harvard study on homework

Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

• Posted January 17, 2012
• By Lory Hough

The debate over how much schoolwork students should be doing at home has flared again, with one side saying it's too much, the other side saying in our competitive world, it's just not enough.

It was a move that doesn't happen very often in American public schools: The principal got rid of homework.

This past September, Stephanie Brant, principal of Gaithersburg Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md., decided that instead of teachers sending kids home with math worksheets and spelling flash cards, students would instead go home and read. Every day for 30 minutes, more if they had time or the inclination, with parents or on their own.

"I knew this would be a big shift for my community," she says. But she also strongly believed it was a necessary one. Twenty-first-century learners, especially those in elementary school, need to think critically and understand their own learning — not spend night after night doing rote homework drills.

Brant's move may not be common, but she isn't alone in her questioning. The value of doing schoolwork at home has gone in and out of fashion in the United States among educators, policymakers, the media, and, more recently, parents. As far back as the late 1800s, with the rise of the Progressive Era, doctors such as Joseph Mayer Rice began pushing for a limit on what he called "mechanical homework," saying it caused childhood nervous conditions and eyestrain. Around that time, the then-influential Ladies Home Journal began publishing a series of anti-homework articles, stating that five hours of brain work a day was "the most we should ask of our children," and that homework was an intrusion on family life. In response, states like California passed laws abolishing homework for students under a certain age.

But, as is often the case with education, the tide eventually turned. After the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, a space race emerged, and, writes Brian Gill in the journal Theory Into Practice, "The homework problem was reconceived as part of a national crisis; the U.S. was losing the Cold War because Russian children were smarter." Many earlier laws limiting homework were abolished, and the longterm trend toward less homework came to an end.

The debate re-emerged a decade later when parents of the late '60s and '70s argued that children should be free to play and explore — similar anti-homework wellness arguments echoed nearly a century earlier. By the early-1980s, however, the pendulum swung again with the publication of A Nation at Risk , which blamed poor education for a "rising tide of mediocrity." Students needed to work harder, the report said, and one way to do this was more homework.

For the most part, this pro-homework sentiment is still going strong today, in part because of mandatory testing and continued economic concerns about the nation's competitiveness. Many believe that today's students are falling behind their peers in places like Korea and Finland and are paying more attention to Angry Birds than to ancient Babylonia.

But there are also a growing number of Stephanie Brants out there, educators and parents who believe that students are stressed and missing out on valuable family time. Students, they say, particularly younger students who have seen a rise in the amount of take-home work and already put in a six- to nine-hour "work" day, need less, not more homework.

Who is right? Are students not working hard enough or is homework not working for them? Here's where the story gets a little tricky: It depends on whom you ask and what research you're looking at. As Cathy Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework , points out, "Homework has generated enough research so that a study can be found to support almost any position, as long as conflicting studies are ignored." Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth and a strong believer in eliminating all homework, writes that, "The fact that there isn't anything close to unanimity among experts belies the widespread assumption that homework helps." At best, he says, homework shows only an association, not a causal relationship, with academic achievement. In other words, it's hard to tease out how homework is really affecting test scores and grades. Did one teacher give better homework than another? Was one teacher more effective in the classroom? Do certain students test better or just try harder?

"It is difficult to separate where the effect of classroom teaching ends," Vatterott writes, "and the effect of homework begins."

Putting research aside, however, much of the current debate over homework is focused less on how homework affects academic achievement and more on time. Parents in particular have been saying that the amount of time children spend in school, especially with afterschool programs, combined with the amount of homework given — as early as kindergarten — is leaving students with little time to run around, eat dinner with their families, or even get enough sleep.

Certainly, for some parents, homework is a way to stay connected to their children's learning. But for others, homework creates a tug-of-war between parents and children, says Liz Goodenough, M.A.T.'71, creator of a documentary called Where Do the Children Play?

"Ideally homework should be about taking something home, spending a few curious and interesting moments in which children might engage with parents, and then getting that project back to school — an organizational triumph," she says. "A nag-free activity could engage family time: Ask a parent about his or her own childhood. Interview siblings."

Instead, as the authors of The Case Against Homework write, "Homework overload is turning many of us into the types of parents we never wanted to be: nags, bribers, and taskmasters."

Leslie Butchko saw it happen a few years ago when her son started sixth grade in the Santa Monica-Malibu (Calif.) United School District. She remembers him getting two to four hours of homework a night, plus weekend and vacation projects. He was overwhelmed and struggled to finish assignments, especially on nights when he also had an extracurricular activity.

"Ultimately, we felt compelled to have Bobby quit karate — he's a black belt — to allow more time for homework," she says. And then, with all of their attention focused on Bobby's homework, she and her husband started sending their youngest to his room so that Bobby could focus. "One day, my younger son gave us 15-minute coupons as a present for us to use to send him to play in the back room. … It was then that we realized there had to be something wrong with the amount of homework we were facing."

Butchko joined forces with another mother who was having similar struggles and ultimately helped get the homework policy in her district changed, limiting homework on weekends and holidays, setting time guidelines for daily homework, and broadening the definition of homework to include projects and studying for tests. As she told the school board at one meeting when the policy was first being discussed, "In closing, I just want to say that I had more free time at Harvard Law School than my son has in middle school, and that is not in the best interests of our children."

One barrier that Butchko had to overcome initially was convincing many teachers and parents that more homework doesn't necessarily equal rigor.

"Most of the parents that were against the homework policy felt that students need a large quantity of homework to prepare them for the rigorous AP classes in high school and to get them into Harvard," she says.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.'06, sees this at Another Course to College, the Boston pilot school where she teaches math. "When a student is not completing [his or her] homework, parents usually are frustrated by this and agree with me that homework is an important part of their child's learning," she says.

