american school system homework

The truth about homework in America

by: Carol Lloyd | Updated: February 9, 2023

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Not excited about homework? We can hardly blame you. But how families handle homework in America can have a huge impact on their child’s short-term and long-term academic success. Here’s a glimpse at how American families approach homework, and some tips that may help you decide how to handle homework in your home.

Model how much you value your child’s education

Think of your child’s nightly homework as a time to model how much you value your child’s learning and education. Get in the habit of asking your child what homework they have each evening, looking over their homework when they’re done each night, praising their hard work, and marveling at all that they are learning. Your admiration and love is the best magic learning potion available.

Set up a homework routine American parents who want their children to graduate from high school and go to college take learning at home seriously. They turn off the TV and radio at homework time. They take away access to video games and smartphones. They make sure the child gets some exercise and has a healthy snack before starting homework because both are shown to help kids focus. When it’s time for homework, they (try to) ensure their child has a quiet place where they can focus and have access to the grade-appropriate homework basics, like paper, pencils, erasers, crayons, and tape for kids in younger grades and calculators and writing materials for kids in older grades.

Helping with homework when you don’t read/speak English

So how can you help with homework if you can’t read your child’s homework because it’s in English — or because the math is being presented in a way you’ve never seen? If you can’t understand your child’s homework, you can still do a lot to help them. Your physical presence (and your authority to turn off the TV) can help them take homework time seriously. Your encouragement that they take their time and not rush through the work also will help. Finally, your ability to ask questions can do two important things: you can show your interest in their work (and thus reinforce the importance you place on learning and education) and you can help your child slow down and figure things out when they’re lost or frustrated. A lot of learning happens when children have a chance to talk through problems and ideas. Sometimes, just describing the assignment or problem to you can help the solution click for your child.

What’s the right amount of homework?

It’s often in first grade that kids start receiving regular homework and feel stressed and lost if they don’t complete it. If your child is having trouble adjusting to their new routines, know that it’s not just your child. Families all across America are having the same issues in terms of figuring out how to create quiet, focussed time for a young child to read, write, and do math inside a bustling home. In first grade, your child will likely be asked to do somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes of homework a night, sometimes in addition to 20 minutes of bedtime reading. ( The National PTA’s research-based recommendation is 10 to 20 minutes of homework a night in first grade and an additional 10 minutes per grade level thereafter.) If your child is getting a lot more than that, talk to your child’s teacher about how long your child should be spending on homework and what you can do to help.

Comparing U.S. homework time to other countries

If you’ve come from another country and recall your childhood homework taking less time, you may think it’s because you’re foreign. The truth is, most parents who grew up in the U.S. are feeling the same way. In the past few decades homework for younger grades has intensified in many schools. “The amount of homework that younger kids — ages 6 to 9 — have to do has gone up astronomically since the late ’80s,” says Alfie Kohn, author of the 2006 book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. So if you feel surprised about the quantity of homework your child is bringing home, you’re not alone.

According to an international study of homework, 15-year-olds in Shanghai do 13.8 hours of homework per week compared to 6.1 hours in the U.S. and 5.3 hours in Mexico and 3.4 hours in Costa Rica. But here’s the thing: academic expectations in the U.S. vary widely from school to school. Some American elementary schools have banned homework. Others pile on hours a night — even in the younger grades. By high school, though, most American students who are seriously preparing for four-year college are doing multiple hours of homework most nights.

Not into homework? Try this.

Homework detractors point to research that shows homework has no demonstrated benefits for students in the early elementary grades. “The research clearly shows that there is no correlation between academic achievement and homework, especially in the lower grades,” says Denise Pope, senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and the author of the 2015 book, Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy Successful Kids .

On the other hand, nightly reading is hugely important.

“One thing we know does have a correlation with academic achievement is free reading time,” says Pope. “We know that that is something we want schools to encourage.” Since the scientific evidence shows the most impact comes from reading for pleasure, don’t skip bedtime reading. If your child is not being given any homework, make sure to spend some of that extra time reading books in either English or Spanish.

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Understanding the American Education System

The American education system offers a rich field of choices for international students. There is such an array of schools, programs and locations that the choices may overwhelm students, even those from the U.S. As you begin your school search, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the American education system. Understanding the system will help you narrow your choices and develop your education plan.

The Educational Structure

Primary and secondary school.

Prior to higher education, American students attend primary and secondary school for a combined total of 12 years. These years are referred to as the first through twelfth grades.

Around age six, U.S. children begin primary school, which is most commonly called “elementary school.” They attend five or six years and then go onto secondary school.

Secondary school consists of two programs: the first is “middle school” or “junior high school” and the second program is “high school.” A diploma or certificate is awarded upon graduation from high school. After graduating high school (12th grade), U.S. students may go on to college or university. College or university study is known as “higher education.”

Grading System

Just like American students, you will have to submit your academic transcripts as part of your application for admission to university or college. Academic transcripts are official copies of your academic work. In the U.S. this includes your “grades” and “grade point average” (GPA), which are measurements of your academic achievement. Courses are commonly graded using percentages, which are converted into letter grades.

The grading system and GPA in the U.S. can be confusing, especially for international students. The interpretation of grades has a lot of variation. For example, two students who attended different schools both submit their transcripts to the same university. They both have 3.5 GPAs, but one student attended an average high school, while the other attended a prestigious school that was academically challenging. The university might interpret their GPAs differently because the two schools have dramatically different standards.

Therefore, there are some crucial things to keep in mind:

• You should find out the U.S. equivalent of the last level of education you completed in your home country.
• Pay close attention to the admission requirements of each university and college, as well as individual degree programs, which may have different requirements than the university.
• Regularly meet with an educational advisor or guidance counselor to make sure you are meeting the requirements.

Your educational advisor or guidance counselor will be able to advise you on whether or not you must spend an extra year or two preparing for U.S. university admission. If an international student entered a U.S. university or college prior to being eligible to attend university in their own country, some countries’ governments and employers may not recognize the students’ U.S. education.

Academic Year

The school calendar usually begins in August or September and continues through May or June. The majority of new students begin in autumn, so it is a good idea for international students to also begin their U.S. university studies at this time. There is a lot of excitement at the beginning of the school year and students form many great friendships during this time, as they are all adjusting to a new phase of academic life. Additionally, many courses are designed for students to take them in sequence, starting in autumn and continuing through the year.

The academic year at many schools is composed of two terms called “semesters.” (Some schools use a three-term calendar known as the “trimester” system.) Still, others further divide the year into the quarter system of four terms, including an optional summer session. Basically, if you exclude the summer session, the academic year is either comprised of two semesters or three quarter terms.

The U.S. Higher Education System: Levels of Study

• First Level: Undergraduate

"The American system is much more open. In Hong Kong you just learn what the teacher writes on the board. In America, you discuss the issues and focus more on ideas."

Paolo Kwan from Hong Kong: Studying English and Business Administration at Sierra College in California

A student who is attending a college or university and has not earned a bachelor’s degree, is studying at the undergraduate level. It typically takes about four years to earn a bachelor’s degree. You can either begin your studies in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree at a community college or a four-year university or college.

Your first two years of study you will generally be required to take a wide variety of classes in different subjects, commonly known as prerequisite courses: literature, science, the social sciences, the arts, history, and so forth. This is so you achieve a general knowledge, a foundation, of a variety of subjects prior to focusing on a specific field of study.

Many students choose to study at a community college in order to complete the first two years of prerequisite courses. They will earn an Associate of Arts (AA) transfer degree and then transfer to a four-year university or college.

A “major” is the specific field of study in which your degree is focused. For example, if someone’s major is journalism, they will earn a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. You will be required to take a certain number of courses in this field in order to meet the degree requirements of your major. You must choose your major at the beginning of your third year of school.

A very unique characteristic of the American higher education system is that you can change your major multiple times if you choose. It is extremely common for American students to switch majors at some point in their undergraduate studies. Often, students discover a different field that they excel in or enjoy. The American education system is very flexible. Keep in mind though that switching majors may result in more courses, which means more time and money.

• Second Level: Graduate in Pursuit of a Master’s Degree

Presently, a college or university graduate with a bachelor’s degree may want to seriously think about graduate study in order to enter certain professions or advance their career. This degree is usually mandatory for higher-level positions in library science, engineering, behavioral health and education.

Furthermore, international students from some countries are only permitted to study abroad at a graduate level. You should inquire about the credentials needed to get a job in your country before you apply to a postgraduate university in the USA.

