Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

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

child doing homework

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

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janine Bempechat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

homework isn’t that bad

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

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

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

why the hell?

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

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

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

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

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

not true it just causes kids to stress

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

homework does help

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

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

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

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

I disagree.

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

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

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

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

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oof i feel bad good luck!

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

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

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

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

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

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

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

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

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

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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A daughter sits at a desk doing homework while her mom stands beside her helping

Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

Posted in Voices+Opinion

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Is Homework Necessary for Student Success?

Readers argue both sides, citing Finland, the value of repetition, education inequity and more.

is homework actually beneficial to students

To the Editor:

Re “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong ,” by Jay Caspian Kang (Sunday Opinion, July 31):

Finland proves that you don’t need homework for education success. Students there have hardly any homework, and it has one of the top education systems in the world. In America, there is ample time for students to do in class what is now assigned as homework.

Whether a student attends an expensive private school, an underserved public school or something in between, being burdened with hours of additional work to do after school unnecessarily robs them of time for play, introspection, creative thinking, relaxation and intellectual growth.

Mr. Kang regards the demonstration of diligence and personal responsibility as an important raison d’être of homework. He sees schools as places where students can distinguish themselves and pursue upward mobility. But ranking students on homework production favors students with quiet places to go home to, good Wi-Fi, and access to tutors and parents who can provide help. In other words, it favors students of higher socioeconomic status.

It follows that making homework an important part of a student’s evaluation perpetuates both educational inequalities and the myth of meritocracy. A first step toward improving our educational system is indeed the abolition of homework.

Dorshka Wylie Washington The writer is an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of the District of Columbia.

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

In both my own education and my 20-year career as an educator, I’ve observed that those students who spend the most time on homework tend to learn the most and earn the best grades. And this is no less true for athletes and musicians. Top performers have often spent far more time perfecting their crafts than their lesser competitors.

This isn’t to deny natural talent or to suggest that everybody starts from the same spot, but it is to say that what matters most is putting in the hours. As Jay Caspian Kang notes, “Kids need to learn how to practice things.”

Simone Biles became the greatest gymnast ever by training seven hours a day, six days a week . Lang Lang made it to Carnegie Hall at age 18 after practicing piano six hours a day starting when he was 5 years old. Steph Curry is the greatest shooter in N.B.A. history precisely because he puts up 300 to 500 shots every day . The recipe is surprisingly simple: Outwork others. It’s much harder than it sounds.

Justin Snider New York The writer is an assistant dean at Columbia University, where he also teaches undergraduate writing.

In my own practice as a high school mathematics teacher, I explored why students were not doing homework in certain classes and discovered that many of them were having difficulty doing the problems. When I “flipped” my classroom, I started assigning simple introductory videos for homework and doing the harder problems in class.

Students get credit for watching and doing the problems in the video. Then in class, they are better prepared to work on more difficult problems. This significantly increased the percentage of homework doers.

In other cases, I create an after-school “homework clinic” where I can guide students in how to approach the work, and how to judge if they have done enough. Sometimes groups of students come together to a homework clinic and enjoy helping one another.

I don’t think about homework as something that must be done “at home”; I think of it as an opportunity for a student to work independently, and to explore and practice new ideas.

This is one approach to improving equity without lowering cognitive demand.

Joyce Leslie Highland Park, N.J.

Telling students that “a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless” is an absurd justification for repetitive, mindless homework.

Allen Berger Savannah, Ga. The writer is emeritus professor of reading and writing at Miami University (Ohio).

I see why Jay Caspian Kang can’t imagine a school that could educate children well without relying on homework, ranking, sorting and other trappings of meritocracy. Most people in our society have never seen such a thing. But some schools do provide a rigorous education that strengthens personal responsibility and skill mastery without emphasizing who is better than whom — and even without homework.

To see this in action, I encourage Mr. Kang to visit any of the powerful public Montessori schools serving low-income communities across our nation. And yes, many Montessori schools take a minimal approach to homework. Instead, they make time for children to struggle with challenging concepts and independently practice new skills during the school day.

Annie Frazer Decatur, Ga. The writer is executive director of Montessori Partnerships for Georgia.

I agree with Jay Caspian Kang that one value of homework is for a student to independently practice a skill until mastery, and I recognize the issue of equity when homework is assessed for students from “disadvantaged” homes. However, there is another important benefit to homework that can bolster social mobility.

Homework gives students the opportunity to practice responsibility, which arguably is an important “soft skill” that will pay off later in the work force. In the classroom, students practice compliance: doing what the teacher says. Homework provides students with agency to practice time management (remembering to do a task and making time to do it) and materials management (taking home the right notebook and bringing it back on time).

To ensure an equal playing field, teachers can directly teach these skills by providing strategies to students who may not have adults at home to do so. Schools can further support students by providing unstructured time for students to do this homework independently with supervision (free period, study hall, after school, etc.). Learning responsibility should be the fourth R.

Barbara Richman Hawthorne, N.Y.

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

Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative impacts on student well-being and behavioral engagement (Shutterstock)

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

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

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Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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The Cult of Homework

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

is homework actually beneficial to students

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

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

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

Read: My daughter’s homework is killing me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

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Does homework help

You know the drill. It’s 10:15 p.m., and the cardboard-and-toothpick Golden Gate Bridge is collapsing. The pages of polynomials have been abandoned. The paper on the Battle of Waterloo seems to have frozen in time with Napoleon lingering eternally over his breakfast at Le Caillou. Then come the tears and tantrums — while we parents wonder, Does the gain merit all this pain? Is this just too much homework?

However the drama unfolds night after night, year after year, most parents hold on to the hope that homework (after soccer games, dinner, flute practice, and, oh yes, that childhood pastime of yore known as playing) advances their children academically.

But what does homework really do for kids? Is the forest’s worth of book reports and math and spelling sheets the average American student completes in their 12 years of primary schooling making a difference? Or is it just busywork?

Homework haterz

Whether or not homework helps, or even hurts, depends on who you ask. If you ask my 12-year-old son, Sam, he’ll say, “Homework doesn’t help anything. It makes kids stressed-out and tired and makes them hate school more.”

Nothing more than common kid bellyaching?

Maybe, but in the fractious field of homework studies, it’s worth noting that Sam’s sentiments nicely synopsize one side of the ivory tower debate. Books like The End of Homework , The Homework Myth , and The Case Against Homework the film Race to Nowhere , and the anguished parent essay “ My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me ” make the case that homework, by taking away precious family time and putting kids under unneeded pressure, is an ineffective way to help children become better learners and thinkers.

One Canadian couple took their homework apostasy all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. After arguing that there was no evidence that it improved academic performance, they won a ruling that exempted their two children from all homework.

So what’s the real relationship between homework and academic achievement?

How much is too much?

To answer this question, researchers have been doing their homework on homework, conducting and examining hundreds of studies. Chris Drew Ph.D., founder and editor at The Helpful Professor recently compiled multiple statistics revealing the folly of today’s after-school busy work. Does any of the data he listed below ring true for you?

• 45 percent of parents think homework is too easy for their child, primarily because it is geared to the lowest standard under the Common Core State Standards .

• 74 percent of students say homework is a source of stress , defined as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems.

• Students in high-performing high schools spend an average of 3.1 hours a night on homework , even though 1 to 2 hours is the optimal duration, according to a peer-reviewed study .

Not included in the list above is the fact many kids have to abandon activities they love — like sports and clubs — because homework deprives them of the needed time to enjoy themselves with other pursuits.

Conversely, The Helpful Professor does list a few pros of homework, noting it teaches discipline and time management, and helps parents know what’s being taught in the class.

The oft-bandied rule on homework quantity — 10 minutes a night per grade (starting from between 10 to 20 minutes in first grade) — is listed on the National Education Association’s website and the National Parent Teacher Association’s website , but few schools follow this rule.

Do you think your child is doing excessive homework? Harris Cooper Ph.D., author of a meta-study on homework , recommends talking with the teacher. “Often there is a miscommunication about the goals of homework assignments,” he says. “What appears to be problematic for kids, why they are doing an assignment, can be cleared up with a conversation.” Also, Cooper suggests taking a careful look at how your child is doing the assignments. It may seem like they’re taking two hours, but maybe your child is wandering off frequently to get a snack or getting distracted.

Less is often more

If your child is dutifully doing their work but still burning the midnight oil, it’s worth intervening to make sure your child gets enough sleep. A 2012 study of 535 high school students found that proper sleep may be far more essential to brain and body development.

For elementary school-age children, Cooper’s research at Duke University shows there is no measurable academic advantage to homework. For middle-schoolers, Cooper found there is a direct correlation between homework and achievement if assignments last between one to two hours per night. After two hours, however, achievement doesn’t improve. For high schoolers, Cooper’s research suggests that two hours per night is optimal. If teens have more than two hours of homework a night, their academic success flatlines. But less is not better. The average high school student doing homework outperformed 69 percent of the students in a class with no homework.

Many schools are starting to act on this research. A Florida superintendent abolished homework in her 42,000 student district, replacing it with 20 minutes of nightly reading. She attributed her decision to “ solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students .”

More family time

A 2020 survey by Crayola Experience reports 82 percent of children complain they don’t have enough quality time with their parents. Homework deserves much of the blame. “Kids should have a chance to just be kids and do things they enjoy, particularly after spending six hours a day in school,” says Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth . “It’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.”

By far, the best replacement for homework — for both parents and children — is bonding, relaxing time together.

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Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

Mother helping son with homework at home

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Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful.

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

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Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?

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is homework actually beneficial to students

Educators should be thrilled by these numbers. Pleasing a majority of parents regarding homework and having equal numbers of dissenters shouting "too much!" and "too little!" is about as good as they can hope for.

But opinions cannot tell us whether homework works; only research can, which is why my colleagues and I have conducted a combined analysis of dozens of homework studies to examine whether homework is beneficial and what amount of homework is appropriate for our children.

The homework question is best answered by comparing students who are assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link the amount of homework to achievement, but control for lots of other factors that might influence this connection. These types of studies, often based on national samples of students, also find a positive link between time on homework and achievement.

Yet other studies simply correlate homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent find the link between homework and achievement is positive. Most interesting, though, is these results suggest little or no relationship between homework and achievement for elementary school students.

Why might that be? Younger children have less developed study habits and are less able to tune out distractions at home. Studies also suggest that young students who are struggling in school take more time to complete homework assignments simply because these assignments are more difficult for them.

is homework actually beneficial to students

These recommendations are consistent with the conclusions reached by our analysis. Practice assignments do improve scores on class tests at all grade levels. A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

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

Opponents of homework counter that it can also have negative effects. They argue it can lead to boredom with schoolwork, since all activities remain interesting only for so long. Homework can deny students access to leisure activities that also teach important life skills. Parents can get too involved in homework -- pressuring their child and confusing him by using different instructional techniques than the teacher.

My feeling is that homework policies should prescribe amounts of homework consistent with the research evidence, but which also give individual schools and teachers some flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students and families. In general, teachers should avoid either extreme.

