is homework banned in california

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California set to approve groundbreaking law that cuts homework, alleviates stress

By Jack Aylmer (Energy Correspondent), Mathew Grisham (Digital Producer), Mirlie Larose (Producer), Jack Henry (Video Editor)

In California, a new law that could dramatically change the way homework is handled in state schools is nearing approval. The Healthy Homework Act is now awaiting the governor’s signature after passing both chambers of the state Legislature.

It aims to not only reduce homework, but also stress among students and parents. The author of the bill, Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, says she was inspired by a conversation with her young daughter, who asked if she could “ban homework.”

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Schiavo said many parents support the idea, expressing frustration of the lack of quality time with their kids. Heavy homework and extracurricular activities topped the list of those potential distractions.

People supporting the current levels of homework argue that it sets up kids for future success. Supporters of the new bill argue that it can damage mental health and place an unnecessary burden on families.

The bill aims to address these concerns by encouraging teachers to carefully consider whether the homework they assign requires parental support or access to technology that not all students have. The Administrators Association of San Diego City Schools, a union representing management employees, is urging lawmakers to pass the legislation.

The union said it would help address the harmful effects of excessive or poorly designed homework , and mentioned that homework is linked to stress, headaches, exhaustion and even physical health problems like weight loss.

Mental and physical health aren’t the only concerns. The rise of artificial intelligence also raises new challenges in the classroom. Educators worry that students are using tools like ChatGPT to complete their assignments.

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Jack Aylmer

IN CALIFORNIA, A NEW LAW THAT COULD DRAMATICALLY CHANGE THE WAY HOMEWORK IS HANDLED IS NEARING APPROVAL. 

THE HEALTHY HOMEWORK ACT, WHICH PASSED BOTH CHAMBERS OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE, IS NOW AWAITING THE GOVERNOR’S SIGNATURE. IF IT BECOMES LAW, IT COULD NOT ONLY REDUCE HOMEWORK BUT REDUCE STRESS FOR BOTH STUDENTS AND PARENTS. 

THE AUTHOR OF THE BILL, ASSEMBLYWOMAN PILAR SCHIAVO, SAYS SHE WAS INSPIRED BY CONVERSATION WITH HER NINE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, WHO ASKED IF SHE COULD “BAN HOMEWORK.” 

SCHIAVO SAYS MANY PARENTS SUPPORT THE IDEA, EXPRESSING FRUSTRATION OVER THE LACK OF QUALITY TIME WITH THEIR KIDS DUE TO HEAVY HOMEWORK LOADS AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES.

SUPPORTERS OF HOMEWORK BELIEVE IT SETS KIDS UP FOR FUTURE SUCCESS, WHILE OPPONENTS ARGUE IT CAN DAMAGE MENTAL HEALTH AND PLACE AN UNNECESSARY BURDEN ON FAMILIES. 

THE BILL AIMS TO ADDRESS THESE CONCERNS BY ENCOURAGING TEACHERS TO CAREFULLY CONSIDER WHETHER THE HOMEWORK THEY ASSIGN REQUIRES PARENTAL SUPPORT OR ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY, THAT NOT ALL STUDENTS HAVE. 

THE ADMINISTRATORS ASSOCIATION OF SAN DIEGO CITY SCHOOLS, A UNION REPRESENTING MANAGEMENT EMPLOYEES, IS URGING LAWMAKERS TO PASS THE HEALTHY HOMEWORK ACT, SAYING IT WOULD HELP ADDRESS THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF EXCESSIVE OR POORLY DESIGNED HOMEWORK. THE UNION MENTIONED THAT HOMEWORK IS LINKED TO STRESS, HEADACHES, EXHAUSTION AND EVEN PHYSICAL HEALTH PROBLEMS LIKE WEIGHT LOSS. 

MENTAL and PHYSICAL HEALTH AREN’T THE ONLY CONCERNS, THE RISE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ALSO RAISES NEW CHALLENGES IN THE CLASSROOM. EDUCATORS WORRY THAT STUDENT ARE USING TOOLS LIKE CHAT GPT TO COMPLETE THEIR ASSIGNMENTS.

AS CALIFORNIA INCHES CLOSER TO POTENTIALLY PASSING THE HEALTHY HOMEWORK LAW, THE CONVERSATION AROUND HOMEWORK, AND “HOW MUCH” CONTINUES TO EVOLVE.

WE’LL KEEP YOU UPDATED AS THIS STORY DEVELOPS. 

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What is california's no homework law.

By Teo Spengler, J.D.

August 20, 2019

Reviewed by Michelle Seidel, B.Sc., LL.B., MBA

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• Pro & Cons of Child Labor Law

Don't get too excited, kids. "No homework" laws are not current California homework policy. But there was a "no homework" law in the state at the beginning of the 20th Century that the children of that era probably appreciated. Today the question of whether homework helps or hurts kids is widely debated in California.

No Homework Law in California

Is there a "no homework law" in California today? There is not today, but there was 100 years ago. The Ladies' Home Journal magazine crusaded against homework at the turn of the century, and medical professionals and doctors testified against it, saying that it was harmful to a kid's health. Some say that the actual reason society (and parents) frowned on homework was because school kids needed time to help with chores around the house.

As a result of that, a number of big-city school districts around the country eliminated homework from the school menu. California's three biggest cities – San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento – passed regulations forbidding teachers from assigning homework. And in 1901, the state passed a law banning all homework for school kids in kindergarten through eighth grade and imposing limits on the amount of homework that could be assigned to high school students.

California Homework Policy Changes

California's no-homework laws were repealed in the 1950s. That was the Cold War period and educators and politicians felt that the country needed better-educated students to create a skilled workforce, especially in the sciences. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 boosted the call for homework, since it appeared that Russian students might be more advanced than U.S. students.

The end of the Second World War also brought great changes to the United States and significant upheaval socially. Men in the military returned to their families, more people moved from agricultural lifestyle to urban areas and children were no longer expected to do as much physical work at home.

