your kid is right homework is pointless

Education | Your kid’s right: Homework is pointless….

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We live, for the most part, fairly similar lives to our next-door neighbors. Both households have two working parents, two kids and an appreciation for the way California weather affords them unscripted, outdoor play year-round.

We are all busier than we want to be, but our neighbors have an extra, unnecessary hurdle that makes life more difficult.

Next door, the kids have homework. This involves 30 minutes of child-wrangling and patience-testing five days a week, pressure-cooking the little downtime they have together as a family.

Meanwhile, our family takes that time to enjoy our kids. No efficiency, no productivity, no agenda; just parents and children hanging out.

There’s been a lot of research and debate on the academic value of homework for school-aged children. The results, although somewhat mixed, generally conclude that homework provides no advantage for kids in elementary grades. As children get older, the potential benefits of homework grow, but less than you probably think.

Missing from the homework conversation is how no-homework policies benefit the whole family — parents and caregivers included.

School schedules and cultures were created for a different time, when moms were expected to be available to children during non-school hours. But today, the majority of families have either dual-working or single parents. Reconfiguring the education system to adapt to this current reality is a big project. We need to accommodate for the fact that nobody’s home to watch kids after school and during holiday breaks, or to spend four hours building a “Bridge to Terabithia” diorama on a Thursday afternoon.

The remedy to this would likely involve an overhaul of our paid leave and vacation policies, as well as modifications to our daily and yearly school schedules. This is not a quick fix.

Ending homework for elementary school-aged kids is, on the other hand, relatively easy. We just have to stop doing it.

We need to do less

Feeling overwhelmed is a defining trait of today’s parents and caregivers. We have too much to do, our kids have too much to do, and leisure and happiness are the prices we pay for it.

One recent survey of 2,000 parents commissioned by Crayola Experience found that more than half of parents feel they are too busy to enjoy the fun of parenting. A similar number told Pew Research Center they struggle to balance the responsibilities of home with the responsibilities of a family. We feel guilty, and we feel tired. We lack the energy to make it through the week, let alone figure out how to get ourselves out of this mess.

When every minute is accounted for, sometimes two or three times over, a reprieve from something as seemingly minor as homework can make a big difference.

“The time families have together is really short; it is much shorter than what people would like. And when you are together everyone is fried,” said Brigid Schulte, author of “ Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time ” and director of the Better Life Lab . “If you are stressed and cranky, and your kid has been in aftercare too long, and then you get home and have to force them to do their homework, it removes the sense that home is a supportive, loving place where you can connect.”

Schulte encourages parents and caregivers to resist homework. This might include fighting for no-homework policies at their children’s schools, and pushing back against unrealistic homework assignments. Reach out to a teacher and tell them why a particular assignment is burdensome or causing unnecessary stress and, if this is the case, why your child won’t be able to meet the teacher’s expectations, she suggested.

“The most important thing is to look for small wins right now,” she said, referring to the battle against busyness. Gaining roughly 30 minutes a night, or two-plus hours a week, has the potential to make a dramatic difference in family well-being, giving us an opportunity to remember why exactly we had children in the first place.

Teach your children, and yourself, to do less

It can feel scary to slow down. Rising income inequality has turned parenting into a competitive sport. It’s a winner-takes-all world and we want our kids to be the winners — unhappy, stressed-out winners.

There is so much out there telling your children they need to do more and be more, and that whatever they think is enough is most definitely not enough. This means that parents and caregivers provide what is likely kids’ only shot at learning about leisure and togetherness. The overwhelming message from decades of research has found these are the main ingredients to happiness and well-being.

Getting rid of homework is a relatively simple way to combat this high-stakes problem. It gives parents and caregivers the opportunity to teach their children these essential — albeit systematically ignored and undervalued — skills.

“Kids should have a chance to just be kids and do things they enjoy, particularly after spending six hours a day in school,” said Alfie Kohn, author of “ The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing .” “After all, we adults need time just to chill out; it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.”

This isn’t to say that the downtime has to be mindless. Kohn suggests that parents and caregivers can, with their kids, cook, play board games, read or watch TV and then discuss what they read or watched. (Ideally, it’s something parents would enjoy as well.) All of these activities require logic or analytical skills, and can help uncover kids’ passions, as well as areas in which they might be struggling and need additional help.

These activities can also help kids build the kind of skills we associate with homework, said Josh Cline, a public school teacher in Oakland, California. Perseverance and stamina, for example, are required to sit through a story and then discuss it, to complete a batch of brownies or play a game of checkers or chess. “It’s better to grow those skills doing things kids find interesting than forcing them to slog through worksheets,” he said. That said, if worksheets are your kid’s thing, Cline said to give them a shot — as long as it is clear they have a choice.

But ultimately, the best replacement for homework is, simply, a parent or caregiver’s attention.

“Spend time with them and see them as people. At school, they operate as a herd, and as hard as I try as a teacher, I can’t give them all the attention they deserve,” Cline said. “At home they should be seen as the unique, individual, interesting and brilliant people they are.”

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The Opinion Pages

Don’t bother, homework is pointless.

Sara Bennett is co-author of " The Case Against Homework : How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It."

November 12, 2014

Almost all research shows that elementary school homework is pointless. If families understood that, they would be thrilled to lose that nightly routine where the adults cajole and bribe, and the kids cry and throw tantrums.

Educators should realize that homework sets up a pattern of dependence that continues throughout the school years, rather than instilling responsibility and self-discipline as they claim.

I would love to see a one-week experiment where all parents agree not to say a word to their elementary school children about homework: not ask whether they have it, not lay out the supplies, not set aside the time, not read the instructions. I bet that most kids would not think about their homework at all. And, at the end of that week, educators would have to acknowledge that homework actually sets up a pattern of dependence that continues throughout the school years, rather than instilling responsibility and self-discipline as they claim.

What if parents stopped asking about or helping with homework through middle, high school, and even college years, too? Teachers would finally see the true quality of students’ work. And parents would stop having crazy conversations like the one I once had with a middle school English teacher when I remarked on the differences between essays written at home and in school. The teacher believed that, at home, students had time to focus on grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary and ideas, and that explained why their essays were so much more developed than their in-class work. I tried to tell him that he was actually seeing the work of parents or tutors, but he refused to see the obvious.

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Recent Discussions

When Homework Is Useless

Education experts offer their thoughts on how—if at all—schools should assign, grade, and use take-home assignments.

A chalkboard featuring a sketch of a backpack overflowing with notebooks, papers, and pens.

This is the third installment in our series about school in a perfect world. Read previous entries on calendars and content .

We asked prominent voices in education—from policy makers and teachers to activists and parents—to look beyond laws, politics, and funding and imagine a utopian system of learning. They went back to the drawing board—and the chalkboard—to build an educational Garden of Eden. We’re publishing their answers to one question each day this week. Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Today’s assignment: The Homework. Will students have homework?

Rita Pin Ahrens, the director of education policy for the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center

Homework is absolutely necessary for students to demonstrate that they are able to independently process and apply their learning. But who says homework has to be the same as it has been? Homework might include pre-reading in preparation for what will be covered in class that day, independent research on a student-chosen topic that complements the class curriculum, experiential learning through a volunteer activity or field trip, or visiting a website and accomplishing a task on it. The structure will be left to the teachers to determine, as best fits the learning objective, and should be graded—whether by the teacher or student. Students will be held accountable for their homework and understand that it is an integral part of the learning process.

Nicholson Baker, the author of Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

No mandatory homework in elementary school. None. No homework in middle school and high school unless a kid wants to do it. Chronic nightly homework makes for guilt, resentment, and lies—and family arguments and bone weariness. Parents become enforcers. It gets ugly.

Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education

When I was a high-school Spanish teacher, I never graded homework. If students came in with homework, I knew one of two things—either they did it, or they had a good friend who did it. I assigned a reasonable amount, never spent more than five minutes of class time reviewing it, and would collect samples as an informal assessment of whether my students understood the prior day’s lesson.

There is really no reason to assign homework in the early grades, although I know it makes parents anxious when their kids come home without it. Middle-school students will not receive more than an hour of homework, and in high schools, no more than two hours a night will be assigned.

Homework in high school helps students reflect on new learning and it gives them feedback as to whether they understand what they were taught. It also develops good habits for college, especially writing and independent-reading skills.

The research on homework shows beneficial effects on learning when appropriate assignments are given and completed, and the benefits increase with grade level. There is little to no learning benefit in the early grades but substantial benefit by grade 12.

Catherine Cushinberry, the executive director of Parents for Public Schools

Homework provides an opportunity for families to be engaged in the learning process, reinforces what has been taught during the school day, and provides students with an opportunity to learn how to be accountable and responsible to others and meet deadlines. Homework will not be graded, but will provide the class an opportunity to work together either as a large or small group to promote peer-to-peer learning while analyzing the assignment. Incentives that are student-specific will be used to encourage preparedness. If a student has mastered a topic, then he or she will be given an assignment that challenges them toward the next level of that work. The structure of homework will depend on the topic. Some assignments might require students to report on real-world observations, try at-home experiments, or allow them to develop ways that will each student best learn the information.

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Michael Horn, the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute

Students will have work that may be done in school or at home. We will cease seeing things as just “homework.” The goal of work is to help students build mastery of knowledge and skills that can be applied in different contexts. Students will do as much or as little of certain tasks until they have built mastery. For some students, that will take place at home. Others will do most of their work surrounded by their peers and teachers at school. We will move beyond the notion of letter grades, where we accept failure as part of the system, to a competency-based notion in which students either master a competency or keep working until they do.

As Sal Khan writes in his book, The One World Schoolhouse , “Homework [is] necessary because not enough learning happens during the school day. Why is there a shortage of learning during the hours specifically designed for it? Because the broadcast, one-pace-fits-all lecture—the technique that is at the very heart of our standard classroom model—turns out to be a highly inefficient way to teach and learn.” With blended learning on the rise, we can do better now.

Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation

Homework, in the popular parlance, is thought of as a necessary but dreary component of education. (An editor once disparagingly described a book manuscript I submitted as feeling like “homework.”) But if properly envisioned, homework can be exhilarating, an opportunity for students to venture independently to pursue in-depth topics first broached in the classroom.

To excite students, homework will be experiential and hands-on. It will encourage students to be explorers and to move beyond what is familiar to them. It will take them into new neighborhoods to interact with people of racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds different than their own. Amy Stuart Wells and her colleagues at Teachers College, Columbia University, note mounting evidence that “diversity makes us smarter.” They write that when students come in contact with people “different from themselves,” the “novel ideas and challenges such exposure brings leads to improved cognitive skills, including critical thinking and problem solving.” The primary implication of the research is the need to diversify schools themselves, but short of that, homework assignments, even in racially isolated schools, will encourage students to venture out and learn from all that the world has to offer.

Michelle Rhee, the founder of StudentsFirst and the former chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools

Students will have opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of subjects through homework, but the days of elementary-school students carrying home backpacks full of homework that are heavier than they are will be gone. Students will have in-class and after-class opportunities to complete assignments, and homework will never be given merely for the purpose of being given. Teachers will emphasize the skill sets they would like to grow with assignments, from essay writing to computations. “Flipped” classrooms, where students watch lectures at home the night before and then use class time to engage in discussion and ask teachers in-depth questions, will also be more prevalent.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers

Homework will depend on what’s needed to inform the coming lesson or to reinforce the lesson students just learned. We will never give homework for the sake of giving it.

Excessive homework is excessively stupid—and more and more evidence tells us that assigning hours of homework for very young students is useless at best and counterproductive at worst.

Homework only helps if every child has a chance get something useful from it—so programs to provide resources for kids who might not have homework support at home are critical, whether that’s tutoring, study labs, or just a safe place to sit and think. And while we’re at it, let’s not pretend that everyone has access to high-tech tools at home.

Check back tomorrow for the next installment in this series.

Our Mission

Homework: No Proven Benefits

Why homework is a pointless and outdated habit.

This is an excerpt from Alfie Kohn's recently published book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. For one teacher's response to this excerpt, read In Defense of Homework: Is there Such a Thing as Too Much? .

It may surprise you, as it did me, to learn that no study has ever demonstrated any academic benefit to assigning homework before children are in high school. In fact, even in high school, the association between homework and achievement is weak -- and the data don't show that homework is responsible for higher achievement. (Correlation doesn't imply causation.)

Finally, there isn't a shred of evidence to support the folk wisdom that homework provides nonacademic benefits at any age -- for example, that it builds character, promotes self-discipline, or teaches good work habits. We're all familiar with the downside of homework: the frustration and exhaustion, the family conflict, time lost for other activities, and possible diminution of children's interest in learning. But the stubborn belief that all of this must be worth it, that the gain must outweigh the pain, relies on faith rather than evidence.

So why does homework continue to be assigned and accepted? Possible reasons include a lack of respect for research, a lack of respect for children (implicit in a determination to keep them busy after school), a lack of understanding about the nature of learning (implicit in the emphasis on practicing skills and the assertion that homework "reinforces" school lessons), or the top-down pressures to teach more stuff faster in order to pump up test scores so we can chant "We're number one!"

All of these explanations are plausible, but I think there's also something else responsible for our continuing to feed children this latter-day cod-liver oil. We don't ask challenging questions about homework because we don't ask challenging questions about most things. Too many of us sound like Robert Frost's neighbor, the man who "will not go behind his father's saying." Too many of us, when pressed about some habit or belief we've adopted, are apt to reply, "Well, that's just the way I was raised" -- as if it were impossible to critically examine the values one was taught. Too many of us, including some who work in the field of education, seem to have lost our capacity to be outraged by the outrageous; when handed foolish and destructive mandates, we respond by asking for guidance on how best to carry them out.

Passivity is a habit acquired early. From our first days in school we are carefully instructed in what has been called the "hidden curriculum": how to do what one is told and stay out of trouble. There are rewards, both tangible and symbolic, for those who behave properly and penalties for those who don't. As students, we're trained to sit still, listen to what the teacher says, run our highlighters across whatever words in the book we'll be required to commit to memory. Pretty soon, we become less likely to ask (or even wonder) whether what we're being taught really makes sense. We just want to know whether it's going to be on the test.

When we find ourselves unhappy with some practice or policy, we're encouraged to focus on incidental aspects of what's going on, to ask questions about the details of implementation -- how something will get done, or by whom, or on what schedule -- but not whether it should be done at all. The more that we attend to secondary concerns, the more the primary issues -- the overarching structures and underlying premises -- are strengthened. We're led to avoid the radical questions -- and I use that adjective in its original sense: Radical comes from the Latin word for "root." It's partly because we spend our time worrying about the tendrils that the weed continues to grow. Noam Chomsky put it this way: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Parents have already been conditioned to accept most of what is done to their children at school, for example, and so their critical energies are confined to the periphery. Sometimes I entertain myself by speculating about how ingrained this pattern really is. If a school administrator were to announce that, starting next week, students will be made to stand outside in the rain and memorize the phone book, I suspect we parents would promptly speak up . . . to ask whether the Yellow Pages will be included. Or perhaps we'd want to know how much of their grade this activity will count for. One of the more outspoken moms might even demand to know whether her child will be permitted to wear a raincoat.