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Research Trends: Why Homework Should Be Balanced

Research suggests that while homework can be an effective learning tool, assigning too much can lower student performance and interfere with other important activities.

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Homework: effective learning tool or waste of time?

Since the average high school student spends almost seven hours each week doing homework, it’s surprising that there’s no clear answer. Homework is generally recognized as an effective way to reinforce what students learn in class, but claims that it may cause more harm than good, especially for younger students, are common.

Here’s what the research says:

  • In general, homework has substantial benefits at the high school level, with decreased benefits for middle school students and few benefits for elementary students (Cooper, 1989; Cooper et al., 2006).
  • While assigning homework may have academic benefits, it can also cut into important personal and family time (Cooper et al., 2006).
  • Assigning too much homework can result in poor performance (Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015).
  • A student’s ability to complete homework may depend on factors that are outside their control (Cooper et al., 2006; OECD, 2014; Eren & Henderson, 2011).
  • The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate homework, but to make it authentic, meaningful, and engaging (Darling-Hammond & Ifill-Lynch, 2006).

Why Homework Should Be Balanced

Homework can boost learning, but doing too much can be detrimental. The National PTA and National Education Association support the “10-minute homework rule,” which recommends 10 minutes of homework per grade level, per night (10 minutes for first grade, 20 minutes for second grade, and so on, up to two hours for 12th grade) (Cooper, 2010). A recent study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90–100 minutes of homework per day, their math and science scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015). Giving students too much homework can lead to fatigue, stress, and a loss of interest in academics—something that we all want to avoid.

Homework Pros and Cons

Homework has many benefits, ranging from higher academic performance to improved study skills and stronger school-parent connections. However, it can also result in a loss of interest in academics, fatigue, and a loss of important personal and family time.

Grade Level Makes a Difference

Although the debate about homework generally falls in the “it works” vs. “it doesn’t work” camps, research shows that grade level makes a difference. High school students generally get the biggest benefits from homework, with middle school students getting about half the benefits, and elementary school students getting few benefits (Cooper et al., 2006). Since young students are still developing study habits like concentration and self-regulation, assigning a lot of homework isn’t all that helpful.

Parents Should Be Supportive, Not Intrusive

Well-designed homework not only strengthens student learning, it also provides ways to create connections between a student’s family and school. Homework offers parents insight into what their children are learning, provides opportunities to talk with children about their learning, and helps create conversations with school communities about ways to support student learning (Walker et al., 2004).

However, parent involvement can also hurt student learning. Patall, Cooper, and Robinson (2008) found that students did worse when their parents were perceived as intrusive or controlling. Motivation plays a key role in learning, and parents can cause unintentional harm by not giving their children enough space and autonomy to do their homework.

Homework Across the Globe

OECD , the developers of the international PISA test, published a 2014 report looking at homework around the world. They found that 15-year-olds worldwide spend an average of five hours per week doing homework (the U.S. average is about six hours). Surprisingly, countries like Finland and Singapore spend less time on homework (two to three hours per week) but still have high PISA rankings. These countries, the report explains, have support systems in place that allow students to rely less on homework to succeed. If a country like the U.S. were to decrease the amount of homework assigned to high school students, test scores would likely decrease unless additional supports were added.

Homework Is About Quality, Not Quantity

Whether you’re pro- or anti-homework, keep in mind that research gives a big-picture idea of what works and what doesn’t, and a capable teacher can make almost anything work. The question isn’t  homework vs. no homework ; instead, we should be asking ourselves, “How can we transform homework so that it’s engaging and relevant and supports learning?”

Cooper, H. (1989). Synthesis of research on homework . Educational leadership, 47 (3), 85-91.

Cooper, H. (2010). Homework’s Diminishing Returns . The New York Times .

Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987–2003 . Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1-62.

Darling-Hammond, L., & Ifill-Lynch, O. (2006). If They'd Only Do Their Work! Educational Leadership, 63 (5), 8-13.

Eren, O., & Henderson, D. J. (2011). Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework? Economics of Education Review, 30 (5), 950-961.

Fernández-Alonso, R., Suárez-Álvarez, J., & Muñiz, J. (2015, March 16). Adolescents’ Homework Performance in Mathematics and Science: Personal Factors and Teaching Practices . Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication.

OECD (2014). Does Homework Perpetuate Inequities in Education? PISA in Focus , No. 46, OECD Publishing, Paris.

Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). Parent involvement in homework: A research synthesis . Review of Educational Research, 78 (4), 1039-1101.

Van Voorhis, F. L. (2003). Interactive homework in middle school: Effects on family involvement and science achievement . The Journal of Educational Research, 96 (6), 323-338.

Walker, J. M., Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., Whetsel, D. R., & Green, C. L. (2004). Parental involvement in homework: A review of current research and its implications for teachers, after school program staff, and parent leaders . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family Research Project.

Raychelle Cassada Lohmann Ph.D.

The Value of Homework

Are teachers assigning too much homework.

Posted September 5, 2016 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

  • Studies show that the benefits of homework peak at about one hour to 90 minutes, and then after that, test scores begin to decline.
  • Research has found that high school teachers (grades 9-12) report assigning an average of 3.5 hours’ worth of homework a week.
  • While homework is necessary, there needs to be balance as well as communication between teachers about the amount of homework being assigned.

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The value of homework has been the subject of debate over the years. In regards to research, the jury is still out as to whether homework positively impacts a student's academic achievement.

In the past, I have written a couple of posts on homework and whether or not it is being used or abused by educators. I am always amazed at what some of my young readers share about sleepless nights, not participating in extracurricular events, and high levels of stress —all of which are attributed to large and daunting amounts of homework .

There have been studies that show that doing homework in moderation improves test performance. So we can’t rule out the value of homework if it’s conducive to learning. However, studies have also shown that the benefits of homework peak at about one hour to 90 minutes, and then after that, test scores begin to decline.

Now, while looking at data, it’s important to review the standard, endorsed by the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association , known as the "10-minute rule" — 10 minutes of homework per grade level per night. That would mean there would only be 10 minutes of homework in the first grade, and end with 120 minutes for senior year of high school (double what research shows beneficial). This leads to an important question: On average, how much homework do teachers assign?

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Typical homework amounts

A Harris Poll from the University of Phoenix surveyed teachers about the hours of homework required of students and why they assign it. Pollsters received responses from approximately 1,000 teachers in public, private, and parochial schools across the United States.

High school teachers (grades 9-12) reported assigning an average of 3.5 hours’ worth of homework a week. Middle school teachers (grades 6-8) reported assigning almost the same amount as high school teachers, 3.2 hours of homework a week. Lastly, K-5 teachers said they assigned an average of 2.9 hours of homework each week. This data shows a spike in homework beginning in middle school.

Why homework is assigned

When teachers were asked why they assign homework, they gave the top three reasons:

  • to see how well students understand lessons
  • to help students develop essential problem-solving skills
  • to show parents what's being learned in school

Approximately, 30 percent of teachers reported they assigned homework to cover more content areas. What’s interesting about this poll was the longer an educator had been in the field the less homework they assigned. Take a look at the breakdown below:

  • 3.6 hours (teachers with less than 10 years in the classroom)
  • 3.1 hours (teachers with 10 to 19 years in the classroom)
  • 2.8 hours (teachers with more than 20 years in the classroom)

The need for balance

While many agree that homework does have a time and place, there needs to be a balance between life and school. There also needs to be communication with other teachers in the school about assignments. Oftentimes, educators get so involved in their subject area, they communicate departmentally, not school-wide. As a result, it’s not uncommon for teens to have a project and a couple of tests all on the same day. This dump of work can lead to an overwhelming amount of stress.

Questions for educators

Educators, how can you maximize the benefit of homework? Use the questions below to guide you in whether or not to assign work outside of the classroom. Ask yourself:

  • Do I need to assign homework or can this be done in class?
  • Does this assignment contribute and supplement the lesson reviewed in class?
  • Do students have all of the information they need to do this assignment? In others words, are they prepared to do the homework?
  • What are you wanting your students to achieve from this assignment? Do you have a specific objective and intended outcome in mind?
  • How much time will the assignment take to complete? Have you given your students a sufficient amount of time?
  • Have you taken into account other coursework that your students have due?
  • How can you incorporate student choice and feedback into your classroom?
  • How can you monitor whether or not you are overloading your students?

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What kids think of homework

Educators: As a conclusion, I have provided a few of the many comments, that I have received below. I think it’s important to look at the age/grade level and messages these teens have shared. Take time to read their words and reflect on ways you can incorporate their perspective into course objectives and content. I believe the solution to the homework dilemma can be found in assigning work in moderation and finding a balance between school, home, and life.

“I am a 7th grader in a small school in Michigan. I think one of the main problems about what teachers think about homework is that they do not think about what other classes are assigned for homework. Throughout the day, I get at least two full pages of homework to complete by the next day. During the school year, I am hesitant to sign up for sports because I am staying up after a game or practice to finish my homework.”

is homework actually beneficial to students

“I'm 17 and I'm in my last year of high school. I can honestly tell you that from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. (sometimes 1 or 2 a.m.) I am doing homework. I've been trying to balance my homework with my work schedule, work around my house, and my social life with no success. So if someone were to ask me if I think kids have too much homework, I would say yes they do. My comment is based solely on my personal experience in high school.”

“I am 13 and I have a problem: homework. I can’t get my homework done at home because it is all on my school MacBook. I don’t own my own personal computer, only an Amazon Fire tablet. What’s the problem with my tablet? There are no middle or high school apps for it. You are might be wondering, “Why not bring the MacBook home?” Well, I am not allowed to, so what is the punishment ? Four late assignments, and 1 late argument essay. And 90% of the homework I get is on my MacBook. This is a mega stresser!"

Raychelle Cassada Lohmann Ph.D.

Raychelle Cassada Lohman n , M.S., LPC, is the author of The Anger Workbook for Teens .

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School Life Balance , Tips for Online Students

The Pros and Cons of Homework

The-Pros-and-Cons-Should-Students-Have-Homework

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

A college student completely swamped with homework.

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Why should students have homework, 1. homework encourages practice.

Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .

2. Homework Gets Parents Involved

Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.

3. Homework Teaches Time Management

Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.

4. Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication

Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.

5. Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.

6. Homework Reduces Screen Time

Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

A female student who doesn’t want to do homework.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

1. homework encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework.

While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom.

Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.

2. Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home

While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .

3. Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job

School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.

4. Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results

Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success.

The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements.

It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity.

Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.

5. Homework Assignments Are Overdone

The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however.

On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

Related Articles

Is homework beneficial? The pros and cons of homework for kids.

is homework actually beneficial to students

It’s a question that looms as large as any other in the education world. Alongside standardized testing, charter schools, and other topics of vigorous debate in headlines and classrooms alike: there’s no denying that homework is a hot-button issue. 

With vocal, informed advocates both for and against homework as a part of the daily academic routine, who’s right here? Is homework actually beneficial for kids? And based on that answer, is it necessary?