A graduate program is usually a division of a university or college. To gain admission, you will need to take the GRE (graduate record examination). Certain master’s programs require specific tests, such as the LSAT for law school, the GRE or GMAT for business school, and the MCAT for medical school.

Graduate programs in pursuit of a master’s degree typically take one to two years to complete. For example, the MBA (master of business administration) is an extremely popular degree program that takes about two years. Other master’s programs, such as journalism, only take one year.

The majority of a master’s program is spent in classroom study and a graduate student must prepare a long research paper called a “master’s thesis” or complete a “master’s project.”

• Third Level: Graduate in Pursuit of a Doctorate Degree

Many graduate schools consider the attainment of a master’s degree the first step towards earning a PhD (doctorate). But at other schools, students may prepare directly for a doctorate without also earning a master’s degree. It may take three years or more to earn a PhD degree. For international students, it may take as long as five or six years.

For the first two years of the program most doctoral candidates enroll in classes and seminars. At least another year is spent conducting firsthand research and writing a thesis or dissertation. This paper must contain views, designs, or research that have not been previously published.

A doctoral dissertation is a discussion and summary of the current scholarship on a given topic. Most U.S. universities awarding doctorates also require their candidates to have a reading knowledge of two foreign languages, to spend a required length of time “in residence,” to pass a qualifying examination that officially admits candidates to the PhD program, and to pass an oral examination on the same topic as the dissertation.

Characteristics of the U.S. Higher Education System

Classroom Environment

Classes range from large lectures with several hundred students to smaller classes and seminars (discussion classes) with only a few students. The American university classroom atmosphere is very dynamic. You will be expected to share your opinion, argue your point, participate in class discussions and give presentations. International students find this one of the most surprising aspects of the American education system.

Each week professors usually assign textbook and other readings. You will be expected to keep up-to-date with the required readings and homework so you can participate in class discussions and understand the lectures. Certain degree programs also require students to spend time in the laboratory.

Professors issue grades for each student enrolled in the course. Grades are usually based upon:

• Each professor will have a unique set of class participation requirements, but students are expected to participate in class discussions, especially in seminar classes. This is often a very important factor in determining a student’s grade.
• A midterm examination is usually given during class time.
• One or more research or term papers , or laboratory reports must be submitted for evaluation.
• Possible short exams or quizzes are given. Sometimes professors will give an unannounced “pop quiz.” This doesn’t count heavily toward the grade, but is intended to inspire students to keep up with their assignments and attendance.
• A final examination will be held after the final class meeting.

Each course is worth a certain number of credits or credit hours. This number is roughly the same as the number of hours a student spends in class for that course each week. A course is typically worth three to five credits.

A full-time program at most schools is 12 or 15 credit hours (four or five courses per term) and a certain number of credits must be fulfilled in order to graduate. International students are expected to enroll in a full-time program during each term.

If a student enrolls at a new university before finishing a degree, generally most credits earned at the first school can be used to complete a degree at the new university. This means a student can transfer to another university and still graduate within a reasonable time.

Types of U.S. higher education

Xujie Zhao from China: Studying Computer Networking at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston

1. State College or University

A state school is supported and run by a state or local government. Each of the 50 U.S. states operates at least one state university and possibly several state colleges. Many of these public universities schools have the name of the state, or the actual word “State” in their names: for example, Washington State University and the University of Michigan.

2. Private College or University

These schools are privately run as opposed to being run by a branch of the government. Tuition will usually be higher than state schools. Often, private U.S. universities and colleges are smaller in size than state schools.

Religiously affiliated universities and colleges are private schools. Nearly all these schools welcome students of all religions and beliefs. Yet, there are a percentage of schools that prefer to admit students who hold similar religious beliefs as those in which the school was founded.

3. Community College

Community colleges are two-year colleges that award an associate’s degrees (transferable), as well as certifications. There are many types of associate degrees, but the most important distinguishing factor is whether or not the degree is transferable. Usually, there will be two primary degree tracks: one for academic transfer and the other prepares students to enter the workforce straightaway. University transfer degrees are generally associate of arts or associate of science. Not likely to be transferrable are the associate of applied science degrees and certificates of completion.

Community college graduates most commonly transfer to four-year colleges or universities to complete their degree. Because they can transfer the credits they earned while attending community college, they can complete their bachelor’s degree program in two or more additional years. Many also offer ESL or intensive English language programs, which will prepare students for university-level courses.

If you do not plan to earn a higher degree than the associate’s, you should find out if an associate’s degree will qualify you for a job in your home country.

4. Institute of Technology

An institute of technology is a school that provides at least four years of study in science and technology. Some have graduate programs, while others offer short-term courses.

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History Cooperative

The Homework Dilemma: Who Invented Homework?

The inventor of homework may be unknown, but its evolution reflects contributions from educators, philosophers, and students. Homework reinforces learning, fosters discipline, and prepares students for the future, spanning from ancient civilizations to modern education. Ongoing debates probe its balance, efficacy, equity, and accessibility, prompting innovative alternatives like project-based and personalized learning. As education evolves, the enigma of homework endures.

Table of Contents

Who Invented Homework?

While historical records don’t provide a definitive answer regarding the inventor of homework in the modern sense, two prominent figures, Roberto Nevelis of Venice and Horace Mann, are often linked to the concept’s early development.

Roberto Nevelis of Venice: A Mythical Innovator?

Roberto Nevelis, a Venetian educator from the 16th century, is frequently credited with the invention of homework. The story goes that Nevelis assigned tasks to his students outside regular classroom hours to reinforce their learning—a practice that aligns with the essence of homework. However, the historical evidence supporting Nevelis as the inventor of homework is rather elusive, leaving room for skepticism.

While Nevelis’s role remains somewhat mythical, his association with homework highlights the early recognition of the concept’s educational value.

Horace Mann: Shaping the American Educational Landscape

Horace Mann, often regarded as the “Father of American Education,” made significant contributions to the American public school system in the 19th century. Though he may not have single-handedly invented homework, his educational reforms played a crucial role in its widespread adoption.

Mann’s vision for education emphasized discipline and rigor, which included assigning tasks to be completed outside of the classroom. While he did not create homework in the traditional sense, his influence on the American education system paved the way for its integration.

The invention of homework was driven by several educational objectives. It aimed to reinforce classroom learning, ensuring knowledge retention and skill development. Homework also served as a means to promote self-discipline and responsibility among students, fostering valuable study habits and time management skills.

Why Was Homework Invented?

The invention of homework was not a random educational practice but rather a deliberate strategy with several essential objectives in mind.

Reinforcing Classroom Learning

Foremost among these objectives was the need to reinforce classroom learning. When students leave the classroom, the goal is for them to retain and apply the knowledge they have acquired during their lessons. Homework emerged as a powerful tool for achieving this goal. It provided students with a structured platform to revisit the day’s lessons, practice what they had learned, and solidify their understanding.

Homework assignments often mirrored classroom activities, allowing students to extend their learning beyond the confines of school hours. Through the repetition of exercises and tasks related to the curriculum, students could deepen their comprehension and mastery of various subjects.

Fostering Self-Discipline and Responsibility

Another significant objective behind the creation of homework was the promotion of self-discipline and responsibility among students. Education has always been about more than just the acquisition of knowledge; it also involves the development of life skills and habits that prepare individuals for future challenges.

By assigning tasks to be completed independently at home, educators aimed to instill valuable study habits and time management skills. Students were expected to take ownership of their learning, manage their time effectively, and meet deadlines—a set of skills that have enduring relevance in contemporary education and beyond.

Homework encouraged students to become proactive in their educational journey. It taught them the importance of accountability and the satisfaction of completing tasks on their own. These life skills would prove invaluable in their future endeavors, both academically and in the broader context of their lives.

When Was Homework Invented?

The roots of homework stretch deep into the annals of history, tracing its origins to ancient civilizations and early educational practices. While it has undergone significant evolution over the centuries, the concept of extending learning beyond the classroom has always been an integral part of education.

Earliest Origins of Homework and Early Educational Practices

The idea of homework, in its most rudimentary form, can be traced back to the earliest human civilizations. In ancient Egypt , for instance, students were tasked with hieroglyphic writing exercises. These exercises served as a precursor to modern homework, as they required students to practice and reinforce their understanding of written language—an essential skill for communication and record-keeping in that era.

In ancient Greece , luminaries like Plato and Aristotle advocated for the use of written exercises as a tool for intellectual development. They recognized the value of practice in enhancing one’s knowledge and skills, laying the foundation for a more systematic approach to homework.