Since then, homework has crept back into the education system. People attacked progressive education as anti-intellectual, lax and dangerous for the nation. Then, in the 1980s, the United States Department of Education came full circle, publishing a pamphlet about the techniques that work best for creating smarter students, concluding that homework was a must.

California Homework Questions Today

Today, California kids from the youngest age through high school can expect homework assignments. But that doesn't mean that the homework/no homework debate is over. Various school districts or individual schools have eliminated homework in California, and while that approach makes some people happy, it makes others very unhappy.

Some educators and researchers argue that children would be better off if homework were abolished. They argue that the research does not demonstrate any tangible benefits for students, and this is especially true for younger students. In fact, studies have shown that elementary school students get no academic benefit from any amount of homework. And, the anti-homework crowd claims, excessive homework stifles a kid's natural curiosity.

However, not all parents agree. In the competitive atmosphere in schools today, just the suggestion of abolishing homework has some parents up in arms.

And high school students in the United States – who spend 5.5 to 6 hours a week on homework – are in the middle of their peers around the world. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 15-year-olds in Shanghai spend the most amount of time on homework, averaging 13.8 hours per week, while students in Finland spend the least time, at just 2.8 hours per week. It is noteworthy that Finnish kids perform just fine on academic tests despite the small amount of homework they do in comparison to teens in other nations.

• SF Gate: History of Homework
• SimpleGrad: Who Invented Homework?
• Time Magazine: Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework
• The Telegraph: Homework Around the World

Teo Spengler earned a JD from U.C. Berkeley Law School. As an Assistant Attorney General in Juneau, she practiced before the Alaska Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court before opening a plaintiff's personal injury practice in San Francisco. She holds both an MA and an MFA in English/writing and enjoys writing legal blogs and articles. Her work has appeared in numerous online publications including USA Today, Legal Zoom, eHow Business, Livestrong, SF Gate, Go Banking Rates, Arizona Central, Houston Chronicle, Navy Federal Credit Union, Pearson, Quicken.com, TurboTax.com, and numerous attorney websites. Spengler splits her time between the French Basque Country and Northern California.

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Will less homework stress make California students happier?

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A bill from a member of the Legislature’s happiness committee would require schools to come up with homework policies that consider the mental and physical strain on students.

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Update: The Assembly education committee on April 24 approved an amended version of the bill that softens some requirements and gives districts until the 2027-28 school year. The full Assembly passed the bill on May 21. Some bills before California’s Legislature don’t come from passionate policy advocates, or from powerful interest groups.  

Sometimes, the inspiration comes from a family car ride. 

While campaigning two years ago, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo ’s daughter, then nine, asked from the backseat what her mother could do if she won.

Schiavo answered that she’d be able to make laws. Then, her daughter Sofia asked her if she could make a law banning homework.

“It was a kind of a joke,” the Santa Clarita Valley Democrat said in an interview, “though I’m sure she’d be happy if homework were banned.”

Still, the conversation got Schiavo thinking, she said. And while Assembly Bill 2999 — which faces its first big test on Wednesday — is far from a ban on homework, it would require school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to develop guidelines for K-12 students and would urge schools to be more intentional about “good,” or meaningful homework. 

Among other things, the guidelines should consider students’ physical health, how long assignments take and how effective they are. But the bill’s main concern is mental health and when homework adds stress to students’ daily lives.

Homework’s impact on happiness is partly why Schiavo brought up the proposal last month during the first meeting of the Legislature’s select committee on happiness , led by former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon .   

“This feeling of loneliness and disconnection — I know when my kid is not feeling connected,” Schiavo, a member of the happiness committee, told CalMatters. “It’s when she’s alone in her room (doing homework), not playing with her cousin, not having dinner with her family.” 

The bill analysis cites a survey of 15,000 California high schoolers from Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education. It found that 45% said homework was a major source of stress and that 52% considered most assignments to be busywork.  

The organization also reported in 2020 that students with higher workloads reported “symptoms of exhaustion and lower rates of sleep,” but that spending more time on homework did not necessarily lead to higher test scores.

Homework’s potential to also widen inequities is why Casey Cuny supports the measure. An English and mythology teacher at Valencia High School and 2024’s California Teacher of the Year , Cuny says language barriers, unreliable home internet, family responsibilities or other outside factors may contribute to a student falling behind on homework.

“I never want a kid’s grade to be low because they have divorced parents and their book was at their dad’s house when they were spending the weekend at mom’s house,” said Cuny, who plans to attend a press conference Wednesday to promote the bill.

In addition, as technology makes it easier for students to cheat — using artificial technology or chat threads to lift answers, for example — Schiavo says that the educators she has spoken to indicate they’re moving towards more in-class assignments. 

Cuny agrees that an emphasis on classwork does help to rein in cheating and allows him to give students immediate feedback. “I feel that I should teach them what I need to teach them when I’m with them in the room,” he said. 

The bill says the local homework policies should have input from teachers, parents, school counselors, social workers and students; be distributed at the beginning of every school year; and be reevaluated every five years.

The Assembly Committee on Education is expected to hear the bill Wednesday. Schiavo says she has received bipartisan support and so far, no official opposition or support is listed in the bill analysis. 

The measure’s provision for parental input may lead to disagreements given the recent culture war disputes between Democratic officials and parental rights groups backed by some Republican lawmakers. Because homework is such a big issue, “I’m sure there will be lively (school) board meetings,” Schiavo said.

Nevertheless, she says she hopes the proposal will overhaul the discussion around homework and mental health. The bill is especially pertinent now that the state is also poised to cut spending on mental health services for children with the passage of Proposition 1 .

Schiavo said the mother of a student with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder told her that the child’s struggle to finish homework has raised issues inside the house, as well as with the school’s principal and teachers.

“And I’m just like, it’s sixth grade!” Schaivo said. “What’s going on?”

Lawmakers want to help California be happy

Lynn la newsletter writer.

Lynn La is the newsletter writer for CalMatters, focusing on California’s top political, policy and Capitol stories every weekday. She produces and curates WhatMatters, CalMatters’ flagship daily newsletter... More by Lynn La

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News Update

Some schools reconsidering their policies on homework, wednesday september 4, 2024 9:28 am, state board of education, november 11, 2020.