It’s not just about achievement, test scores, and readiness for college and careers. Homework’s impact on kids’ mental health and non-academic skills also must be closely examined. 

Then there’s the sheer amount of it in some schools. As kids juggle enrichment activities , jobs, and family time, many parents are asking how much homework is too much homework.  

Pros & Cons of Homework

Let’s dive into each of these critical questions. Don’t worry, we did our homework on this. 

In general, homework is beneficial because it could instill independence, improve time management, and encourage critical thinking. Homework can also lead to higher test scores, while giving parents at home a window into life at school. 

Pros of homework in schools

1. Research correlates homework with higher academic success for secondary students. 

Duke University analyzed findings from 60 homework-related research studies and  found statistically significant evidence that middle and high school students who complete homework regularly will score higher on tests and earn better grades than those who do not.

2. Experts actually agree on the right amount of homework 

The “ 10-minute rule ” is widely accepted as the best measurement of homework in terms of quantity. It goes like this: in 1st grade, kids should have 10 minutes of homework, 20 minutes in 2nd grade, and so on until about 2 hours of homework in 12th grade. 

Among many educational experts, the National PTA and National Education Association (parents and teachers) agree that, if these length guidelines are followed, homework benefits students. 

3. Homework gives families a valuable window into life at school

It can help parents and families support their children in multiple ways. Homework offers a tangible snapshot into what (and how) kids are learning, allowing parents to engage with their children in meaningful conversations about school. 

Points of success and confusion, furthermore, can help parents identify learning needs that need special attention, like gifted and talented programs, special education services, or custom academic support.  

4. High quality  homework assignments enrich students’ learning 

There is well-documented evidence that, when designed correctly, homework enriches students’ engagement with academic material. 

- Overall literacy increases when students are assigned choice reading. 

- Math skills increase with independent practice, and technology can help . 

-Across disciplines, effective homework assignments increase students’ retrieval abilities , aka the ability to remember information and reapply skills on their own. 

-Effective homework assignments are a logical extension of the “ I do/we do/ you do ” teaching model, a widely accepted best practice across disciplines. 

5. A solid homework routine helps kids develop life skills

The Duke study mentioned earlier also found that students build important skills like conscientiousness, time management,  organization, and prioritization by doing their homework. 

There’s no doubt about it: kids will need these skills in college, future careers, and to lead balanced, happy lives. By managing homework responsibilities, kids can build vital skill sets like a “ growth mindset ,” Stephen Covey’s widely lauded 7 Habits of Highly Effective Kids & Teens , and the grit necessary to persevere through challenges . 

Cons of Homework in Schools

On the other hand, too much homework can be counterproductive, and there is a lack of evidence around homework's benefit at the elementary level. Homework can also increase student (and parent) stress, while exacerbating the achievement gap between privileged and disadvantaged students. 

1. Too much homework is detrimental to students and counterproductive to learning

A “more is more” attitude is demonstrably unhelpful and unfounded in the homework conversation. 

It’s easier said than done to hit that 10-minute sweet spot across grade levels, and missing the mark is detrimental to students. In fact, studies show that too much homework can undo learning in addition causing mental health issues , which is damaging to children in and outside the classroom. 

2. There is a lack of evidence surrounding homework at the elementary level

Educational research has yet to successfully demonstrate a tie between homework and academic success in elementary school . 

This raises important questions and concerns about the efficacy of homework for young students. Key among them is the worry that dreading homework from an early age will negatively impact attitudes towards school and learning for years to come. 

3. Homework, especially tasks that require/benefit from technology, exacerbates achievement gaps between privileged and disadvantaged students 

Think about it. Successful homework completion hinges on things not all students have: quiet, safe space at home, ample school supplies, time after school not spent working/ caring for younger siblings, and internet access (not only for online homework , but research, and more).

The list goes on, so why does the homework brush treat students of all backgrounds the same? 

Plus, teachers and other school leaders who make decisions regarding homework don’t always understand or adequately weigh these factors. As a result, homework might perpetuate the problematic inequalities that exist in K-12 education. 

4. Homework routines increase stress for the whole family

Many families dread “the homework battle,” and with good reason. Not all parents have the knowledge, time, or (frankly) patience to be homework monitors, and not all students have the self-regulatory skills to do so themselves. 

And then comes the deluge of distractions. 

Getting those under control is like a miserable game of whack-a-mole for families and students alike. According to a recent poll , 80% of parents identify distractibility as the #1 detractor from successful homework completion. 

The sheer number of distractors (social media, games, apps, texting) that will always be more fun than kids’ science homework just seems to keep growing. It’s undoubtedly challenging and stressful to deal with these, especially when the homework battle usurps quality time together.

Considerations for Elementary School

There are specific pros and cons of homework in elementary school that are worth reviewing separately here. Like I mentioned, it’s worth noting that research is limited regarding the benefits of homework in grades K-4. And for many, “preparation for secondary school” isn’t a sufficient reason in and of itself to incorporate it into elementary grades. Throw in the research about how much kids learn through play at this age, and it’s certainly worth asking if homework is worth it for younger kids.

That said, the advised amount of time for elementary school kids should be 10 minutes maximum in 1st grade, 40 minutes at maximum in 4th grade,  which should not be a challenge for most kids. The question becomes what skills a homework routine adds into the school routine, just as much as what kind of assignments youngsters receive. 

Considerations for High School

Kids get increasingly busy in secondary grades (as any parent knows), so the pros and cons of homework in high school become a part of an increasingly complex schedule equation. 

Juggling academics, sports, jobs, and other extracurricular activities is no easy feat, and there can seem to be too few hours in a day to get it all done. That feeling already causes stress for many teens, adding to the mental health challenges they often face at this age. 

So, what are the benefits of homework in middle school onwards? Research correlates a regular homework routine with increased long-term academic success. Middle and high school are developmentally critical in cognitive growth; critical thinking, planning, executive functioning, and judgement can all be supported by quality homework routine. College and career-bound kids learn all kinds of valuable life skills, and it’s an important opportunity to practice the academic skills that become increasingly applicable in real life.

The bottoms line is: at this age, balance matters more than ever. 

My take on just how beneficial & necessary homework is: 

If I didn’t take a stance here, my former students would rightly point out I’m not taking my own advice (and wouldn’t pass the rubric I used to assess their writing). 

Based on the existing evidence and personal experience, my take is this: academically enriching, developmentally appropriate homework is beneficial to students on the whole. 

I also think there is a lot of work to be done to realize these benefits. The evidence clearly demonstrates that excessive or arbitrary homework assignments do more harm than good. 

If homework is here to stay, schools need to get to work in improving its quality, implementation, and constant evaluation within the education community. Families need to get involved and step up at-home support. 

It’s past time to tackle the inequalities the homework issue exposes in public schools among other the many challenges outlined above. It is the responsibility of teachers, students, families, and their school communities to navigate these challenges and maximize positive outcomes for kids. 

So what’s next? 

Glad you asked! A lot needs to happen to make homework actually work for students, so I’ll focus on what’s within reach for action steps. Here are a few recommendations: 

Advocate for quality homework assignments. This needs to be a part of teacher training and professional development as well as ongoing conversations between families and schools. These could well be tough conversations, but they’re well worth having. 

Talk with your student and school professionals about kids’ mental health. In my opinion, this is as important a conversation as any in schools, but it isn’t currently given the time and attention it deserves—not even close. Reach out to your child’s school to get the ball rolling if needed! 

Ask for help! Seriously, don’t be shy. Teachers and other school professionals can’t drive to your house and supervise homework time themselves, but most would be happy to provide advice and/or resources. They know your child too and can add valuable insight into their needs.

Encourage learning outside of school AND beyond homework worksheets. Seemingly endless/excessive practice of anything will inevitably lead to kids feeling discouraged. Revitalize learning for the whole family with a fun read,  interesting documentary, or trip to a museum or park. 

It’s our mission at iD Tech to help kids thrive, and we love sharing insights with our community along the way to achieving that mission! 

For more resources, check out our recent posts on Zoom school etiquette and safety  and  goal-setting strategies for kids .

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Virginia started with iD Tech at the University of Denver in 2015 and has loved every minute since then! A former teacher by trade, she has a master's in education and loves working to embolden the next generation through STEM. Outside the office, you can usually find her reading a good book, struggling on a yoga mat, or exploring the Rocky Mountains. 

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iD Tech Privacy Policy

Id tech privacy policy publish date: 10/26/2023.

internalDrive, Inc. (“iD Tech”) respects your privacy and recognizes the importance of your personal information. We are committed to protecting your information through our compliance with this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies to all individuals who visit and/or use iD Tech/internalDrive, Inc.'s websites, services, and products that collect data and/or display these terms ("iD Sites & Services"). This Privacy Policy describes the types of information we may collect when you visit an iD Tech website, open an account or receive iD Tech Services and our practices for using, maintaining, protecting and disclosing that information. 

All references to "us," "we," or "our" refer to iD Tech/internalDrive, Inc.

All references to "child" or "children" refer to children  under the age of 13.

By accessing or otherwise using any of our iD Sites & Services, you consent to the terms contained in this privacy statement, including the collection, use, and disclosure of data as described below.

California Residents:  iD Tech’s  PRIVACY NOTICE FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS  supplements the information contained in this Privacy Policy and applies solely to visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California.

I.   Information We May Ask You To Provide

Through our iD Sites & Services, we collect information about you and/or your student when you choose to provide it to us. For example, we collect information from you so you can use iD Sites & Services, purchase products and services, register for and obtain an account, request information, apply for a job, register for one of our programs, or verify your age. In general, we may ask you to provide us with the following types of information about you and/your student:

  • Contact information such as name, email address, mailing address, phone numbers (note to parents/guardians of children: if we have actual knowledge that a user is under 13 years old, the child will be asked to have their parent or guardian continue the registration process);
  • Month, day, and year of birth;
  • Gender preference;
  • Course interests;
  • Billing information such as credit card number and billing address;
  • User names to third-party systems (for example, Facebook);
  • Information provided on forums or chat rooms within our iD Sites & Services (note to parents/guardians of children: forums and chat rooms permit a child user to enter comments through which the child could provide personal information that would be visible to other users);
  • Information included in résumés and job applications; and
  • Health, any participation limitations or needs, immunization and allergy information.

Note to Parents/Guardians : We only collect the information described above, from someone we know to be a child, after the child's parent or guardian provides us with verifiable consent, unless one of the limited exceptions discussed below applies. For more information and/or to review these limited exceptions, please see the " Our Commitment to Children’s Privacy " section below. II.   Information Collected Automatically Cookies and other Tracking Technologies We may use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, log files, Local Storage Objects, or other technologies to collect certain information about visitors to and users of iD Sites & Services, such as the date and time you visit iD Sites & Services, the areas or pages of iD Sites & Services that you visit, the amount of time you spend viewing or using iD Sites & Services, the number of times you return to iD Sites & Services, other click-stream or usage data, and emails that you open, forward or click through to iD Sites & Services. For example, we may automatically collect certain information, such as the type of web browser and operating system you use, the name of your Internet Service Provider, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, software version, and the domain name from which you accessed our iD Sites & Services. We use this information to monitor and improve our iD Sites & Services, support the internal operations of our iD Sites & Services, personalize your online experience, verify e-signatures, and for internal analysis.