As Timothy Jarman, Ed.M.'10, a ninth-grade English teacher at Eugene Ashley High School in Wilmington, N.C., says, "Parents think it is strange when their children are not assigned a substantial amount of homework."

That's because, writes Vatterott, in her chapter, "The Cult(ure) of Homework," the concept of homework "has become so engrained in U.S. culture that the word homework is part of the common vernacular."

These days, nightly homework is a given in American schools, writes Kohn.

"Homework isn't limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important. Most teachers and administrators aren't saying, 'It may be useful to do this particular project at home,'" he writes. "Rather, the point of departure seems to be, 'We've decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week). … This commitment to the idea of homework in the abstract is accepted by the overwhelming majority of schools — public and private, elementary and secondary."

Brant had to confront this when she cut homework at Gaithersburg Elementary.

"A lot of my parents have this idea that homework is part of life. This is what I had to do when I was young," she says, and so, too, will our kids. "So I had to shift their thinking." She did this slowly, first by asking her teachers last year to really think about what they were sending home. And this year, in addition to forming a parent advisory group around the issue, she also holds events to answer questions.

Still, not everyone is convinced that homework as a given is a bad thing. "Any pursuit of excellence, be it in sports, the arts, or academics, requires hard work. That our culture finds it okay for kids to spend hours a day in a sport but not equal time on academics is part of the problem," wrote one pro-homework parent on the blog for the documentary Race to Nowhere , which looks at the stress American students are under. "Homework has always been an issue for parents and children. It is now and it was 20 years ago. I think when people decide to have children that it is their responsibility to educate them," wrote another.

And part of educating them, some believe, is helping them develop skills they will eventually need in adulthood. "Homework can help students develop study skills that will be of value even after they leave school," reads a publication on the U.S. Department of Education website called Homework Tips for Parents. "It can teach them that learning takes place anywhere, not just in the classroom. … It can foster positive character traits such as independence and responsibility. Homework can teach children how to manage time."

Annie Brown, Ed.M.'01, feels this is particularly critical at less affluent schools like the ones she has worked at in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and Los Angeles as a literacy coach.

"It feels important that my students do homework because they will ultimately be competing for college placement and jobs with students who have done homework and have developed a work ethic," she says. "Also it will get them ready for independently taking responsibility for their learning, which will need to happen for them to go to college."

The problem with this thinking, writes Vatterott, is that homework becomes a way to practice being a worker.

"Which begs the question," she writes. "Is our job as educators to produce learners or workers?"

Slate magazine editor Emily Bazelon, in a piece about homework, says this makes no sense for younger kids.

"Why should we think that practicing homework in first grade will make you better at doing it in middle school?" she writes. "Doesn't the opposite seem equally plausible: that it's counterproductive to ask children to sit down and work at night before they're developmentally ready because you'll just make them tired and cross?"

Kohn writes in the American School Board Journal that this "premature exposure" to practices like homework (and sit-and-listen lessons and tests) "are clearly a bad match for younger children and of questionable value at any age." He calls it BGUTI: Better Get Used to It. "The logic here is that we have to prepare you for the bad things that are going to be done to you later … by doing them to you now."

According to a recent University of Michigan study, daily homework for six- to eight-year-olds increased on average from about 8 minutes in 1981 to 22 minutes in 2003. A review of research by Duke University Professor Harris Cooper found that for elementary school students, "the average correlation between time spent on homework and achievement … hovered around zero."

So should homework be eliminated? Of course not, say many Ed School graduates who are teaching. Not only would students not have time for essays and long projects, but also teachers would not be able to get all students to grade level or to cover critical material, says Brett Pangburn, Ed.M.'06, a sixth-grade English teacher at Excel Academy Charter School in Boston. Still, he says, homework has to be relevant.

"Kids need to practice the skills being taught in class, especially where, like the kids I teach at Excel, they are behind and need to catch up," he says. "Our results at Excel have demonstrated that kids can catch up and view themselves as in control of their academic futures, but this requires hard work, and homework is a part of it."

Ed School Professor Howard Gardner basically agrees.

"America and Americans lurch between too little homework in many of our schools to an excess of homework in our most competitive environments — Li'l Abner vs. Tiger Mother," he says. "Neither approach makes sense. Homework should build on what happens in class, consolidating skills and helping students to answer new questions."

So how can schools come to a happy medium, a way that allows teachers to cover everything they need while not overwhelming students? Conklin says she often gives online math assignments that act as labs and students have two or three days to complete them, including some in-class time. Students at Pangburn's school have a 50-minute silent period during regular school hours where homework can be started, and where teachers pull individual or small groups of students aside for tutoring, often on that night's homework. Afterschool homework clubs can help.

Some schools and districts have adapted time limits rather than nix homework completely, with the 10-minute per grade rule being the standard — 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 30 minutes for third-graders, and so on. (This remedy, however, is often met with mixed results since not all students work at the same pace.) Other schools offer an extended day that allows teachers to cover more material in school, in turn requiring fewer take-home assignments. And for others, like Stephanie Brant's elementary school in Maryland, more reading with a few targeted project assignments has been the answer.

"The routine of reading is so much more important than the routine of homework," she says. "Let's have kids reflect. You can still have the routine and you can still have your workspace, but now it's for reading. I often say to parents, if we can put a man on the moon, we can put a man or woman on Mars and that person is now a second-grader. We don't know what skills that person will need. At the end of the day, we have to feel confident that we're giving them something they can use on Mars."

Read a January 2014 update.

Homework Policy Still Going Strong

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The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

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Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

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

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

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

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

Should we get rid of homework?