Lasherica Thornton

Homework, according to recent research, is one of many factors affecting student mental health, pushing some schools to reconsider their policies, Axios reported . 

Based on a 2020 survey led by Stanford researchers , 67%of 50,000 high schoolers surveyed said homework was a major source of stress. For students with at least three hours’ worth of nightly homework, that percentage was 80%. 

But a correlation between homework and academic achievement — if it exists — is hard to measure, Stanford education researcher Denise Pope told Axios.

Only 33% of the surveyed students believe most or all of their assigned homework contributed to their learning. 

“Am I giving homework so that I am keeping my administrators happy because I have to give homework?” Katie Trowbridge, a former Illinois high school teacher, posed as a hypothetical question to Axios. “Or am I giving homework because it is a meaningful exercise that kids need to do in order to establish learning and extend learning?”

In Herriman, Utah, Butterfield Canyon Elementary School has had a no-homework policy since 2020 to improve students’ social-emotional health, Axios reported. 

And the California Legislature recently passed a bill encouraging school districts to evaluate the mental and physical health impacts of homework assignments, Axios reported. 

The proposed legislation awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.

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Will Less Homework Stress Make California Students Happier?

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Some bills before California’s Legislature don’t come from passionate policy advocates or powerful interest groups.

Sometimes, the inspiration comes from a family car ride.

While campaigning two years ago, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo ’s daughter, then 9, asked from the backseat what her mother could do if she won.

Schiavo answered that she’d be able to make laws. Then, her daughter Sofia asked if she could make a law banning homework.

“It was a kind of a joke,” the Santa Clarita Valley Democrat said in an interview, “though I’m sure she’d be happy if homework were banned.”

Still, the conversation got Schiavo thinking, she said. And while Assembly Bill 2999 — which faces its first big test on Wednesday — is far from a ban on homework, it would require school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to develop guidelines for K–12 students. It would urge schools to be more intentional about “good” or meaningful homework.

Among other things, the guidelines should consider students’ physical health, how long assignments take, and how effective they are. However, the bill’s main concern is mental health and when homework adds stress to students’ daily lives.

Homework’s impact on happiness is partly why Schiavo brought up the proposal last month during the first meeting of the Legislature’s select committee on happiness , led by former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon .

“This feeling of loneliness and disconnection — I know when my kid is not feeling connected,” Schiavo, a member of the happiness committee, told CalMatters. “It’s when she’s alone in her room (doing homework), not playing with her cousin, not having dinner with her family.”

The bill analysis cites a survey of 15,000 California high schoolers from Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education. It found that 45% said homework was a major source of stress and that 52% considered most assignments to be busywork.

The organization also reported in 2020 that students with higher workloads reported “symptoms of exhaustion and lower rates of sleep” but that spending more time on homework did not necessarily lead to higher test scores.

Homework’s potential to also widen inequities is why Casey Cuny supports the measure. Cuny, an English and mythology teacher at Valencia High School and 2024’s California Teacher of the Year , said language barriers, unreliable home internet, family responsibilities or other outside factors may contribute to a student falling behind on homework.

“I never want a kid’s grade to be low because they have divorced parents, and their book was at their dad’s house when they were spending the weekend at mom’s house,” said Cuny, who plans to attend a press conference Wednesday to promote the bill.

In addition, as technology makes it easier for students to cheat — using artificial technology or chat threads to lift answers, for example — Schiavo said that the educators she has spoken to indicate they’re moving towards more in-class assignments.

Cuny agrees that an emphasis on classwork does help to rein in cheating and allows him to give students immediate feedback. “I feel that I should teach them what I need to teach them when I’m with them in the room,” he said.

The bill said the local homework policies should have input from teachers, parents, school counselors, social workers and students; be distributed at the beginning of every school year; and be reevaluated every five years.

The Assembly Committee on Education is expected to hear the bill Wednesday. Schiavo said she has received bipartisan support, and so far, no official opposition or support has been listed in the bill analysis.

But she acknowledges that, if passed, the measure’s provision for parental input may lead to disagreements given the recent culture war disputes between Democratic officials and parental rights groups backed by some Republican lawmakers. “I’m sure there will be lively (school) board meetings,” Schiavo said.

Nevertheless, she hopes the proposal will overhaul the discussion around homework and mental health. The bill is especially pertinent now that the state is also poised to cut spending on mental health services for children with the passage of Proposition 1 .

Schiavo said the mother of a student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder told her that the child’s struggle to finish homework had raised issues inside the house, as well as with the school’s principal and teachers.

“And I’m just like, it’s sixth grade!” Schaivo said. “What’s going on?”

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Too much homework? New CA bill aims to ease the load on students

Having less homework would be beneficial for some students like Kyan Vanderweel, a San Luis Obispo high school student.

With multiple band and orchestra practices a day, on top of taking AP classes, Vanderweel finds it difficult to balance the things he loves to do with what he needs to get done, saying it even affects his mental health.

“AP classes should have homework but only a limited amount but in my opinion, I don’t think English classes apart from reading should have any unnecessary homework,” Vanderweel said.

Vanderweel says his homework and classwork are very repetitive and he feels it's unnecessary to do some of the homework.

“By the end of the day, we already know what we're doing so I feel like it’s a waste of time to an extent,” Vanderweel said.

Other students feel like homework in high school is bearable.

“I think I'm pretty comfortable with how it is right now,” San Luis Obispo High School student Tamiyah Murrieta said.

The "Healthy Homework Act,” introduced by Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, would not ban homework altogether but would require local school boards and educational agencies to establish policies that consider impacts on students’ physical and mental health with input from parents, teachers and students.

This is something Tyler Gerbel, a San Luis Obispo high school student, says could impact some students.

“Homework has been shown to stress students out a little bit. I’ve felt that myself when I have so much work to do,” Gerbel said.

Although he thinks his workload is manageable right now, he understands how some might have it harder.