Our education system, meanwhile, is busily avoiding important topics in its own right. For every question that's asked in this field, there are other, more vital questions that are never raised. Educators weigh different techniques of "behavior management" but rarely examine the imperative to focus on behavior -- that is, observable actions -- rather than on reasons and needs and the children who have them. Teachers think about what classroom rules they ought to introduce but are unlikely to ask why they're doing so unilaterally, why students aren't participating in such decisions. It's probably not a coincidence that most schools of education require prospective teachers to take a course called Methods, but there is no course called Goals.

And so we return to the question of homework. Parents anxiously grill teachers about their policies on this topic, but they mostly ask about the details of the assignments their children will be made to do. If homework is a given, it's certainly understandable that one would want to make sure it's being done "correctly." But this begs the question of whether, and why, it should be a given. The willingness not to ask provides another explanation for how a practice can persist even if it hurts more than helps.

For their part, teachers regularly witness how many children are made miserable by homework and how many resist doing it. Some respond with sympathy and respect. Others reach for bribes and threats to compel students to turn in the assignments; indeed, they may insist these inducements are necessary: "If the kids weren't being graded, they'd never do it!" Even if true, this is less an argument for grades and other coercive tactics than an invitation to reconsider the value of those assignments. Or so one might think. However, teachers had to do homework when they were students, and they've likely been expected to give it at every school where they've worked. The idea that homework must be assigned is the premise, not the conclusion -- and it's a premise that's rarely examined by educators.

Unlike parents and teachers, scholars are a step removed from the classroom and therefore have the luxury of pursuing potentially uncomfortable areas of investigation. But few do. Instead, they are more likely to ask, "How much time should students spend on homework?" or "Which strategies will succeed in improving homework completion rates?," which is simply assumed to be desirable.

Policy groups, too, are more likely to act as cheerleaders than as thoughtful critics. The major document on the subject issued jointly by the National PTA and the National Education Association, for example, concedes that children often complain about homework, but never considers the possibility that their complaints may be justified. Parents are exhorted to "show your children that you think homework is important" -- regardless of whether it is, or even whether one really believes this is true -- and to praise them for compliance.

Health professionals, meanwhile, have begun raising concerns about the weight of children's backpacks and then recommending . . . exercises to strengthen their backs! This was also the tack taken by People magazine: An article about families struggling to cope with excessive homework was accompanied by a sidebar that offered some "ways to minimize the strain on young backs" -- for example, "pick a [back]pack with padded shoulder straps."

The People article reminds us that the popular press does occasionally -- cyclically -- take note of how much homework children have to do, and how varied and virulent are its effects. But such inquiries are rarely penetrating and their conclusions almost never rock the boat. Time magazine published a cover essay in 2003 entitled "The Homework Ate My Family." It opened with affecting and even alarming stories of homework's harms. Several pages later, however, it closed with a finger-wagging declaration that "both parents and students must be willing to embrace the 'work' component of homework -- to recognize the quiet satisfaction that comes from practice and drill." Likewise, an essay on the Family Education Network's Web site: "Yes, homework is sometimes dull, or too easy, or too difficult. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be taken seriously." (One wonders what would have to be true before we'd be justified in not taking something seriously.)

Nor, apparently, are these questions seen as appropriate by most medical and mental health professionals. When a child resists doing homework -- or complying with other demands -- their job is to get the child back on track. Very rarely is there any inquiry into the value of the homework or the reasonableness of the demands.

Sometimes parents are invited to talk to teachers about homework -- providing that their concerns are "appropriate." The same is true of formal opportunities for offering feedback. A list of sample survey questions offered to principals by the central office in one Colorado school district is typical. Parents were asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the following statements: "My child understands how to do his/her homework"; "Teachers at this school give me useful suggestions about how to help my child with schoolwork"; "Homework assignments allow me to see what my student is being taught and how he/she is learning"; and "The amount of homework my child receives is (choose one): too much/just right/too little."

The most striking feature of such a list is what isn't on it. Such a questionnaire seems to have been designed to illustrate Chomsky's point about encouraging lively discussion within a narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion, the better to reinforce the key presuppositions of the system. Parents' feedback is earnestly sought -- on these questions only. So, too, for the popular articles that criticize homework, or the parents who speak out: The focus is generally limited to how much is being assigned. I'm sympathetic to this concern, but I'm more struck by how it misses much of what matters. We sometimes forget that not everything that's destructive when done to excess is innocuous when done in moderation. Sometimes the problem is with what's being done, or at least the way it's being done, rather than just with how much of it is being done.

The more we are invited to think in Goldilocks terms (too much, too little, or just right?), the less likely we become to step back and ask the questions that count: What reason is there to think that any quantity of the kind of homework our kids are getting is really worth doing? What evidence exists to show that daily homework, regardless of its nature, is necessary for children to become better thinkers? Why did the students have no chance to participate in deciding which of their assignments ought to be taken home?

And: What if there was no homework at all?

Washington Monthly

That Homework Kids Have Is Pointless

Daniel Luzer

Daniel Luzer is the news editor at Governing Magazine and former web editor of the Washington Monthly. Find him on Twitter: @Daniel_Luzer

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“School Is Pointless!” A Parent’s Guide to Low Academic Motivation

Written by:

Amy Sippl

Filed under: COVID-19 tips , Building Independence , Neurodivergent Experiences

Published: November 6, 2020

Last Reviewed: November 7, 2023

READING TIME: ~ minutes

“School is pointless!”

“I’m not doing any more of these useless assignments.”

“I don’t care!”

“Why do I need to know this stuff? You don’t ever use it at your job.”

Does this sound familiar? Many parents are struggling in homes across the country right now, with children and teens who show low academic interest and motivation. With so many stressors and distractions bombarding your child, it can be hard to help them find meaning and value in the day-to-day grind of school and homework.

What causes low academic motivation?

As behavior analysts, we often help parents and teachers dealing with low academic motivation tease out issues of “I can’t do” from issues of “I won’t do.” Depending on how your child responds to homework and academic goals, it can be hard to tell the difference. Yet, understanding if your child’s experiencing skill delays vs. a lack of motivation will change how you address the problem.

Academic Skill Delays

Low academic motivation can often be confused by academic skill deficits. If a child struggles with reading or auditory comprehension delays, they may avoid school because instructions don’t make sense or are too hard. If a child lacks fluency in basic math facts, algebra and geometry may take longer or be more frustrating.

Ignoring academic skill delays is like ignoring a small grass fire. As more and more material is added, the problem only grows. Eventually, the blaze becomes unmanageable. It’s far easier to address skill deficits starting back at the small grass fire stage before the issue gets out of control.

Executive Functioning Skills

In addition to academic skill delays, parents and teachers should know how executive functioning skills contribute to low academic motivation. Behaviors like time management, organization, planning provide, and support academic performance. We know that we tend to enjoy more manageable tasks, especially if they lead to us getting to a reward or preferred activity faster. Even if a child is at or above grade level academically, they may show lower academic motivation if they lack a solid foundation of executive functioning skills.

After evaluating and addressing academic and executive functioning skills, parents and teachers are then left with issues of “I won’t do.”

Delay discounting is one theory motivation researchers might point to when addressing low academic motivation in teens and young adults. Delay discounting or ‘discounting theory’ describes how we measure the value of rewards—both immediate rewards and long-term rewards that happen after a period of waiting or after a set of tasks.

Over and over again, research supports that humans struggle to make choices that delay our immediate gratification, even if our longer-term reward is far better than the short-term reward. In other words, if there’s a choice between watching one last YouTube video now vs. watching unlimited YouTube videos once homework is finished, kids and teens tend to overlook the larger reward for the short term gain.

The situation becomes even more complicated when adding in delayed consequences that are abstract for many learners with unique needs. Describing the benefits of college education or higher lifetime earnings when it’s time to finish the next math assignment probably isn’t going to help much.

3 Steps You Can Take When Your Child Doesn’t Find Value in School

So, how do you connect with your child who lacks motivation for school?

1. Rule out as many competing variables as possible first

Before any decisions about interventions occur to address issues of skill (“I can’t do”) and motivation (“I won’t do”), parents and teachers should always try to rule out other variables that might be impacting a child’s responding at school.

We’ve worked with students who struggled in the classroom because of environmental allergies, chronic headaches, back pain, and medication complications. When we resolved the biological barrier to learning, the behavior and motivation challenges also went away. If your child complains about not wanting to go to school or do homework because of illness, go ahead and rule that variable out with an evaluation by a medical professional.

While it’s more complicated to evaluate, parents and teachers must also identify any other barriers at school. Children with disabilities and unique learning needs are at a higher risk for bullying than their peers. Social challenges related to diagnoses of Autism, ADHD, or other behavioral challenges can sometimes exacerbate bullying and make it even harder for children and teens to stay motivated for school.

2. Communicate with the classroom

A second step—and often working in tandem with the first—is to establish a clear parent-teacher communication channel. Identify the key stakeholders for your child at school and set a regular and consistent expectation for check-ins and communication. Be kind and respectful (teachers manage way more than most parents realize!) but also be clear about what information you need and why. Review the strategies you’re taking at home to address your concerns and aim to bring a collaboration vs. confrontation approach.

To keep track of who you connected with at school, download our free .pdf Parent-Teacher Communication Log below.

3. Set up cause-effect relationships

The final strategy ties back to delay discounting and addressing motivation in the short run. If your child doesn’t connect with the long-term consequences of doing well in school, establish shorter-term cause-and-effect relationships that are more concrete. If you know your child is motivated by spending time with friends, screen time, or having to do fewer household chores, connect good academic habits with those activities. Some examples:

“You finished your math homework before dinner, so why don’t you watch an episode while I do the dishes tonight.”

“Since you finished reading the chapters now, you’ll have plenty of free time tonight to watch the game.”

“If you work ahead on your project tonight, there will be plenty of time to have a friend over on the weekend.”

If your child struggles with delay discounting and seeing the long-run value in school, focusing on these long-term benefits is likely only to cause you more frustration. Instead of the big picture, build success with cause-effect in the short run. Demonstrate that good academic performance connects to positive things, privileges, and rewards. Start with immediate rewards and then, over time, slowly build in a delay to longer-term consequences (e.g., “if you get A’s and B’s this semester, we can sign you up for that coding camp you talked about.”)

Don’t be afraid to consider other options

If you’ve worked hard on some of the areas above and still struggle with low academic motivation, don’t be afraid to look at another educational option. Many parents struggle with the outcomes of mismatched school placements, including a child’s unhealthy attitude towards school, poor academic performance, or failing to develop positive relationships with teachers and peers. A fresh start in a different environment might be all the learner needs.

Does your child need more 1:1 instruction during the day? Does your child focus better when they work in hands-on environments? With music and art? Would it be better for teaching to happen online? Self-paced?

World-renowned autism advocate Temple Grandin writes in many of her books that she struggled with traditional academic environments. Most recently, she released Autism in Lockdown , a great resource for anyone on the spectrum struggling to cope with the the lockdown. Early on, her parents recognized these challenges and emphasized finding a way to connect Grandin’s motivation for animals to her academic performance. By emphasizing strengths and interests (instead of trying to force a challenging school situation), Grandin has gone on to complete a doctoral program and to become one of the most respected public speakers in the autism community.

About The Author

Amy Sippl is a Minnesota-based Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and freelance content developer specializing in helping individuals with autism and their families reach their best possible outcomes. Amy earned her Master's Degree in Applied Behavior Analysis from St. Cloud State University and also holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Family Social Science from University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. Amy has worked with children with autism and related developmental disabilities for over a decade in both in-home and clinical settings. Her content focuses on parents, educators, and professionals in the world of autism—emphasizing simple strategies and tips to maximize success. To see more of her work visit amysippl.com .

Supporting a sibling with executive functioning challenges: tips and strategies, benefits of nature exposure on executive functioning – what the research says, executive functioning 101: all about attentional control, executive functioning 101: all about impulse control, teaching unique learners about saving for long-term purchases, executive functioning skills 101: flexibility.

Life Skills Advocate is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Some of the links in this post may be Amazon.com affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase, Life Skills Advocate will earn a commission. However, we only promote products we actually use or those which have been vetted by the greater community of families and professionals who support individuals with diverse learning needs.

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Kids are onto something: Homework might actually be bad

By Stan Horaczek

Posted on Sep 23, 2021 8:00 AM EDT

6 minute read

When you’re a kid, your stance on homework is generally pretty simple: It’s the worst. When it comes to educators, parents, and school administrators, however, the topic gets a lot more complicated.

Collective educational enthusiasm toward homework has ebbed and flowed throughout the 20th century in the US. School districts began abolishing homework in the ‘30s and ‘40s, only for it to come roaring back as the space race kicked off in the late ‘50s and drove a desire for sharper math and science skills. It fell out of fashion again during the Vietnam War era before it came back strong in the ‘80s .

As the country mostly transitions back to full-time, in-person schooling, the available research on homework and its efficacy is still messy at best.

How much homework are kids doing?

There’s a fundamental issue at the very start of this discussion: we’re not entirely sure how much homework kids are actually doing. A 2019 Pew survey found that teens were spending considerably more time doing schoolwork at home than they had in the past—an hour a day, on average, compared to 44 minutes a decade ago and just 30 in the mid-1990s.

But other data disagrees , instead suggesting that homework expansion primarily affects children in lower grades. But it’s worth noting that such arguments typically refer to data from more than a decade ago.

How much homework are kids supposed to be doing?

Many schools subscribe to a “rule of thumb” that suggests students should get 10 minutes of homework for each grade level. So, first graders should get just 10 minutes of work to do at home while high schoolers should be cracking the books for up to two hours each night.

This once served as the official guidance for educators from the National Education Association, as well as the National PTA. It also serves as the official homework policy for many school districts, even though the NEA’s outline of the policy now leads to an error page . The National PTA also now relies on a less-specific resolution on homework which encourages districts and educators to focus on “quality over quantity.”

The PTA’s resolution effectively sums up the current dominant perspective on homework. “The National PTA and its constituent associations advocate that teachers, schools, and districts follow evidence-based guidelines regarding the use of homework assignments and its impact on children’s lives and family interactions.”

Even with these well-known standards, a study from researchers at Brown University, Brandeis University, Rhode Island College, Dean College, the Children’s National Medical Center, and the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology, found that younger children were still getting more than the recommended amount of homework by two or three times . First and second graders were doing roughly 30 minutes of homework every night.

Does homework make kids smarter?