The ancient Romans also played a pivotal role in the early development of homework. Young Roman students were expected to complete assignments at home, with a particular focus on subjects like mathematics and literature. These assignments were designed to consolidate their classroom learning, emphasizing the importance of practice in mastering various disciplines.

READ MORE: Who Invented Math? The History of Mathematics

The practice of assigning work to be done outside of regular school hours continued to evolve through various historical periods. As societies advanced, so did the complexity and diversity of homework tasks, reflecting the changing needs and priorities of education.

The Influence of Educational Philosophers

While the roots of homework extend to ancient times, the ideas of renowned educational philosophers in later centuries further contributed to its development. John Locke, an influential thinker of the Enlightenment era, believed in a gradual and cumulative approach to learning. He emphasized the importance of students revisiting topics through repetition and practice, a concept that aligns with the principles of homework.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, another prominent philosopher, stressed the significance of self-directed learning. Rousseau’s ideas encouraged the development of independent study habits and a personalized approach to education—a philosophy that resonates with modern concepts of homework.

Homework in the American Public School System

The American public school system has played a pivotal role in the widespread adoption and popularization of homework. To understand the significance of homework in modern education, it’s essential to delve into its history and evolution within the United States.

History and Evolution of Homework in the United States

The late 19th century marked a significant turning point for homework in the United States. During this period, influenced by educational reforms and the growing need for standardized curricula, homework assignments began to gain prominence in American schools.

Educational reformers and policymakers recognized the value of homework as a tool for reinforcing classroom learning. They believed that assigning tasks for students to complete outside of regular school hours would help ensure that knowledge was retained and skills were honed. This approach aligned with the broader trends in education at the time, which aimed to provide a more structured and systematic approach to learning.

As the American public school system continued to evolve, homework assignments became a common practice in classrooms across the nation. The standardization of curricula and the formalization of education contributed to the integration of homework into the learning process. This marked a significant departure from earlier educational practices, reflecting a shift toward more structured and comprehensive learning experiences.

The incorporation of homework into the American education system not only reinforced classroom learning but also fostered self-discipline and responsibility among students. It encouraged them to take ownership of their educational journey and develop valuable study habits and time management skills—a legacy that continues to influence modern pedagogy.

Controversies Around Homework

Despite its longstanding presence in education, homework has not been immune to controversy and debate. While many view it as a valuable educational tool, others question its effectiveness and impact on students’ well-being.

The Homework Debate

One of the central controversies revolves around the amount of homework assigned to students. Critics argue that excessive homework loads can lead to stress, sleep deprivation, and a lack of free time for students. The debate often centers on striking the right balance between homework and other aspects of a student’s life, including extracurricular activities, family time, and rest.

Homework’s Efficacy

Another contentious issue pertains to the efficacy of homework in enhancing learning outcomes. Some studies suggest that moderate amounts of homework can reinforce classroom learning and improve academic performance. However, others question whether all homework assignments contribute equally to learning or whether some may be more beneficial than others. The effectiveness of homework can vary depending on factors such as the student’s grade level, the subject matter, and the quality of the assignment.

Equity and Accessibility

Homework can also raise concerns related to equity and accessibility. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds may have limited access to resources and support at home, potentially putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to completing homework assignments. This disparity has prompted discussions about the role of homework in perpetuating educational inequalities and how schools can address these disparities.

Alternative Approaches to Learning

In response to the controversies surrounding homework, educators and researchers have explored alternative approaches to learning. These approaches aim to strike a balance between reinforcing classroom learning and promoting holistic student well-being. Some alternatives include:

Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning emphasizes hands-on, collaborative projects that allow students to apply their knowledge to real-world problems. This approach shifts the focus from traditional homework assignments to engaging, practical learning experiences.

Flipped Classrooms

Flipped classrooms reverse the traditional teaching model. Students learn new material at home through video lectures or readings and then use class time for interactive discussions and activities. This approach reduces the need for traditional homework while promoting active learning.

Personalized Learning

Personalized learning tailors instruction to individual students’ needs, allowing them to progress at their own pace. This approach minimizes the need for one-size-fits-all homework assignments and instead focuses on targeted learning experiences.

The Ongoing Conversation

The controversies surrounding homework highlight the need for an ongoing conversation about its role in education. Striking the right balance between reinforcing learning and addressing students’ well-being remains a complex challenge. As educators, parents, and researchers continue to explore innovative approaches to learning, the role of homework in the modern educational landscape continues to evolve. Ultimately, the goal is to provide students with the most effective and equitable learning experiences possible.

Unpacking the Homework Enigma

Homework, without a single inventor, has evolved through educators, philosophers, and students. It reinforces learning, fosters discipline and prepares students. From ancient times to modern education, it upholds timeless values. Yet, controversies arise—debates on balance, efficacy, equity, and accessibility persist. Innovative alternatives like project-based and personalized learning emerge. Homework’s role evolves with education.

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The Cult of Homework

America’s devotion to the practice stems in part from the fact that it’s what today’s parents and teachers grew up with themselves.

America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed , which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.

The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s . Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study , for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.

But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.

Read: My daughter’s homework is killing me

Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.

“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”

Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.

Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.

Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”

Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their school community, this benefit of homework can seem redundant. “They don’t need it,” Schneider says, “so they’re not advocating for it.”

That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that homework is more vital in low-income districts. In fact, there are different, but just as compelling, reasons it can be burdensome in these communities as well. Allison Wienhold, who teaches high-school Spanish in the small town of Dunkerton, Iowa, has phased out homework assignments over the past three years. Her thinking: Some of her students, she says, have little time for homework because they’re working 30 hours a week or responsible for looking after younger siblings.

As educators reduce or eliminate the homework they assign, it’s worth asking what amount and what kind of homework is best for students. It turns out that there’s some disagreement about this among researchers, who tend to fall in one of two camps.

In the first camp is Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s , and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on in-class tests. This correlation, the review found, was stronger for older students than for younger ones.

This conclusion is generally accepted among educators, in part because it’s compatible with “the 10-minute rule,” a rule of thumb popular among teachers suggesting that the proper amount of homework is approximately 10 minutes per night, per grade level—that is, 10 minutes a night for first graders, 20 minutes a night for second graders, and so on, up to two hours a night for high schoolers.

In Cooper’s eyes, homework isn’t overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He points to a 2014 Brookings Institution report that found “little evidence that the homework load has increased for the average student”; onerous amounts of homework, it determined, are indeed out there, but relatively rare. Moreover, the report noted that most parents think their children get the right amount of homework, and that parents who are worried about under-assigning outnumber those who are worried about over-assigning. Cooper says that those latter worries tend to come from a small number of communities with “concerns about being competitive for the most selective colleges and universities.”

According to Alfie Kohn, squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , considers homework to be a “reliable extinguisher of curiosity,” and has several complaints with the evidence that Cooper and others cite in favor of it. Kohn notes, among other things, that Cooper’s 2006 meta-analysis doesn’t establish causation, and that its central correlation is based on children’s (potentially unreliable) self-reporting of how much time they spend doing homework. (Kohn’s prolific writing on the subject alleges numerous other methodological faults.)

In fact, other correlations make a compelling case that homework doesn’t help. Some countries whose students regularly outperform American kids on standardized tests, such as Japan and Denmark, send their kids home with less schoolwork , while students from some countries with higher homework loads than the U.S., such as Thailand and Greece, fare worse on tests. (Of course, international comparisons can be fraught because so many factors, in education systems and in societies at large, might shape students’ success.)

Kohn also takes issue with the way achievement is commonly assessed. “If all you want is to cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week, yeah, if you give them more time and make them do the cramming at night, that could raise the scores,” he says. “But if you’re interested in kids who know how to think or enjoy learning, then homework isn’t merely ineffective, but counterproductive.”

His concern is, in a way, a philosophical one. “The practice of homework assumes that only academic growth matters, to the point that having kids work on that most of the school day isn’t enough,” Kohn says. What about homework’s effect on quality time spent with family? On long-term information retention? On critical-thinking skills? On social development? On success later in life? On happiness? The research is quiet on these questions.

Another problem is that research tends to focus on homework’s quantity rather than its quality, because the former is much easier to measure than the latter. While experts generally agree that the substance of an assignment matters greatly (and that a lot of homework is uninspiring busywork), there isn’t a catchall rule for what’s best—the answer is often specific to a certain curriculum or even an individual student.