“If something is done to limit the homework it might relieve stress off of students and I feel like mental health is a very important thing for students today,” Gerbel said.

The bill is also tailored to people who might not have access to resources at home like high-speed internet.

The bill would require the adopted policy to be updated at least once every five years.

It is currently making its way through the State Legislature.

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• The Highlight

Nobody knows what the point of homework is

The homework wars are back.

by Jacob Sweet

As the Covid-19 pandemic began and students logged into their remote classrooms, all work, in effect, became homework. But whether or not students could complete it at home varied. For some, schoolwork became public-library work or McDonald’s-parking-lot work.

Luis Torres, the principal of PS 55, a predominantly low-income community elementary school in the south Bronx, told me that his school secured Chromebooks for students early in the pandemic only to learn that some lived in shelters that blocked wifi for security reasons. Others, who lived in housing projects with poor internet reception, did their schoolwork in laundromats.

According to a 2021 Pew survey , 25 percent of lower-income parents said their children, at some point, were unable to complete their schoolwork because they couldn’t access a computer at home; that number for upper-income parents was 2 percent.

The issues with remote learning in March 2020 were new. But they highlighted a divide that had been there all along in another form: homework. And even long after schools have resumed in-person classes, the pandemic’s effects on homework have lingered.

Over the past three years, in response to concerns about equity, schools across the country, including in Sacramento, Los Angeles , San Diego , and Clark County, Nevada , made permanent changes to their homework policies that restricted how much homework could be given and how it could be graded after in-person learning resumed.

Three years into the pandemic, as districts and teachers reckon with Covid-era overhauls of teaching and learning, schools are still reconsidering the purpose and place of homework. Whether relaxing homework expectations helps level the playing field between students or harms them by decreasing rigor is a divisive issue without conclusive evidence on either side, echoing other debates in education like the elimination of standardized test scores from some colleges’ admissions processes.

I first began to wonder if the homework abolition movement made sense after speaking with teachers in some Massachusetts public schools, who argued that rather than help disadvantaged kids, stringent homework restrictions communicated an attitude of low expectations. One, an English teacher, said she felt the school had “just given up” on trying to get the students to do work; another argued that restrictions that prohibit teachers from assigning take-home work that doesn’t begin in class made it difficult to get through the foreign-language curriculum. Teachers in other districts have raised formal concerns about homework abolition’s ability to close gaps among students rather than widening them.

Many education experts share this view. Harris Cooper, a professor emeritus of psychology at Duke who has studied homework efficacy, likened homework abolition to “playing to the lowest common denominator.”

But as I learned after talking to a variety of stakeholders — from homework researchers to policymakers to parents of schoolchildren — whether to abolish homework probably isn’t the right question. More important is what kind of work students are sent home with and where they can complete it. Chances are, if schools think more deeply about giving constructive work, time spent on homework will come down regardless.

There’s no consensus on whether homework works

The rise of the no-homework movement during the Covid-19 pandemic tapped into long-running disagreements over homework’s impact on students. The purpose and effectiveness of homework have been disputed for well over a century. In 1901, for instance, California banned homework for students up to age 15, and limited it for older students, over concerns that it endangered children’s mental and physical health. The newest iteration of the anti-homework argument contends that the current practice punishes students who lack support and rewards those with more resources, reinforcing the “myth of meritocracy.”

But there is still no research consensus on homework’s effectiveness; no one can seem to agree on what the right metrics are. Much of the debate relies on anecdotes, intuition, or speculation.

Researchers disagree even on how much research exists on the value of homework. Kathleen Budge, the co-author of Turning High-Poverty Schools Into High-Performing Schools and a professor at Boise State, told me that homework “has been greatly researched.” Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer and leader of the education nonprofit Challenge Success, said, “It’s not a highly researched area because of some of the methodological problems.”

Experts who are more sympathetic to take-home assignments generally support the “10-minute rule,” a framework that estimates the ideal amount of homework on any given night by multiplying the student’s grade by 10 minutes. (A ninth grader, for example, would have about 90 minutes of work a night.) Homework proponents argue that while it is difficult to design randomized control studies to test homework’s effectiveness, the vast majority of existing studies show a strong positive correlation between homework and high academic achievement for middle and high school students. Prominent critics of homework argue that these correlational studies are unreliable and point to studies that suggest a neutral or negative effect on student performance. Both agree there is little to no evidence for homework’s effectiveness at an elementary school level, though proponents often argue that it builds constructive habits for the future.

For anyone who remembers homework assignments from both good and bad teachers, this fundamental disagreement might not be surprising. Some homework is pointless and frustrating to complete. Every week during my senior year of high school, I had to analyze a poem for English and decorate it with images found on Google; my most distinct memory from that class is receiving a demoralizing 25-point deduction because I failed to present my analysis on a poster board. Other assignments really do help students learn: After making an adapted version of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book for a ninth grade history project, I was inspired to check out from the library and read a biography of the Chinese ruler.

For homework opponents, the first example is more likely to resonate. “We’re all familiar with the negative effects of homework: stress, exhaustion, family conflict, less time for other activities, diminished interest in learning,” Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, which challenges common justifications for homework, told me in an email. “And these effects may be most pronounced among low-income students.” Kohn believes that schools should make permanent any moratoria implemented during the pandemic, arguing that there are no positives at all to outweigh homework’s downsides. Recent studies , he argues , show the benefits may not even materialize during high school.

In the Marlborough Public Schools, a suburban district 45 minutes west of Boston, school policy committee chair Katherine Hennessy described getting kids to complete their homework during remote education as “a challenge, to say the least.” Teachers found that students who spent all day on their computers didn’t want to spend more time online when the day was over. So, for a few months, the school relaxed the usual practice and teachers slashed the quantity of nightly homework.