In the mid-2000s, a Duke researcher named Harris Cooper led up one of the most comprehensive looks at homework efficacy to-date. The research set out to explore the perceived correlation between homework and achievement. The results showed a general correlation between homework and achievement. Cooper reported, “No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework–achievement link and the outcome measure (grades as opposed to standardized tests) or the subject matter (reading as opposed to math).”

The paper does suggest that the correlation strengthens after 7th grade—but it’s likely not a causal relationship. In an interview with the NEA , Cooper explains, “It’s also worth noting that these correlations with older students are likely caused, not only by homework helping achievement but also by kids who have higher achievement levels doing more homework.”

A 2012 study looked at more than 18,000 10th-grade students and concluded that increasing homework loads could be the result of too much material with insufficient instructional time in the classroom. “The overflow typically results in more homework assignments,” the lead researcher said in a statement from the University. “However, students spending more time on something that is not easy to understand or needs to be explained by a teacher does not help these students learn and, in fact, may confuse them.”

Even in that case, however, the research provided somewhat conflicting results that are hard to reconcile. While the study found a positive association between time spent on homework and scores on standardized tests, students who did homework didn’t generally get better grades than kids who didn’t.

Can homework hurt kids?

It seems antithetical, but some research suggests that homework can actually hinder achievement and, in some cases, students’ overall health.

A 2013 study looked at a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper middle class communities. The results showed that “students who did more hours of homework experienced greater behavioral engagement in school but also more academic stress, physical health problems, and lack of balance in their lives.” And that’s in affluent districts.

When you add economic inequity into the equation, homework’s prognosis looks even worse. Research suggests that increased homework can help widen the achievement gap between low-income and economically advantaged students ; the latter group is more likely to have a safe and appropriate place to do schoolwork at night, as well as to have caregivers with the time and academic experience to encourage them to get it done.

That doesn’t mean financially privileged kids are guaranteed to benefit from hours of worksheets and essays. Literature supporting homework often suggests that it gives parents an opportunity to participate in the educational process as well as monitor a child’s progress and learning. Opponents, however, contest that parental involvement can actually hurt achievement. A 2014 research survey showed that help from parents who have forgotten the material (or who never really understood it) can actually harm a student’s ability to learn.

The digital homework divide

Access to reliable high-speed internet also presents an unfortunate opportunity for inequity when it comes to at-home learning. Even with COVID-era initiatives expanding programs to provide broadband to underserved areas, millions of households still lack access to fast, reliable internet .

As more homework assignments migrate to online environments instead of paper, those students without reliable home internet have to make other arrangements to complete their assignments in school or somewhere else outside the home.

How do we make homework work?

Some experts suggest decoupling homework from students’ overall grades. A 2009 paper suggests that, while homework can be an effective tool for monitoring progress, assigning a grade can actually undercut the main purpose of the work by encouraging students to focus on their scores instead of mastering the material. The study recommends nuanced feedback instead of numbered grades to keep the emphasis on learning—which has the added benefit of minimizing consequences for kids with tougher at-home circumstances.

Making homework more useful for kids may also come down to picking the right types of assignments. There’s a well-worn concept in psychology known as the spacing effect , which suggests it’s easier to learn material revisited several times in short bursts rather than during long study sessions. This supports the idea that shorter assignments can be more beneficial than heavy workloads. Many homework opponents add that at-home assignments should appeal to a child’s innate curiosity. It’s easy to find anecdotal evidence from educators who have stopped assigning homework only to find that their students end up participating in more self-guided learning. As kids head back into physical school buildings, the homework debate will no doubt continue on. Hopefully, the research will go with it.

Is your head constantly spinning with outlandish, mind-burning questions? If you’ve ever wondered what the universe is made of, what would happen if you fell into a black hole, or even why not everyone can touch their toes, then you should be sure to listen and subscribe to Ask Us Anything, a podcast from the editors of Popular Science. Ask Us Anything hits Apple , Anchor , Spotify , and everywhere else you listen to podcasts. Each episode takes a deep dive into a single query we know you’ll want to stick around for.

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Is There A "Right Way" To Help My Kid With Their Homework?

Most kids need to learn to do homework in the same way they learn to swim or, even better, do their own laundry.

How much should we help our kids with their homework? I barely remember getting any help from my own parents as a kid. Maybe they were busy, or maybe I rarely asked for help. And my son doesn’t, either. But we find ourselves micromanaging him to make sure he takes his time and does a good job. And I worry that it may actually be to his detriment. Is this diluting his sense of independence and accountability? Will it make him over-reliant on us? And will it skew his teacher’s view of how well he’s doing when he’s allowed to work independently?

Before I had kids, I did my final internship as a school psychologist in an outrageously wealthy school district. The parenting was beyond intensive, I felt. The kids, spoiled and neutered of their own confidence or competence for getting by without parental intrusion. Mothers in $200 yoga pants showed up at all hours in the school offices to micromanage (or sometimes, just because they were bored). One day on my commute, I heard the psychologist Madeline Levine being interviewed on the radio. Levine’s work (her books include The Price of Privilege : How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids ) focuses on children and teens in communities like this one, who, she believes, are so over-protected that they launch into the world not knowing how to recover from minor setbacks or, say, do their own laundry. A mother called in to ask Levine a question: If she noticed that her third-grader left her completed homework at home, should she bring it to school for her so her child didn’t get a poor grade, or let them learn from their mistake by dealing with the natural consequences?

As you can imagine, Levine gently chastised the version of this mother who would take time out of her own day to haul a forgotten homework assignment into the school office on behalf of her poor child — and I chastised along with her. Now, 10 years and two kids later, I know better. Though Levine’s work is richer than this one anecdote, this mother’s question (and yours) aren’t as simple as experts want us to believe.

Homework stress is born of a culture that takes parental oversight as a given. It takes work to buck these trends.

This conundrum gets at one of the central themes of our current parenting culture: oversight and the conditions that encourage it. We want our kids to roam the streets in packs like we used to, to have unsupervised play dates, to learn how to make a simple quesadilla. We want them, most importantly, to feel confident and capable. But the structures of our modern society, and the habits we’ve picked up watching the parents around us, virtually and IRL, complicate the free-choice scenario that psychologists like Levine lay out. There don’t seem to be any other kids out there to roam with, we feel that other parents expect us to monitor their children, we don’t hear about parents letting their kids work the burners anymore. As we’re all probably tired of hearing, on average, parents today spend much more time with their children than our parents did with us. The kind of independence your parents gave you with homework was probably equal parts ambient cultural-parenting expectations, and logistics. When a child falls in the forest, and their parents are constantly checking on them because that’s what parents do these days, will they learn to pick themselves back up?

Culture influences the logistics of our parenting lives. If your children go to a school where most of the students come from households where parents work multiple jobs, or where families are transient, it’s unlikely that homework will be designed for much parental intervention; it just wouldn’t be fair or appropriate. For this reason, many schools leave big, labor-intensive projects to be done during the school day, and assign homework as remedial practice, something they might encourage, but would never expect parents to oversee. Other schools, because of the level of financial and educational resources available to their families, assume an enormous amount of parental involvement in homework, and plan accordingly. Parents of even young children may find themselves staring down a 10-part assignment, complete with researching and gathering specimens and writing, tasks that even the most precocious elementary-schooler would not be able to do on their own.

What parents need to do to support their children with homework isn’t some objective parenting rule: it’s impacted by the assumptions, often unspoken, of the spaces we live in. You can be the parent who pushes back against this — and I encourage you to try it — but it’s not just an individual problem. Homework stress is born of a culture that takes parental oversight as a given. It takes work to buck these trends. Some explicit boundaries — that your partner, if you have one, should also agree to — might be necessary. We help for 10 minutes a night and after that we write a note that this is really too much to be expecting from home. Or we get really clear on what our kid can do on their own and what they need us for, and ask them to come and get us for our parts.

If your kiddo is really struggling with the content of the homework — remembering how to subtract with borrowing, for example — I would certainly do some re-teaching if needed (and if you also happen to remember how to do that). But I would want their teacher to be very clear on what they can do on their own and what they need a lot of hand-holding on. If you write the essay for them, or re-teach the whole math lesson several times, the person who needs to keep track of what they’ve learned and how well will be getting false information. Some families make a plan with the teacher that they will circle problems that were done with parent help to communicate just that.

Homework is, mostly, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many researchers, totally pointless, so your kid doing a half-assed job on it might mean less than you think it does.

All of that aside, there’s the issue of what to do when your values of independence and autonomy seem to be conflicting with your values of hard work and thoughtful effort. Maybe the homework is reasonable and your kid can generally manage it, but it’s meaningful to you to have them give a bit more. Just like my child’s pediatrician counseled early on not to get too hung up on what he was eating every day, but to think about diet as a longer-term project, I would encourage you to zoom up to the bigger picture of your child’s work ethic. Often we parents forget that our kids are spending hours upon hours each day, out of our sight, tirelessly completing tasks assigned to them by adults, often with little satisfaction. If your kid is doing this, but slacking a bit on the homework, that’s quite different from a kid who is constantly turning in careless work. Homework is, mostly, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many researchers, totally pointless, so your kid doing a half-assed job on it might mean less than you think it does.

If you want to be involved in a healthy way, the best time you can spend with your child and homework is on building what we psych nerds call executive functioning skills . These are the softer skills behind the content learning that goes in to every completed worksheet or term paper — how to set-up spaces for doing work that promote your sustained focus, how to break down long-term assignments into smaller parts so you don’t get slammed the night before something is due, how to slow down when the task requires more care and check your work when you’re done. Some unicorn kids just get all of this intuitively, and hats off to them. But most kids, especially but not only the neurodivergent ones, need to learn to do homework in the same way they learn to swim or, even better, do their own laundry.

Honing executive function is great because it will help them in endless situations, and, ideally, it shifts the onus from you to them. If your kid has a multi-step project like a book report, for example, you can sit them down as soon as it’s assigned, draw a little calendar of the days until it’s due, and help them do some “ backwards planning ” by asking, “What will this look like when it’s done? What steps will go into making it that way? What materials will you need? How long do you think each step will take and what day will you do them on?" Or, maybe you work with them to develop a homework checklist that lives in their designated homework space, and reminds them to check their own work.

The first time (or two), you may have to sit and model these things completely, but the idea is that you gradually release the responsibility to your kid. The hope is that at some point you can just say, “Did you make your calendar with all the parts?” and they will know what you mean. This stuff not only teaches them skills they can use their whole life, but also, by design, it gets you out of the picture.

Because, as you have predicted, they will one day be an independent and accountable adult, treating their own stains and knowing somewhere in the back of their 5G-implanted minds that you did the best you could.

The Good Enough Parent is an advice column for parents who are sick of parenting advice. Let Sarah answer your questions about the messy realities of parenting! Send her your questions via this anonymous form or by emailing her at [email protected].

Education | Your kid’s right: Homework is pointless. Here’s…

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Education | man shot dead, more than five people stabbed in brawl by lake berryessa: police, education | your kid’s right: homework is pointless. here’s what you should be doing instead.

There's been a lot of research and debate on the academic value of homework for school-aged children. (Getty Images)

We are all busier than we want to be, but our neighbors have an extra, unnecessary hurdle that makes life more difficult.

Next door, the kids have homework. This involves 30 minutes of child-wrangling and patience-testing five days a week, pressure-cooking the little downtime they have together as a family.

Meanwhile, our family takes that time to enjoy our kids. No efficiency, no productivity, no agenda; just parents and children hanging out.

Missing from the homework conversation is how no-homework policies benefit the whole family — parents and caregivers included.

The remedy to this would likely involve an overhaul of our paid leave and vacation policies, as well as modifications to our daily and yearly school schedules. This is not a quick fix.

Ending homework for elementary school-aged kids is, on the other hand, relatively easy. We just have to stop doing it.

We need to do less

Feeling overwhelmed is a defining trait of today’s parents and caregivers. We have too much to do, our kids have too much to do, and leisure and happiness are the prices we pay for it.

When every minute is accounted for, sometimes two or three times over, a reprieve from something as seemingly minor as homework can make a big difference.

Teach your children, and yourself, to do less

But ultimately, the best replacement for homework is, simply, a parent or caregiver’s attention.

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Homework – Top 3 Pros and Cons

Pro/Con Arguments | Discussion Questions | Take Action | Sources | More Debates

From dioramas to book reports, from algebraic word problems to research projects, whether students should be given homework, as well as the type and amount of homework, has been debated for over a century. [ 1 ]

While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word “homework” dates back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Younger asked his followers to practice their speeches at home. Memorization exercises as homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks and other scholars. [ 45 ]

In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s Schools” were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. This concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the United States by Horace Mann , who encountered the idea in Prussia. [ 45 ]

In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal , decried homework’s negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ]

Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to concerns about keeping up with the Soviet Union’s technological advances during the Cold War . And, in 1986, the US government included homework as an educational quality boosting tool. [ 3 ] [ 45 ]

A 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth to twelfth graders 3.5 hours per teacher. A 2014-2019 study found that teens spent about an hour a day on homework. [ 4 ] [ 44 ]

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of homework as students were schooling remotely and many were doing all school work from home. Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss asked, “Does homework work when kids are learning all day at home?” While students were mostly back in school buildings in fall 2021, the question remains of how effective homework is as an educational tool. [ 47 ]

Is Homework Beneficial?