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

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

Mr. Kang argues:

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

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

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

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

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

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

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• Online vs. Paper: How Medium Affects Homework Completion Rate

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by Naomi Reiner

For students who struggle with paper organization, online platforms such as Google Classroom may provide a way to increase assignment turn-in rate. In this study, the homework completion rates of 170 9th grade students were measured over the course of two 6-week units in biology class: the first unit on paper, the second on Google Classroom. The overall homework turn-in rates for each unit were compared, and results indicated that a small group of students who struggled heavily with paper organization did turn in significantly more homework. However, there was a larger group of students who unexpectedly turned in significantly more homework on paper. When surveyed, these students reported that when they did not possess a physical paper to remind them, they forgot to do their homework. Overall, we found that an online system combined with a physical paper reminder could represent an effective two-prong approach to increasing students’ homework completion.

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Homework At-A-Glance

Homework typically constitutes any activity you ask students to complete outside of class. It can either help students prepare for the next class or can allow them to fully delve into topics learned in a previous class.

Want examples of Homework?  Check out the ABLConnect Database Want research supporting the Homework method?  Click here!

Why should you facilitate Homework?

Possible learning goals: Have students learn as they struggle with more challenging questions than can be worked through during the time constraints of class. Have students practice questions on their own to test and deepen their understanding. Have students complete work that you will not have time to complete in class. Have students prepare for class.

Want to facilitate Homework in your class?

How-To Guide:

• Think carefully about why students are doing homework. Is it to prepare for the next class? To practice material learned in class? To synthesize new information? Etc. Make it clear to students why they are being asked to complete homework to help motivate them to complete it.
• Emphasize that the assignments are not just busy-work, but rather there to help students deepen their understanding of material.
• Avoid fact regurgitation – students feel that repeating readily available facts is busy work and will not be motivated (and will most likely complain). Rather think of problems that applies information to new situations of challenges them to think critically
• Vary types of questions – students can get bored if the same type or format of question is used. Vary the types of problems and format of responses. For example you can have students draw their responses, write short answers, or respond to a class-blog. 
• Make questions personal and close to real-life situations – students will be more engaged if the questions are relatable. Use real-world data, reference activities on campus, or require students to generate their own data when possible while writing questions
• Help students remember previously covered topics by having questions that incorporate old material with the new material. By repeating older material and having students retrieve previously learned knowledge, it helps them remember and learn
• There are benefits to having individual assignments and group assignments. If you decide to have group work, encourage students to first work independently to test their own understanding before getting together with a study-group to work on the assignment.
• Students can build confidence as they complete the work independently
• Self-testing is a good way for students to evaluate how well they understand the material in a low-pressure environment
• Students will learn the material more concretely if they have to struggle a little to complete the assignment
• Students can tackle more difficult questions in a group as they can pool their knowledge
• Students can teach each other. This benefits the students who are struggling as they can get help they need. It also benefits the students who are teaching as they need to further cement the information to clearly communicate their reasoning
• Students appreciate multiple approaches to solving problems, especially for open ended questions that challenge students critical thinking skills
• Enhances communication and team-work skills
• Students may have questions while completing their homework. Have a designated system for them to contact you – either have office hours, an email policy, etc.
• Don’t be afraid to edit or clarify a question to the entire class if several students get suck at the same point.

Have a policy for missed work and stick to it. Also have a policy for what an accepted excuse will be

• Students learn most from constructive feedback on their assignments. Praise good responses and indicate where errors occurred on incorrect responses
• Post an answer key so students can compare their responses to the ‘correct’ response. This also cuts back on grading time, as you do not have to re-write correct answers for each student.

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Virtual school: tips and tricks for classes from home.

For me, like many of my classmates, I was beginning my Junior year away from Cambridge in my childhood bedroom. Throughout the past several months, we have all been forced to confront the chaos of the world in own unique ways. From a global pandemic to a polarizing national election and everything in between, I was ready to return to anything that would provide me a sense of normalcy. But with a return to school came a return to classes, assignments, projects and deadlines. Even with my desire to go back to academic routine, I realized that I would need to set new expectations and goals in this exceedingly unexpected world we are living in. Below are some of the tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way this semester!

1. Celebrate ALL the wins (no matter how small).
 No matter how much we want it to be, this school year is not normal (to say the least). And with that, it's not realistic of us to hold ourselves to the same wild standards we held ourselves to before. Whether it be finishing that homework set or finally sending that email that you have been dreading for weeks, treat yourself! For me, that sometimes looks like a bowl of cookies n’ cream ice cream and an episode of New Girl; other times it looks like taking the time to play a chess game with my younger brother. The basic principle remains true, take time to celebrate the wins as they come!

2. Taking a tech break is always the answer.
 I don’t know about you, but I have never spent this much time in front of a screen in my life. My screen times have skyrocketed, everything from classes to homework to hanging out with friends is mediated by my computer screen. Most of my go-to forms of relaxation (tv, facetiming, ebooks etc..) are on an electronic of sorts. This semester, I’ve realized that taking time to just shut my computer screen can do wonders for my productivity and concentration later on. No one has ever done something revolutionary (or productive for that matter) with a migraine, so anything to prevent yourself from getting in that situation is key. Zoom fatigue and being ‘zoomed out’ are popular sayings now for good reason. Especially with the sun setting obscenely early now, taking the time between classes to go outside for a few minutes or stretching does wonders. 

Jack Skellington Themed De-Stress

My brothers and I taking a much needed tech break by carving a pumpkin before Halloween.