Online learning made the preexisting divides between students more apparent, she said. Many students, even during normal circumstances, lacked resources to keep them on track and focused on completing take-home assignments. Though Marlborough Schools is more affluent than PS 55, Hennessy said many students had parents whose work schedules left them unable to provide homework help in the evenings. The experience tracked with a common divide in the country between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

So in October 2021, months after the homework reduction began, the Marlborough committee made a change to the district’s policy. While teachers could still give homework, the assignments had to begin as classwork. And though teachers could acknowledge homework completion in a student’s participation grade, they couldn’t count homework as its own grading category. “Rigorous learning in the classroom does not mean that that classwork must be assigned every night,” the policy stated . “Extensions of class work is not to be used to teach new content or as a form of punishment.”

Canceling homework might not do anything for the achievement gap

The critiques of homework are valid as far as they go, but at a certain point, arguments against homework can defy the commonsense idea that to retain what they’re learning, students need to practice it.

“Doesn’t a kid become a better reader if he reads more? Doesn’t a kid learn his math facts better if he practices them?” said Cathy Vatterott, an education researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. After decades of research, she said it’s still hard to isolate the value of homework, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned.

Blanket vilification of homework can also conflate the unique challenges facing disadvantaged students as compared to affluent ones, which could have different solutions. “The kids in the low-income schools are being hurt because they’re being graded, unfairly, on time they just don’t have to do this stuff,” Pope told me. “And they’re still being held accountable for turning in assignments, whether they’re meaningful or not.” On the other side, “Palo Alto kids” — students in Silicon Valley’s stereotypically pressure-cooker public schools — “are just bombarded and overloaded and trying to stay above water.”

Merely getting rid of homework doesn’t solve either problem. The United States already has the second-highest disparity among OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations between time spent on homework by students of high and low socioeconomic status — a difference of more than three hours, said Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University and author of No More Mindless Homework .

When she interviewed teachers in Boston-area schools that had cut homework before the pandemic, Bempechat told me, “What they saw immediately was parents who could afford it immediately enrolled their children in the Russian School of Mathematics,” a math-enrichment program whose tuition ranges from $140 to about $400 a month. Getting rid of homework “does nothing for equity; it increases the opportunity gap between wealthier and less wealthy families,” she said. “That solution troubles me because it’s no solution at all.”

A group of teachers at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, made the same point after the school district proposed an overhaul of its homework policies, including removing penalties for missing homework deadlines, allowing unlimited retakes, and prohibiting grading of homework.

“Given the emphasis on equity in today’s education systems,” they wrote in a letter to the school board, “we believe that some of the proposed changes will actually have a detrimental impact towards achieving this goal. Families that have means could still provide challenging and engaging academic experiences for their children and will continue to do so, especially if their children are not experiencing expected rigor in the classroom.” At a school where more than a third of students are low-income, the teachers argued, the policies would prompt students “to expect the least of themselves in terms of effort, results, and responsibility.”

Not all homework is created equal

Despite their opposing sides in the homework wars, most of the researchers I spoke to made a lot of the same points. Both Bempechat and Pope were quick to bring up how parents and schools confuse rigor with workload, treating the volume of assignments as a proxy for quality of learning. Bempechat, who is known for defending homework, has written extensively about how plenty of it lacks clear purpose, requires the purchasing of unnecessary supplies, and takes longer than it needs to. Likewise, when Pope instructs graduate-level classes on curriculum, she asks her students to think about the larger purpose they’re trying to achieve with homework: If they can get the job done in the classroom, there’s no point in sending home more work.

At its best, pandemic-era teaching facilitated that last approach. Honolulu-based teacher Christina Torres Cawdery told me that, early in the pandemic, she often had a cohort of kids in her classroom for four hours straight, as her school tried to avoid too much commingling. She couldn’t lecture for four hours, so she gave the students plenty of time to complete independent and project-based work. At the end of most school days, she didn’t feel the need to send them home with more to do.

A similar limited-homework philosophy worked at a public middle school in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A couple of teachers there turned as much class as possible into an opportunity for small-group practice, allowing kids to work on problems that traditionally would be assigned for homework, Jessica Flick, a math coach who leads department meetings at the school, told me. It was inspired by a philosophy pioneered by Simon Fraser University professor Peter Liljedahl, whose influential book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics reframes homework as “check-your-understanding questions” rather than as compulsory work. Last year, Flick found that the two eighth grade classes whose teachers adopted this strategy performed the best on state tests, and this year, she has encouraged other teachers to implement it.

Teachers know that plenty of homework is tedious and unproductive. Jeannemarie Dawson De Quiroz, who has taught for more than 20 years in low-income Boston and Los Angeles pilot and charter schools, says that in her first years on the job she frequently assigned “drill and kill” tasks and questions that she now feels unfairly stumped students. She said designing good homework wasn’t part of her teaching programs, nor was it meaningfully discussed in professional development. With more experience, she turned as much class time as she could into practice time and limited what she sent home.

“The thing about homework that’s sticky is that not all homework is created equal,” says Jill Harrison Berg, a former teacher and the author of Uprooting Instructional Inequity . “Some homework is a genuine waste of time and requires lots of resources for no good reason. And other homework is really useful.”

Cutting homework has to be part of a larger strategy

The takeaways are clear: Schools can make cuts to homework, but those cuts should be part of a strategy to improve the quality of education for all students. If the point of homework was to provide more practice, districts should think about how students can make it up during class — or offer time during or after school for students to seek help from teachers. If it was to move the curriculum along, it’s worth considering whether strategies like Liljedahl’s can get more done in less time.

Some of the best thinking around effective assignments comes from those most critical of the current practice. Denise Pope proposes that, before assigning homework, teachers should consider whether students understand the purpose of the work and whether they can do it without help. If teachers think it’s something that can’t be done in class, they should be mindful of how much time it should take and the feedback they should provide. It’s questions like these that De Quiroz considered before reducing the volume of work she sent home.

More than a year after the new homework policy began in Marlborough, Hennessy still hears from parents who incorrectly “think homework isn’t happening” despite repeated assurances that kids still can receive work. She thinks part of the reason is that education has changed over the years. “I think what we’re trying to do is establish that homework may be an element of educating students,” she told me. “But it may not be what parents think of as what they grew up with. ... It’s going to need to adapt, per the teaching and the curriculum, and how it’s being delivered in each classroom.”