Pro 1 Homework improves student achievement. Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicated that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” [ 6 ] Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school. [ 10 ] Read More

Pro 2 Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good study habits and life skills. Students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor NYC, explained, “at-home assignments help students learn the material taught in class. Students require independent practice to internalize new concepts… [And] these assignments can provide valuable data for teachers about how well students understand the curriculum.” [ 11 ] [ 49 ] Elementary school students who were taught “strategies to organize and complete homework,” such as prioritizing homework activities, collecting study materials, note-taking, and following directions, showed increased grades and more positive comments on report cards. [ 17 ] Research by the City University of New York noted that “students who engage in self-regulatory processes while completing homework,” such as goal-setting, time management, and remaining focused, “are generally more motivated and are higher achievers than those who do not use these processes.” [ 18 ] Homework also helps students develop key skills that they’ll use throughout their lives: accountability, autonomy, discipline, time management, self-direction, critical thinking, and independent problem-solving. Freireich and Platzer noted that “homework helps students acquire the skills needed to plan, organize, and complete their work.” [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 49 ] Read More

Pro 3 Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning. Thanks to take-home assignments, parents are able to track what their children are learning at school as well as their academic strengths and weaknesses. [ 12 ] Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that parental involvement in homework can improve class performance, especially among economically disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic students. [ 20 ] Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: “Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students.” [ 21 ] Homework can also help clue parents in to the existence of any learning disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust learning strategies as needed. Duke University Professor Harris Cooper noted, “Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning disability until homework revealed it to them.” [ 12 ] Read More

Con 1 Too much homework can be harmful. A poll of California high school students found that 59% thought they had too much homework. 82% of respondents said that they were “often or always stressed by schoolwork.” High-achieving high school students said too much homework leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems. [ 24 ] [ 28 ] [ 29 ] Alfie Kohn, an education and parenting expert, said, “Kids should have a chance to just be kids… it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.” [ 27 ] Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, explained, “More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies.” [ 48 ] Excessive homework can also lead to cheating: 90% of middle school students and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework, and 43% of college students engaged in “unauthorized collaboration” on out-of-class assignments. Even parents take shortcuts on homework: 43% of those surveyed admitted to having completed a child’s assignment for them. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] Read More

Con 2 Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap. Kiara Taylor, financial expert, defined the digital divide as “the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t. Though the term now encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology—along with access (or a lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology.” For students, this is often called the homework gap. [ 50 ] [ 51 ] 30% (about 15 to 16 million) public school students either did not have an adequate internet connection or an appropriate device, or both, for distance learning. Completing homework for these students is more complicated (having to find a safe place with an internet connection, or borrowing a laptop, for example) or impossible. [ 51 ] A Hispanic Heritage Foundation study found that 96.5% of students across the country needed to use the internet for homework, and nearly half reported they were sometimes unable to complete their homework due to lack of access to the internet or a computer, which often resulted in lower grades. [ 37 ] [ 38 ] One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it “potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who already experience some privilege in the school system while further disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position.” [ 39 ] Read More

Con 3 Homework does not help younger students, and may not help high school students. We’ve known for a while that homework does not help elementary students. A 2006 study found that “homework had no association with achievement gains” when measured by standardized tests results or grades. [ 7 ] Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night actually did worse. [ 41 ] Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not the most effective tool for young learners to apply new information: “They’re learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework.” [ 42 ] In fact, homework may not be helpful at the high school level either. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, stated, “I interviewed high school teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no downside, it was all upside.” He explains, “just because the same kids who get more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made that happen.” [ 52 ] Read More

Discussion Questions

1. Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience, and other types of information. Explain your answer(s).

2. If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help students learn classroom material? Explain your answer(s).

3. How has homework been helpful to you personally? How has homework been unhelpful to you personally? Make carefully considered lists for both sides.

Take Action

1. Examine an argument in favor of quality homework assignments from Janine Bempechat.

2. Explore Oxford Learning’s infographic on the effects of homework on students.

3. Consider Joseph Lathan’s argument that homework promotes inequality .

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives .

	1.	Tom Loveless, “Homework in America: Part II of the 2014 Brown Center Report of American Education,” brookings.edu, Mar. 18, 2014
	2.	Edward Bok, “A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents,” , Jan. 1900
	3.	Tim Walker, “The Great Homework Debate: What’s Getting Lost in the Hype,” neatoday.org, Sep. 23, 2015
	4.	University of Phoenix College of Education, “Homework Anxiety: Survey Reveals How Much Homework K-12 Students Are Assigned and Why Teachers Deem It Beneficial,” phoenix.edu, Feb. 24, 2014
	5.	Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “PISA in Focus No. 46: Does Homework Perpetuate Inequities in Education?,” oecd.org, Dec. 2014
	6.	Adam V. Maltese, Robert H. Tai, and Xitao Fan, “When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math,” , 2012
	7.	Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, and Erika A. Patall, “Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Researcher, 1987-2003,” , 2006
	8.	Gökhan Bas, Cihad Sentürk, and Fatih Mehmet Cigerci, “Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research,” , 2017
	9.	Huiyong Fan, Jianzhong Xu, Zhihui Cai, Jinbo He, and Xitao Fan, “Homework and Students’ Achievement in Math and Science: A 30-Year Meta-Analysis, 1986-2015,” , 2017
	10.	Charlene Marie Kalenkoski and Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia, “Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement?,” iza.og, Apr. 2014
	11.	Ron Kurtus, “Purpose of Homework,” school-for-champions.com, July 8, 2012
	12.	Harris Cooper, “Yes, Teachers Should Give Homework – The Benefits Are Many,” newsobserver.com, Sep. 2, 2016
	13.	Tammi A. Minke, “Types of Homework and Their Effect on Student Achievement,” repository.stcloudstate.edu, 2017
	14.	LakkshyaEducation.com, “How Does Homework Help Students: Suggestions From Experts,” LakkshyaEducation.com (accessed Aug. 29, 2018)
	15.	University of Montreal, “Do Kids Benefit from Homework?,” teaching.monster.com (accessed Aug. 30, 2018)
	16.	Glenda Faye Pryor-Johnson, “Why Homework Is Actually Good for Kids,” memphisparent.com, Feb. 1, 2012
	17.	Joan M. Shepard, “Developing Responsibility for Completing and Handing in Daily Homework Assignments for Students in Grades Three, Four, and Five,” eric.ed.gov, 1999
	18.	Darshanand Ramdass and Barry J. Zimmerman, “Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework,” , 2011
	19.	US Department of Education, “Let’s Do Homework!,” ed.gov (accessed Aug. 29, 2018)
	20.	Loretta Waldman, “Sociologist Upends Notions about Parental Help with Homework,” phys.org, Apr. 12, 2014
	21.	Frances L. Van Voorhis, “Reflecting on the Homework Ritual: Assignments and Designs,” , June 2010
	22.	Roel J. F. J. Aries and Sofie J. Cabus, “Parental Homework Involvement Improves Test Scores? A Review of the Literature,” , June 2015
	23.	Jamie Ballard, “40% of People Say Elementary School Students Have Too Much Homework,” yougov.com, July 31, 2018
	24.	Stanford University, “Stanford Survey of Adolescent School Experiences Report: Mira Costa High School, Winter 2017,” stanford.edu, 2017
	25.	Cathy Vatterott, “Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs,” ascd.org, 2009
	26.	End the Race, “Homework: You Can Make a Difference,” racetonowhere.com (accessed Aug. 24, 2018)
	27.	Elissa Strauss, “Opinion: Your Kid Is Right, Homework Is Pointless. Here’s What You Should Do Instead.,” cnn.com, Jan. 28, 2020
	28.	Jeanne Fratello, “Survey: Homework Is Biggest Source of Stress for Mira Costa Students,” digmb.com, Dec. 15, 2017
	29.	Clifton B. Parker, “Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework,” stanford.edu, Mar. 10, 2014
	30.	AdCouncil, “Cheating Is a Personal Foul: Academic Cheating Background,” glass-castle.com (accessed Aug. 16, 2018)
	31.	Jeffrey R. Young, “High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame,” chronicle.com, Mar. 28, 2010
	32.	Robin McClure, “Do You Do Your Child’s Homework?,” verywellfamily.com, Mar. 14, 2018
	33.	Robert M. Pressman, David B. Sugarman, Melissa L. Nemon, Jennifer, Desjarlais, Judith A. Owens, and Allison Schettini-Evans, “Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background,” , 2015
	34.	Heather Koball and Yang Jiang, “Basic Facts about Low-Income Children,” nccp.org, Jan. 2018
	35.	Meagan McGovern, “Homework Is for Rich Kids,” huffingtonpost.com, Sep. 2, 2016
	36.	H. Richard Milner IV, “Not All Students Have Access to Homework Help,” nytimes.com, Nov. 13, 2014
	37.	Claire McLaughlin, “The Homework Gap: The ‘Cruelest Part of the Digital Divide’,” neatoday.org, Apr. 20, 2016
	38.	Doug Levin, “This Evening’s Homework Requires the Use of the Internet,” edtechstrategies.com, May 1, 2015
	39.	Amy Lutz and Lakshmi Jayaram, “Getting the Homework Done: Social Class and Parents’ Relationship to Homework,” , June 2015
	40.	Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg, “How American Children Spend Their Time,” psc.isr.umich.edu, Apr. 17, 2000
	41.	Alfie Kohn, “Does Homework Improve Learning?,” alfiekohn.org, 2006
	42.	Patrick A. Coleman, “Elementary School Homework Probably Isn’t Good for Kids,” fatherly.com, Feb. 8, 2018
	43.	Valerie Strauss, “Why This Superintendent Is Banning Homework – and Asking Kids to Read Instead,” washingtonpost.com, July 17, 2017
	44.	Pew Research Center, “The Way U.S. Teens Spend Their Time Is Changing, but Differences between Boys and Girls Persist,” pewresearch.org, Feb. 20, 2019
	45.	ThroughEducation, “The History of Homework: Why Was It Invented and Who Was behind It?,” , Feb. 14, 2020
	46.	History, “Why Homework Was Banned,” (accessed Feb. 24, 2022)
	47.	Valerie Strauss, “Does Homework Work When Kids Are Learning All Day at Home?,” , Sep. 2, 2020
	48.	Sara M Moniuszko, “Is It Time to Get Rid of Homework? Mental Health Experts Weigh In,” , Aug. 17, 2021
	49.	Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, “The Worsening Homework Problem,” , Apr. 13, 2021
	50.	Kiara Taylor, “Digital Divide,” , Feb. 12, 2022
	51.	Marguerite Reardon, “The Digital Divide Has Left Millions of School Kids Behind,” , May 5, 2021
	52.	Rachel Paula Abrahamson, “Why More and More Teachers Are Joining the Anti-Homework Movement,” , Sep. 10, 2021

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Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here’s what you should do instead.

We are all busier than we want to be, but our neighbors have an extra, unnecessary hurdle that makes life more difficult.

Next door, the kids have homework. This involves 30 minutes of child-wrangling and patience-testing five days a week, pressure-cooking the little downtime they have together as a family.

Meanwhile, our family takes that time to enjoy our kids. No efficiency, no productivity, no agenda; just parents and children hanging out.

Missing from the homework conversation is how no-homework policies benefit the whole family — parents and caregivers included.

The remedy to this would likely involve an overhaul of our paid leave and vacation policies, as well as modifications to our daily and yearly school schedules. This is not a quick fix.

Ending homework for elementary school-aged kids is, on the other hand, relatively easy. We just have to stop doing it.

We need to do less

Feeling overwhelmed is a defining trait of today’s parents and caregivers. We have too much to do, our kids have too much to do, and leisure and happiness are the prices we pay for it.

When every minute is accounted for, sometimes two or three times over, a reprieve from something as seemingly minor as homework can make a big difference.

Teach your children, and yourself, to do less

From an academic standpoint, Cline’s main interest is for kids to be reading at home. However, he says, forcing it is likely to backfire. Instead, parents and caregivers should try to encourage reading by giving their kids plenty of choices, and, whenever possible, integrating reading into a cozy routine (that may or may not include hot chocolate).

But ultimately, the best replacement for homework is, simply, a parent or caregiver’s attention.

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4 Ways to Make Homework Time Less Painful

Improving a few important skills can help change bad homework habits.

Published on Sep 27, 2016

Executive Function Consultation, Education and Skills (EXCEL) Clinic

“It’s not unusual for her to forget to bring home the right books and papers to do her assignment.”

“Getting him to stop what he’s doing and start homework is a daily struggle.”

“she always finds a reason to jump up from the table to get something else she needs in the other room.”, “he turns in work late all the time because he didn’t realize when it was due.”.

“In some cases, the root of homework troubles is weakness with one or more executive functions,” says Iris Paltin, PhD , Pediatric Neuropsychologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Executive functions are the skills that let us complete daily tasks. Children and teens can work around executive function difficulties with specific interventions that create new habits, overriding a cognitive challenge.”

Here are four methods Dr. Paltin suggests to improve a weak executive function and address common homework challenges.

“It’s not unusual for her to forget to bring home the right books and papers to do an assignment.”

If your child frequently comes home without everything they need for homework and studying, they could be struggling to develop inhibition skills. Inhibition skills would make it easier to stop themselves from running out the door without the things they need.

Try this: Introduce a forced “stop and think” moment.

How to do it: Use a hook or strap that stops your child from grabbing their backpack from a locker or cubby and running out the door. Attach the backpack to the locker or another item that stays at school (maybe backup sneakers or a gym bag). When your child takes their backpack from their locker, their grab-and-go pattern will be interrupted when they have to pause to unhook it. The forced stop will serve as a cue to stop and think, and gather everything they need before going home.

If your child struggles to start homework, constantly stalls, and is regularly late finishing projects, they may be struggling to develop initiation skills.

Try this: Use a timer.

How to do it: Put the timer beside your child and put five minutes on the clock. Tell them they have five minutes to finish their game, grab a snack or use the bathroom — then it’s time for homework. If you want, you can offer a reward. You might say, “If you start your homework without being asked three nights in a row, we can get an ice cream the third night.” Later, after a pattern of success, you can take away the external reward.

If your child is constantly bouncing up from homework to get a snack, pencil or missing book, they may be struggling to develop organizational skills.

Try this: Pack a shower caddy with supplies.

How to do it: A shower caddy can hold all of your child’s usual homework supplies, like sharpened pencils, erasers, markers, pens, colored pencils, a ruler, scissors, tape, a snack, a bottle of water and a calculator (if appropriate). With everything close at hand, your child is less likely to get distracted and more likely to complete the task at hand.

If it seems your child is never quite sure what they should be working on, how long they have to get an assignment done or what the due date is, they may be struggling to develop organizational skills.

Try this: Teach your child how to use a daily planner.

How to do it: Many children already have a planner, but don’t assume they know how to use it. Sit down with your child and their planner. Show them where and how to write down the due date of a homework assignment, what materials are needed, and how to plan for larger projects that must be completed over multiple days. It’s important for students and parents to check the planner each night. Praise your child for writing down the assignments and instruct them to check off when assignments are completed.

These simple suggestions will have the short-term benefit of easing the stress of homework, but in the long term, your child will strengthen the skills they need to be productive throughout their life.

Contributed by: Iris Paltin, PhD, ABPP-CN

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Is Homework Pointless?

Around the third or fourth grade, my family started to inquire why I carried so many books to and from school. When I told them I had to for all my homework, I remember them launching into narratives about how “when I was your age” they didn’t have much in the way of homework.

By the sixth grade, I was staying up half the night to trace maps of the Lewis and Clark expedition, finishing up math assignments, and completing my reading for English. Most of the time, I would skip dinner to complete all my assignments. When my father would check on me close to 10 pm, it would be out of concern, not to praise his daughter for her scholastic dedication. And when I read about how much homework today’s kids are slaving away over, I see that not that much has changed since I was a kid.

When evaluating the many weak spots of modern education, homework often comes up among parents and teachers alike as perhaps an outdated form of educating children. Excessive and needless homework assignments, that read more like busy work than critical exercises, are considered just one of my factors that are stressing out our children at younger and younger ages.