We may also use cookies, web beacons, and other similar technologies from third party partners such as Google for measurement services, better targeting advertisements and for marketing purposes.  These cookies, web beacons, and other similar technologies allow us to display our promotional material to you on other sites you visit across the internet.  Our third-party advertising partners may also use these technologies to identify your browsing interests over time and across different websites to deliver targeted advertisements. 

iD Sites & Services do not recognize “Do Not Track” headers or similar mechanisms.

iD Tech partners with Rakuten Advertising, who may collect personal information when you interact with our site. The collection and use of this information is subject to Rakuten’s privacy policy located at  https://rakutenadvertising.com/legal-notices/services-privacy-policy/ . Our Sites & Services may also use other third-party plug-ins to provide additional services and benefits. These third parties may collect information about you as well. When we use a third-party plug-in we will attempt to provide you with the identify the plug-in, so you can visit the sites of the third-parties to view the privacy policy under which the information they collect is identified and controlled. 

We may also collect geolocation information from your device so we can customize your experience on our iD Sites & Services. In most cases, you are able to turn off such data collection at any time by accessing the privacy settings of your device and/or through the settings in the applicable GPS application. Social Media You also can engage with our content, and other offerings, on or through social media services or other third-party platforms, such as Facebook, or other third-party social media plug-ins, integrations and applications. When you engage with our content on or through social media services or other third-party platforms, plug-ins, integrations or applications, you may allow us to have access to certain information in your profile. This may include your name, email address, photo, gender, birthday, location, an ID associated with the applicable third-party platform or social media account user files, like photos and videos, your list of friends or connections, people you follow and/or who follow you, or your posts or "likes." For a description on how social media services and other third-party platforms, plug-ins, integrations, or applications handle your information, please refer to their respective privacy policies and terms of use, which may permit you to modify your privacy settings.

When we interact with you through our content on third-party websites, applications, integrations or platforms, we may obtain any information regarding your interaction with that content, such as content you have viewed, and information about advertisements within the content you have been shown or may have clicked on. Information from Third Party Services We may also obtain other information, including personal information, from third parties and combine that with information we collect through our Websites. For example, we may have access to certain information from a third-party social media or authentication service if you log in to our Services through such a service or otherwise provide us with access to information from the service. Any access that we may have to such information from a third-party social media or authentication service is in accordance with the authorization procedures determined by that service. If you authorize us to connect with a third-party service, we will access and store your name, email address(es), current city, profile picture URL, and other personal information that the third party service makes available to us, and use and disclose it in accordance with this Policy. You should check your privacy settings on these third-party services to understand and change the information sent to us through these services. For example, you can log in to the Services using single sign-in services such as Facebook Connect or an Open ID provider.

III.    Your Ability To Control Cookies And Similar Technologies As noted, we may use cookies or similar technologies to monitor and improve iD Sites & Services, support the internal operations of iD Sites & Services, personalize your online experience, support the e-signature process, and/or for internal analysis. This includes the use of third-party cookies. We use these technologies to keep track of how you are using our iD Sites & Services and to remember certain pieces of general information. 

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. Check the “Tools” or “Help” tab on your browser to learn how to change your cookie and other tracking preferences.

If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the functions of iD Sites & Services and/or some of our services will function improperly, in particular the inability to log in or manage items in your shopping cart. We do not share cookie data with any third parties. IV.   How We May Use Your Information We may use the information we collect from and about you and/or your student for any of the following purposes:

  • Allow you to register yourself or your student with iD Sites & Services, or to otherwise register and open an account with us;
  • Allow you and/or your student to use iD Sites & Services;
  • Fulfill orders, process payments, and prevent transactional fraud;
  • Respond to your or your student’s requests or inquiries;
  • Provide you or your student with information about our products and services;
  • Consider you for employment or a volunteer opportunity;
  • Register you or your student in one of our programs;
  • Verify your student's age;
  • Monitor and improve iD Sites & Services, support the internal operations of iD Sites & Services, personalize your online experience, and for internal analysis;
  • Protect the security or integrity of iD Sites & Services and our business;
  • Facilitate the sale or potential sale of our business or any of our assets; or
  • As required by law.

V.   How We Share Information We do not sell or otherwise share your or your student’s information with any third parties, except for the limited purposes described below. Parents/guardians of children under the age of 13 have the option of consenting to the collection and use of their child's personal information without consenting to the disclosure of that information to certain third parties.  

1.   Law Enforcement And Safety

We may access, preserve, and/or disclose the information we collect and/or content you and/or your student/child provides to us (including information posted on our forums) to a law enforcement agency or other third parties if required to do so by law or with a good faith belief that such access, preservation, or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (i) comply with legal process; (ii) enforce the Terms and Conditions of iD Sites & Services; (iii) respond to claims that the content violates the rights of third parties; or (iv) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the owners or users of iD Sites & Services, a third party, or the general public. We also may disclose information whenever we believe disclosure is necessary to limit our legal liability; to protect or defend our rights or property; or protect the safety, rights, or property of others.  2.   Service Providers; Colleges and Universities Information collected through iD Sites & Services may be transferred, disclosed, or shared with third parties engaged by us to handle and deliver certain activities, such as housing, meals, payment processing, mail/email distribution, software providers, and to perform other technical and processing functions, such as maintaining data integrity, programming operations, user services, or technology services. We may provide these third parties’ information collected as needed to perform their functions, but they are prohibited from using it for other purposes and specifically agree to maintain the confidentiality of such information. Some of these providers, such as payment processors, may request additional information during the course of offering their services. Before you provide additional information to third-party providers, we encourage you to review their privacy policies and information collection practices. 3.    Business Transfer During the normal course of our business, we may sell or purchase assets. If another entity may acquire and/or acquires us or any of our assets, information we have collected about you may be transferred to such entity. In addition, if any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding is brought by or against us, such information may be considered an asset of ours and may be sold or transferred to third parties. Should a sale or transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to try to require that the transferee use personal information provided through our iD Sites & Services in a manner that is consistent with this privacy statement. VI.            Our Commitment To Children’s Privacy Protecting the privacy of children is paramount. We understand that users and visitors of our iD Sites & Services who are under 13 years of age need special safeguards and privacy protection. It is our intent to fully comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). 

Our iD Sites & Services are intended for general audiences. We do not knowingly permit anyone under 13 years of age to provide us with personal information without obtaining a parent's or guardian’s verifiable consent, except where:

  • the sole purpose of collecting the name or online contact information of a parent or child is to provide notice and obtain parental consent;
  • the purpose of collecting a parent’s online contact information is to provide voluntary notice to, and subsequently update the parent about, the child’s participation in our iD Sites & Services that do not otherwise collect, use, or disclose childrens' personal information;
  • the sole purpose of collecting online contact information from a child is to respond directly on a one-time basis to a specific request from the child, and where such information is not used to re-contact the child or for any other purpose, is not disclosed, and is deleted by us promptly after responding to the child’s request;
  • the purpose of collecting a child’s and a parent’s online contact information is to respond directly more than once to the child’s specific request, and where such information is not used for any other purpose, disclosed, or combined with any other information collected from the child;
  • the purpose of collecting a child’s and a parent’s name and online contact information, is to protect the safety of a child, and where such information is not used or disclosed for any purpose unrelated to the child’s safety;
  • we collect a persistent identifier and no other personal information and such identifier is used for the sole purpose of providing support for the internal operations of iD Sites & Services; or
  • otherwise permitted or required by law.

If we receive the verifiable consent of a child's parent or guardian to collect, use, and/or disclose the child's information, we will only collect, use, and disclose the information as described in this privacy statement. Some features of our iD Sites & Services permit a child user to enter comments, such as forums and chat rooms, through which the child could provide personal information that would be visible to other users. If you are the parent or guardian of a child user, please advise your child of the risks of posting personal information on this iD Sites & Services or any other site. VII.           Parental/Guardian Rights If you are a parent or guardian, you can review or have deleted your child's personal information, and refuse to permit further collection or use of your child's information. To exercise any of these rights, please email us at  [email protected] or send your request to:

iD Tech ∙ PO Box 111720 ∙ Campbell, CA 950011 Client Service Toll Free Number: 1-888-709-8324

VIII.         Restrictions On Child Users Children under 13 years of age are prevented from accessing areas of iD Sites & Services which include, but are not restricted to, client account information, unless approved by their parent or guardian and any course content defined as age inappropriate by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). IX.            Forums And Chats We may offer forums and chat rooms. Please be aware that anyone may read postings on a forum or in a chat room. Furthermore, any information which is posted to a forum or chat room could include personal information, which would be disclosed and available to all users of that forum or chat room, and is therefore no longer private. We cannot guarantee the security of information that any user discloses or communicates online in public areas such as forums and chat rooms. Those who do so, do so at their own risk. We reserve the right to monitor the content of the forums and chat rooms. If age-inappropriate content or potentially identifiable information is seen, it may be removed or edited by us for security, privacy, and/or legal reasons. We will not republish postings from forums or chat rooms anywhere on the Web. X.             Links And Third Parties

At our discretion, we may include or offer third-party websites, products, and services on iD Sites & Services. These third-party sites, products, and services have separate and independent privacy policies. You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third parties. We have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of linked sites, products, or services.

Our iD Sites & Services may contain links to other third-party websites, chat rooms, or other resources that we provide for your convenience. These sites are not under our control, and we are not responsible for the content available on other sites. Such links do not imply any endorsement of material on our part and we expressly disclaim all liability with regard to your access to such sites. Access to any other websites linked to from iD Sites & Services is at your own risk.  

XI.             Legal Basis for processing Personal Data and Your Data Protection Rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), iD Tech’s legal basis for collecting and using your personal information as described in this policy depends on the personal Data we collect and the context in which we collect it.  ID Tech may process your personal data:

  • To provide the services which you requested or purchased;
  • Because you have given us permission to do so;
  • To provide you with better services, including conducting audits and data analysis;
  • For payment processing;
  • For marketing; and 
  • To comply with the law

You have certain data protection rights. iD Tech aims to take reasonable steps to allow you to correct, amend, delete or limit the use of your Personal Data.

If you wish to be informed about what Personal Data we hold about you and if you want it to be removed from our systems, please contact us at  [email protected] .

In certain circumstances, you have the following data protection rights:

  • The right to access, update, or delete the information we have on you. Whenever made possible, you can access, update, or request deletion of your Personal Data directly within your account settings section. If you are unable to perform these actions yourself, please contact us to assist you.
  • The right to have your information corrected if that information is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • The right to object. You have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Data.
  • The right of restriction. You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information.
  • The right to data portability. You have the right to be provided with a copy of the information we have on you in a structured, machine-readable, and commonly used format.
  • The right to withdraw consent. You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time where iD Tech relied on your consent to process your personal information.

Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity before responding to such requests.

You have the right to complain to a Data Protection Authority about our collection and use of your Personal Data. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority in the European Economic Area (EEA). XII.           International Visitors  (non GDPR Locations) Our iD Sites & Services are operated and managed on servers located in the United States. If you choose to use our iD Sites & Services from the European Union or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and uses that differ from the United States, then you recognize and agree that you are transferring your personal information outside of those regions to the United States and you consent to that transfer. XIII.          Data Security Commitment To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place reasonable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect. We also use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol on your account information and registration pages to protect sensitive personal information. Sensitive data is encrypted on our iD Sites & Services and when stored on the servers.

XIV. How You Can Access, Request A Copy, Correct, Or Ask For Information To Be Deleted Access to certain personal Information that is collected from our Services and that we maintain may be available to you. For example, if you created a password-protected account within our Service, you can access that account to review the information you provided.

You may also send an email or letter to the following email or call the number provided to ask for a copy, correction, or ask us to delete your personal Information. Please include your registration information for such services, such as first name, last name, phone, and email address in the request. We may ask you to provide additional information for identity verification purposes or to verify that you are in possession of an applicable email account. Email: [email protected] Phone: 1-888-709-8324 XV. How To Contact Us/Opting Out Of Electronic Communications If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or if you have provided your email and/or address and prefer not to receive marketing information, please contact us via email or call at the number provided below.  Make sure you provide your name as well as the email(s) and address(es) you wish to have removed. 

If you have signed up to receive text messages from us and no longer wish to receive such messages, you may call or email us at the address provided below. Please provide your name, account email, and the number(s) you want removed. Email: [email protected] Phone: 1-888-709-8324 XVI.         Terms And Conditions Your use of our iD Sites & Services and any information you provide on our iD Sites & Services are subject to the terms of the internalDrive, Inc. (referred to as “iD Tech”) Terms and Conditions. XVII.         Privacy Statement Changes We will occasionally amend this privacy statement. We reserve the right to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this statement at any time. If we materially change our use of your personal information, we will announce such a change on relevant iD Sites & Services and will also note it in this privacy statement. The effective date of this privacy statement is documented at the beginning of the statement. If you have any questions about our privacy statement, please contact us in writing at [email protected] or by mail at PO Box 111720, Campbell, CA 95011. XVIII.          Your Credit Card Information And Transactions For your convenience, you may have us bill you or you can pay for your orders by credit card. If you choose to pay by credit card, we will keep your credit card information on file, but we do not display that information at the online registration site. For your security, your credit card security number is not stored in our system.

We use state-of-the-art Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption technology to safeguard and protect your personal information and transactions over the Internet. Your information, including your credit card information, is encrypted and cannot be read as it travels over the Internet. XIX.         Social Networking Disclaimer iD Tech provides several opportunities for social networking for both participants and staff on sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. These sites are not affiliated with iD Tech and offer their own individual social networking services. Please read the following Terms and Conditions carefully, as well as the Terms and Conditions of the sites in which iD Tech has created a forum ("Group"). These Terms and Conditions are a legal agreement between you and iD Tech and apply to you whether you are a visitor to these sites or any site with an official iD Tech affiliation. iD Tech is a member of several pre-existing sites (as mentioned above). There may be, however, portions of  www.iDTech.com  that include areas where participants can post submissions. Any of the above-mentioned "Sites" (or other similar sites) have their own distinct rules and regulations. iD Tech reserves the right to take action to remove any content deemed inappropriate by the sites or by iD Tech standards. iD Tech will not be held liable for any loss of content or disagreements that may arise between the individual social networking site and the user. You understand that by registering for an iD Tech program, your participant(s) may access and upload content to social networking sites. In order to access certain features of the social networking sites or pages on iDTech.com, and to post Member Submissions, the majority of these sites require that the user open an account with them. Please note that these sites have their own individual Terms and Conditions that must be followed. Age requirements are outlined within each Site's Terms and Conditions. You hereby authorize your participant to access social networking sites while at camp and create an account if they choose to do so and if they meet the requirements listed by each site to create an account. Interaction with other users:

  • iD Tech is merely providing a medium in which to socialize online with fellow participants. Users are solely responsible for interactions (including any disputes) with other Members and any volunteers that may advise and assist participants with projects and activities via your use of the iD Site & Services.
  • You understand that iD Tech does not in any way screen Members or review or police: (i) statements made by Members in their Member Submissions or the Member Submissions in general; or (ii) statements made by Users or any information a User may provide via the iD Site & Services.
  • You understand that your participant(s) is solely responsible for, and will exercise caution, discretion, common sense, and judgment in using the various iD Sites & Services and disclosing personal information to other Members or Users. 
  • On behalf of your participant(s), you agree that they will take reasonable precautions in all interactions with other Members, particularly if they decide to meet a Member offline or in person.
  • Your participant's use of the social networking sites with which iD Tech is affiliated, their services, and/or Content and Member Submissions, is at your sole risk and discretion and iD Tech hereby disclaims any and all liability to you or any third party relating thereto.
  • On behalf of your participant(s), you agree that they will not harass, threaten, intimidate, bully, stalk, or invade the privacy of any individual in connection with your use of the social networking sites with which iD Tech is affiliated and their services, whether or not an individual is an iD Tech Member; and you further agree not to advocate such activities or to encourage others to engage in any such activities.
  • On behalf of your participant(s), you agree they will not give their social networking information to an iD Tech staff member.
  • You and your participant(s) should also be aware that under no circumstances are iD Tech employees allowed to give personal contact information for social networking sites. This must be arranged by the participant's parent/guardian through the People Services Department.

XX.        Copyright & Intellectual Property Policy: You agree that you and your participant will not use the social networking sites to offer, display, distribute, transmit, route, provide connections to, or store any material that infringes copyrighted works, trademarks, or service marks or otherwise violates or promotes the violation of the intellectual property rights of any third party. internalDrive, Inc. has adopted and implemented a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are believed to be or are charged with repeatedly infringing the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others. XXI.       Disclaimer:   BY USING THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES OR SUBMITTING A MEMBER SUBMISSION, YOU AGREE THAT INTERNALDRIVE, INC. IS NOT RESPONSIBLE, AND WILL IN NO EVENT BE HELD LIABLE, FOR ANY: (A) LOST, ILLEGIBLE, MISDIRECTED, DAMAGED, OR INCOMPLETE MEMBER SUBMISSIONS; (B) COMPUTER OR NETWORK MALFUNCTION OR ERROR; (C) COMMUNICATION DISRUPTION OR OTHER DISRUPTIONS RELATED TO INTERNET TRAFFIC, A VIRUS, BUG, WORM, OR NON-AUTHORIZED INTERVENTION; OR (D) DAMAGE CAUSED BY A COMPUTER VIRUS OR OTHERWISE FROM YOUR ACCESS TO THE SITE OR SERVICES. THE SITE, SERVICES, INTERNALDRIVE, INC., CONTENT, AND MEMBER SUBMISSIONS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. INTERNALDRIVE, INC. AND ITS SUPPLIERS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE SITE, SERVICES, INTERNALDRIVE, INC., CONTENT AND MEMBER SUBMISSIONS, WHETHER THE PROVISION OF SERVICES OR YOUR SUBMISSION OF A MEMBER SUBMISSION WILL PRODUCE ANY LEVEL OF PROFIT OR BUSINESS FOR YOU OR LEAD TO ECONOMIC BENEFIT, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF QUALITY, AVAILABILITY, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN ADDITION, INTERNALDRIVE, INC. MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY THAT THE SITE OR SERVICES WILL BE ERROR FREE OR THAT ANY ERRORS WILL BE CORRECTED. SOME STATES OR JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN WARRANTIES. ACCORDINGLY, SOME OF THE ABOVE EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. XXII.         Indemnification:   You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold iD Tech, its officers, directors, employees, and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, arising out of or in any way connected with: (i) your access to or use of social networking sites, their services, iD Tech Content and Member Submissions; (ii) your violation of these Terms of Use; (iii) your violation of any third-party right, including, without limitation, any intellectual property right, publicity, confidentiality, property, or privacy right; or (iv) any claim that one of your Member Submissions caused damage to a third party or infringed or violated any third-party intellectual property right, publicity, confidentiality, property, or privacy right.

iD Tech Terms & Conditions

Id tech general terms & conditions publish date: october 26, 2023.

These Terms and Conditions apply to all pages found at www.idtech.com  and all Programs operated by internalDrive, Inc. (referred to as "iD Tech") including but not limited to iD Tech In-Person programs and iD Tech Online Programs. These terms apply to all lessons, classes, courses, and options offered by iD Tech (hereinafter referred to individually as “Program” or collectively “Programs”).

Privacy Policy: By using iD Tech’s website, registering you or your student for a Program, and/or affirmatively giving your agreement, you are agreeing on your own behalf and that of your student to abide and be bound by the Privacy Policy found HERE and the Terms and Conditions contained and referenced herein.

Online Programs: If you are purchasing, or you or your student is participating in an Online Program you also agree on your own behalf and on behalf of your student, to be bound by the additional terms and conditions found HERE .

On-Campus Programs: If you are purchasing, or you or your student is participating in, an On-Campus Program, you also agree on your own behalf and on behalf of your student to be bound by the additional terms and conditions found HERE .

I. Code of Conduct

To promote the best learning environment possible, all students and parents will be held to this Code of Conduct. Failure to comply with this Code of Conduct or engaging in actions or attitudes that seem to be harmful to the atmosphere, other participants, or staff, in the opinion of iD Tech can lead to removal from a Program or Program(s). iD Tech reserves the right to dismiss students from a Program and prevent a student from attending additional Programs without any prior warning for (1) violating any of the terms of this code of conduct, or (2) if iD Tech determines that a Program is not a suitable and/or productive environment for a student (this includes incidents in which a student does not have sufficient English language skills to participate in the Program; participation in courses requires a high level of English understanding). Refunds will not be given for students dismissed for failure of the student or the parent to abide by the Code of Conduct, or if it is determined that a Program is not suitable for a student. While iD Tech strives to maintain excellent relationships with students, in some rare cases, we may determine that iD Tech is not a compatible environment for every student.

Students and parents/guardians may NEVER:

  • Disrupt, bully, intimidate, or harass others;
  • Use inappropriate language (for example, students cannot use of swear or curse words, racial, gendered, homophobic/transphobic, stereotypical, or culturally insensitive words, even if done in a joking manner);
  • View, display or post any inappropriate material (including sexual content, material depicting inappropriate violence, racism, bullying, etc.) during a Program;
  • Share Program information (including lesson plans, etc.) with third-parties, without permission from iD Tech;
  • Impersonate another person; or
  • Contact instructors outside of the Program.