For the policy to work, faculty, parents, and students will all have to buy into a shared vision of what school ought to look like. The district is working on it — in November, it hosted and uploaded to YouTube a round-table discussion on homework between district administrators — but considering the sustained confusion, the path ahead seems difficult.

When I asked Luis Torres about whether he thought homework serves a useful part in PS 55’s curriculum, he said yes, of course it was — despite the effort and money it takes to keep the school open after hours to help them do it. “The children need the opportunity to practice,” he said. “If you don’t give them opportunities to practice what they learn, they’re going to forget.” But Torres doesn’t care if the work is done at home. The school stays open until around 6 pm on weekdays, even during breaks. Tutors through New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development programs help kids with work after school so they don’t need to take it with them.

As schools weigh the purpose of homework in an unequal world, it’s tempting to dispose of a practice that presents real, practical problems to students across the country. But getting rid of homework is unlikely to do much good on its own. Before cutting it, it’s worth thinking about what good assignments are meant to do in the first place. It’s crucial that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds tackle complex quantitative problems and hone their reading and writing skills. It’s less important that the work comes home with them.

Jacob Sweet is a freelance writer in Somerville, Massachusetts. He is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, among other publications.

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When homework is busywork

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Rachel Bennett, 12, loves playing soccer, spending time with her grandparents and making jewelry with beads. But since she entered a magnet middle school in the fall -- and began receiving two to four hours of homework a night -- those activities have fallen by the wayside.

“She’s only a kid for so long,” said her father, Alex Bennett, of Silverado Canyon. “There’s been tears and frustration and family arguments. Everyone gets burned out and tired.”

Bennett is part of a vocal movement of parents and educators who contend that homework overload is robbing children of needed sleep and playtime, chipping into family dinners and vacations and overly stressing young minds. The objections have been raised for years but increasingly, school districts are listening. They are banning busywork, setting time limits on homework and barring it on weekends and over vacations.

“Groups of parents are going to schools and saying, ‘Get real. We want our kids to have a life,’ ” said Cathy Vatterott, an associate education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who has studied the issue.

Trustees in Danville, Calif., eliminated homework on weekends and vacations last year. Palo Alto officials banned it over winter break. Officials in Orange, where Rachel Bennett attends school, are reminding teachers about limits on homework and urging them not to assign it on weekends. A private school in Hollywood has done away with book reports.

“As adults, if every book we ever read, we had to write a report on -- would that encourage our reading or discourage it?” asked Eileen Horowitz, head of school at Temple Israel of Hollywood Day School. “We realized we needed to rethink that.”

Nancy Ortenberg is happy about the change.

“Homework is much more meaningful now,” said Ortenberg, whose daughter Isabelle, 9, was in school before the policy took effect in 2007. Before the change, it was a chore for her daughter, but “now she reads for the pure joy of reading.”

Homework was once hugely controversial. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, social commentators and physicians crusaded against it, convinced it was causing children to become wan, weak and nervous.

In a 1900 article titled “A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents” in the Ladies’ Home Journal, editor Edward Bok wrote, “When are parents going to open their eyes to this fearful evil? Are they as blind as bats, that they do not see what is being wrought by this crowning folly of night study?”

California was at the vanguard of the anti-homework movement. In 1901, the California Legislature banned it for students under 15 and ordered high schools to limit it for older students to 20 recitations a week. The law was taken off the books in 1917.

Homework has fallen in and out of favor ever since, often viewed as a force for good when the nation feels threatened -- after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, for example, and during competition with Japan in the 1980s.

The homework wars have reignited in recent years, with parents around the nation arguing that children are being given too much.

Much of the debate is driven by the belief that today’s students are doing more work at home than their predecessors. But student surveys do not bear that out, said Brian Gill, a senior social scientist with Mathematica Policy Research.

Instead, in today’s increasingly competitive race for college admission, student schedules are increasingly packed with clubs, sports and other activities in addition to homework, Gill said. Students -- and parents -- may just have less time, he said.

Not all object, however.

“Obviously we want to think it’s busywork, but most of the time it’s really helpful,” said Allison Hall, 16, a junior at Villa Park High in the Orange district. Allison, who is taking five Advanced Placement classes, has up to three hours of homework a night; she also is on the cross country, track and mock trial teams and does volunteer work.

But others say there is just too much, especially for younger children. Karen Adnams of Villa Park has four children. She said that heavier course loads make sense for older children but that she doesn’t understand the amount of work given in lower grades.

“I think teachers have lost touch with what a third-grader or a fifth-grader can really do,” she said.

Vatterott, a former principal, said she became interested in the subject a decade ago as a frustrated parent. Her son, who has a learning disability, was upset by assignments he didn’t understand and couldn’t complete in a reasonable time.

She decided to study the effectiveness of homework. That research showed that more time spent on such work was not necessarily better.

Vatterott questioned the quantity and the quality of assignments. If 10 math problems could demonstrate a child’s grasp of a concept, why assign 50, she asked? The solution, she said, was not to do away with homework but to clarify the reasons for assigning it.

Some schools, among them Grant Elementary in Glenrock, Wyo., have gone further. Principal Christine Hendricks had grown concerned that students were spending too much time on busywork and that homework was causing conflicts between parents and children and between teachers and students. So she got rid of it last year except for reading and studying for tests.

“My philosophy, even when I was a teacher, is if you work hard during the day, I don’t like to work at night. Kids are kind of the same way,” she said.

Other districts, including San Ramon Valley Unified in Danville, Calif., have taken a more nuanced approach.

Since San Ramon revised its homework policy last year, the youngest students are given no more than 30 minutes a night; high school students have up to three hours of work. District trustees also decided that aside from reading, no homework should be given to elementary and middle school students on weekends or vacations.

In the Orange Unified School District, trustee John Ortega grew concerned about the workload carried by his middle school daughter. “We would have a swim meet all weekend, and she would be worried about coming home and having to finish homework,” he said. “She was stressed about it.”