Vicki Abeles , a filmmaker, lawyer and mother of three recently told The New York Times that homework is part of much larger overbearing scholastic culture that doesn’t really teach our kids anything:

Many of our children are already stretched to unhealthy breaking points, loaded down with excessive homework, extracurricular activities and outside tutoring because they’re led to believe high test scores, a slew of Advanced Placement classes and a packed resume are their ticket to college and success. This has led to an epidemic of anxious, unhealthy, sleep-deprived, burned-out, disengaged, unprepared children…

Academically-driven children who want to do well are faced with skipping other enriching activities, like the arts, which ultimately contribute to a child’s ability to learn. But with so many assignments, time with say a musical instrument is scarce.

Annie Murphy Paul , the author of Origins , writes that excessive homework is not only cutting into children’s other interests, but also their physical health. With so much time sitting down at a desk, many children aren’t getting nearly enough exercise which in turn prohibits learning:

Exercise, too, is vital to children’s learning. Research has demonstrated that physical activity boosts attention and motivation and reduces behavioral problems, and may even enhance the ability to think and reason. An article in the journal Health Psychology reported earlier this year that overweight children who began exercising for 40 minutes a day increased their scores on an intelligence test, and scans of their brains showed greater activity in areas responsible for complex thought. Lastly, the arts ”” music, drama, drawing and painting ”” are not only valuable in themselves, but also promote the development of academic skills. A recent study of two New York City public schools ”” similar but for the fact that one school offered intensive music training beginning in kindergarten ”” found that second-graders who’d been given the instruction in music had reading skills superior to those of second-graders who’d received no musical education.

Some schools, like the Montessori school for example, take a different approach to homework. According to “the Montessori way,” children should be allowed to develop in other ways once exiting campus. Montessori doesn’t assign homework until students are in late elementary school or middle school. As stated on their website, the theory behind Montessori is that children don’t need homework after a long school day :

Children work hard in school, just as their parents do at the office. All of the usual arguments that parents and mainstream teachers use to justify homework miss the point. Homework does not teach children responsibility, time management skills, self-discipline, or more of what they should be learning during the day. What it teaches is how to put up with a job that they dislike. Many teachers seem to think that they can help their students become better educated by requiring them to do tasks that few would ever do voluntarily.

Their website also states that, “Even though most Montessori schools do not require homework, many ask children to read and write daily.” Kids write in journals or do creative exercises that they invent themselves. Even though Montessori does send home assignments eventually, they are far from the traditional assignments you’d find in the folders of many kids. Montessori suggests interviewing a grandparent, finding a pen pal on the other side of the United States, or researching a city that you have never been to.

The debate about homework is far from over, but with some parents openly admitting to doing their children’s homework for them , we clearly have a problem. Whether it’s ineffective, a waste of your child’s time, or costing them sleep at night, in the long run, conventional homework can seem pretty pointless to a child’s development and education.

(photo: Shutterstock)

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Homework – Top 3 Pros and Cons

Father helping his son with his homework. Parent child student little boy

While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word "homework" dates back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Younger asked his followers to practice their speeches at home. Memorization exercises as homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks and other scholars. [45]

In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or "People’s Schools" were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. This concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the United States by Horace Mann , who encountered the idea in Prussia. [45]

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of homework as students were schooling remotely and many were doing all school work from home. Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss asked, "Does homework work when kids are learning all day at home?" While students were mostly back in school buildings in fall 2021, the question remains of how effective homework is as an educational tool. [47]

Pro Arguments	Con Arguments

Pro Arguments

Pro 1: homework improves student achievement..

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

Research published in the High School Journal indicated that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework "scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average." [6]

Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. [7] [8]

Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school. [10]

Pro 2: Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good study habits and life skills.

Students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor NYC, explained, "at-home assignments help students learn the material taught in class. Students require independent practice to internalize new concepts… [And] these assignments can provide valuable data for teachers about how well students understand the curriculum." [11] [49]

Elementary school students who were taught "strategies to organize and complete homework," such as prioritizing homework activities, collecting study materials, note-taking, and following directions, showed increased grades and more positive comments on report cards. [17]

Research by the City University of New York noted that "students who engage in self-regulatory processes while completing homework," such as goal-setting, time management, and remaining focused, "are generally more motivated and are higher achievers than those who do not use these processes." [18]

Homework also helps students develop key skills that they’ll use throughout their lives: accountability, autonomy, discipline, time management, self-direction, critical thinking, and independent problem-solving. Freireich and Platzer noted that "homework helps students acquire the skills needed to plan, organize, and complete their work." [12] [13] [14] [15] [49]

Pro 3: Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning.

Thanks to take-home assignments, parents are able to track what their children are learning at school as well as their academic strengths and weaknesses. [12]

Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that parental involvement in homework can improve class performance, especially among economically disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic students. [20]

Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: "Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students." [21]

Homework can also help clue parents in to the existence of any learning disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust learning strategies as needed. Duke University Professor Harris Cooper noted, "Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning disability until homework revealed it to them." [12]

Con Arguments

Con 1: too much homework can be harmful..

A poll of California high school students found that 59% thought they had too much homework. 82% of respondents said that they were "often or always stressed by schoolwork." High-achieving high school students said too much homework leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems. [24] [28] [29]

Alfie Kohn, an education and parenting expert, said, "Kids should have a chance to just be kids… it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow." [27]

Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, explained, "More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies." [48]

Excessive homework can also lead to cheating: 90% of middle school students and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework, and 43% of college students engaged in "unauthorized collaboration" on out-of-class assignments. Even parents take shortcuts on homework: 43% of those surveyed admitted to having completed a child’s assignment for them. [30] [31] [32]

Con 2: Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap.

Kiara Taylor, financial expert, defined the digital divide as "the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t. Though the term now encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology—along with access (or a lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology." For students, this is often called the homework gap. [50] [51]

30% (about 15 to 16 million) public school students either did not have an adequate internet connection or an appropriate device, or both, for distance learning. Completing homework for these students is more complicated (having to find a safe place with an internet connection, or borrowing a laptop, for example) or impossible. [51]

A Hispanic Heritage Foundation study found that 96.5% of students across the country needed to use the internet for homework, and nearly half reported they were sometimes unable to complete their homework due to lack of access to the internet or a computer, which often resulted in lower grades. [37] [38]

One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it "potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who already experience some privilege in the school system while further disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position." [39]

Con 3: Homework does not help younger students, and may not help high school students.

We’ve known for a while that homework does not help elementary students. A 2006 study found that "homework had no association with achievement gains" when measured by standardized tests results or grades. [7]

Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night actually did worse. [41]

Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not the most effective tool for young learners to apply new information: "They’re learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework." [42]

In fact, homework may not be helpful at the high school level either. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, stated, "I interviewed high school teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no downside, it was all upside." He explains, "just because the same kids who get more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made that happen." [52]

Discussion Questions

Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience, and other types of information. Explain your answer(s).
If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help students learn classroom material? Explain your answer(s).
How has homework been helpful to you personally? How has homework been unhelpful to you personally? Make carefully considered lists for both sides.

Take Action

Examine an argument in favor of quality homework assignments from Janine Bempechat.
Explore Oxford Learning’s infographic on the effects of homework on students.
Consider Joseph Lathan’s argument that homework promotes inequality
Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.
Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives .
Tom Loveless, "Homework in America: Part II of the 2014 Brown Center Report of American Education," brookings.edu, Mar. 18, 2014
Edward Bok, "A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents," The Ladies Home Journal , Jan. 1900
Tim Walker, "The Great Homework Debate: What’s Getting Lost in the Hype," neatoday.org, Sep. 23, 2015
University of Phoenix College of Education, "Homework Anxiety: Survey Reveals How Much Homework K-12 Students Are Assigned and Why Teachers Deem It Beneficial," phoenix.edu, Feb. 24, 2014
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), "PISA in Focus No. 46: Does Homework Perpetuate Inequities in Education?," oecd.org, Dec. 2014
Adam V. Maltese, Robert H. Tai, and Xitao Fan, "When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math," The High School Journal , 2012
Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, and Erika A. Patall, "Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Researcher, 1987-2003," Review of Educational Research , 2006
Gökhan Bas, Cihad Sentürk, and Fatih Mehmet Cigerci, "Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research," Issues in Educational Research , 2017
Huiyong Fan, Jianzhong Xu, Zhihui Cai, Jinbo He, and Xitao Fan, "Homework and Students’ Achievement in Math and Science: A 30-Year Meta-Analysis, 1986-2015," Educational Research Review , 2017
Charlene Marie Kalenkoski and Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia, "Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement?," iza.og, Apr. 2014
Ron Kurtus, "Purpose of Homework," school-for-champions.com, July 8, 2012
Harris Cooper, "Yes, Teachers Should Give Homework – The Benefits Are Many," newsobserver.com, Sep. 2, 2016
Tammi A. Minke, "Types of Homework and Their Effect on Student Achievement," repository.stcloudstate.edu, 2017
LakkshyaEducation.com, "How Does Homework Help Students: Suggestions From Experts," LakkshyaEducation.com (accessed Aug. 29, 2018)
University of Montreal, "Do Kids Benefit from Homework?," teaching.monster.com (accessed Aug. 30, 2018)
Glenda Faye Pryor-Johnson, "Why Homework Is Actually Good for Kids," memphisparent.com, Feb. 1, 2012
Joan M. Shepard, "Developing Responsibility for Completing and Handing in Daily Homework Assignments for Students in Grades Three, Four, and Five," eric.ed.gov, 1999
Darshanand Ramdass and Barry J. Zimmerman, "Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework," Journal of Advanced Academics , 2011
US Department of Education, "Let’s Do Homework!," ed.gov (accessed Aug. 29, 2018)
Loretta Waldman, "Sociologist Upends Notions about Parental Help with Homework," phys.org, Apr. 12, 2014
Frances L. Van Voorhis, "Reflecting on the Homework Ritual: Assignments and Designs," Theory Into Practice , June 2010
Roel J. F. J. Aries and Sofie J. Cabus, "Parental Homework Involvement Improves Test Scores? A Review of the Literature," Review of Education , June 2015
Jamie Ballard, "40% of People Say Elementary School Students Have Too Much Homework," yougov.com, July 31, 2018
Stanford University, "Stanford Survey of Adolescent School Experiences Report: Mira Costa High School, Winter 2017," stanford.edu, 2017
Cathy Vatterott, "Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs," ascd.org, 2009
End the Race, "Homework: You Can Make a Difference," racetonowhere.com (accessed Aug. 24, 2018)
Elissa Strauss, "Opinion: Your Kid Is Right, Homework Is Pointless. Here’s What You Should Do Instead.," cnn.com, Jan. 28, 2020
Jeanne Fratello, "Survey: Homework Is Biggest Source of Stress for Mira Costa Students," digmb.com, Dec. 15, 2017
Clifton B. Parker, "Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework," stanford.edu, Mar. 10, 2014
AdCouncil, "Cheating Is a Personal Foul: Academic Cheating Background," glass-castle.com (accessed Aug. 16, 2018)
Jeffrey R. Young, "High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame," chronicle.com, Mar. 28, 2010
Robin McClure, "Do You Do Your Child’s Homework?," verywellfamily.com, Mar. 14, 2018
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Home / Expert Articles / Child Behavior Problems / School & Homework

“My Child Refuses to Do Homework” — How to Stop the Nightly Struggle Over Schoolwork

By janet lehman, msw.

For many parents, getting their kids to do their homework is a nightly struggle. Some kids refuse to do their homework. Others claim that they don’t have homework, but then the report card comes out, and you realize that their work was not being done.

So why is homework time so difficult? In my opinion, one of the major reasons is that it’s hard for kids to focus at home. Look at it this way: when your child is in school, they’re in a classroom where there aren’t a lot of distractions. The learning is structured and organized, and all the students are focusing on the same thing.

But when your child comes home, their brain clicks over to “free time” mode. In their mind, home is a place to relax, have a snack, listen to music, and play video games. Kids simply don’t view the home as the place to do schoolwork.

If the homework struggles you experience are part of a larger pattern of acting out behavior, then the child is resisting to get power over you. They intend to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and homework just becomes another battlefield. And, as on any other battlefield, parents can use tactics that succeed or tactics that fail.

Regardless of why your child won’t do their homework, know that fighting over it is a losing proposition for both of you. You will end up frustrated, angry, and exhausted, and your child will have found yet another way to push your buttons. And, even worse, they will wind up hating school and hating learning.

A major part of getting your child to do their homework lies in establishing a system so that your child comes to see that homework is just a regular part of home life. Once they accept that, you’ve already won half the battle. Accordingly, my first few tips are around setting up this system. If you get the system right, things tend to fall into place.

Put this system in place with your child at a time when things are calm and going well rather than during the heat of an argument. Tell your child that you’re going to try something different starting next week with homework that will make it go better for everyone. Then explain the system.

You’ll find that this system will make your life easier as a parent, will make you more effective as a parent, and will help your child to get the work done. And when your child gets their work done, they’re more likely to succeed, and nothing drives motivation more than success.

Structure the Evening for Homework

When your kids come home, there should be a structure and a schedule set up each night. I recommend that you write this up and post it on the refrigerator or in some central location in the house. Kids need to know that there is a time to eat, a time to do homework, and also that there is free time. And remember, free time starts after homework is done.

Homework time should be a quiet time in your whole house. Siblings shouldn’t be in the next room watching TV or playing video games. The whole idea is to eliminate distractions. The message to your child is, “You’re not going to do anything anyway, so you might as well do your homework.”

Even if your child doesn’t have homework some nights, homework time should still mean no phone and no electronics. Instead, your child can read a book or a magazine in their room or work on longer-term assignments. Consistently adhering to the homework time structure is important to instill the homework habit.

Start the Evening Homework Habit When Your Kids are Young

If your children are younger and they don’t get homework yet, set aside quiet time each evening where your child can read or do some type of learning. Doing so will help children understand that evening quiet and study time is a part of everyday home life, just like chores. This habit will pay off when the real homework begins.

Use a Public Place for Homework

For a lot of kids, sending them to their rooms to do their homework is a mistake. Many children need your presence to stay focused and disciplined. And they need to be away from the stuff in their rooms that can distract them.

You know your child best. If you think they’re not being productive in their room, then insist they work at the kitchen table or in some other room where you can monitor them and where there will be fewer distractions.

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If they do homework in their room, the door to the room should be open, and you should check in from time to time. No text messaging, no fooling around. Take the phone and laptop away and eliminate electronics from the room during study time. In short, you want to get rid of all the temptations and distractions.

Give Breaks During Homework Time

Many kids get tired halfway through homework time, and that’s when they start acting up. If your child is doing an hour of homework, have them take a 5-minute break every half-hour so that they can get up, have a snack, and stretch their legs. But don’t allow electronics during the break—electronics are just too distracting.

Monitor the break and ensure that your child gets back to work promptly.

Be sure to encourage your child when they’re discouraged. It’s okay to say things like:

“I know it’s a drag, but think of this—when you get your work done, the rest of the night is yours.”