3. Recreate your productive spaces.
 My investment in a desk chair this semester was the most powerful move I’ve made this semester. With many libraries and coffee shops closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve had to reimagine my traditional places of productivity at home. Although it looks a little different, recreating some of my favorite study spaces on campus has helped me get in the zone when deadlines are rapidly approaching. For me, that looks like brewing a cup of Earl Grey tea and lighting my Honey Pumpkin candle, putting my phone in another room, and blasting my "you NEED (seriously, Nadya) to get work done" (I kid you not, that is the title) Spotify playlist in my earphones. For a few blissful hours, I can pretend I am back at my corner table at Capital One Peet’s in the Square, and it gets the job done. And with that… This school year is shaping up to be very different from anything that we’ve experienced before, whether you are just starting your college search, applying to universities, or are actively enrolled. But out identity as students remains the same, and I hope these tips and tricks help you as you think about what keeps you surviving and thriving through these wild times!  

Nadya Class of '22 Alumni

Hi! My name is Nadya and I am a Senior concentrating in the History of Science on the Mind Brain and Behavior Track with a citation in Spanish, living in Mather House.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

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

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

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

homework isn’t that bad

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

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

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

why the hell?

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

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

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

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

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

not true it just causes kids to stress

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

homework does help

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

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

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

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

I disagree.

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

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

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

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

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oof i feel bad good luck!

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

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

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

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

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

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

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

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

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

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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‘Harvard Thinking’: How far has COVID set back students?

In podcast, an economist, a policy expert, and a teacher explain why learning losses are worse than many parents realize

Samantha Laine Perfas

Harvard Staff Writer

We’re now three academic years beyond the pandemic. A lot of families think things are back to normal. Thomas Kane disagrees.

“A lot of parents misperceive how much students have lost,” said the faculty director for the Center for Education Policy Research . “That has been one of the biggest things hampering the recovery, parents thinking things are fine now that kids are back in school.”

According to Kane’s research , on average students have lost about a half a grade level in math and a quarter of a grade level in reading. But that’s on average; individually, some schools are doing even better than before the pandemic, while others have lost as much as two grade levels in education.

Heather Hill , a co-director of the teacher education program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, said one thing she noticed was that students forgot how to “student.” Gone were skills in studying, sitting in classrooms, and taking notes.

“When teachers came back they said, ‘Wow, these kids have forgotten how to be students,’ and one of the things we saw pretty immediately was a rise in behavior issues,” Hill said. While a lot of those issues have been addressed, she said, others — like the rising absenteeism rates that are nearly double pre-pandemic levels — have not.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.’06, a New York State Master Teacher who teaches math at Colonie Central High School, said educators are facing higher expectations than ever.

“We’re asked to be counselors, social workers, teach math, teach writing, and teach students how to be students,” Conklin said, pointing to rising rates of turnover and burnout. Guests talked about the need to better support teachers and what that might look like beyond pay raises.

In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with Kane, Hill, and Conklin about post-pandemic challenges in the classroom and how to fix them.

Thomas Kane: A lot of parents misperceive how much students have lost. They see kids are back in school and they’re thinking everything’s back to normal. And honestly, that has been one of the biggest things hampering the recovery: parents thinking things are fine now that kids are back in school.

Samantha Laine Perfas: American schools took a big hit during the pandemic. On average, they lost half a grade level in math and a little less than that in reading. Some schools have come back, but many others have not, and some are in even worse shape. Other problems have also cropped up, like a surprising rise in absenteeism that spans geography and income. So what happens now?

Welcome to Harvard Thinking, a podcast where the life of the mind meets everyday life.

Today, I’m joined by:

Kane: Tom Kane. I’m a faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research here at Harvard.

Laine Perfas: He works with school districts and state agencies to help them evaluate programs and policies. Since the pandemic, a lot of his research has focused on gains and losses in education. Then:

Heather Hill: Heather Hill. I am at Harvard GSE. My research focuses on mathematics teaching. I spend a lot of time in classrooms, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Laine Perfas: She also co-directs the teacher education program at GSE, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and helps prepare teachers for the classroom. And finally:

Stephanie Conklin: Stephanie Conklin. I’m a math teacher at Colonie Central High School.

Laine Perfas: She’s also a New York State Master Teacher and a graduate of GSE. She serves on the faculty at the University of Albany.

And I’m Samantha Laine Perfas, your host and a writer for The Harvard Gazette. And in this episode, we’ll explore what’s happening in our schools as they try to regain pandemic learning losses.

It’s not a surprise that education took a big hit during the pandemic, but I think there’s been some surprise regarding its lingering effects. I’d love to start the conversation with where things stand now. Maybe, Tom, you can start by talking a little bit about your research in this area.

Kane: Sam, as you said, it was not surprising that students lost ground during the pandemic. But I think many were surprised by just the magnitudes of the losses, especially in many high-poverty school districts in the U.S. Remember March of 2021, when the American Rescue Plan passed, people were sort of hoping that online learning was, maybe, 80 percent as good as in-person learning. We learned subsequently that many districts lost much more than 20 percent of their typical learning during that school year. Now, as a country, we lost about half of a grade level in math and we made up about a third of that. We lost about a quarter of a grade level in reading and we made up about one quarter of that. So we still have a ways to go, and that is on average. There are many districts that are much farther behind than that, like more than a grade level behind.

Laine Perfas: Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you about how the average somewhat hides the greater gaps that are at play. Because when I was looking at some of your research, I was seeing that some school districts are pretty much back to where they were, if not doing even better than before the pandemic. But other areas are significantly worse than pre-pandemic. What’s happening there and what districts seem to be recovering in a way that we would hope, and which districts are being left behind?

Kane: There was a lot of variation in the magnitude of losses, but two factors did play a role. One was high-poverty schools in every state were more likely to stay closed for longer. For instance, in Florida the average school went back sooner than the average school in Massachusetts. But still, even in Florida, the higher-poverty districts stayed closed for longer. And that was true in most other states. The second reason is that when schools closed the losses were larger for higher-poverty schools. Interestingly, in the places where schools did not close for long — like practically every school was closed in the spring of 2020 — but among those places that came back quickly in the fall of 2020, there wasn’t as much increase in inequality. High-poverty and low-poverty schools lost about the same amount of ground. It was in the places where schools were closed for half of the 2021 year or more, that’s where we really saw big differences in the magnitude of the losses.