Given that homework’s benefits are so narrowly defined (and even then, contested), it’s a bit surprising that assigning so much of it is often a classroom default, and that more isn’t done to make the homework that is assigned more enriching. A number of things are preserving this state of affairs—things that have little to do with whether homework helps students learn.

Jack Schneider, the Massachusetts parent and professor, thinks it’s important to consider the generational inertia of the practice. “The vast majority of parents of public-school students themselves are graduates of the public education system,” he says. “Therefore, their views of what is legitimate have been shaped already by the system that they would ostensibly be critiquing.” In other words, many parents’ own history with homework might lead them to expect the same for their children, and anything less is often taken as an indicator that a school or a teacher isn’t rigorous enough. (This dovetails with—and complicates—the finding that most parents think their children have the right amount of homework.)

Barbara Stengel, an education professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, brought up two developments in the educational system that might be keeping homework rote and unexciting. The first is the importance placed in the past few decades on standardized testing, which looms over many public-school classroom decisions and frequently discourages teachers from trying out more creative homework assignments. “They could do it, but they’re afraid to do it, because they’re getting pressure every day about test scores,” Stengel says.

Second, she notes that the profession of teaching, with its relatively low wages and lack of autonomy, struggles to attract and support some of the people who might reimagine homework, as well as other aspects of education. “Part of why we get less interesting homework is because some of the people who would really have pushed the limits of that are no longer in teaching,” she says.

“In general, we have no imagination when it comes to homework,” Stengel says. She wishes teachers had the time and resources to remake homework into something that actually engages students. “If we had kids reading—anything, the sports page, anything that they’re able to read—that’s the best single thing. If we had kids going to the zoo, if we had kids going to parks after school, if we had them doing all of those things, their test scores would improve. But they’re not. They’re going home and doing homework that is not expanding what they think about.”

“Exploratory” is one word Mike Simpson used when describing the types of homework he’d like his students to undertake. Simpson is the head of the Stone Independent School, a tiny private high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that opened in 2017. “We were lucky to start a school a year and a half ago,” Simpson says, “so it’s been easy to say we aren’t going to assign worksheets, we aren’t going assign regurgitative problem sets.” For instance, a half-dozen students recently built a 25-foot trebuchet on campus.

Simpson says he thinks it’s a shame that the things students have to do at home are often the least fulfilling parts of schooling: “When our students can’t make the connection between the work they’re doing at 11 o’clock at night on a Tuesday to the way they want their lives to be, I think we begin to lose the plot.”

When I talked with other teachers who did homework makeovers in their classrooms, I heard few regrets. Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Joshua, Texas, stopped assigning take-home packets of worksheets three years ago, and instead started asking her students to do 20 minutes of pleasure reading a night. She says she’s pleased with the results, but she’s noticed something funny. “Some kids,” she says, “really do like homework.” She’s started putting out a bucket of it for students to draw from voluntarily—whether because they want an additional challenge or something to pass the time at home.

Chris Bronke, a high-school English teacher in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, told me something similar. This school year, he eliminated homework for his class of freshmen, and now mostly lets students study on their own or in small groups during class time. It’s usually up to them what they work on each day, and Bronke has been impressed by how they’ve managed their time.

In fact, some of them willingly spend time on assignments at home, whether because they’re particularly engaged, because they prefer to do some deeper thinking outside school, or because they needed to spend time in class that day preparing for, say, a biology test the following period. “They’re making meaningful decisions about their time that I don’t think education really ever gives students the experience, nor the practice, of doing,” Bronke said.

The typical prescription offered by those overwhelmed with homework is to assign less of it—to subtract. But perhaps a more useful approach, for many classrooms, would be to create homework only when teachers and students believe it’s actually needed to further the learning that takes place in class—to start with nothing, and add as necessary.

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School Life in the U.S

CIEE High School USA gives you the live-changing opportunity to attend high school in the U.S. To help you make the most of this opportunity, we hope you will read the guide provided below; it covers topics such as school spirit, dress codes, studying, graduation, and more. Understanding this information is key to having a successful and rewarding experience.

Activities, Sports, and Clubs Many different activities, sports, and clubs are available at most high schools in the U.S. What is available at your specific school (and whether you are eligible to participate) will vary, but typical activities can be found below.

• American football
• Baseball and/or softball
• Field hockey
• Cross country
• Track and Field
• Cheerleading

Activities and Clubs

• Speech and debate
• School newspaper
• Yearbook club
• Foreign language club
• International Club
• Student government
• Drama and/or theater club
• National Honors Society

Please note: Some activities may require a fee to participate. See the section on school fees for more information.

Communication and Language Expectations For the exception of language-specific courses such as Spanish, French, German, etc., classes in U.S. high schools are taught in English. Understanding your teachers can be hard at first; they may speak quickly and use vocabulary that you are not familiar with. Due to regional accents, where you live may also play a role in your ability to understand what teachers are saying.

A few tips that will make it easier to succeed at school:

• Pay careful attention during class to what your teacher is saying.
• Most teachers want their students, including exchange students, to raise their hands during class to ask questions. Feel free to ask a question if you don’t understand!
• If you are not yet comfortable speaking in class, then stay after class to speak with your teacher. Note that your teacher may have little time to prepare for the next class, so they may ask you to come back at the end of the school day or before the next day starts.
• If you do not understand a homework assignment, ask the teacher or another classmate to explain it to you before it is due.
• If you are at home and do not understand a homework assignment, ask a host family member to help explain it.
• Schedule activities to allow enough time (usually two hours) to complete your schoolwork each day.
• Do not wait until right before you go to bed to start your homework. You will already be exhausted, making it harder to understand and finish your work.

Dress Codes While high schools in the U.S. have a wide variety of expectations regarding dress code – some private or religious schools require uniforms while most public schools do not – all schools will pay attention to what their students wear.

The general expectation is that all students dress respectfully and tastefully without showing too much of their bodies. Schools reserve the right to tell students to return home to change outfits if their clothing violates the school’s expectations or creates a disturbance in the classroom.

Remember that most Americans, especially those in smaller towns or rural environments, are very modest and that you will be expected to dress accordingly.

Grading In the U.S., you will usually be graded on a 100-point scale or with letters: A, B, C, D, and F. Letter grades will often include either a plus or minus. As a CIEE student, you must maintain a grade average of C+ or higher. Your school might have higher requirements, especially if you want to receive a diploma. Your final grade (in each course) is typically the average of all assignments and exams. Teachers may also add points for participation.

Be sure to keep your Local Coordinator updated on how you are doing in school and what your current grades are. Some schools have online portals to check your grades. If your school offers such an online portal, share access with your Local Coordinator. Local Coordinators must report on how you are doing in school every month to CIEE, your international representative, and your natural parents, so be sure to keep them informed.

Guidance Counselors As a student in an American high school, you will have access to a guidance counselor. In some cases, your guidance counselor will be the person who helps you register for your classes. Guidance counselors are a valuable resource; they can provide information about such things as school policies, school life, and the activities, clubs, and sports that are be available to you.

Your guidance counselor will also monitor your academic progress and speak with you and your teachers if any academic or social problems arise. This will help you understand any problems and will also help you solve them.

It is important to remember that you can ask your guidance counselor for help any time you are at school. (You may also want to contact your Local Coordinator for assistance.)

Homework Homework is an important part of the American school system. Most students receive homework assignments in almost every class almost every day. Students typically spend about two hours or more on homework each night. You must complete all homework assignments and return them to the appropriate teacher on the due date to receive credit for your work. Your overall grade will be lowered if you do not complete your homework assignments (or turn them in late). In addition, your ability to learn the subject will be greatly reduced.

Assignments and evaluation will vary for each course and might differ greatly from what you are used to back home. Some examples of homework assignments include:

• Completing a few dozen math problems
• Writing an essay on a book you read
• Studying for a multiple-choice or short-answer exam
• Preparing a presentation that you will give to the class

It’s common for students to study or work on projects together, meeting up at the library, a coffee shop, or a student’s home. This is a great way for exchange students to make friends and succeed in class at the same time!

School Fees Many high schools in the U.S. have fees that students are expected to pay. While the fees will vary from school to school, you will find a list of typical fees below:

• School lunches (should you choose to buy one)
• Library overdue fee (for books returned late)
• School yearbook (should you choose to order one)
• Uniform fees (for some sports, marching band, etc.)
• Transportation fees

Additional note about club, activity, and sports fees Many clubs, activities, and sport teams require participants to pay additional fees. The amount varies from activity to activity and from school to school. For more information, please contact your school.