“Look, if you do your work all week, you’ll have the whole weekend to do what you want.”

Show your child empathy—how many of us truly enjoyed homework every night? It’s work, pure and simple. But your child will be encouraged when they begin to have success with their work.

Help Your Child Get Started With Their Homework

Some kids have a hard time getting assignments started. They may be overwhelmed or unsure where to begin. Or the work may seem too difficult.

There’s a concept I explain in The Total Transformation® child behavior program called hurdle help . If you have a child who has a hard time getting started, spend the first five minutes with them to get them over the first couple of hurdles. Perhaps help them with the first math problem or make sure they understand the assignment.

For many kids who are slow starters, hurdle help is very effective. This doesn’t mean you are doing their homework for them—this is simply extra help designed to get them going on their own.

Help Your Child Manage Long-Term Assignments

If your child has a big, long-term project, then you want to work with them to estimate how much time it’s going to take. Then your child has to work within that time frame. So if your child has a science project, help them manage and structure their time. For instance, if the project is due in 30 days, ask them:

“How much time are you going to spend on it each night?”

They might say, “15 minutes a night,” and you hold them to that.

Don’t assume that your child knows how to manage their time effectively. As adults, we sometimes take for granted the habits we have spent a lifetime developing and forget that our kids are not there yet.

Make Sunday Night a School Night

The way that I structure the weekend is that Sunday night is a school night, not Friday. So if your child has homework for the weekend, and as long as they’re done all their work for the past week, they get Friday and Saturday night off and can do their homework on Sunday night.

If there’s a project or something big to do over the weekend, then work with your child to budget their time. They may have to put some time in on Saturday or Sunday during the day. But other than that, your child should have the weekend off too, just like adults do.

The Weekend Doesn’t Begin Until Overdue Work Is Done

If your child has overdue homework, their weekend shouldn’t begin until those assignments are done. In other words, Friday night is a homework night if their week’s work is not complete.

Believe me, this is a highly effective consequence for kids because it creates a great incentive to get their work done. Indeed, each minute they’re doing homework is a minute they could be hanging out with friends or playing video games.

If you can hold to this rule once and deal with the complaining, then next week the homework will be done.

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By the way, if they say they can’t do their homework because they didn’t bring their school books home, they should be grounded for the weekend. You can say:

“I don’t want to hear that you can’t do it because you don’t have your books. You’d better call around and find a friend who you can borrow them from. Otherwise, you’ll be staying in this weekend.”

Make Homework a Higher Priority Than Activities

Kids are involved in a lot of after school activities these days. I understand that. But my priority has always been “homework comes first.”

In my opinion, if the homework isn’t done on Monday, then your child shouldn’t go to football on Tuesday. It’s fine if he misses a practice or two. You can say:

“Here’s the deal. We’re not going to football today. You need to get your work done first.”

If your child says, “Well, if I miss a practice, I’m going to get thrown off the team,” You can say:

“Well, then make sure your work is complete. Otherwise, you’re not going to practice. That’s all there is to it.”

I personally don’t put football, soccer, or any other extracurricular activities above homework and home responsibilities. I don’t believe parents should be going from soccer to karate to basketball with their kids while homework and school responsibilities are being neglected.

Use Rewards for Schoolwork, Not Bribes

Most kids get personal satisfaction out of getting good grades and completing their work, and that’s what we’re aiming for. Nevertheless, it’s important to reinforce positive behavior, and that may mean offering an incentive for getting good grades. For instance, my son knew that he would get a certain reward for his performance if he got all B’s or above. The reward was an incentive to do well.

One of the shortcuts we take as parents is to bribe our kids rather than rewarding them for performance. It can be a subtle difference. A reward is something that is given after an achievement. A bribe is something you give your child after negotiating with them over something that is already a responsibility.

If you bribe your child to do their homework or to do anything else that is an expected responsibility, then your child will come to expect something extra just for behaving appropriately. Bribes undermine your parental authority as kids learn that they can get things from you by threatening bad behavior. Bribes put your child in charge of you.

The appropriate parental response to not meeting a responsibility is a consequence, not a bribe. A bribe says, “If you do your homework, I will extend your curfew by an hour.” In contrast, a consequence says, “If you don’t do your homework, you’re grounded until it’s finished.” Never bribe your kids to do what they’re expected to do.

Use Effective Consequences

When giving consequences, be sure they’re effective consequences. What makes an effective consequence? An effective consequence motivates your child to good behavior. They put you back in control and teach your child how to problem-solve, giving your child the skills needed to be successful.

An effective consequence looks like this:

“If you fall below a B average, then you can no longer study in your room and must study at the kitchen table until you get your average back to a B.”

For the child who prefers to study in their room, this is an effective consequence.

Another effective consequence would be the following:

“If you choose not to study during the scheduled time, you will lose your electronics for the night. Tomorrow, you’ll get another chance to use them.”

And the next day, your child gets to try again to earn the privilege of electronics. Short-term consequences like this are very effective. Just don’t take away this privilege for more than a day as your child will have no incentive to do better the next time.

For more on consequences, read the article on how to give effective consequences to your child .

Be Prepared to Let Your Child Fail

Failure should be an option, and sometimes you just have to let your child fail . Parents often do their kids a disservice when they shield them from the consequences of their actions. If your child chooses not to study enough and they get a failing grade, that’s the natural consequence for their behavior. And they should experience the discomfort that results from their behavior.

Let me be clear. If you interfere and try to get your child’s teacher to change their grade, your child will learn the wrong lesson. Your child will learn that if they screw up enough, Mom and Dad will take care of them. And they don’t learn their math or science or whatever it is they failed.

To be sure, failing is a hard lesson, but it’s the right lesson when your child fails. And it’s not the end of the world. In fact, for many kids, it’s what turns them around.

Don’t Fight with Your Child Over Homework

Don’t get sucked into arguments with your child about homework. Make it very clear that if they don’t do their homework, then the next part of their night does not begin. Keep discussions simple. Say to your child:

“Right now is homework time. The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can have free time.”

Say this in a supportive way with a smile on your face. Again, it’s important not to get sucked into fights with your child. Remember, you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. If your child refuses to do his or her work, then calmly give the consequence that you established for not doing homework.

Also, trying to convince your child that grades are important is a losing battle. You can’t make your child take school as seriously as you do. The truth is, they don’t typically think that way. To get your child to do homework, focus on their behavior, not their motivation. Rather than giving a lecture, just maintain the system that enables them to get their work done. Often, the motivation comes after the child has had a taste of success, and this system sets them up for that success.

Stay Calm When Helping Your Child With Their Homework

It’s important to be calm when helping your child with their homework. Don’t argue about the right answer for the math problem or the right way to do the geography quiz. If you get frustrated and start yelling and screaming at your child, this sets a negative tone and won’t help them get the work done. It’s better to walk away than it is to engage in an argument, even when you’re just trying to be helpful.

For couples, it may be that one of you is more patient and acceptable to your child. Let that person take on the homework monitoring responsibilities. And don’t take it personally if it isn’t you.

Remember, if you can’t stay calm when helping your child, or if you find that your help is making the situation worse, then it’s better not to help at all. Find someone else or talk to the teacher about how your child can get the help they need. And try not to blame your child for the frustration that you feel.

It’s Your Child’s Homework, Not Yours

Remember that your child is doing the homework as a school assignment. The teacher will ultimately be the judge of how good or bad, correct or incorrect the work is. You’re not responsible for the work itself; your job is to guide your child. You can always make suggestions, but ultimately it’s your child’s job to do their assignments. And it’s the teacher’s job to grade them.

Know the Teachers and the Assignments

Build good relationships with your child’s teachers. Meet with the teachers at the beginning of the school year and stay in touch as the year progresses. Your relationships with your child’s teachers will pay off if your child begins to have problems.

And if your child does have problems, then communicate with their teachers weekly. If they’re not handing in their work on time, ask the teachers to send you any assignments that they didn’t get done each week. Many schools have assignments available online, which is a big help for parents. Just don’t rely on your child to give you accurate information. Find out for yourself.

The bottom line is that you want to hold your child accountable for doing their work, and you can only do that if you know what the work is. If you keep yourself informed, then you won’t be surprised when report cards come out.

Work with your child on a system to keep track of assignments. I recommend an old-fashioned paper calendar simply because we already have too many distracting electronics in our lives—experiment and use what works best for your child.

Finally, try to see your child’s teachers as your allies. In my experience, most teachers are dedicated and caring, but I realize that this isn’t always the case. So, for your child’s sake, do your best to find a way to work with their teachers.

If You Think Your Child Might Have a Learning Disability

Kids are expected to do some difficult work, and your child may struggle. If your child is having an especially hard time, talk with their teacher. Ask if it’s typical for your child to be struggling in this area.

In some cases, the teacher may recommend testing to see if your child has a learning disability. While this can be hard to hear as a parent, it’s important to find out so that you can make the necessary adjustments.

If it turns out that your child does have a learning disability, then you want to get an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) set up with the school.

Most kids don’t enjoy homework, and for some, it will always be a struggle. Our children all have different strengths and abilities, and while some may never be excellent students, they might be great workers, talented artists, or thoughtful builders.

I have to admit that dealing with my son’s homework was one of my least favorite experiences as a parent. It was overwhelming at times. Often, I just wasn’t equipped to offer the help he needed.

Our son struggled with a learning disability, which made the work feel unending at times. My husband James was much better at helping him, so he took on this responsibility. But even with this division of labor, we had to make adjustments to our schedules, our lives, and our expectations to make sure our son did his homework as expected.

Life would be easier if all children were self-motivated students who came home, sat down, and dug into their homework without being asked. This is hardly the case, though. Therefore, you need to set up a system that is right for your child, and it’s going to be easier for some kids than for others.

We’re trying to raise our kids to be responsible and accountable for their homework. And we’re trying to avoid fighting with them over it every night. When I had parents in my office, I would take these concepts and show them how they could make it work for their families in their own homes. The families I worked with were able to turn the nightly homework struggle around successfully time and time again.

Related content: The Homework Battle: How to Get Children to Do Homework

Empowering Parents Podcast: Apple, Spotify

About Janet Lehman, MSW

Janet Lehman, MSW, has worked with troubled children and teens for over 30 years. A veteran social worker, she specializes in child behavior issues — ranging from anger management and oppositional defiance to more serious criminal behavior in teens. She is co-creator of The Total Transformation® Program , The Complete Guide To Consequences™ , Getting Through To Your Child™ , and Two Parents One Plan™ .

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Hello, my grandson recently moved with me from another state. He is currently in 8th grade (but should be in 9th). He basically failed the last 2 years and was promoted. I would say he is at a 6th grade level. It's a daily fight with him to do his homework. He won't even try. I know a lot of this is because no one has ever made him do his homework before. I thought he would just have to get in a routine of doing it. He's been in school for a month now and its a fight every single day after school. I have lost all the patience I had. I am tired of being a broken record and being the "bad guy". I don't want to give up on him and send him back to his mom, where I know he will never graduate. I have made so many sacrifices to get him here, but I am literally at my wits end with this. I knew it wasn't going to be easy but I didn't think it was going to be this hard.

My rule is homework after school. If he comes home and does his homework after school, it was easier for him to complete. That lasted a week and a half. Now, he just sits there and does nothing. Does anyone have any suggestions? I couldn't live with myself if I sent him back and he became nothing but a drop out. I know I am not one to have patience, and I am trying but at the same time, I am almost over it. I don't like going to bed crying and knowing that he is crying too. I am open to all suggestions. Please and thank you.

I'm so sorry you are facing these struggles with your grandson. We here from many caregivers in similar situations, so you're not alone in your frustration. We have several articles that offer helpful tips for managing these homework struggles, which can be found here: https://www.empoweringparents.com/article-categories/child-behavior-problems/school-homework/

We appreciate you reaching out and wish you all the best moving forward. Be sure to check back and let us know how things are going.

Jessicar Thank you for this article and strategies. I echo many of the frustrations expressed by other parents here, including my opinion (as an educator) that homework should not exist. I agree that teachers and parents are in a struggle about which adult is responsible for supporting the child in getting More homework done. The best thing for my son was a free "homework club" in fourth and fifth grade where a teacher monitored completion of homework. He has nothing like this in middle school so far. Where I really disagree with the article is about extracurricular activities. Kids need physical activity through sports! They need enrichment beyond academics through the arts, theater, music. Many families send their children to religious, language, and/or cultural programs after school. If I sat in school all day, I'd want to move my body and interact with others too. The solution is not removing extracurricular activities that are healthy or motivating or valued. The solution is for schools to limit homework. Given that there is still homework as a reality--I'd like advice on when to have child do homework AFTER sports or extracurricular activity. When is the best time for homework if the goal is to go to bed on time (in my house in bed around 9 pm)? Between extracurricular and dinner--when the kid is tired? After dinner? My child is in 7th grade and I still can't figure it out. What do others do/think?

I found school to be extremely boring, as a teen. Looking back I realize that I hadn't found the work challenging enough. Personally, I struggled with this all through high school. I was completely disinterested in school, as a result.

I noticed that there wasn't a section addressing situations where children, who are motivated by challenges, do poorly as a result of boredom.

I enjoy reading many of the articles; even those which don't necessarily apply to my current situations with my child. One never knows what obstacles or challenges one may come across. Thank you

Here's what I know. Correcting our children when their behavior is displeasing is what most parents focus on. Without a lot of explanation I'm going to try to get you to change your focus. All children have 4 emotional needs:

1. A sense of belonging

2. A sense of personal power

3. To be heard and understood

4. Limits and boundaries

Rather than focus on your child's behavior, focus on meeting these needs. Meet the needs, change the behavior. There a 25 ways to meet these needs. One of the most effective is to spend regular one-on-one time with your child doing what your child wants to do. How do you spell love? T-I-M-E. It seems counter-intuitive, but just try it for a week. Do this for 1/2 hour every day for a week. See what happens.

Frustrated Confused Parent, I went through similar challenges with my son when he was in high school. As a grade school student his grades were always B and higher. The changes began when his mother and I separated; my son was 12yo. Prior to our separation I was the one who maintained, and enforced the habit of completing his assignments before extracurricular activities could be enjoyed. His mother never felt she had the patience or intelligence to assist him with his homework assignments and upon our separation she completely ignored his school work. Although he continued to follow the structure I had established through grade school, he soon began to realize that no one was showing interest any longer and, thus, began shirking school related responsibilities. My son and I were, and still are, close. I am certain that the separation likely had some affect on him, but it was more than that. He was reaching his teens and becoming more self-aware. Friends began to play a more integral and influential part in his life. Unfortunately my son's grades began slipping as he reached his early teens. For me, this was extremely frustrating since I was aware of how intelligent he was and of what he was capable. After many aggravating, lengthy, heated, and unyielding conversations with his mother about maintaining the structure established through grade school, it became clear she was incapable or simply unwilling. Essentially, he was on his own. Of course I would do whatever I could to help. For starters, I facilitated a transfer to a Charter School, realizing that he needed more individualized attention than that which a public school could provide. It seemed as though he was getting 'lost in the shuffle'.

