005 ). The most consistently used measure is from Steinberg et al. ( 1992 ; five items). Three studies cited it; however, two studies modified it. Even when researchers used the same national datasets (e.g., NELS-88), different items were used to assess parent involvement across studies. Although such heterogeneity might undermine our ability to identify consistent patterns in the relation between parental involvement and achievement, the meta-analysis still points to the conclusion that parental involvement that reflects academic socialization has the strongest positive relation with achievement.

Finally, the state of the extant literature did not permit a thorough examination of ethnic and socioeconomic variations in involvement and their relation with academic outcomes. The findings suggested that there is no difference in the strength of the relation between involvement and achievement for European Americans compared to African Americans when considering the findings from the random effects models, which extrapolate to the broader literature (i.e., random-effects design). However, the fixed effect models demonstrated that the relation was positive for both African American and Euro-American families, but stronger for European Americans. Some research suggests that parental involvement has different meanings and motivations across ethnicity ( Hill & Craft, 2003 ; Lynch & Stein, 1987 ), and those from varying economic background engage in parental involvement with different levels of social capital (i.e., resources, knowledge; Hill et al., 2004 ; Lareau, 2003 ; Lareau & Horvat, 1999 ). It is possible that seemingly ethnic differences are ultimately the result of differences in economic resources. Thus, ethnic differences found in the fixed effects model may be due to the potential confounding of ethnicity and other contextual factors in the studies in this meta-analysis. Supporting this contention, Jeynes’s (2005) meta-analysis found no statistical differences in the strength of the relation between studies reflecting “mostly ethnic minority” samples and Euro-American samples when socioeconomic indicators were controlled. Similarly, Fan and Chen (2001) did not find ethnicity to be a significant moderator in their meta-analysis. It is also possible that ethnic differences in beliefs, practices, and processes are not related to involvement as defined in this study. For example, prior research has found that African American parents’ involvement has entailed monitoring the school and teachers rather than forming partnerships with them ( Lareau & Horvat, 1999 ), and African American parents of high achievers have indicated that they are involved at school, in part, to demonstrate to school personnel their commitment to education.

Other than with African Americans, the body of literature on parental involvement in middle school does not include sufficient studies of other sizable ethnic groups, such as Latinos or Asian Americans. Although there is evidence that Asian American students have the highest average achievement levels, their parents are the least involved in education as defined by the prevailing theories ( Chao, 2000 ). Given current demographic trends that predict that Latinos will become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, it is imperative that psychologists conduct research to understand how Latino families and schools work together most productively. In addition, it is important to identify the types of involvement strategies used by Asian American families. This is particularly important because academic socialization as a parental involvement strategy is more dependent on parents’ knowledge and resources and schools’ ability to provide such information to parents than are other types of involvement.

In the current policy climate—one that requires schools to maintain policies and support parental involvement in education—it is imperative that the scientific field identify developmentally appropriate practical strategies for middle schools. Although the NCLB Act (2002) requires parental involvement in education, largely defined as accountability and communication between families and schools, the results of this meta-analysis suggest that programs and policies need to consider a broader range of involvement strategies. In their mandates, policies such as the NCLB should carefully consider the specific needs of middle school students, including the provision of information about tracking and placement as it effects college access, the ways in which curriculum can be linked to students’ interests and current events, and linkages between the middle school curriculum and students’ long term goals. Lack of guidance was the primary reason that academically able students did not attend postsecondary institutions after high school ( Catsambis & Garland, 1997 ; Conners & Epstein, 1995 ; Jordan & Plank, 2000 ). In the current context of increased demand for parental involvement in education (e.g., school choice, tracking, course selection), without effective parental involvement, adolescents’ opportunities are often foreclosed, leading to lost potential, unrealized talent, diminished educational and vocational attainment, and widening demographic gaps in achievement.

Acknowledgments

This study was funded in part by a seed grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse Transdisciplinary Research Center at the Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University. We thank Harris Cooper for his consultation on meta-analytic strategies. In addition, we thank Lea Bromell, Roxanne Flint, Joseph Bataille, and Andrea Malone-Reid for their assistance with coding the reports for this meta-analysis.

1 Based on the fixed effects model, which does not generalize to the broader literature but reflects the current set of studies, the average weighted correlation was .07 (95% CI = .04, .11) for African Americans and .20 (95% CI = .17, .23) for European Americans. These average weighted correlations were significantly different from each other ( Q (1) = 32.67 p < .001), suggesting that the relation between parental involvement and achievement is stronger for European Americans, albeit positive and significant for both groups.

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