School Traditions and Dances: Spirit Week, Prom, Homecoming, and More! One big difference between American schools and most schools abroad is that U.S. schools have dances and school-wide activities at certain points throughout the year. For example, students will dress up in formal wear – dresses and suits – for the homecoming dance in the fall semester and again for prom in the spring.

Many schools will also hold what is called Spirit Week – a time when students participate in activities such as obstacle courses or dressing up for “pajama day.” While it is not mandatory to attend dances or participate in most school-wide activities, these can be a lot of fun and help you make memories that last a lifetime.

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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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How the Cold War Space Race Led to US Students Doing Tons of Homework

By: Dave Roos

Published: August 13, 2019

Middle-schoolers who trudge home each day with a 50-pound backpack and hours of homework would have had an easier time in 1901. That’s when the anti-homework movement was at its peak and the state of California actually banned all homework for grades below high school.

From the late 19th century through the Great Depression , homework was a popular punching bag of the progressive education movement, a “child-centered” approach championed by psychologist and reformer John Dewey . Not only was homework a waste of time, progressive educators believed, but it was detrimental to children’s health. 

By 1948, only 8 percent of American high school students reported studying for two or more hours each night. Homework might have remained in the educational doghouse if not for the arrival of the Cold War , and specifically, the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957.

To the horror of many Americans, the Space Race was being won by communist scientists from the Soviet Union.

“This elicited widespread fear that we were being undone by our schools,” says Steven Schlossman, a historian at Carnegie Mellon University. “How could it be that the Soviets had gotten there faster? They must have better schools that are training their kids to become scientists on a higher level. America now had to integrate schools into our thinking about national defense policy.”

As far as education was concerned, there was plenty of rethinking to do. Around the late 19th century, with the arrival of waves of immigrants, officials had begun shifting public education policies to best serve the rapidly changing face of America.

Until then, Schlossman says most schoolwork revolved around drill, memorization and recitation. Kids were expected to “say their lessons,” which meant memorizing long passages of history texts and poetry, drilling math problems, and reciting it all out loud in class. All of that memorization and recitation meant hours of practice at home every night. But as America and its students became more diverse, the rigidity of rote memorization seemed insufficient.

If schools were going to offer equal education opportunities for all students, they needed to do it scientifically, and the leading educational minds of the day were fascinated with the emerging fields of psychology and child development.

Progressive's Push Against Homework

Popular turn-of-the-century women’s magazines like The Ladies Home Journal published studies showing that drilling of spelling words didn’t improve children’s overall spelling ability, and its editors promoted more “natural” patterns of child learning and growth. These new ideas about what’s best for kids’ education were picked up by organizations like the National Congress of Mothers, a group formed in 1897 that would become the National Parent Teachers Association (PTA).

It didn’t take long for this increasingly vocal movement of child psychologists and concerned moms to identify public enemy number one.

“The first thing that had to be changed in schooling was this old-fashioned way of doing homework, which was antithetical to children’s natural growth qualities,” says Schlossman. “Homework took on a broader symbolic meaning for ‘out with the old and in with the new.’”

That’s why the California legislature voted in 1901 to abolish all homework for students 14 and younger, a move followed by dozens of large cities and school districts across the country.

The anti-homework argument of the progressive education movement further contended that hours of homework robbed children of outdoor play, considered essential to healthy physical and emotional development.

“For the elementary school child and the junior high school child,” concluded a 1930s study , homework was nothing less than “legalized criminality.” The American Child Health Association equated homework with child labor in 1930, claiming that both practices were “chief causes of the high death and morbidity rates from tuberculosis and heart disease among adolescents.”

By the 1940s, nightly homework levels had dropped to all-time lows.

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More Americans Finish High School During Great Depression

But then came World War II and another set of demographic and societal shifts that would again demand changes in American public education. Starting with the Great Depression when jobs were scarce, more American kids started staying in school through high school, and with the post-war baby boom , unprecedented numbers of students entered the nation’s school systems with expectations of reaching high school and beyond.

“High school was now for everybody,” says Schlossman. “This is really important. The idea of a high-school education as a ladder for success really takes root in post-World War II period.”

Even before Cold War anxieties kicked in in the 1950s, there was a growing sentiment among educators that the high-school curriculum needed an upgrade. Standards needed to be raised and teaching methods rethought. If more kids planned on going to college, homework would have to be part of the equation.

But no single event rocketed homework back into the national conversation quite like the launching of Sputnik 1, humankind’s first artificial satellite to reach Earth’s orbit. The response from the U.S. federal government was swift. In 1958, just a year after Sputnik, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), a $1-billion spending package to bolster high-quality teaching and learning in science, mathematics and foreign languages.

A report from the House of Representatives supporting passage of the NDEA read: “It is no exaggeration to say that America’s progress in many fields of endeavor in the years ahead—in fact, the very survival of our free country—may depend in large part upon the education we provide for our young people now.”

Funding from the NDEA helped develop ambitious new high school curriculums, including what became known as the “new math.” Top academics, scientists and educational psychologists teamed up to create a new American public education mandate that would later be called the “academic excellence” movement. And homework was front and center.

Just as the academic excellence movement promoted a deeper and more hands-on approach to math and science in the classroom, homework at all levels had to be more than memorization and mindless drills. It needed to promote creative problem-solving and analytical thinking.

The NDEA investment had immediate effects. By 1962, 23 percent of high-school juniors reported doing two or more hours of homework a night, nearly twice as many as in 1957, the year of Sputnik.

Still, the Sputnik homework bump didn’t last long. The counterculture movement of the late 1960s encouraged students to question authority, and nothing sticks it to “the man” quite like skipping your homework. By 1972, the percentage of high-schoolers doing two or more hours of homework a day dropped back below 10 percent.

Homework Drive Revived Under Reagan

There was another attempt in the early 1980s to revive homework as part of a second-wave academic excellence movement under the Reagan administration. A report called A Nation at Risk warned in Cold-War terms of the potential fallout from a failed education system.

“...[T]he educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people,” wrote the report’s authors. 

Schlossman says that this second academic excellence push did little to move the needle significantly on homework, flattening out at around 12 percent of high-schoolers clocking two or more hours a day by the mid-1980s.

“The homework movement of the 1980s was cast as a character reform movement, almost like a moral enterprise,” says Schlossman. “It didn’t have the intellectual expectations of the 1950s and 1960s.”

In more recent times, a 2016 analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics found that U.S. high school students spent an average of 7.5 hours on homework each week—averaging about 1.5 hours per day. While that was up from an average of 6.6 hours in 2012, it remained an easier lift that what students took on during the heady days of the Cold War. 

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How Homework Became A Thing In The US

For many U.S. students, homework is an unfortunate certainty — the childhood equivalent of death and taxes. But the truth is that it has been controversial since it was introduced. A major player in the initial spread of homework in the U.S. was 19th-century education reformer Horace Mann, Study  explained. Mann was inspired by the developing public education system in Germany, which had recently become unified as a single nation-state. The Volksschulen , or "People's Schools," assigned students work to be completed at home. Mann, who helped develop a state-funded public school system in the U.S., adopted the homework concept from the German system. 

As school attendance became mandatory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, homework became a reality for more U.S. families, Slate explained. This led to a rising backlash against it. In 1900, Edward Bok wrote in the Ladies' Home Journal that forcing children to complete homework rather than play was a "rank injustice." His editorial received support from parents and teachers and, by 1901, 2/3 of U.S. city school districts had limited homework. California went so far as to ban homework for any child under 15. In the 1930s, the American Child Health Association listed homework with child labor as a cause of tuberculosis and heart disease in children, according to The Washington Post .

The rise of homework

Attitudes toward homework shifted in a big way during the Cold War , according to History . The Russian launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to concerns that U.S. students were falling behind their Russian counterparts, and homework became an important part of revamping the high school curriculum. In 1948, only 8% of U.S. students studied for two or more hours a night. By 1962, 23% of high-school juniors studied that long.

Since then, feelings about homework have gone in roughly 15-year cycles, Slate explained. There was another backlash during the counter-cultural 1960s and 1970s, followed by another pro-homework push in the 1980s. The 1983 government report "A Nation at Risk" argued that high schoolers should be doing more homework to compete with students in South Korea, Japan, and Germany. The 1990s saw another period of anti-homework sentiment, with articles like "The Homework Ate My Family" appearing in Time . Today, homework is being assigned to children as young as kindergarten. Yet other schools are experimenting with homework bans, according to The Washington Post . The future of homework in the U.S. is as controversial as its past.