After speaking with other parents, Ortega raised the subject publicly in the fall, prompting a series of discussions in the district. It turned out that although the board had set limits on homework, they were not always followed, said Marsha Brown, assistant superintendent of educational services. She said teachers have now been informed about the policy and principals are working to clarify the purpose of homework.

Brown said children’s social growth must be nurtured alongside their academic development. “We don’t want just academic children. We want them involved in sports and music and art and family time and downtime,” she said. “We want well-rounded citizens. I think we will always be struggling with that balance.”

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Seema Mehta is a veteran political writer who is covering the 2024 presidential race as well as other state and national contests. She started at the Los Angeles Times in 1998, previously covered multiple presidential, state and local races, and completed a Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan in 2019.

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The end of homework? Why some schools are banning homework

Fed up with the tension over homework, some schools are opting out altogether.

No-homework policies are popping up all over, including schools in the U.S., where the shift to the Common Core curriculum is prompting educators to rethink how students spend their time.

“Homework really is a black hole,” said Etta Kralovec, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Arizona South and co-author of “The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning.”

“I think teachers are going to be increasingly interested in having total control over student learning during the class day and not relying on homework as any kind of activity that’s going to support student learning.”

College de Saint-Ambroise, an elementary school in Quebec, is the latest school to ban homework, announcing this week that it would try the new policy for a year. The decision came after officials found that it was “becoming more and more difficult” for children to devote time to all the assignments they were bringing home, Marie-Ève Desrosiers, a spokeswoman with the Jonquière School Board, told the CBC .

Kralovec called the ban on homework a movement, though she estimated just a small handful of schools in the U.S. have such policies.

Gaithersburg Elementary School in Rockville, Maryland, is one of them, eliminating the traditional concept of homework in 2012. The policy is still in place and working fine, Principal Stephanie Brant told TODAY Parents. The school simply asks that students read 30 minutes each night.

“We felt like with the shift to the Common Core curriculum, and our knowledge of how our students need to think differently… we wanted their time to be spent in meaningful ways,” Brant said.

“We’re constantly asking parents for feedback… and everyone’s really happy with it so far. But it’s really a culture shift.”

It was a decision that was best for her community, Brant said, adding that she often gets phone calls from other principals inquiring how it’s working out.

The VanDamme Academy, a private K-8 school in Aliso Viejo, California, has a similar policy , calling homework “largely pointless.”

The Buffalo Academy of Scholars, a private school in Buffalo, New York, touts that it has called “a truce in the homework battle” and promises that families can “enjoy stress-free, homework-free evenings and more quality time together at home.”

Some schools have taken yet another approach. At Ridgewood High School in Norridge, Illinois, teachers do assign homework but it doesn’t count towards a student’s final grade.

Many schools in the U.S. have toyed with the idea of opting out of homework, but end up changing nothing because it is such a contentious issue among parents, Kralovec noted.

“There’s a huge philosophical divide between parents who want their kids to be very scheduled, very driven, and very ambitiously focused at school -- those parents want their kids to do homework,” she said.

“And then there are the parents who want a more child-centered life with their kids, who want their kids to be able to explore different aspects of themselves, who think their kids should have free time.”

So what’s the right amount of time to spend on homework?

National PTA spokeswoman Heidi May pointed to the organization’s “ 10 minute rule ,” which recommends kids spend about 10 minutes on homework per night for every year they’re in school. That would mean 10 minutes for a first-grader and an hour for a child in the sixth grade.

But many parents say their kids must spend much longer on their assignments. Last year, a New York dad tried to do his eight-grader’s homework for a week and it took him at least three hours on most nights.

More than 80 percent of respondents in a TODAY.com poll complained kids have too much homework. For homework critics like Kralovec, who said research shows homework has little value at the elementary and middle school level, the issue is simple.

“Kids are at school 7 or 8 hours a day, that’s a full working day and why should they have to take work home?” she asked.

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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 .

More School Debate Topics

Should K-12 Students Dissect Animals in Science Classrooms? – Proponents say dissecting real animals is a better learning experience. Opponents say the practice is bad for the environment.

Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms? – Proponents say uniforms may increase student safety. Opponents say uniforms restrict expression.

Should Corporal Punishment Be Used in K-12 Schools? – Proponents say corporal punishment is an appropriate discipline. Opponents say it inflicts long-lasting physical and mental harm on students.

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Homework Helps Kids Learn

Homework isn’t a needless exercise: Reasonable, quality assignments expand on topics and skills taught in the classroom and — in the big picture — help develop lifelong learning habits.

Teachers use homework:

• To help students understand and review the work that has been covered in class
• To see whether students understand the lesson
• To help students learn how to find and use more information on a subject
• To teach responsibility and routine.

Most educators agree:

• For children in grades K-2, homework is more effective when it does not exceed 20 minutes each school day
• Older children, in grades 3-6, can handle 30-60 minutes a day
• For kids in middle and high school, 2 hours of homework may be assigned
• However, homework time and strategies can vary from teacher to teacher and school to school.

HELP YOUR STUDENT GET THE MOST OUT OF HOMEWORK

Parents and families play an important role in the homework process. Together, families can help children develop good study habits and attitudes that lead to becoming lifelong learners. Your job is not to do the work for them, but to provide support, encouragement and ask questions that help them arrive at the answers themselves.

Your child’s teacher can tell you, usually at Back-to-School Night, how much time he or she expects students to spend on homework. Your child’s teacher may have a website or other resource that posts homework assignments.

Your child’s school may have an online grading system, which allows parents to check their child’s grades, attendance and homework status on a daily basis. This can be an invaluable source of information that allows you to keep on top of any issues before they become problems.

Ask your principal, school site council or PTA if your school or district has a homework policy, including how to handle homework if your child needs to be absent. Make sure you and your child know and understand this policy.

DOWNLOAD HOMEWORK TIPS

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QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

California State PTA believes that, when it comes to homework, assignment quality — not quantity — should be the priority. Find out more with our resolution .