Unfortunately the damage had already been done. After two years under his mother's lack of tutelage my son had developed some poor habits.

He struggled with maintaining good grades throughout his high school career. By 'maintaining good grades' I mean that he would take a grading of 45 in math and bring it to a 70 within three weeks of the end of a marking period. He ALWAYS passed, though. He would somehow get his grades to or even above passing by the end of the period. As I began to see this, I began to have more faith knowing that when the going got tough he would step up and take charge. It also indicated that he did well with what might perceive as an impossible goal. So, I started to have faith that he'd find his way.

He has since graduated, he has a good-paying job, and he is beginning school to become an electrician within the next month or so. In two weeks he moves into his own apartment, also. He's never done drugs, never drank alcohol, and never started smoking cigarettes. All of which I have done as a teen and well into my adult years. I am in recovery. My son is aware of my own struggles. Most importantly, I believe, is that he has a complete understanding that we all struggle in our own ways. Working through the difficulties, challenges, and obstacles are what makes us stronger and it's our compassion for others, and ourselves, which help us grow into decent adults.

I came to realize that the 'grades' he received in school had nothing to do with the amazing adult he's become; it was literally everything else.

NanaRound2 My 6 year old grandson has just taken 2 hours to write a list and write 3 sentences. He thinks if the words were shorter it wouldn't take so long. Already went through this with his dad. I celebrated more than he did when he graduated. Can't drag More another kid through school. Losing my mind and like the previous comment have tried EVERYTHING.

Yeah -been there, done that. Doesn't work. At least not for my child. I've read every *actual* parenting book out there ( You know, the books publishes by Harvard & Stanford professors who've been studying parenting and child psychology for the past 30 years?) ... and you're all missing something - because I've tried it all.

My kid DGAF. This was almost painful to read. "oh, yup - tried that one. That one too. Oh, hey - I've tried that as well."

This is so frustrating; tell me something I haven't already tried 50 times.

Psych Fan I'm with you my sophomore son DGAF . I tried so much stuff even set time stuff and he just doesn't go get his work out. He's 5'9 so I am 5'1 and I can't move him to do stuff . All he does is debate with me that More Grades really don't matter that he's like I'm just going to get D's because I'm not going to care to do better because I do not like school. He doesn't understand why I don't approve of D grades because I know he has better potential but he's like D grades I will pass and get my diploma .

The first thing on the list is to try and stay calm. While doing homework with my children I'm usually very calm. When I do get frustrated I'll leave the room for a moment, wash my face, and take a few deep breaths until I calm down. Or I'll make hot chocolate to help calm my nerves. It's not a perfect system, but what is?

Number two is to set clear expectations around homework time and responsibilities. We have a standard homework time at our house, with a timer and everything. If our kids meet the homework time goal they'll be rewarded later in the evening with family time. Each of our kids know their roles and responsibilities in the house whether the work gets done before dinner or not.

Number three is a relationship with the teachers, each of whom e-mail us, some two or three times a day. Contact with them has never been better. They're teachers are all pretty awesome too.

Number Four, play the parental role most useful to your child...I have three kids. One needs no help at all, one needs minor help and advisement, while the third requires constant supervision or their e-mail might 'accidentally' open up. This we've provided through double teaming. One parent works with them until the other gets home, then they switch while the other goes to make dinner.

Five, keep activities similar with all your kids. We all live on the same schedule, if one of them finishes homework early they get the reward of extra quiet reading time-my kids are ALL book worms.

Six, Set up a structured time and place for homework. Done. Homework table with a supplies basket right in the middle of the room. Big enough for all of them to work at and then some, it's an octagonal table which my husband built. I also always have their 'homework snacks' waiting for them when they get home, and I usually try to make it healthy-even if they don't realize it.

Seven, start early. My kids have been doing 'homework' with me since they were babies, and (as I pointed out to them yesterday) they loved it. We'd learn about cooking, dinosaurs, amphibians, insects, math, English, chemistry, even the periodic table came up. We'd do work pages every day and they'd love it.

Eight, hurdle help, works in area's like math, but not so much with history or English when the problems aren't as straight forward. But we do use this method where it applies.

Nine, choose the best person for the job. I'm best at English and my husband at math. When I get stuck on math I know who to go to, and I'll even study in my spare time to get better at it so I can be more useful in case he has to work late. That being said, we both devote a lot of our time to helping our kids with their homework.

Ten, show empathy and support. Done, not only can I relate to my kids, but I've pointed out that not getting their work done will make them feel bad bad enough, and that that's why we should work on getting it done together, so they have something to be proud of.

Use positive reinforcement and incentives. :) There was this one time I sat my son down at a table with a work book about 400 pages long. He was young, not even in school yet. Next to the book I placed a giant bag of M&Ms. I told him for every page he got done, he could have one m&m. About ten minutes later he finished the workbook and grinned up at me. When I found out he'd finished the book, I quickly checked it to see if it was done well, and then pushed the bag of M&M's towards him and told him he could just have it...Now they get rewarded in video games and computer time...

It seems that according to this article I'm doing everything right...So why is my child still struggling with homework/classwork? They've literally just refused to do it. Have seriously just sat in their chair without saying a word and stared at the table, or desk, or screen- as the majority of work is now done on computers...I'll sit with them, ask them if they need help, try to help them with problems. They will tell me the right answer to the questions being asked and then refuse to write it down. I feel like I've done everything I can as a parent to help them, but despite all my efforts, it isn't working. So...when all of these things fail, when a parent has done everything right, and there is nothing more they can do short of taking the pen or pencil into their own hands and doing it themselves, (but that would be cheating their child out of an education) what then should the parents do?

When our kids don't get their homework done before dinner, they're sent down the hall where it's quiet so they can finish it at the desk there, while the other kids have family time. They are told to come and get us if they really need help after that. But at this point it's like ostracizing our child for not doing homework.

I agree with most of what's on this page, and our family lifestyle reflects that, but I will disagree with one thing it said. It is our job to help our kids and be supportive of them yes, to nurture them and help them get the skills they need to take care of themselves and their home when they're older...but it is not our job to do the teachers work for them, they get paid for that. Some days it seems like that's what's expected of parents. Some even send home classwork if the kids don't finish it in class. Which means the child now has even more work to do on top of their homework. Though I understand that the teachers want the child to finish the lesson, and were the homework not a factor I probably wouldn't mind it as much. I don't even mind them sending home study guides to help kids before tests (Which is what homework was originally) but to send home overwhelming piles of work each night for parents to help kids with, (Each child with different homework so that parents need to bounce from history, to math to English) it's unreasonable. When teachers send home homework, they're dictating what the parents can do with the little time they have with their child. Which is wrong. We once had to cancel a trip to a science museum because our child had too much homework to finish and there was no way to make it in time and get their homework done. They could have had an amazing educational experience which would overall help them get excited about learning with new and fun tactile experiences, but their schedule (and therefore our schedule) was being dictated by the teacher while they weren't even in class. Of course I try not to talk bad about homework in front of my children, because that would make it even more difficult to get them to do it. But children NEED family time, they NEED to be kids. To be allowed to get away from their work and be themselves, to go outside and play with their friends, or even go out to dinner once in a while with their parents. Homework has made it difficult to grow a relationship with our children beyond the confines of what the teachers are dictating. It's violating in some ways and frustrating in others. It's grown into this monstrous thing which it was never meant to become, and the funny part about it is that most studies done on it show that schools who don't have homework have higher test scores and graduation rates. Not to mention better mental health rates. Studies also show, that after a child is taught something, they'll only really learn it after a good nights sleep, and that no amount of homework will change that. Sleep is what our bodies need to absorb important information we learn throughout the day, so staying up late with homework might even be harmful to a child's education...

Sorry I guess that turned into a bit of a rant...In the end I was hoping to find something useful in this article, something I hadn't tried that might work, but I've done it all, and will probably continue to do all of it in hopes that consistency might be the key...It's just that even after years of already doing All of this consistently, it's still not working. It's as if my child has made a conscious decision Not to work. He's not unintelligent, he understands it, he's even been tested and found to have an above average ability to learn. He just not doing it..So what now? What more can I do to actually inspire him to do the work?

AshumSmashum Out of all of this, most of which I've read and tried a billion times, your comment hit deeper. My son scores in the 99% on tests but cannot sit down and do the simplest homework. He does have autism and adhd so when he freezes up on homework, despite More knowing it, I'm lost at how to help him get it done. He knows the work so why does he need to show it with 20 math problems after school that take forever to complete one? (whatever honors algebra stuff he's in, I was lucky to learn division lol) He has a high IQ and excels in all subjects and yet is being tutored, so far, in English just to get the work done. I'm so done with the emotional toll it takes on me and him at home. Nobody wants to go to work for 8 hours and come home and do the same for another 5 so why do we think our kids want to come home and do more classwork? I'm so appreciative of your comment!

JC Hi Barb, thank you for bringing this up! My son sounds a lot like you...and he really wants to get good grades and go to an Ivy League school. What could someone do to help an 8th grader in the moment of struggle, while making sure they don't get more More anxious from falling behind for the rest of the year?

Tb Hi Barb, I'm the parent of an 8th grader and I want to thank you for the comment you left here. You helped me look at the deeper issues and I really appreciate that. I'm going to approach the conversation with my son differently, thanks to you. Thank More you!

My 11 year old daughter, Alice, has always helped her 7 year old sister, Chole, with homework. But just recently Alice has been giving Chole the wrong answers. We have been trying to get her to give Chole the correct answers

but she always yells at us. She has a baby sister 2 months named Ray and ever since Ray was born she has been giving Chole wrong answers. I once overheard her and Kevin, my husband, talking about how she felt left out. She came and talked to me and said exactly what she had told Kevin. She also told me she has been getting bad grades and doesn't get her homework. Me and Alice talked and she said "All the cool New York girls get straight A's and ever since I started getting D's and F's they said I wasn't cool anymore." We started having her grandparents come over and she would yell, hit, scream, and talk back to them. She is a great student but she spends all of her time on her phone. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even at school she is on her phone. All I'm asking is that 1. How do I make her stop screaming, yelling, hitting, and back talking? 2. How do I make her feel cool and get A's again?and 3. How do I get her off her phone?

sounds like you have a number of concerns around your daughter’s behavior, and

it certainly can feel overwhelming. We would suggest https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/its-never-too-late-7-ways-to-start-parenting-more-effectively/ and focusing on just one or two of the most serious, to get

started. Behaviors like verbal or physical abuse would be of top priority,

while behaviors like https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/how-to-walk-away-from-a-fight-with-your-child-why-its-harder-than-you-think/ we would recommend ignoring, and not giving it any power or control.

Empowering Parents author Sara Bean offers some great insight into the reason

for poor child behavior in her article, https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/the-surprising-reason-for-bad-child-behavior-i-cant-solve-problems/.It sounds like your daughter is struggling to

find more effective ways to solve the problems she is facing, and the result is

the acting out behavior. Keep in mind, you can’t make your daughter do anything, but what you can do is help her to

learn better tools to solve whatever problems may come her way. Best of luck to

you and your family as you continue to work on this.

Emma Reed Alice also swears at school and she swears to teachers. Please we have tried everything, even her sister at age 18. What have we done wrong?

Being away from loved ones when they are struggling can be

distressing. It may help to know that it’s not unusual to see changes in

behavior as kids move from the tweens into adolescence, as Janet Lehman

explains in the article https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/adolescent-behavior-changes-is-your-child-embarrassed-by-you/. Normally responsible

kids can start to push back against meeting expectations and disrespect towards

parents and other authority figures can become quite common. The behavior you

describe isn’t OK; it is normal though. I can hear how much you want to help

your daughter and granddaughter

work through these challenges. If your daughter is open to it, you could share

some Empowering Parents articles with her, such as the one above and this one, https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/my-childs-behavior-is-so-bad-where-do-i-begin-how-to-coach-your-child-forward/.

We appreciate you writing in. Best of luck to you and your family moving

forward. Take care.

mphyvr Thanks for all these "strategies", they might work for some parents, but quite simplistic and just plain old common sense for more defiant kids... Thanks anyways and hope this article helps many.

Psych Fan I'm a mom of a sophomore he's also a swearing boy and will have quite a tantrum even with consequences of take away all he does is sleep. He doesn't like school says school is a waste of time and that grades won't matter in his adulthood . He says More it over n over about how schooling won't help him in the future as I go it will help you do good on a ACT and SAT he is like getting good scores on those are only good if your going to college. He also is like jobs won't look at my grades . I tell him homework teaches him responsibility once a job sees your amount of effort in school your going to have a heck of time getting hired. I even ask him how is he going to succeed to work real well at a job when he doesn't work hard at school he goes I don't need to work hard at school but I will need to work hard at a job.

dcastillo68 If it was only this simple, but, in reality it is not. Middle school syndrome is the worst. Kids don't want to be labeled as nerds so they do everything to try to fail. I went through that with my first born, and now again with my youngest. It is More very frustrating when I was the total opposite when I was growing up. I cared about my grades an I took it for granted thinking they will feel the same way. Now seeing how they are happy with just getting by is really frustrating to me because I am such an over achiever. They didn't even get an ounce of this. Very very frustrating. And I wish I have never invited video games to this household. That is all they want to do. I keep using this an incentive to bring them back on track, but as soon as I give them their games back, they are back to their old habits. Sorry, but I can't wait until they are finished with school and hopefully moving out of state to hopefully a college career. I may change my mind later, but at the moment, this is just how I feel. It is very hard too when you don't get any help. I find today's teacher to be lazy and pushing on more responsibility to the parents. Who has time to do a full day's of work, only to do additional work at home? okay, enough venting.

@frustrated single dad Diane Lewis Hi there - I have a son adopted out of foster care. He is 6 1/2 and has been in 5 homes. He is totally the same! They learn this behavior and are incredibly manipulative. They are so insanely smart. I worry about exactly the same thing. They turn on and off the behavior depending on who they are with and what they want.

We did Parent Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT) at the Mailman Center (Jackson Hospital Miami). It made a huge difference in the short-term. They basically taught us to be full-time behavioral therapists with my son. The effects wore off after a few months as my son adapted and found ways to circumvent the consequences techniques taught to us. He is like the Borg! I am going back to get more ideas on how to adapt and change and stay one step ahead of my son. The gals there are really smart!

So, that being said - we have to be Jean Luc Picard and constantly change and adapt and outsmart them - just like changing the phasers on a laser gun! It is bloody hard work. And, harder the older they get -

eg. He drops like a dead weight - throws his book bag and will not get in the car to go to school - response - next morning I headed it off by calling out to the kids "LAST ONE IN THE CAR IS A ROTTEN EGG!" This has worked for 2 days now.