Unfortunately, an untold story is that the higher-poverty districts in Massachusetts did the opposite of catching up between ’22 and ’23. They lost more ground. So Lynn, Massachusetts, is now basically two grade levels behind where they themselves were in 2019. Those gaps that existed before the pandemic are bigger now and all of the recovery in Massachusetts has been limited to the higher-income districts like Newton, Wellesley, Lexington. The higher-poverty districts like Lynn, Fall River, fell further behind between ’22 and ’23.

Hill: I think one of the issues about being home for a full year, which is what a lot of kids were in some cases in some of these urban districts, is that they forgot how to “student,” if you think about student as a verb. “Studenting” means paying attention, being engaged with your peers, being engaged with your teacher. When teachers came back they said, “Wow, these kids have forgotten how to be students,” and one of the things we saw pretty immediately was a rise in behavior issues on the part of kids. I would say from what I can tell, and I’d be curious what Stephanie thinks about this, I think those are worked out. But what teachers are also saying at this point is that the student engagement is not back yet.

Conklin: As Heather mentioned, when students came back to the classroom, besides just learning how to student, we also noticed that a lot of students’ skills in learning had really suffered. So for example, just students’ ability to retain facts and retain information, that is a real skill that we teach in schools. And then the other piece, too, to learning how to be a student, is being organized. Keeping track of eight classes for many of our students is a real struggle at the middle- and high-school level. And then not having had to do that for a year really made it even harder for students to access the curriculum. So many of us in education had to take a step back, not only reteach academic skills, we also have to teach, OK, how do you take notes in a math classroom? How do you use a calculator if you haven’t used it for a year?

Laine Perfas: It sounds like a big challenge has just been transitioning kids back to school. But another challenge that we’re seeing is actually getting kids back in the classroom in the first place. Can you talk about that and how absenteeism rates are really high right now?

Kane: Basically, chronic absenteeism rates have almost doubled from before the pandemic. By the way, when you yourself miss class, you miss more than a day. Obviously you miss that day you were gone, but the first day you’re back you’re maybe picking up 75 percent of what the teacher is saying. The second day you’re back you’re maybe picking up 80 percent of what the teacher is saying. But when you’re a teacher where 5 percent of kids are missing one day, but it’s a different 5 percent the next day, it’s a different 5 percent the next day. And then you’re trying to juggle and keep everybody going. It really becomes disruptive.

Laine Perfas: Are people still getting sick or is it just not seeing the value of attending school? What exactly is causing that huge increase in absenteeism?

Kane: I don’t think anybody really knows yet. At least part of it is likely due to the fact that I think parents are more aware of communicable diseases, whereas we might have sent our kid to school when they were coughing, now we might hesitate. But I think that is a small share of it. It’s more likely to be things like families have gotten out of their routines, kids, they’re more accustomed to being at home during a weekday of school.

Hill: I think parents are home more often as well at work from home, which takes the burden off of sending your kids to school because you’re like, “It’s not a big deal for you to be home.”

Conklin: For my students I take a picture of all my notes. I post my assignments online. Many of us educators got into a routine of making everything accessible for students, whether they’re in or out of the classroom. Now the positives to that are tremendous. I have students who will follow my notes on their iPad while taking notes with me in class, I have students if they’re absent a day here or there, they can catch up. However, I think that what that’s done is, if we have students who maybe are like, “Well, I’m not feeling great, I’m going to just stay home because Dr. Conklin always puts her notes online and I can catch up tomorrow.” I think families also have the same issue, but I did want to take Tom’s comment like a little bit farther about when a kid misses one day. In the educator perspective, we are not only trying to catch kids up for that day, teach them the content, but also from past things. Three years ago, they missed that content. So what I’m finding is it’s almost like whack-a-mole teaching. “OK, these five kids were out on Thursday. I need to catch them up on today’s lesson, but they still don’t know how to do these four topics.” But then I also have kids who I want to extend the lesson because they already know it. So we’re finding that teachers are not only scaffolding, differentiating lessons, it’s almost like too much for one human being to do, to have two to three different classrooms running in one classroom setting.

Hill: One of the things I think about teaching, which was already pre-pandemic a really difficult job for a lot of reasons, it’s become 20 percent harder. And that may not sound like, “Oh, it’s insurmountable.” But 20 percent harder day in, day out becomes really unsustainable. And I think one of the things that we’ve been seeing is increased teacher absence rates as well, which, paired with teacher shortages and sub shortages, puts schools in this really difficult position. So many of the schools that I’m in, it just feels very tenuous to be there because it erodes the social contract a little bit between students and teachers when you get that level of everybody’s absent and relationships can suffer.

Kane: So for all these reasons, it’s remarkable that between 2022 and 2023 kids did make up some of the ground. Students gained about .17 grade level in math, so that means that students learned roughly about 117 percent of what they would typically learn in math, which is remarkable. But a lot of that was paid for with federal dollars. People had extra resources to hire teachers’ aides or to hire tutors or expand summer school, and that federal money is expiring at the end of September.

Laine Perfas: I wanted to ask a little bit more about the relief dollars, because it seems like they helped. One, did they help, and was that a consistent benefit across the country? And then also, why is it ending in September if there’s clearly still pretty huge gaps that need to be bridged?

Kane: Remember, the American Rescue Plan, which provided this pot of federal money to school districts around the country, was passed in March of 2021; many schools were still closed. So that was before anybody knew how big the losses were going to be. And 90 percent of the money was sent directly to school districts. So basically 13,000 different school districts around the country were making up their own recovery plan. Some came up with better plans than others.