The Academy Road

Editorials and Opinion

The American School System: A Student’s Perspective

Sanjana Kumari November 15, 2019

It’s widely acknowledged that homework is a key part of America’s educational system; take it from me, a student at the Albany Academy for Girls who experiences the stress caused by this overwhelming amount of homework and witnesses many of her peers go through it alongside her. This stress, unfortunately, occurs on a daily basis because students can never seem to catch a break! Everyone’s always looking forward to weekends and holiday breaks because it gives them some much needed time off from school, but even during these vacations, we all end up miserable anyway because we’ve been assigned homework to do during what’s supposed to be time away from the overwhelming heap of responsibilities given to us by school. Honestly, not a single weekend or vacation from the last 5 years comes to mind where my peers and I were homework-free. Sure, sometimes we’re lucky enough to get everything done in school, so we don’t have to worry about it over the weekend, but since high school started, that’s been happening less and less.

It might be pretty obvious that tremendous and constant stress is an effect of the way our education system is built. The biggest flaws in said system are the things cause those never-ending thoughts of, “Oh, shoot, I forgot to do my English homework and it’s almost two in the morning!” and, “I know I should study for those three tests I have tomorrow, but I’m just so tired, ” among several others. 

Let’s start with what’s probably a given: the workload. The further we progress in grades – particularly in high school – the more work we’re expected to manage, which makes complete sense! The problem is that the amount of work we get in freshman year, the start of high school, is so staggering in and of itself that it creates anxiety of the amount of work that’s to come in the next three years. It’s understandable that this amount of work is supposed to help us figure out time management, but, at the same time, it seems a bit much.  Do we really need an hour (or sometimes even more) of homework from all, or most, of our classes nearly every night? No, definitely not. I’ve spent a whole lot of nights at my desk for nearly three hours doing nothing but homework, only to realize that I’ve still got multiple assignments left. It’s incredibly upsetting and frustrating, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been in that situation, nor am I the only one who would greatly appreciate not having to be in that situation anymore. A survey taken in December 2018 showed that high school students attending private schools like the Albany Academies receive approximately ten hours of homework per week. Considering the fact that a typical school week is only five days long and many weeks in the school year are cut short due to holidays, teacher conference days, or snow days, that means that private school students are assigned about two hours of homework per night. Two hours. We already spend seven or more hours at school nearly every day, and then we get two hours worth of more schoolwork to do that night? That already takes up more than a quarter of a day!

This raises a question that leads me to my next point: Has it ever been considered that many students partake in one or more extracurriculars, as well as out of school activities? Well, if it has,  it doesn’t show. Activities like sports and theatre are huge time commitments, and having piles of homework to do on top of that is just the cherry on top of the Stress Sundae! Sadly, it feels like students are always to blame for this.  If we didn’t choose to do these activities, we’d have more time for homework… right? While that may be true, it seems highly unfair to encourage students to give up things that they’re passionate about just so they can focus on school. We’re always told by adults that we’re young and that we should make the most of our youth, but how are we supposed to do that if we’ve got hours of homework to do and several tests and quizzes to study for? Honestly, we can’t, and that’s what’s frustrating. Some of the adults in our lives tell us to live while we’re young and to do what we love, but others tell us that we can’t pursue our passions if they get in the way of schoolwork, and that’s what stops us from following the advice we were initially given

Building off of that, the final point I have to make is that nearly every scenario the burden falls on the student, and this is, perhaps, the biggest flaw in the way the American school system works. As previously stated, we, as students, are expected to handle heaps of homework as well as manage one or more activities that we want to commit to outside of school. In the case that managing all of this becomes too much to handle, we’re expected to drop pretty much anything that isn’t related to our academic lives, things that we usually love and are passionate about, or even out-of-town trips to see our families for occasions like reunions and weddings. For two years in a row I’ve had to miss out on trips to India because of school, both of those trips being for the weddings of two of my closest relatives. If we’re out late because of a performance or a match and are simply too tired to complete all of our assignments the night before they’re due, shouldn’t that be a valid situation, assuming we approach our teachers with credible sources like handwritten notes or emails? If we’re away for a period of time, should we have to come back and make up every single assignment and assessment we’ve missed? That probably wouldn’t even be a question if we didn’t have so much homework to do. I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but this idea that it’s always on me, that it’s up to me and me alone to get all of this work done, does a number on my mental state and self-esteem. I’m sure it can’t be good for anyone to feel bad for having a normal life that occasionally prevents them from doing schoolwork, which they’re already doing nearly every single day. 

School is important and it’s good to prioritize it over certain other things, but it shouldn’t be important enough that it comes above the activities that make us happy, nor should it be important enough that we prioritize it over our mental health and making time for ourselves every day. Everyday life would be easier for so many students in America if stricter limits were placed on how much homework was assigned from every class and how many nights a week it was assigned. Along with that, it would be much appreciated if there was stronger encouragement towards the students to choose and pursue the extracurriculars that they want to pursue, whether those extracurriculars are academic, athletic, or artistic.

Ms. Marchetti

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About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork

Roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. With a majority of teens having heard of ChatGPT, that amounts to 13% of all U.S. teens who have used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in their schoolwork.

Teens in higher grade levels are particularly likely to have used the chatbot to help them with schoolwork. About one-quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT say they have done this. This share drops to 17% among 9th and 10th graders and 12% among 7th and 8th graders.

There is no significant difference between teen boys and girls who have used ChatGPT in this way.

The introduction of ChatGPT last year has led to much discussion about its role in schools , especially whether schools should integrate the new technology into the classroom or ban it .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand American teens’ use and understanding of ChatGPT in the school setting.

The Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Teens’ awareness of ChatGPT

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT, including 23% who have heard a lot about it. But awareness varies by race and ethnicity, as well as by household income:

• 72% of White teens say they’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, compared with 63% of Hispanic teens and 56% of Black teens.
• 75% of teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually have heard of ChatGPT. Much smaller shares in households with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 (58%) and less than $30,000 (41%) say the same.

Teens who are more aware of ChatGPT are more likely to use it for schoolwork. Roughly a third of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT (36%) have used it for schoolwork, far higher than the 10% among those who have heard a little about it.

When do teens think it’s OK for students to use ChatGPT?

For teens, whether it is – or is not – acceptable for students to use ChatGPT depends on what it is being used for.

There is a fair amount of support for using the chatbot to explore a topic. Roughly seven-in-ten teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use when they are researching something new, while 13% say it is not acceptable.

However, there is much less support for using ChatGPT to do the work itself. Just one-in-five teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays, while 57% say it is not acceptable. And 39% say it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT to solve math problems, while a similar share of teens (36%) say it’s not acceptable.

Some teens are uncertain about whether it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for these tasks. Between 18% and 24% say they aren’t sure whether these are acceptable use cases for ChatGPT.

Those who have heard a lot about ChatGPT are more likely than those who have only heard a little about it to say it’s acceptable to use the chatbot to research topics, solve math problems and write essays. For instance, 54% of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems, compared with 32% among those who have heard a little about it.

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

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Olivia Sidoti is a research assistant focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Jeffrey Gottfried is an associate director focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Many Americans think generative AI programs should credit the sources they rely on

Americans’ use of chatgpt is ticking up, but few trust its election information, q&a: how we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts, striking findings from 2023, what the data says about americans’ views of artificial intelligence, most popular.

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We travel a lot, and our son attends local classrooms along the way. We noticed primary schools in Europe let kids be kids.

• My husband and I homeschool our son, which allows us to travel. 
• In addition to his homeschooling curriculum, he has attended schools in different countries. 
• We've noticed differences — and similarities — between the schools he attended in Europe and the US.

My son has been homeschooled, essentially, his whole academic life. Because of this, we're able to travel multiple times each month without worrying about him missing school. I am a writer and my husband is a film and TV composer as well as an investor, which also makes this possible.

Not only can we take my son's work with us, but he has also been able to experience schooling in various countries by joining classrooms and homeschool groups throughout our travels. His curriculum is based in the United States, but integrating local schools helps him learn different languages, culture, and of course, make friends.

Because we have spent extended periods of time in Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy, we have been able to experience how a few schools in these places approach education more intimately. While we've experienced some similarities across the schools he's attended, like classroom size and curriculum structure, we also noticed distinct differences in approach.

School was low-stress in the Netherlands

Where we lived in the Netherlands, children as young as four years old often happily walked themselves to school. The school my son attended in the Netherlands was run like a well-oiled machine, yet they still maintained a playful and innocent atmosphere.