Wont do homework 2 nights ago - response - "ooh I like doing word puzzles - Im going to do them and win" - this worked one night but not the next - he just then just left me to do his work - so I have told his teacher that there will be no school party for Alex next week unless he gets his homework finished - we will see if this works.....

It is totally exhausting and you have to be on your A game all the time. Im telling you this but - I have to tell myself this too. We have to stay really fit (like cross fit) and work out like a marine. We have to be very disciplined with ourselves - a healthy body is a healthy mind - we cannot let up at all. We have to stay calm at all times (again self discipline).

Im always looking for concrete reactions to situations with my son. Like I said - the entire day goes on like this with everything except what he wants to do. Wont get dressed in the morning - put out his clothes in dining room where there are no distractions or toys - tell him that if he gets dressed and ready for school quickly - he can spend the left over time on the trampoline. That worked this morning.

STAY STRONG MY BROTHER IN ARMS!!! If you can get into a PCIT program - do it.

Love to you - R

My child comes home and says he doesn't have homework, does something easy to make it look like he's doing his homework, or says he did it during free time in class. How do you combat this without going to the school everyday? Neither my husband nor I can do More this because of work, and the we asked the teacher's if it was possible to send us the assignments via email or let us come pick them up once a week with no cooperation. He is a very smart kid and gets "A's' on the work he does, but he is failing all of his core classes because he won't do homework.

@atmywitsend , my child is the same way. I'm at my wits end. I feel like I'm a failure as a parent because I thought I taught my smart kid to succeed - and instead she's lying to me.

Psych Fan NinaMays I'm with the same feelings as my son can be above a C student but he choose to go oh I rather just get F's on this work than to actually get at least a B or A on these many assignments.. I ask him why he chooses F's More in many assignments when he could get a grade to bring his grades up and me telling me he's not being his full potential as by making him not do his work how can I truly believe he's going to be successful and he's like I have big brains . Then I'm like why not show me by doing your school work he goes I don't need do that and I show you of my big brains by telling you school isn't important. Telling me I am brainwashed. He is a sophomore in high school.

FRUSTRATED PARENT NinaMays This is my reality too - "relationship" with teachers is difficult when they won't co-operate with homework expectations, or follow up email - the schools complain that kids are on the internet - yet its them providing wifi passwords - so kids are playing in class - lying about More homework - and since I'm not in the class, I have no idea until report cards surface.

Responses to questions posted on EmpoweringParents.com are not intended to replace qualified medical or mental health assessments. We cannot diagnose disorders or offer recommendations on which treatment plan is best for your family. Please seek the support of local resources as needed. If you need immediate assistance, or if you and your family are in crisis, please contact a qualified mental health provider in your area, or contact your statewide crisis hotline.

We value your opinions and encourage you to add your comments to this discussion. We ask that you refrain from discussing topics of a political or religious nature. Unfortunately, it's not possible for us to respond to every question posted on our website.

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Newsletters

Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #50

Welcome to Hall Pass, a newsletter written to keep you plugged into the conversations driving school board politics and governance.

In today’s edition, you’ll find:

On the issues: The debate over homework

Share candidate endorsements with us!
School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications

DeSantis releases list of 14 school board seats to flip in 2024

Extracurricular: education news from around the web.

Candidate Connection survey

Email us at [email protected] to share reactions or story ideas!

In this section, we curate reporting, analysis, and commentary on the issues school board members deliberate when they set out to offer the best education possible in their district.

How beneficial is homework?

Jay Caspian Kang writes that homework teaches students how to practice and master concepts and activities. Kang also says homework can help prepare children for tasks they might face in their careers.

Elissa Strauss writes that homework creates stress for students and families and makes kids unhappy. Strauss says income inequality makes homework too competitive and that homework contributes to unhealthy feelings of inadequacy.

The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong | Jay Caspian Kang, The New York Times

“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?’ … When you break it all down, the amount of class mobility our education system can grind out each year falls well short of what most people expect. … 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.”

Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here’s what you should do instead. | Elissa Strauss, CNN

“Feeling overwhelmed is a defining trait of today’s parents and caregivers. We have too much to do, our kids have too much to do, and leisure and happiness are the prices we pay for it. … It can feel scary to slow down. Rising income inequality has turned parenting into a competitive sport. It’s a winner-takes-all world and we want our kids to be the winners — unhappy, stressed-out winners. There is so much out there telling your children they need to do more and be more, and that whatever they think is enough is most definitely not enough. This means that parents and caregivers provide what is likely kids’ only shot at learning about leisure and togetherness. The overwhelming message from decades of research has found these are the main ingredients to happiness and well-being. Getting rid of homework is a relatively simple way to combat this high-stakes problem. It gives parents and caregivers the opportunity to teach their children these essential – albeit systematically ignored and undervalued – skills.”

School board update: filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications

Ballotpedia has historically covered school board elections in about 500 of the country’s largest districts. We’re gradually expanding the number we cover with our eye on the more than 13,000 districts with elected school boards.

Upcoming school board elections

On April 4 , Oklahoma and Wisconsin will hold school board general elections. We covered Oklahoma’s (Feb. 14) and Wisconsin’s (Feb. 21) primaries in previous editions of this newsletter. We’re covering all school board elections in both Oklahoma and Wisconsin this year.

We’re also covering elections in the following states/districts on April 4:

Anchorage School District school board in Alaska
School District U-46 school board in Illinois
Lincoln Public Schools in Nebraska
Missouri (several districts)

The 2024 election cycle is underway—including at the school board level.

On Feb. 21, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) released a list of school board incumbents he hopes to see defeated in the 2024 elections. DeSantis made the announcement following a meeting with state House of Representatives Speaker Paul Renner (R), Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, and Florida Republican Party Chair Christian Ziegler.

The list includes districts in the counties of Sarasota, Hillsborough, Duval, Brevard, Miami-Dade, Volusia, and Indian River—districts DeSantis has brought up in the past.

DeSantis endorsed 34 candidates in 2022. Twenty-nine of those candidates won their elections. In the August 2022 primaries, DeSantis-backed candidates succeeded in shifting the balance of power from liberal to conservative in several districts, including Miami-Dade and Sarasota. In Sarasota County, Tom Edwards was left as the remaining Democrat on the board.

In Florida, each county is a school district. Florida holds nonpartisan school board elections in even-numbered years. Primary candidates can win outright if they receive more than a simple majority of the vote.

DeSantis said the targeted incumbents “do not protect parental rights and have failed to protect students from woke ideologies.”

Edwards is one of the incumbents on DeSantis’ 2024 list. Edwards said , “I appreciate the spotlight that the governor is giving me for my good governance, and for my quality School Board work for the students and my community.”

As school board elections have increasingly reflected national partisan concerns, they’ve also attracted the attention of statewide officials and candidates, and national organizations. That includes Moms for Liberty , which began in Florida but endorses school board candidates across the country. The group describes itself as an organization for “all that have a desire to stand up for parental rights at all levels of government” and has generally backed candidates affiliated with the Republican Party.

National organizations, like Run For Something , have also backed Democratic school board candidates. Run for Something describes itself as “recruiting and supporting young progressives,” and helped elect Brevard School Board member Jennifer Jenkins and Miami-Dade County Public Schools school board member Luisa Santos —both of whom are on DeSantis’ 2024 list.

Incumbent governors like DeSantis don’t usually get involved in local school board elections. But in 2022, we tracked seven state executive officials and candidates—including two incumbent governors—in four states who endorsed candidates running for seats in school districts within Ballotpedia’s coverage scope. That scope has traditionally included all school districts in the 100 largest cities by population and the 200 largest school districts by student enrollment. Those officials included DeSantis and his gubernatorial Democratic candidate, Charlie Crist, as well as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R). The seven officials and candidates endorsed 110 candidates, 64 of whom won their elections.

Recently, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said he was working with the Illinois Democratic Party to counter local Republican Party committees and national organizations working to elect school board candidates in the state’s upcoming elections. Illinois Democratic Party executive director Ben Hardin said , “We aren’t going to let these extremist groups get away with pushing their agendas.” In a move similar to DeSantis’, the Illinois Democratic Party is planning to release a list of over 100 candidates it opposes.

Illinois’ school board elections are April 4.

This section contains links to recent education-related articles from around the internet. If you know of a story we should be reading, reply to this email to share it with us!

Grad rates a mixed bag as states struggle with chronic absenteeism | K-12 Dive
School choice detractors, advocates come to head over Arkansas education bill | UA Little Rock Public Radio
Governors call for higher teacher salaries amid continued hiring struggles in schools | Chalkbeat
In the quest to transform education, putting purpose at the center is key | Brookings
Summer School Can Remedy Pandemic Learning Loss | The Wall Street Journal
Nebraska conservatives set sights on education takeover | Associated Press

Take our Candidate Connection survey to reach voters in your district

Today, we’re looking at responses from Brian Ahart , who is running in the general election for one of three at-large seats on the Liberty Schools Board of Education in Missouri on April 4, and Audra Deaver, who is running in the general election for Humble Independent School District school board Position 6 in Texas on May 6.

Here’s how Ahart answered the question, “ Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office? ”

“Closing the learning gap due to the pandemic
Attracting top talent and retention of existing faculty
Improve implementation of programs and initiatives”

Click here to read the rest of Ahart’s answers.

Here’s how Deaver answered the question, “ Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office? ”

“Academic Excellence
Board Governance
Parental Advocacy & Safeguarding Children”

Click here to read the rest of Deaver’s answers.

IMAGES

Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you
Homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead
Why Homework Is Pointless
Messages Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what
Homework is pointless, according to an educational expert
Why Homework Is Pointless

VIDEO

W kid right there #funny #youtubeshorts #viralvideo
He’s raising this kid right. #smalltire #noprep
world class kid right here
Every kid right now😭
The most pointless video ever
Idk why but this is a really stupid and pointless video

COMMENTS

Homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead
Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead. By Elissa Strauss, CNN 6 minute read Updated 4:49 PM EST, Tue January 28, 2020 Link Copied! Video Ad ...
Your kid's right: Homework is pointless. Here's what you should be
Next door, the kids have homework. This involves 30 minutes of child-wrangling and patience-testing five days a week, pressure-cooking the little downtime they have together as a family. Meanwhile ...
Should We Get Rid of Homework?
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 ...
Don't Bother, Homework Is Pointless
November 12, 2014. Almost all research shows that elementary school homework is pointless. If families understood that, they would be thrilled to lose that nightly routine where the adults cajole ...
For Young Children, Homework May Be Pointless
No mandatory homework in elementary school. None. No homework in middle school and high school unless a kid wants to do it. Chronic nightly homework makes for guilt, resentment, and lies—and ...
Homework: No Proven Benefits
Yes, count me in. Finally, there isn't a shred of evidence to support the folk wisdom that homework provides nonacademic benefits at any age -- for example, that it builds character, promotes self-discipline, or teaches good work habits. We're all familiar with the downside of homework: the frustration and exhaustion, the family conflict, time ...
That Homework Kids Have Is Pointless
New research indicates that homework may not really be that important. This is not exactly groundbreaking—no one's ever really been able to show that time spent doing homework mattered much ...
"School Is Pointless!" A Parent's Guide to Low Academic Motivation
Depending on how your child responds to homework and academic goals, it can be hard to tell the difference. Yet, understanding if your child's experiencing skill delays vs. a lack of motivation will change how you address the problem. Academic Skill Delays. Low academic motivation can often be confused by academic skill deficits.
Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you
Teacher shot by 6-year-old texted a dire warning to a loved one before she was wounded, source says. The text "showed her frustration," the source said. "She was frustrated because she was trying to get help with this child, for this child, and then when she needed help, no one was coming.". The Virginia teacher who was shot by her 6 ...
Homework might actually be bad
A 2019 Pew survey found that teens were spending considerably more time doing schoolwork at home than they had in the past—an hour a day, on average, compared to 44 minutes a decade ago and just ...
Is There A "Right Way" To Help My Kid With Their Homework?
Homework is, mostly, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many researchers, totally pointless, so your kid doing a half-assed job on it might mean less than you think it does. If you want to be ...
Your kid's right: Homework is pointless. Here's what you should be
Next door, the kids have homework. This involves 30 minutes of child-wrangling and patience-testing five days a week, pressure-cooking the little downtime they have together as a family. Meanwhile ...
Homework Pros and Cons
In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. ... Your Kid Is Right, Homework Is Pointless. Here's What You Should Do Instead.," cnn.com, Jan. 28, 2020: 28.
Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you
Next door, the kids have homework. This involves 30 minutes of child-wrangling and patience-testing five days a week, pressure-cooking the little downtime they have together as a family. Meanwhile ...
4 Ways to Make Homework Time Less Painful
Try this: Use a timer. How to do it: Put the timer beside your child and put five minutes on the clock. Tell them they have five minutes to finish their game, grab a snack or use the bathroom — then it's time for homework. If you want, you can offer a reward. You might say, "If you start your homework without being asked three nights in a ...
Gender stereotypes keep boys from reading as well as girls
Related article Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead. A year and a half later, skill and enjoyment levels for reading were retested in the same ...
Is Homework Pointless?
Whether it's ineffective, a waste of your child's time, or costing them sleep at night, in the long run, conventional homework can seem pretty pointless to a child's development and ...
4 tips to help your teenager build resilience through ...
Related article Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead. "I think kids feel very small these days, very powerless - between Covid and racial strife ...
Homework
In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. [1] ... Elissa Strauss, "Opinion: Your Kid Is Right, Homework Is Pointless. Here's What You Should Do Instead.," cnn.com, Jan. 28, 2020; Jeanne Fratello, "Survey: Homework Is Biggest ...
My Child Refuses To Do Homework
Don't get sucked into arguments with your child about homework. Make it very clear that if they don't do their homework, then the next part of their night does not begin. Keep discussions simple. Say to your child: "Right now is homework time. The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can have free time.".
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2020-01-28 Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead. ... 2020-01-16 This is your child's brain on books: Scans show benefit of reading vs. screen time;
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Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here's what you should do instead. | Elissa Strauss, CNN "Feeling overwhelmed is a defining trait of today's parents and caregivers. We have too much to do, our kids have too much to do, and leisure and happiness are the prices we pay for it. … It can feel scary to slow down.

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This is an excerpt from Alfie Kohn's recently published book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. For one teacher's response to this excerpt, read In Defense of Homework: Is there Such a Thing as Too Much? .

That Homework Kids Have Is Pointless

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Opinion: Your kid is right, homework is pointless. Here’s what you should do instead.

We need to do less

Teach your children, and yourself, to do less

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“Getting him to stop what he’s doing and start homework is a daily struggle.”

“It’s not unusual for her to forget to bring home the right books and papers to do an assignment.”

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