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Why (Most) Homework Should Be Banned

The 30-minute rule is there to justify giving a lot of homework

Anthony Malcolm ‘23 , Staff Writer December 8, 2022

There are plenty of reasons why (most) homework should be banned. I’ll start out with some general facts and look at homework in general, then go into some detail about our school.

Stanford conducted a study surveying over 4,300 students in 10 high performing high schools in California. More than 70% of the students said they were “often or always stressed over schoolwork,” with 56% claiming that homework was the main stressor. But here’s the kicker: Less than 1% said homework was not a stressor. 

The researchers then asked the students if they had exhibited symptoms of stress like headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems. More than 80% of the students reported at least one stress related symptom recently and 44% claimed they experienced 3 or more symptoms. The study also found that students who spend a lot of time working on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, and a lack of balance in their lives. The study claimed that any more than 2 hours of homework per night was counterproductive, and that the students who spent too much time on homework were more likely to not participate in activities and hobbies, and stop seeing friends and family. 

A smaller NYU study claimed that students at elite high schools are susceptible to chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and alcohol and drug abuse. About half of the students said they received at least 3 hours of homework a night on top of being pressured to take college level classes and participate in extracurricular activities (sound familiar?). The study claims that many of the students felt they were being worked as hard as adults, and they said that their workload seemed inappropriate for their development level. The study reported that the students felt that they had little time for relaxing and hobbies. More than two thirds of students said they used alcohol or drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with the stress.

Back to the Stanford study for a second; many of the students claimed that the homework was “pointless” or “mindless.” The study argues that homework should have a purpose and benefit, which should be to cultivate learning. One of the main reasons is that school feels like a full-time job at this point. We, as in BC High students, are in school from 8:25 till 2:40; most of us have some sort of extracurricular activity on top of that, and most of us have significant commutes, which means we are getting home much later. On top of a rigorous day at school, an afterschool activity, and a commute, we have to deal with a varying amount of homework every night. Sometimes it is 2 hours, sometimes 3, sometimes even 4. I will give you an example of a day in my life last year to provide a specific example, because we are not a one size fits all community. 

I live in Middleboro and Bridgewater, so I ride the train to school which takes 50 minutes to an hour. A spring day last year would start by waking up at 5:30 and then leaving my house to get to the train at 6:30-6:35, getting on the train at 6:50, getting off the train at 7:50, and arriving at the school before classes started at 8:20. I would go through the school day and stay after for track practice. After track, I would most likely get on the train at 5:00 and get home at 6:15. I would eat dinner, shower, and then start my homework around 7:30-8, and usually I would finish somewhere between 10:30ish to 11:30ish. Can you see how that can be misconstrued as a full-time job?

Some of you might be thinking (especially any teacher reading this), why didn’t you use the 30-minute rule? Well, because most (and I mean MOST) of the time the 30-minute rule is an ineffective rule that justifies giving students a lot of homework. If you use the 30-minute rule and don’t finish a homework assignment, it still has to be completed sometime, and you’ll be behind in class. It is only effective when a teacher plans for the 30-minute rule and tells you to stop at 30 minutes to get an idea of how long an assignment takes their students. The 30-minute rule is there to justify giving a lot of homework because if you say in class that the homework took a long time, you will probably be told about the 30-minute rule. But if you used the 30-minute rule, you would have an unfinished homework assignment which means, depending on the class, you would be lost and behind, and you would still have to do it at some point. If you should have to justify giving a lot of homework, then it is probably too much. 

Parker, Clifton B. “Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework.” Stanford University , 10 Mar. 2014, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/march/too-much-homework-031014.html . 

Communications, NYU Web. NYU Study Examines Top High School Students’ Stress and Coping Mechanisms . http://www.nyu.edu/content/nyu/en/about/news-publications/news/2015/august/nyu

-study-examines-top-high-school-students-stress-and-coping-mechanisms . 

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When Homework Was Banned

Published: November 3, 2023

In the early 1900s, Ladies' Home Journal took up a crusade against homework, enlisting doctors and parents who say it damages children's health. In 1901 California passed a law abolishing homework!

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California is on the brink of banning homework

Homework is set to be banned in california after legislation on the matter was passed by politicians in the us state..

4 September 2024

Homework is set to be banned in California.

Homework is set to be banned in California

The Healthy Homework Act has passed both chambers of state legislature and will ask teachers to consider whether any homework tasks they give out will require support from parents and access to technology.

Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo wrote the bill after a conversation with her nine-year-old daughter who asked whether she could "ban homework" and claims that she has the backing of parents in the US state.

She said: "You can see the stress on their face when they talk about not being able to have time with their kids in the evening because of so much homework and extracurricular activities, and the three shifts that we ask our kids to do every day at school and after school, and then homework at home."

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Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

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

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

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

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

Should we get rid of homework?

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

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

Mr. Kang argues:

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

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Ban homework in California Schools

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California Passes Bill Banning Six Color Additives in Schools

A state bill to ban six color additives from foods served at California public schools was signed into law last week and will go into effect Dec. 31, 2027.

Assembly Bill 2316, the California School Food Safety Act, would prohibit six allegedly harmful food dyes from being used in foods served in the state's public schools: red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 1, blue 2 and green 3. They impart the vibrant colors in products such as Cheetos, Froot Loops and Skittles.

Titanium dioxide originally was in the bill but apparently has been dropped – just as it had been in the state’s late-2023 ban of four food ingredients: potassium bromate, propylparaben, brominated vegetable oil and Red 3. Those will be banned from all foods manufactured, delivered or sold in the state after Jan. 1, 2027 .

Studies suggest that consumption of the six dyes may be linked to hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children, especially those who already exhibit signs of ADHD or autism.

The FDA maintains there is not sufficient proof the color additives pose any risk, although the agency hasn’t formally reviewed their safety in decades. However, that review may be coming, as Jim Jones, deputy commissioner of the FDA’s Human Foods Program, has hinted in recent public remarks.

The bill was introduced into the California Assembly in March . It was passed by the state’s legislature and senate earlier last week and signed into law later in the week by the governor.

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.

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