The school administrators were strict about timeliness — I often witnessed that if students arrived even one minute late, they were considered late, with no exceptions. However, discipline for kids was simply a stern talking-to from teachers. Teachers told us that if children had issues with each other, they were expected to sort it amongst themselves, while the adults observed from a distance.

Friends who had kids at other schools in the Netherlands confirmed that this focus on independent conflict resolution with minimal adult intervention was common. Play was the central focus of the day for children until they were about seven years old. The primary focus during those early years was on children learning to coexist with one another rather than academics.

Learning to swim was also a significant focus in the early years in the Netherlands and considered more critical than learning to read by many locals we spoke with. Once compulsory, now only some schools integrate swim classes into the curriculum. Given the numerous canals everywhere, this emphasis is understandable.

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Children at my son's school spent a large portion of their day outdoors, regardless of the weather, which parents said was typical. The Dutch often say, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing." At school, my son assisted in preparing daily vegan meals, and occasionally brought home crafts to do.

Friends who had older kids in the Netherlands told me that the homework increased once they hit middle school, where there was more of an emphasis on academics. I truly appreciated this low-stress setting we encountered during our son's primary school years.

We saw more emphasis on collaboration than individual performance in Portugal

In Portugal, there was an emphasis on projects that children completed together to enhance their collaboration skills, and praise was often based on the collaboration itself rather than individual performance.

We noticed that children rarely had packed schedules filled with extracurricular activities like in the US, and often stayed up very late at night with their families, based on our own observations and talking to Portuguese parents.

While I adored the genuinely "crunchy" vibe of the schools my son attended and the kindness of the teachers, I believed our son would benefit from more structure and consistency in his routine . So, for a time, we supplemented even more than our usual load of schoolwork at home to provide more academic consistency during his short stint at a Portuguese school and eventually transitioned to only homeschooling again and met with a homeschool group for field trips.

We noticed less encouragement of competition in Italy than in the US

At the school my son goes to in Italy , it was immediately evident that food and dining is treated as an important part of the school day. Students are given a proper dining experience with formal table settings. The primary schools get a full two-hour break in the middle of the day including lunch and free time, known as riposo , lending to a much longer school day overall.

Football (soccer) is also taken seriously, so most schools we visited have specialized schedules specifically for children who play and perhaps want to pursue it as a career. Participation in the arts, football, and music is encouraged, but football is by far the most popular activity at our school and in our region.

As for the emphasis on the curriculum, so far, it seems far less rigid than in the US. Cognitive and social skills appear to be the primary objectives, rather than a heavy focus on testing. There is almost no encouragement of competition that we witnessed, as collaboration seems to be the focus until middle school.

My son is not yet in middle school, but from what I've heard both in preliminary conversations with schools, open days, and from Facebook groups with other expat parents , it sounds like middle school takes a more rigorous academic approach across Europe. For example, some countries, like Italy, expect children to know their primary focus of study by the time they enter high school, and then are placed in a specialized school program geared towards that interest area. Middle school seems to help form this decision by focusing on more specific subjects like robotics, engineering and anatomy, as they are already expected to know how to work together.

The unifying theme we observed throughout the schools in Europe that our son has attended, regardless of the country, was to allow children to be children and let the serious learning come later. At almost all the schools my son attended or toured, more importance was placed on children's ability to coexist together, work on projects and tasks collaboratively, than on core subjects like math, science, and history in those early years.

Each country had something we cherished and something we had to learn to adjust to. Overall, compared to our group homeschooling experience in the US, I would say that the primary schools in the European cities we joined were far less stressful. The academics seemed to get prioritized more as the kids got older. This makes me really appreciate how the lower grades focused on collaboration and coexistence.

• Main content

The alarming state of the American student in 2022

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, robin lake and robin lake director, center on reinventing public education - arizona state university @rbnlake travis pillow travis pillow innovation fellow, center on reinventing public education - arizona state university @travispillow.

November 1, 2022

The pandemic was a wrecking ball for U.S. public education, bringing months of school closures, frantic moves to remote instruction, and trauma and isolation.

Kids may be back at school after three disrupted years, but a return to classrooms has not brought a return to normal. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed historic declines in American students’ knowledge and skills and widening gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students.

But even these sobering results do not tell us the whole story.

After nearly three years of tracking pandemic response by U.S. school systems and synthesizing knowledge about the impacts on students, we sought to establish a baseline understanding of the contours of the crisis: What happened and why, and where do we go from here?

This first annual “ State of the American Student ” report synthesizes nearly three years of research on the academic, mental health, and other impacts of the pandemic and school closures.

It outlines the contours of the crisis American students have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and begins to chart a path to recovery and reinvention for all students—which includes building a new and better approach to public education that ensures an educational crisis of this magnitude cannot happen again.

The state of American students as we emerge from the pandemic is still coming into focus, but here’s what we’ve learned (and haven’t yet learned) about where COVID-19 left us:

1. Students lost critical opportunities to learn and thrive.

• The typical American student lost several months’ worth of learning in language arts and more in mathematics.

• Students suffered crushing increases in anxiety and depression. More than one in 360 U.S. children lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19.

• Students poorly served before the pandemic were profoundly left behind during it, including many with disabilities whose parents reported they were cut off from essential school and life services.

This deeply traumatic period threatens to reverberate for decades. The academic, social, and mental-health needs are real, they are measurable, and they must be addressed quickly to avoid long-term consequences to individual students, the future workforce, and society.

2. The average effects from COVID mask dire inequities and widely varied impact.

Some students are catching up, but time is running out for others. Every student experienced the pandemic differently, and there is tremendous variation from student to student, with certain populations—namely, Black, Hispanic, and low-income students, as well as other vulnerable populations—suffering the most severe impacts.

The effects were more severe where campuses stayed closed longer. American students are experiencing a K-shaped recovery, in which gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students, already growing before the pandemic, are widening into chasms. In the latest NAEP results released in September , national average scores fell five times as much in reading, and four times as much in math, for the lowest-scoring 10 percent of nine-year-olds as they had for the highest-scoring 10 percent.

At the pace of recovery we are seeing today, too many students of all races and income levels will graduate in the coming years without the skills and knowledge needed for college and careers.

3. What we know at this point is incomplete. The situation could be significantly worse than the early data suggest.

The data and stories we have to date are enough to warrant immediate action, but there are serious holes in our understanding of how the pandemic has affected various groups of students, especially those who are typically most likely to fall through the cracks in the American education system.

We know little about students with complex needs, such as those with disabilities and English learners. We still know too little about the learning impacts in non-tested subjects, such as science, civics, and foreign languages. And while psychologists , educators , and the federal government are sounding alarms about a youth mental health crisis, systematic measures of student wellbeing remain hard to come by.

We must acknowledge that what we know at this point is incomplete, since the pandemic closures and following recovery have been so unprecedented in recent times. It’s possible that as we continue to dig into the evidence on the pandemic’s impacts, some student groups or subjects may have not been so adversely affected. Alternatively, the situation could be significantly worse than the early data suggest. Some students are already bouncing back quickly. But for others, the impact could grow worse over time.

In subjects like math, where learning is cumulative, pandemic-related gaps in students’ learning that emerged during the pandemic could affect their ability to grasp future material. In some states, test scores fell dramatically for high schoolers nearing graduation. Shifts in these students’ academic trajectories could affect their college plans—and the rest of their lives. And elevated rates of chronic absenteeism suggest some students who disconnected from school during the pandemic have struggled to reconnect since.

4. The harms students experienced can be traced to a rigid and inequitable system that put adults, not students, first.

• Despite often heroic efforts by caring adults, students and families were cut off from essential support, offered radically diminished learning opportunities, and left to their own devices to support learning.

• Too often, partisan politics, not student needs , drove decision-making.

• Students with complexities and differences too often faced systems immobilized by fear and a commitment to sameness rather than prioritization and problem-solving.

So, what can we do to address the situation we’re in?

Diverse needs demand diverse solutions that are informed by pandemic experiences

Freed from the routines of rigid systems, some parents, communities, and educators found new ways to tailor learning experiences around students’ needs. They discovered learning can happen any time and anywhere. They discovered enriching activities outside class and troves of untapped adult talent.

Some of these breakthroughs happened in public schools—like virtual IEP meetings that leveled power dynamics between administrators and parents advocating for their children’s special education services. Others happened in learning pods or other new environments where families and community groups devised new ways to meet students’ needs. These were exceptions to an otherwise miserable rule, and they can inform the work ahead.