Students also may NEVER:

  • Engage in Internet hacking;
  • Create an account on or log into third-party websites without the permission of their instructor;
  • Use false information to create an account on or log into third-party websites;
  • Share personal information with staff members or ask staff members for their personal information;
  • Share or create video or audio recordings of iD Tech staff or another student without the permission of iD Tech.

Students and parents/guardians MUST:

  • Follow directions/instructions of iD Tech personnel;
  • If online, ensure the student attends the Program in an appropriate, private setting;
  • Dress appropriately during the Program;
  • Adhere to the terms of use of any sites used, including following the specified age policies; and
  • Only share material that is related to lessons and appropriate.

II. Age Policy

iD Tech offers Programs for students ages 7-19. Therefore, students may interact and/or room with a student that is within this age range including 18 or 19 years old. Please note the age range of the Program being registered for.

If a student is 18 or 19 years old and participating in an On-Campus Program, they must successfully pass a criminal and sexual offender background check prior to being allowed to attend. Clients are responsible for all costs and fees associated with any background checks required for a student to attend.

III. Special Accommodations

If a student requires an accommodation to participate, or needs an aid to attend in an iD Tech Program, a parent/guardian must call iD Tech at 1-888-709-8324, no less than three weeks prior to your student’s first day of the Program to make needed arrangements.

If a student requires an aide to participate in an iD Tech Program, the aide must be age 18 or older, may not be a family member, and if it is an On -Campus Program, the aide must successfully pass a criminal and sexual offender background check prior ro being allowed to attend with the student. Aides may also be subject to fingerprinting. Clients are responsible for all direct costs, including background check processing fees, parking, and compensation for the aide’s attendance.

IV. Payment Policy

  • Unless otherwise noted, all financial transactions are made and quoted in U.S. Dollars.
  • All Payment Plan Fees, fees paid for Online Programs, and the $250 per week deposit for On-Campus Programs are non-refundable and non-transferrable.
  • Other than if iD Tech needs to cancel a class, there are no refunds, credits or replacement days for classes missed. If iD Tech needs to cancel a class, iD Tech will either provide you a pro rata credit or reschedule the canceled class(es).
  • If iD Tech cancels an entire Program for any reason, the fees paid for the Program will be refunded, less the non-refundable fees, as set out above. Non-refundable fees (other than the Payment Plan Fee, if any) will remain in your account as a fully transferable credit that is valid for three (3) years.
  • iD Tech has the right to charge a $25 late fee on any payments not paid by the due date. For balances that are over 30 (thirty) days past due, iD Tech has the right to charge a 1% monthly finance charge and send the balance to a collection agency for collection (collection agency and legal fees may apply).
  • All fees (registration, administrative, late, etc.) must be paid prior to the start of a Program, unless a payment plan has been agreed to. Students will be withdrawn from a Program if the Program has not been paid in full prior to the start of the Program, or if at any time a payment is not paid by the due date. No refunds, credits, or make-up classes will be provided if a session is missed due to a delinquent payment.
  • By agreeing to a subscription or payment plan, you are authorizing iD Tech to auto charge the credit card on file as agreed at the time of purchase and as set out in My Account.
  • A $35 returned check fee will be assessed for any checks returned or card transactions that are not honored.

V. Reservation Changes

To provide outstanding Programs, we may have to limit your ability to make changes (such as registering for a different course or changing attendance dates) and/or cancel a Program. Please reference the Terms and Conditions for specific Programs (linked above) for the rules and restrictions for changes and cancellations for that Program.

VI. Promotions and Discounts

Promotional discounts are limited to one discount per student. There may be other limitations as to how they apply, and codes must be submitted at the time of registration. iD Tech will not honor retroactive adjustments, and the total discounts received cannot exceed the total cost of the products purchased.

The Refer-a-Friend Program is a voluntary Program that applies to Small Group Classes and In-Person Programs.

  • Each Referral Code can be used a maximum of 10 times. The code can only be used by students attending iD Tech for the first time (may be limited to certain Programs) and must be applied at the time of registration.
  • A tuition credit will be given for each new student that registers for an In-Person Program or Small Group Class using a referral code and attends the course for which they registered.
  • The Refer-a-Friend Program does not apply to siblings.
  • Students may not refer each other to both qualify for the Refer-a-Friend Discount.
  • Tuition credit will be applied after the referred client registers, pays in full and attends the Program. If the referred friend cancels his/her Program, the credit will be removed, and you will be responsible for any account balance that is created as a result of the lost credit.
  • All tuition credits must be used in the Program term in which they are earned, can be used to offset Program tuition and other fees incurred, but do not entitle you to any form of payment.
  • Tuition credits have no cash value.

VII. Certificates/Vouchers

All certificates/vouchers are non-refundable, non-transferable, and not redeemable for cash. Certificates/vouchers must be redeemed at the time of registration. Certificates/vouchers are valid until the specified expiration date, without exception. They are valid for up to the amount issued, and any amounts not used are forfeited.

VIII. General Releases

  • Media Release: As a condition of participation, you authorize iD Tech and its partners to take photos, videos, images, audio, and testimonials of and/or from you and your student and agree that said content may be used by iD Tech in promotional materials, marketing collateral, and online media. These images, testimonials, photos, videos, and audio may be shared and used by corporate partners, the media, or other organizations that work with iD Tech. You also agree that all projects and work created by your student during an iD Tech Program may be used by iD Tech in promotional materials, online, and other print media, and may be shared and used by corporate partners, the media, or other organizations that work with iD Tech. You understand that iD Tech, its owners, agents, partners, facility providers, and employees will not be held liable for damages and injuries associated with use of any content released herein, including any and all claims based on negligence. You agree that all images, testimonials, photos, video, and audio taken at or in connection with an iD Tech Program are the sole and exclusive property of iD Tech, and that iD Tech has a royalty-free, perpetual license to use copies of all student work and projects created at an iD Tech Program.
  • Name and Likeness Release: As a condition of participation, you authorize iD Tech and the press to use your student's full name and likeness in print, radio, TV, and other mediums.
  • Project/Hardware Release: Some iD Tech Programs are project-based. In such instances, iD Tech will attempt to provide your student with the knowledge to produce a working project. Some iD Tech Programs include take home hardware. In those instances, iD Tech will send home a product or voucher for a product. However, there will be instances when a project or product or product voucher cannot be sent home, posted, or delivered, and you agree that iD Tech is not responsible if the game, project, product or voucher does not work properly and/or is not compatible with outside systems. You release iD Tech from any responsibility for failure to provide a copy of the project or product voucher, or a non-functioning/non-compatible/non-complete game, project, product voucher or product. Refunds will not be issued for not receiving products, product vouchers, or being provided a copy of the project, and/or non-functioning/non-compatible/non-complete projects, product vouchers or products. If you have issues with a product voucher or product, you must contact the manufacturer directly. Product vouchers only cover shipping within the continental U.S. Therefore, if you require the product to be shipped outside the continental US, you are responsible for all shipping and handling costs.
  • Software Accounts: Some iD Tech Program activities require creation and/or use of an online account or require an online account to be created for your student. You consent to create or have iD Tech create account(s) as needed for your student to participate in Program activities. During non-instructional time, students may have access to websites that require accounts to be set up. While it is against iD Tech rules for students to set up accounts without their instructor’s permission, there may be instances where a student may create an account without the knowledge of iD Tech or its employees. In such instances, you release iD Tech and its employees from any and all responsibility and liability for accounts created by your student without iD Tech’s knowledge.
  • Game Ratings: iD Tech takes its corporate responsibility and iD Tech family values very seriously. However, we cannot guarantee that younger students at iD Tech will avoid all contact with or mention of games rated "T" for Teen, or "M" for Mature. iD Tech will make a concerted effort to minimize both direct and indirect exposure to any games not rated for a student’s age group. Students attending courses designed for older ages have a greater chance of being exposed to materials rated for that older age group. If a student is attending a course for ages 13+, they may be exposed to games rated "M" for Mature by the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). You voluntarily assume any and all risks, known or unknown, associated with your student’s exposure to game content at an iD Tech Program.

IX. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold internalDrive, Inc.,iD Tech, its officers, directors, employees, and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, arising out of or in any way connected with your student’s participation in an iD Tech Program.

X. Arbitration Agreement

You agree that any dispute other than collection matters, arising out of or relating to this Agreement, you or your student's participation in a Program with internalDrive, Inc., or otherwise arising between the parties, including, without limitation, any statutorily created or protected rights, as permitted by applicable state/provincial or federal laws, shall be settled by arbitration to be held in Santa Clara County, California, in accordance with the Commercial Rules of the American Arbitration Association, and judgment upon the award rendered by the arbitrator(s) may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. The prevailing party in the arbitration shall be entitled to recover expenses including costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees associated therewith. Should any part of this contract be found invalid or not enforceable by a court of law, then the remaining portion shall continue to be valid and in force. You hereby acknowledge that you understand the terms of this ARBITRATION AGREEMENT, and you agree to comply with all of its terms and provisions.

XI. Rights Reserved

internalDrive, Inc. reserves the right to update or modify these Terms and Conditions at any time. iD Tech is not a university-sponsored program. iD Tech reserves the right to cancel or modify any and all classes, lessons, Programs or courses for any reason.

XII. Release of Liability

ON BEHALF OF MY SON/DAUGHTER/WARD, I, THE PARENT/GUARDIAN, IN EXCHANGE FOR THE RIGHT OF MY SON/DAUGHTER/WARD TO PARTICIPATE IN ID TECH PROGRAM(S), HEREBY RELEASE INTERNALDRIVE, INC., ITS OWNERS, AGENTS, PARTNERS, FACILITY PROVIDERS, AND EMPLOYEES FROM LIABILITY (INCLUDING CLAIMS BASED UPON NEGLIGENCE) FOR ANY AND ALL DAMAGES OR INJURIES TO MY SON/DAUGHTER/WARD OR DAMAGE OF ANY PERSONAL PROPERTY. I AGREE TO BE FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY AND ALL SUCH DAMAGES OR INJURIES WHICH MAY RESULT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY FROM ANY NEGLIGENT ACTS OR ACTIVITIES ASSOCIATED WITH INTERNALDRIVE, INC. HOWEVER, I UNDERSTAND THAT I AM NOT RELEASING INTERNALDRIVE, INC., ITS OWNERS, AGENTS, PARTNERS, FACILITY PROVIDERS, AND EMPLOYEES FROM GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR INTENTIONALLY TORTIOUS CONDUCT. TO THE EXTENT THIS RELEASE CONFLICTS WITH STATE/PROVINCIAL LAW GOVERNING RELEASES, THIS RELEASE IS TO BE GIVEN THE FULLEST FORCE AND EFFECT PERMITTED UNDER STATE/PROVINCIAL LAW. SHOULD ANY PART OF THIS CONTRACT BE FOUND INVALID OR NOT ENFORCEABLE BY A COURT OF LAW, THEN THE REMAINING PORTION SHALL CONTINUE TO BE VALID AND IN FORCE. XIII. Copyright

iD Tech partners with and uses the intellectual property of some amazing companies. You and your student agree to uphold the copyright and trademark rights of iD Tech, their partners, and any company whose products are used at an iD Tech Program.