Unfortunately, the federal guidance on this was downright misleading because the federal law only required them to spend 20 percent on academic recovery. But a lot of districts like Lynn or Fall River that lost more than a grade level, there was no way they were going to be able to recover spending 20 percent of those federal dollars on academic recovery. There was simply no way. Imagine if at the beginning of the pandemic, the federal government said, “We’re not even going to try to come up with a vaccine. We’re going to send all the money out to local public health authorities and say, ‘You come up with your own solution.’” And that’s exactly what we did in education, is we put out $190 billion, 90 percent of it, directly to school districts. And then had them all figure out their own plans and some have made progress and some haven’t.

Conklin: I know, on the ground in my district, we’re spending a lot of money focusing on more teachers in classrooms. I teach an at-risk population. I’m math certified, but also special-ed certified, and I have a co-teacher. So there are two adults in my classroom at all times to support our special-ed students, all of our learners who are struggling, and so, at least in my district, I think we’ve been able to spend the money wisely, and we’ve been able to justify keeping those positions by changing how we’re funding other things. Now, when we talk about Lynn and other school districts in Massachusetts, they were probably underfunded to begin with. And so now they’re having to go back and figure out where can we put this money if it’s toward staffing, it’s toward students’ needs, in our high-poverty schools. How are we then going to justify keeping extra staff, which we know works? I’m in New York and high schools that I’m in touch with, our special-ed students who are consistently attending school because they have supports, they’re being really successful and they are catching up.

Kane: This is one place where I feel like both the federal government and states really dropped the ball during the pandemic. We had an opportunity to learn more about the efficacy of different strategies. The problem was we blew the opportunity to learn which of those strategies were most effective. So like in Stephanie’s school district, choosing to have a couple of teachers in a given classroom, that’s one strategy. Other districts did things like, they said, “We’re going to hire math coaches,” and other places said, “Oh, we’re going to really try to expand summer learning,” or, “We’re going to hire tutors.” And even if each of those has some positive effect, I don’t think we have a good sense now, a better sense than we did before the pandemic, of what is the bang for the buck for these different strategies. School districts weren’t tracking which kids got what, so we didn’t learn nearly as much as we could have and should have learned over the last two or three years.

Laine Perfas: Stephanie, you mentioned that, at least in your school district, just staffing up was a really wise investment of resources. How do you do that when there’s so much teacher turnover and burnout right now? Heather, I think you actually mentioned that earlier in the conversation, that teachers are exhausted. It’s a really hard job. It was hard before, and now it’s even harder. I just want to create some space to talk about that a little bit because teachers are such a vital part of the solution and yet they’re struggling as well.

Conklin: It’s a great question. I have so many thoughts. I guess I would say I am on staff at University of Albany, teaching folks how to become teachers. I know in the past three years, pre-COVID, we had about 50 students in our teacher-ed program. And now I think I have 24 this semester. So we’re certainly seeing a huge hit.

I think what teachers are being asked to do is tremendously different than what I was asked to do during my teacher training 15 years ago. We’re asked to be counselors, social workers, teach math, teach writing, and teach students how to be students. I know that our program at University of Albany, we’re always seeking to change it, amend it, but a lot of the state requirements for teachers are not aligned. Two six-week student teaching opportunities I don’t feel is enough — that’s the state requirements right now — in order to really prepare someone for a lifelong career in education. We really should be looking at programs where student teachers are placed for an entire school year in a district and or in a placement and working with a mentor teacher on how to deal with this. OK, when you have a student in crisis, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with it the day after spring break when no student wants to do any work? Which can be very stressful when you have 30 kids in front of you and everyone still wants to be on spring break, yourself included. All these nuances of teaching really need to be taught and modeled for new teachers. I think the current system and the current programs that we’re offering may not necessarily yield themselves to creating teachers who have that resiliency, that ability to sort of push through this much more challenging time.

Hill: OK, so number one, just pay teachers more. If the job is 20 percent harder in any other profession, we’d be like, and you pay people more. Instead, what we see is many states saying, “Oh, we can’t find teachers at the wage that we’re willing to pay. Let’s let people into classrooms who have no training.” There is some weird way in which the public governance of teaching as a profession has stood in the way of actually paying teachers the money that is needed to do the job that they have.

The next thing would be to take a look at teachers’ overall working conditions. There is an enormous amount of stuff that we’re asking teachers to do on top of just teaching students. Looking at that level of workload and paring back what is not necessary would be step two for me, which is to say, how can we get teachers more time to prepare for and to teach students? End of story. Number three is schools need to be better places for teachers to work. Teachers leave schools that are not well-managed, and not all schools are well-managed right now for various reasons. Helping schools get over shortage of subs, helping principals establish common disciplinary policies across the school, establish common routines in classrooms, so as kids are moving around they’re very familiar with this is how we do things at the school; that can make a big difference to getting teachers to stay in the profession.

Laine Perfas: Why do we put all that pressure on teachers? There are so many needs that students have. I’m wondering if there’s space for other people who are not teachers to be part of this solution as well. And what that could look like, engaging an entire community on a broader level to help with some of these challenges.

Kane: We had an event here where the governor of Rhode Island was talking about what they’re doing; you know, very few mayors can teach Algebra I. But mayors can help with the attendance issue, with public information campaigns, with maybe lowering bus fares or handing out transportation cards to students or providing more transportation options. That is one area where public organizations outside of schools could really help.