We must act quickly but we must also act differently. Important next steps include:

• Districts and states should immediately use their federal dollars to address the emergent needs of the COVID-19 generation of students via proven interventions, such as well-designed tutoring, extended learning time, credit recovery, additional mental health support, college and career guidance, and mentoring. The challenges ahead are too daunting for schools to shoulder alone. Partnerships and funding for families and community-driven solutions will be critical.

• By the end of the 2022–2023 academic year, states and districts must commit to an honest accounting of rebuilding efforts by defining, adopting, and reporting on their progress toward 5- and 10-year goals for long-term student recovery. States should invest in rigorous studies that document, analyze, and improve their approaches.

• Education leaders and researchers must adopt a national research and development agenda for school reinvention over the next five years. This effort must be anchored in the reality that the needs of students are so varied, so profound, and so multifaceted that a one-size-fits-all approach to education can’t possibly meet them all. Across the country, community organizations who previously operated summer or afterschool programs stepped up to support students during the school day. As they focus on recovery, school system leaders should look to these helpers not as peripheral players in education, but as critical contributors who can provide teaching , tutoring, or joyful learning environments for students and often have trusting relationships with their families.

• Recovery and rebuilding should ensure the system is more resilient and prepared for future crises. That means more thoughtful integration of online learning and stronger partnerships with organizations that support learning outside school walls. Every school system in America should have a plan to keep students safe and learning even when they can’t physically come to school, be equipped to deliver high-quality, individualized pathways for students, and build on practices that show promise.

Our “State of the American Student” report is the first in a series of annual reports the Center on Reinventing Public Education intends to produce through fall of 2027. We hope every state and community will produce similar, annual accounts and begin to define ambitious goals for recovery. The implications of these deeply traumatic years will reverberate for decades unless we find a path not only to normalcy but also to restitution for this generation and future generations of American students.

The road to recovery can lead somewhere new. In five years, we hope to report that out of the ashes of the pandemic, American public education emerged transformed: more flexible and resilient, more individualized and equitable, and—most of all— more joyful.

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‘Too many of us are stressed and losing sleep’: Students explain why school needs to change

Our panel of pupils want more creativity, less emphasis on homework and greater recognition of learning outside the classroom.

Erlandino Doha, Conor Dunne Atkins, Sofia Moran and Philippa McIntosh

It was the day everything changed: March 12th, 2020. Schools were shut and catapulted into an experiment in remote learning on a huge scale.

In many ways, the education system showed its resilience amid the chaos – but in other ways, the pandemic was a jolting reminder of an underfunded education system rooted in a 20th-century model of learning.

What we have learned since, combined with the rise of AI and its potential to reshape education, provides an ideal moment to debate what school is for and where it should go next.

As the Government’s plans to hold a citizens’ assembly on the future of education hang in the balance due, partly, to the change of taoiseach , The Irish Times is leading a debate about how to future-proof teaching and learning.

Younger teachers in Catholic schools less likely to believe in God or attend religious services

Irish universities risk undermining their autonomy through self-inflicted wounds

Last month we canvassed business leaders, educators, cultural figures and scientists for their views . Now, it’s students’ turn to have their say.

Our panel includes pupils of different ages, backgrounds and school types. It includes: Sofia Moran (8), a second-class student in Holly Park, Dublin; Conor Dunne Atkins (14), a second-year student at Clogher Road Community College, Dublin 8; Síofra (15), a third-year student at a school in Salthill, Co Galway; Philippa McIntosh (16), a transition-year student at Bandon Grammar School, Co Cork; Erlandino Doda (17), a sixth-year bursary recipient student at Belvedere College in Dublin 1; and Hazel (17) who attends iScoil, an online-learning service.

Philippa McIntosh. Photograph: Andy Gibson

Restrictive curriculum: ‘We’re not given a chance to really think for ourselves’

Philippa McIntosh (16) says one of the biggest negatives is that the curriculum restricts how students learn.

“Even art, which should be free and creative, is restricted by the curriculum,” she says. “I understand the reason behind homework, but the sheer volume of it can be overwhelming.”

Conor Dunne Atkins (14) also feels that while teachers at his school “really do listen to us”, they still have to deliver the curriculum in a particular way.

“We are all taught the same and not given a chance to really think for ourselves,” he says. “We need to be given more opportunities to question everything.”

These issues also affect primary level. Sofia Moran (8) says when she started school it was lots of fun, but now the focus is on more traditional lessons.

“Maths is one of my favourite subjects, but it has become more about learning the information than about enjoying it. But I think that is just what the teachers have to teach, because that is what they are told to do.”

Conor Dunne Atkins (14). Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Homework: ‘It’s excessive’

Almost all our panel say they understand the need for homework – they just feel there is too much emphasis on it.

“The sheer volume of it can be overwhelming,” says Philippa McIntosh. As a dyslexic student, she would like if there were more leeway and understanding. “Yes, there’s allowances made in the exams, but we still have to spend much longer on our homework, and if it’s not completed, it will be held against us.”

Similarly, Hazel feels homework is “far too long” and adds to the anxiety of second level. “Homework adds to the pressure, and you don’t get any time to yourself at all,” she says.

By the time Síofra (15) gets home from school, she feels so much time is spent on homework that there’s little space or energy for anything else.

“Already, attention is turning to our [transition year] and Leaving Cert subjects, with a focus on which subjects are more likely to get us a H1. It shouldn’t have to be this way,” she says.

The points race: ‘It shouldn’t have to be this way’

As a sixth-year student, Erlandino Doda (17) know all about the points race.

“One of the big problems is how much is built around the CAO. There should be more options, more critical thinking and more input of student voices. Yes, there is an internal student council, and the ISSU is there, but I am not sure whether the Government really listens to the student voice,” he says.

Philippa (16) feels more should be done to make the curriculum more accessible and less stressful. “There are so many young people who are stressed and losing sleep: this is not how we should be spending our childhood,” she says.

Erlandino says policymakers should look at the international baccalaureate as a model. “In maths, for instance, students do a project on any area outside the curriculum. And they might look at continuous assessments, projects and alternative routes to college. As a bursary student, I am grateful for the opportunity, but you shouldn’t have to access a fee-paying school to have more chances of a better life – it is unfair,” he says.

Sofia Moran (8). Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Learning outside school: ‘Rat race leaves no time for this’

While Conor Dunne Atkins (14) says school is necessary, he feels it is not the only route to success. “I have an online business selling clothes ( unpluggedclothes.com ) that I started when I was 12. We should be encouraged to make plans that don’t just revolve around college,” he says.

Erlandino would also like to see more acknowledgment of what students do outside school. “For instance, I organise events in my own free time, but the education system gives no credit, and the intensity of the rat race leaves no time for things like this,” he says.

Philippa also feels that the intense nature of the exams means many students don’t have time for extracurricular activities.

“I used to do swimming but had to stop because there wasn’t time. I would like to see whether we could be given some credit for involvement in volunteering, sport or other activities,” she says.

Síofra (15) feels subjects should be more focused on skills you need in life, such as business and home economics. “I would also like to see more school trips and exchanges, that are not just tied to whether your school does them,” she says.

Erlandino Doha

Better use of tech: ‘We barely even notice that we’re learning’

Hazel (17), who attends iScoil, says she has seen first hand how education doesn’t need to be delivered in a school setting.

“You can achieve an education without having to physically go somewhere: with technology becoming more relevant in today’s society, you can work from home online,” she says.

“Since I have been attending iScoil, I have rarely been sick or had to go to the doctors as much, as working from home is an environment that I am comfortable in. It has completely changed my life for the better and I am so grateful.”

Sofia (8) has seen how apps can make learning subjects such as learning much more enjoyable.

“There are lots of fun things they could do with apps or reading games, so we barely even notice that we are learning,” she says. “We could also do charades in Irish, for example. There is too much sitting still for six hours in school: we are children, we should be moving around more.”

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Montgomery mayor named president of African American Mayors Association

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - On Friday, Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed will be sworn in as president of the African American Mayors Association.

Reed currently serves as the organization’s vice president. Now he will helm it through early 20245.

Reed said several areas of focus for him will be improving public safety, helping workers and minority-owned businesses, and building support for infrastructure and sustainability investments.

The mayor described his elevation to the new position as both and honor and a challenge.

“I think anytime you get recognized by your peers, it’s an honor to represent as association as esteemed as African American Mayors. When we look at some of the challenges that we have in our cities across this country, it also is a weight of responsibly to come up with best practices, to look at those things that will best move our communities forward and help the citizens that we represent,” he said.

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