Is Homework Good or Bad for Students?

It's mostly good, especially for the sciences, but it also can be bad

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Homework isn't fun for students to do or for teachers to grade, so why do it? Here are some reasons why homework is good and why it's bad.

Why Homework Is Good

Here are 10 reasons why homework is good, especially for the sciences, such as chemistry:

  • Doing homework teaches you how to learn on your own and work independently. You'll learn how to use resources such as texts, libraries, and the internet. No matter how well you thought you understood the material in class, there will be times when you'll get stuck doing homework. When you face the challenge, you learn how to get help, how to deal with frustration, and how to persevere.
  • Homework helps you learn beyond the scope of the class. Example problems from teachers and textbooks show you how to do an assignment. The acid test is seeing whether you truly understand the material and can do the work on your own. In science classes, homework problems are critically important. You see concepts in a whole new light, so you'll know how equations work in general, not just how they work for a particular example. In chemistry, physics, and math, homework is truly important and not just busywork.
  • It shows you what the teacher thinks is important to learn, so you'll have a better idea of what to expect on a quiz or test .
  • It's often a significant part of your grade . If you don't do it, it could cost you , no matter how well you do on exams.
  • Homework is a good opportunity to connect parents, classmates, and siblings with your education. The better your support network, the more likely you are to succeed in class.
  • Homework, however tedious it might be, teaches responsibility and accountability. For some classes, homework is an essential part of learning the subject matter.
  • Homework nips procrastination in the bud. One reason teachers give homework and attach a big part of your grade to it is to motivate you to keep up. If you fall behind, you could fail.
  • How will you get all your work done before class? Homework teaches you time management and how to prioritize tasks.
  • Homework reinforces the concepts taught in class. The more you work with them, the more likely you are to learn them. 
  • Homework can help boost self-esteem . Or, if it's not going well, it helps you identify problems before they get out of control.

Sometimes Homework Is Bad

So, homework is good because it can boost your grades , help you learn the material, and prepare you for tests. It's not always beneficial, however. Sometimes homework hurts more than it helps. Here are five ways homework can be bad:

  • You need a break from a subject so you don't burn out or lose interest. Taking a break helps you learn.
  • Too much homework can lead to copying and cheating.
  • Homework that is pointless busywork can lead to a negative impression of a subject (not to mention a teacher).
  • It takes time away from families, friends, jobs, and other ways to spend your time.
  • Homework can hurt your grades. It forces you to make time management decisions, sometimes putting you in a no-win situation. Do you take the time to do the homework or spend it studying concepts or doing work for another subject? If you don't have the time for the homework, you could hurt your grades even if you ace the tests and understand the subject.
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How important is homework, and how much should parents help?

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is homework actually beneficial to students

A version of this post was  originally published  by Parenting Translator. Sign up for  the newsletter  and follow Parenting Translator  on Instagram .

In recent years, homework has become a very hot topic . Many parents and educators have raised concerns about homework and questioned how effective it is in enhancing students’ learning. There are also concerns that students may be getting too much homework, which ultimately interferes with quality family time and opportunities for physical activity and play . Research suggests that these concerns may be valid. For example, one study reported that elementary school students, on average, are assigned three times  the recommended amount of homework.

So what does the research say? What are the potential risks and benefits of homework, and how much is too much?

Academic benefits

First, research finds that homework is associated with higher scores on academic standardized tests for middle and high school students, but not elementary school students . A recent experimental study in Romania found some benefit for a small amount of writing homework in elementary students but not math homework. Yet, interestingly, this positive impact only occurred when students were given a moderate amount of homework (about 20 minutes on average).

Non-academic benefits

The goal of homework is not simply to improve academic skills. Research finds that homework may have some non-academic benefits, such as building responsibility , time management skills, and task persistence . Homework may also increase parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling. Yet, too much homework may also have some negative impacts on non-academic skills by reducing opportunities for free play , which is essential for the development of language, cognitive, self-regulation and social-emotional skills. Homework may also interfere with physical activity and too much homework is associated with an increased risk for being overweight . As with the research on academic benefits, this research also suggests that homework may be beneficial when it is minimal.

What is the “right” amount of homework?

Research suggests that homework should not exceed 1.5 to 2.5 hours per night for high school students and no more than one hour per night for middle school students. Homework for elementary school students should be minimal and assigned with the aim of building self-regulation and independent work skills. Any more than this and homework may no longer have a positive impact. 

The National Education Association recommends 10 minutes of homework per grade and there is also some experimental evidence that backs this up.

Overall translation

Research finds that homework provides some academic benefit for middle and high school students but is less beneficial for elementary school students. Research suggests that homework should be none or minimal for elementary students, less than one hour per night for middle school students, and less than 1.5 to 2.5 hours for high school students. 

What can parents do?

Research finds that parental help with homework is beneficial but that it matters more how the parent is helping rather than  how often  the parent is helping.

So how should parents help with homework, according to the research? 

  • Focus on providing general monitoring, guidance and encouragement, but allow children to generate answers on their own and complete their homework as independently as possible . Specifically, be present while they are completing homework to help them to understand the directions, be available to answer simple questions, or praise and acknowledge their effort and hard work. Research shows that allowing children more autonomy in completing homework may benefit their academic skills.
  • Only provide help when your child asks for it and step away whenever possible. Research finds that too much parental involvement or intrusive and controlling involvement with homework is associated with worse academic performance . 
  • Help your children to create structure and develop some routines that help your child to independently complete their homework . Have a regular time and place for homework that is free from distractions and has all of the materials they need within arm’s reach. Help your child to create a checklist for homework tasks. Create rules for homework with your child. Help children to develop strategies for increasing their own self-motivation. For example, developing their own reward system or creating a homework schedule with breaks for fun activities. Research finds that providing this type of structure and responsiveness is related to improved academic skills.
  • Set specific rules around homework. Research finds an association between parents setting rules around homework and academic performance. 
  • Help your child to view homework as an opportunity to learn and improve skills. Parents who view homework as a learning opportunity (that is, a “mastery orientation”) rather than something that they must get “right” or complete successfully to obtain a higher grade (that is, a “performance orientation”) are more likely to have children with the same attitudes. 
  • Encourage your child to persist in challenging assignments and emphasize difficult assignments as opportunities to grow . Research finds that this attitude is associated with student success. Research also indicates that more challenging homework is associated with enhanced academic performance.
  • Stay calm and positive during homework. Research shows that mothers showing positive emotions while helping with homework may improve children’s motivation in homework.
  • Praise your child’s hard work and effort during homework.   This type of praise is likely to increase motivation. In addition, research finds that putting more effort into homework may be associated with enhanced development of conscientiousness in children.
  • Communicate with your child and the teacher about any problems your child has with homework and the teacher’s learning goals. Research finds that open communication about homework is associated with increased academic performance.

Cara Goodwin, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, a mother of three and the founder of  Parenting Translator , a nonprofit newsletter that turns scientific research into information that is accurate, relevant and useful for parents.

is homework actually beneficial to students

Is homework beneficial in today’s education landscape?

is homework beneficial

The K12 education landscape is transforming before our eyes, though some schools and countries have been slower to catch on.

Traditional educational practices are slowly being replaced with teaching 21st century skills like creativity, critical thinking and collaboration.

Classroom designs are becoming more flexible and there is a shift towards self-directed and student-centered learning.

In this new era of education, is homework beneficial for students or has it become an outdated education requirement?

According to an article by Youki Terada, Research and Standards Editor for Edutopia , homework is beneficial but only to a certain degree, depending on the age group.

Homework is wrecking our kids: The research is clear, let’s ban elementary homework https://t.co/dq1HZRoocI “Homework has benefits, but its benefits are age dependent.” Prayers for alll. God bless Thank you Katie Washburn @Katiekcw for sharing — Dawn Loves Life (@dawnloveslife) September 24, 2019

Second-grade teacher Fiorentino experimented with dropping homework after she found that the minimal benefits of homework didn’t outweigh the potential drawback of putting young children off school from an early age.

She wrote , “Something surprising happened: They started doing more work at home. This inspiring group of 8-year-olds used their newfound free time to explore subjects and topics of interest to them.”

Fiorentino found it was better to encourage her students to read more at home, offering optional homework instead to help them review material learnt in the classroom.

Homework is most beneficial for older students

But what about middle school students? According to Terada, “As students mature and develop the study skills necessary to delve deeply into a topic—and to retain what they learn—they also benefit more from homework.

“Nightly assignments can help prepare them for scholarly work, and research shows that homework can have moderate benefits for middle school students.

“Recent research also shows that online math homework, which can be designed to adapt to students’ levels of understanding, can significantly boost test scores.”

However, there is a limit to how much homework should be assigned. Too much can cause middle school students to lose motivation and focus, as researchers found in a 2015 study .

The researchers advised teachers to assign homework that presents a certain level of challenge or difficulty, instead of homework that is so challenging it demotivates students.

Homework should be assigned ““with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning.” In other words, its quality over quantity when it comes to homework.

My school: You have to study at least one hour daily Also my school: *puts tons of homework and projects that most of the time take like three hours daily and says that teenagers need to do exercise for 45 mins* Me: pic.twitter.com/5R0o9su7tk — (@plnkstardust) October 9, 2018

For high school students, homework is indeed beneficial for a learning boost but it should also not be too challenging or take up too much of their free time.

Terada wrote, “When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up valuable time to rest and spend time with family and friends. A 2013 study found that high school students can experience serious mental and physical health problems, from higher stress levels to sleep deprivation, when assigned too much homework.

“Homework in high school should always relate to the lesson and be doable without any assistance, and feedback should be clear and explicit.”

All things considered, homework is still beneficial for older students, as long as they’re not drowning in it, which can lead to burnout, stress and demotivation.

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is homework actually beneficial to students

A woman watches an annular solar eclipse on October 14, 2023 using special solar filter glasses at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Carlos Tischler/ Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images hide caption

A woman watches an annular solar eclipse on October 14, 2023 using special solar filter glasses at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

On April 8, as millions of people try to watch a solar eclipse sweep over North America, eye doctors across the United States will be on high alert.

That's because, while a solar eclipse is a stunning celestial event, it can also be dangerous. Looking at any part of the exposed sun without the right kind of protection can permanently injure the eye's light-sensitive retina.

And if past eclipses are prologue, it's likely that some eclipse-gazers will show up at doctors' offices with significant eye damage.

For April's eclipse, going from 'meh' to 'OMG' might mean just driving across town

For April's eclipse, going from 'meh' to 'OMG' might mean just driving across town

In 2017, during the solar eclipse seen across the United States, that happened to multiple people despite abundant media coverage about the danger of looking at the sun when it is anything less than fully and completely covered by the moon.

In New York City, for example, one young woman came to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, complaining of blurred and distorted vision.