But the other area is, so here in Boston, there’s an organization called Boston After School and Beyond that helps organize summer learning opportunities. Rather than having the school try to plan both the enrichment activities for summer learning and the academic content, what Boston is doing is saying, “OK, so we got a bunch of organizations here in the city that run enrichment opportunities during the summer: summer camps or museums or other organizations. And why don’t we have them organize the enrichment, but then have the Boston Public Schools provide teachers to teach on site?” So it’s splitting up that task and saying, “Hey, look, we don’t have to solve all of this. Why don’t we let the nonprofits who were already doing a great job recruiting kids and getting kids to show up for summer and just inserting some summer learning into that.”

Conklin: We are finding that summertime, where we have the 10 weeks of students not doing anything, does need to be filled. And the idea that someone else could take that on besides a school? Those opportunities really would benefit students. One of the things I wanted to agree with you wholeheartedly on is giving teachers more time. Tom mentioned algebra. I’ve been teaching algebra for 17 years. I have been rewriting everything the past three years. The time with my colleagues, the time to prepare for my students that are in front of me, is critical. And I know a lot of things we’re talking about relate to funding, but that is one very tangible thing: teachers having more time. And going along with that, I think one of my biggest stressors is dealing with families who have a really challenging time understanding why their students are behind, why their students aren’t being successful. And having support from administrators, which I do have at my school, who are willing to say, “Hey, we need to support your child. Here’s what we’re going to do.” And it’s not just on the teacher.

Hill: The solutions that you’re suggesting are the right set of solutions. I don’t know how to do a hard reset on teachers’ working conditions. The way that the bureaucracy has grown in American education is that teachers need this, and teachers need that. But that takes teachers’ time, and it takes time away from preparing to teach students, and from, in many cases, actually teaching students. One of the things that is the most robust in this literature on the production function for kids — meaning like what produces student achievement — is literally, like, time on task: Are kids in classrooms? This comes back to the absence issue. Are kids there? Are teachers there providing instruction?

Kane: One of the barriers is that a lot of parents misperceive how much students have lost. They see kids are back in school and they’re thinking, everything’s back to normal. If parents are misperceiving the amount of loss, it’s going to be hard for school districts to ask for the bigger things like major increases in funding for teachers or big increases in summer learning and honestly, that has been one of the biggest things, I think, hampering the recovery, is parents thinking things are fine now that kids are back in school.

Laine Perfas: How might parents get a better understanding of how bad things are in some of the school districts?

Kane: I wish more schools would just tell parents, before school’s out, when their child is below grade level in math or reading or any other subject so the parents actually have time to sign up for summer learning. Instead, there’s been a lack of honesty with parents on just where kids are. And part of that is on schools. I can understand, if you’re already overwhelmed, like, who wants to get parents riled up? But I do think that lack of parent awareness of the magnitude of the losses is meaning that parents are pushing back on things like extending the school year or signing their kid up for summer learning.

Conklin: I would agree with Tom. I think, too, in the past two to three years, many students have been given a literal pass in courses because of COVID. You know, during the 2020, 2021 years, many students were passed on, whether through social promotion or because of policies related to COVID. So I think families have become accustomed to, well, they’re struggling, but they’ll get through. But now that we’re three years post-pandemic, three academic years, many of those supports to pass students are going away so students are going to be expected to pass exams that do have graduation requirements.

Hill: Can I ask Stephanie, what you were saying about students feeling like they can get by past their classes without having to really put in full effort is really interesting because I feel like from what I have seen anecdotally it’s certainly the case. One of the things I like to recommend is homework, but I know that is a fraught issue, so I’m curious how you’re thinking about this and whether that is part of a solution.

Conklin: I think the issue is, is that if kids don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know what they’re doing at home. So I know that, for many of the teachers, what we talk about is having an assignment that is reasonable to do at home and that is started in class. So I always, the last five minutes of class, “OK, let’s get a jump start. Let’s read the directions together. Let’s do a couple problems.” For my middle and high school kids, you know, we’re really suggesting no more than 10 to 15 minutes of homework. And that’s actually probably all the practice they need to get that specific skill down.

Laine Perfas: We’ve been talking a little bit about solutions that could happen at the local or community level, but what policies need to change to create a healthier education ecosystem long term?

Kane: Sam, that is a great question. I wish it was a much more lively debate right now going on in states, because as I said, the federal money is about to run out. For the last three years, we’ve just been watching districts spend down the federal money without thinking about, “OK, so what’s going to happen when the federal money runs out?” Here are a few just very concrete things that states could be doing. You know, number one, they could be providing extra resources for students who are behind, so targeted benefits either to kids or to districts. A second thing, and this is something that Texas has been doing, they said, “OK, we, the state, will pay half the cost for additional days of learning time that you provide.” A number of districts have extended the school year beyond 180 days in Texas, as a result of this. And a third area, states could set aside some money for funding pilot programs for lowering absenteeism rates and then evaluating those. So a state could say, here’s a pot of money if a district out there has an idea or a pilot program they would like to launch to try to help lower absenteeism rates. If the state were to fund those and then fund evaluations of them, we could be learning much faster than we are about how we’re going to lower the absenteeism problem.

Hill: One of the things that I was thinking, this was a few years ago, back at the beginning of the pandemic, is just to say, everything is on the table. There’s a lot that I think we can do to increase academic learning time without changing structures within the schools to that much of an extent. There’s actually already programs that address student absentee rates. What they look like is they look very relational. So it’s working with the parents, having somebody from the school, sometimes a guidance counselor, somebody whose job is it to go and try to coordinate and reduce chronic absenteeism on the part of students. They can be very successful when they are able to form relationships with parents and really engage parents in solving the problem.

Conklin: To recruit the best teachers we need to offer a higher pay, and I think that people would be willing to work more for a higher pay. I have a doctorate in education and I can’t tell you how many of my students say, “Why are you a teacher if you have a Ph.D.? You went to Harvard and you have a Ph.D. and you’re teaching here?” I think we need to change that perspective. We need to pay teachers well, we need to treat teachers well. So if we talk about policy, every school for every certain number of kids having a social worker, having a counselor so that those SEL (social emotional learning) needs, which we know have been huge concern for teachers, students, families, are met. I think those are some of the issues that really would attract more teachers.

Kane: We’ve been talking mostly about academic recovery and what it’s going to take. I think we need to take a step back and realize what drove this. The learning loss to some extent is a result of public health measures, that were taken on behalf of all of us. I know there are people who disagree with those public health decisions that were made, but they were on our behalf by duly elected or appointed officials. Basically, what we’re doing now is deciding who’s going to pay for that. Right now, in a lot of communities, we’ve said, OK, kids are going to pay for that. That we’re not going to do what’s necessary to help students catch up. Framed that way, I think most people would say, “Gosh, of course, we need to continue the recovery beyond September. We’ve got to figure out some way to make sure these losses are made up because these were losses that were caused by public health measures intended to benefit all of us. It’s on us to make sure kids are made whole.” That’s what this is all about.

Laine Perfas: Thank you for joining me and for talking about this really important issue.

Hill: Thanks, Sam, for having me.

Conklin: Thank you for having me.

Kane: Thanks, Sam.

Laine Perfas: Thanks for listening. For a transcript of this episode and to see all of our other episodes, visit harvard.edu/thinking. This episode was hosted and produced by me, Samantha Laine Perfas. It was edited by Ryan Mulcahy, Paul Makishima, and Simona Covel. Original music and sound design by Noel Flatt. Produced by Harvard University.

Recommended reading

• For students still feeling pandemic shock, clock is ticking by The Harvard Gazette
• Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School by The New York Times
• Turning Around Teacher Turnover by the Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Combatting Chronic Absenteeism with Family Engagement by The Harvard EdCast

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H omework has long been a staple of the educational experience, often viewed as a tool for reinforcing learning and assessing student understanding. Despite its educational importance, many students struggle with timely completion, facing obstacles such as procrastination, distraction, and a lack of motivation. These challenges can make homework seem like a daunting task. However, the benefits of completing homework on time extend beyond academic achievement. This article aims to explore the psychological benefits associated with timely homework completion, revealing how this practice can enhance mental well-being and foster personal growth.

Enhanced time management skills

One of the key psychological benefits of completing homework on time is the development of robust time management skills. When students regularly meet homework deadlines, they learn to prioritize tasks and manage their time more effectively. This skill is crucial not only in academic settings but also in personal and professional life. Mastering time management can lead to a sense of control over one’s life, which significantly reduces feelings of stress and overwhelm. It’s common to hear students ask, “ Can you write my paper for me ?” as deadlines approach. However, those who have honed their time management skills are more likely to tackle assignments independently and with confidence, knowing they have planned adequately to meet their obligations.

Reduced stress and anxiety

The act of finishing homework on time can significantly alleviate stress and anxiety. Procrastination often leads to a buildup of tasks, which can become overwhelming as deadlines draw near. This not only increases anxiety but also triggers a cycle of stress and poor performance. By completing assignments on time, students can avoid the panic associated with last-minute rushes. The psychological relief that comes from knowing that all tasks are completed and nothing is hanging over one’s head is profound. Regularly experiencing this relief helps students maintain a calmer, more composed mindset, which is conducive to both academic success and general well-being.

Improved self-esteem

Timely completion of homework also plays a critical role in enhancing self-esteem. When students finish their work on time, they receive positive feedback and grades, which reinforces their self-image and confidence in their abilities. This process is vital for building self-efficacy, the belief in one’s capability to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. Achieving daily homework goals provides a continuous stream of small successes, each boosting the student’s self-esteem. Over time, this pattern fosters a more positive self-concept and encourages students to embrace more significant challenges, knowing they have the skills and discipline to succeed.

Better sleep patterns

Regular completion of homework by set deadlines can also lead to improved sleep patterns. When students avoid cramming their studies into late-night hours, they can maintain a healthier sleep schedule. This is crucial because adequate sleep is essential for brain function, emotional regulation, and overall mental health. A consistent sleep pattern prevents sleep deprivation’s cognitive impairments, such as reduced attention, slower processing, and memory issues. Students who manage their homework efficiently tend to go to bed at a reasonable hour, leading to better psychological and physical health outcomes.

Increased academic performance

There is a direct correlation between timely homework completion and academic performance. Students who consistently complete their homework on time often achieve higher grades and gain a deeper understanding of the material. This practice allows for regular study and revision, which enhances learning retention and prepares students for complex topics and exams. Psychologically, the regular accomplishment of set tasks, like homework, enhances mental agility and academic stamina, which is essential for long-term educational success.

Long-term academic and career benefits

Developing good habits in homework completion can yield significant long-term benefits in both academic and professional contexts. Academically, students who are diligent and consistent with their homework are more likely to pursue higher education and succeed in their chosen fields. Professionally, these habits translate into traits valued in the workplace, such as reliability, punctuality, and thoroughness. The psychological advantage of being perceived as dependable and hardworking cannot be overstated, as it opens doors to opportunities and fosters professional growth and stability.

The psychological benefits of completing homework on time are profound and multifaceted. From enhanced time management and reduced stress to improved self-esteem and better sleep patterns, the advantages extend well beyond the classroom. As students cultivate these habits, they not only boost their academic performance but also prepare themselves for future challenges in their academic and professional lives. It’s important for students to recognize these benefits and seek resources that reinforce good study habits, whether through educational tools, supportive peer groups, or essay writing service reviews when necessary. Ultimately, developing the discipline to complete homework on time is an investment in one’s mental health and future success.