She had peeked up at the crescent sun without eyewear at first, then looked at it longer while wearing what she thought were appropriate eclipse glasses.

Everything you need to know about solar eclipse glasses before April 8

Everything you need to know about solar eclipse glasses before April 8

"But the problem was she was handed glasses from someone else," says ophthalmologist Avnish Deobhakta , so she didn't know if the eyewear really met safety standards .

Doctors found a permanent, crescent-shaped wound on her retina; there's no treatment for that kind of injury, which is similar to the kind of light-induced damage caused by pointing a laser into the eye.

Other eclipse-related eye injuries were reported in California and Utah .

Given that more than 150 million people directly viewed either a partial eclipse or a total solar eclipse, however, the number who suffered eye problems may seem relatively small.

Plan to watch the eclipse from a wild mountain summit? Be ready for harsh conditions

Plan to watch the eclipse from a wild mountain summit? Be ready for harsh conditions

"We've got less than 100 cases across Canada and the U.S.," says Ralph Chou , an eclipse eye safety expert with the University of Waterloo in Canada.

But no one knows for sure how many people damaged their eyes in 2017, he says, because not every case gets written up for a medical journal, and people may not seek help for less severe vision troubles.

"A lot of them, if they actually happened, were probably relatively minor and, you know, they resolved on their own within weeks or months," says Chou, who says that about half of those who experience significant blurring on the day after an eclipse will recover almost completely.

Some of that recovery may just be the brain learning to compensate and "fill in" the blanks, says Deobhakta, who notes that "there's two eyes, and often there's asymmetric injury. Your brain kind of gets used to it."

The eclipse gives astronomy clubs an opportunity to shine

The eclipse gives astronomy clubs an opportunity to shine

He notes that there are ways to enjoy the eclipse without looking up at all; everyday household objects like colanders allow you to create pinhole projectors that let you watch an image of the sun becoming more and more crescent-shaped.

"My advice is to not look at the sun, because you may not realize that it is affecting your retina. It does not hurt. It doesn't burn at the time. It's not as if you feel it," says Deobhakta.

If you do choose to look up at the sun when it is partially eclipsed, says Deobhakta, "make sure you really are sure that you have the standard glasses that have the right filters."

The American Astronomical Society has a list of vetted suppliers .

Will you be celebrating the solar eclipse? NPR wants to hear from you

Will you be celebrating the solar eclipse? NPR wants to hear from you

If you still have reliable eclipse viewers from 2017 that are in good condition, those should still work fine, says Chou.

He notes that eclipse viewers usually have a "best by" date on them, but that is to satisfy European regulations related to personal protective equipment.

"It's essentially meaningless because the filters do not age," says Chou. "If you've taken good care of the viewers from 2017, they haven't been crushed or folded or whatever to damage the mountings, then they're perfectly safe to use for this eclipse."

Despite the warnings, some people try to glimpse the partially-eclipsed sun without eye protection, thinking that a quick look won't cause any harm. While an initial glance at the sun may not cause lasting damage, says Chou, repeated peeks do add up.

"At some point, you may tip yourself over the critical threshold," says Chou. "Unfortunately, you don't realize that until far too late."

The eye damage only becomes apparent hours after it occurs. Typically, people wake up the morning after observing an eclipse and see a spot of extreme fuzziness in the center of their field of vision.

There is one time when it's safe to look up at the sun with the naked eye, experts say, and that's when the sun is totally covered by the moon.

This eclipse phase is only visible from the so-called " path of totality ," a stretch of land from Texas to Maine. And the experience of totality doesn't last long — up to four and a half minutes or so, depending on your location.

When the sun is 100% obscured, the sky abruptly darkens and the once-bright sun becomes a dark circle surrounded by a ghostly white ring called the corona.

If people wear super-dark eclipse eyewear during these dramatic moments, they'll miss the whole show.

"People get so concerned to not hurt their eyes, which of course is super important, that they don't take their glasses off when the moon completely covers the sun," says Laura Peticolas , a space physicist at Sonoma State University. "And then they're like, 'I never saw the corona.'"

So knowing when to take the glasses off, and when to put them on, is key.

Chou says that in the last moments before the sun gets totally covered, the thin crescent of the bright sun breaks into discrete points of bright light. These are called " Baily's beads ," and they are the last bits of light from the disk of the sun shining through the valleys on the edge of the moon.

"And as they go out, their disappearance is a signal that it is now safe to remove the filters and look at the sun without a protective filter," he explains.

As soon as the sun starts to re-emerge, the glasses need to immediately go back on.

"It is possible to observe the eclipse in perfect safety," says Chou, who has seen 19 total solar eclipses.

He encourages people to go out and enjoy an event that won't happen again in the United States until 2044, even as he realizes that some people will be too fearful of eye damage.

"I recognize that there are going to be people who just don't trust the science and just don't trust the public service announcements and are just going to ignore the eclipse as much as they can," says Chou. "It's an unfortunate thing."

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Muslim students face tough challenges during Ramadan. Here's what teachers can do to help.

is homework actually beneficial to students

Last year during Ramadan , Zara Ahmad’s school in southern Maryland hosted a waffle day. The smells of batter and syrup wafted through the campus hallways. Ahmad did everything she could to ignore the aromas, but the decision to hold the event then felt insensitive given she and other Muslim students were fasting .   

“Even if they know, they just don't care and they're not as considerate as they could be,” said Ahmad, 16, reflecting on how teachers and administrators handle day-to-day operations during the Islamic holy month of fasting, prayer and community. 

Several times in the past couple of decades , the U.S. Education Department has issued guidance about affirming students’ right to pray and express their religion at school. Last year, the department released the guidance again – specifically alluding to protections related to Ramadan, which began last week and runs through April 9. The latest guidance came as a growing number of school districts have taken steps to better accommodate students who observe Ramadan, including by making one of the major holidays following the month an official day off for all students. 

At a time of rising anti-Muslim discrimination, however, advocates say U.S. schools aren’t doing enough to raise awareness and ensure that students feel supported when practicing their religion. Teachers are often unaware that the holiday is taking place, putting the onus on kids or parents to request exemptions from certain activities or a place where students can pray.

The Education Department’s civil rights arm separately issued a letter on Thursday reminding schools of their obligation to protect such students from discrimination, highlighting the heightened Islamophobia after war broke out in Gaza.

USA TODAY spoke with Amaarah DeCuir, an education researcher and expert on Muslim student experiences about best practices for supporting Ramadan in schools. Here's what she said: 

Lunchtime accommodations and places to pray

A key tenet of Ramadan is fasting from dawn to sunset, which means people observing the holiday often don’t eat lunch. Schools should ensure children have a place to go during lunchtime other than the cafeteria, with its food smells and boisterous noises, said DeCuir, a lecturer at American University in Washington, D.C. 

Often that place is the library. Experts recommend schools staff this lunchtime room or area with at least one adult to monitor children and ensure they have what they need, whether it's quiet time for reflection or a game to play and recharge. 

Kids who choose to pray will also need a place to do so without being bothered. Ahmad, who has been sitting in the cafeteria and doing her schoolwork since Ramadan began, had to ask the guidance counselor earlier this school year if she could pray in her office. “But nothing really special has been done,” she said. This year, as with years before, “it’s definitely on the students to figure out what they want to do" during school, she said.

Flexible homework and testing

DeCuir stressed that Ramadan is a time of joy and reflection, when families may pray late at night and early in the morning. With fasting and limited sleep, students are sometimes low on energy. That’s especially true for younger students still figuring out how to navigate and manage the physical aspects of Ramadan. (Fasting typically isn't expected until followers reach puberty.)

That can make it difficult to concentrate on schoolwork at certain times of the day. DeCuir suggested that educators keep this in mind and be flexible with students who need leeway. Kids who feel their brains are most active during the morning can do any tests or important assignments early; students who feel most energetic in the afternoon can do the bulk of their work later in the day. 

DeCuir said it's important to check in with students and see what works best for them. She noted that the holy month coincides with high-stakes testing this year in many states and said schools should be flexible about timing with students who need consideration. 

At colleges and universities, it's typically up to faculty members to decide whether to accommodate Muslim students' needs during Ramadan, she said. Many professors aren't proactive about being flexible with students, penalizing them for turning in assignments late or refusing to let them take an exam at a different time than their peers.

When is Ramadan 2024? What is it? Muslims set to mark a month of spirituality, reflection

Alternatives in PE, music class and extracurriculars

Because of the physical limitations that sometimes come with fasting, DeCuir stressed the importance of exempting students from high-intensity cardiovascular activities. Instead, teachers can offer strength training or another low-intensity exercise.

Some people also abstain from singing and listening to music during Ramadan. Those students should be allowed to opt out of music class or engage in alternative activities during that time. 

Special consideration should also be made for children involved in after-school sports, DeCuir said. 

Ahmad is an avid tennis player and has often had to contend with matches scheduled on Eid al-Fitr, the holy day that marks the end of Ramadan. Ahmad’s parents have had to push the district to allow her to participate in the competitions after she missed class to attend Muslim events. Administrators typically bar students from playing on days they are absent from school.

Her parents have also had to request permission for Ahmad to be picked up from matches early, rather than take the bus back with her teammates, so she'll be home in time to break the fast at night with her family. 

“All these things can happen if the kids and parents ask for it,” said Omar Ahmad, Zara’s father. “But high school’s a tough time for children as it is, and there’s been a rise in Islamophobia and a backlash if you’re different.

"So many kids aren’t going to ask for it. Many parents might not even ask for it.”

Proactive support for students

Allowing Muslim students to exercise their right to pray is just a first step, DeCuir said. Schools should also be proactive about offering support. 

The Education Department guidance indicates that schools should excuse students from class so they can fast is such an allowance is requested.

Policies with this kind of language place a heavy burden on children and families, DeCuir said: “It requires a family or student to come before a school leader or classroom teacher to say: ‘I’m Muslim. I’m observing Ramadan.'” Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza, expressing something like that can be "extremely difficult and risky for many Muslims across the nation,” she said.

It can also be logistically tricky, particularly for immigrant families who do not speak English as a first language or know how to navigate school bureaucracy.

A better practice, DeCuir said, would be for schools to distribute a districtwide message outlining support that's available. It's important to remember that while a small percentage of students are Muslim, Islam is the third-largest religion in the U.S.

Campus politics: Harvard under scrutiny for discrimination. This complaint comes from Palestinian students

Don’t do this : Rejecting Ramadan celebrations to avoid politics  

DeCuir shared the story of a person she knows whose daughter wanted to bring Ramadan goodie bags to school for her classmates, including cards, stickers and fidget spinners. That's similar to how kids bring treats for Christmas or Easter, but the principal rejected the idea. 

The effect crushed the child's spirit, she said, and the family has since challenged the decision.

Muslim students have faced stigmas for years, particularly since 9/11. It's important to dedicate classroom time to teaching about issues involving Muslims in an accurate and responsible way, but teachers often avoid them.

It’s understandable why school leaders are wary of that, DeCuir said, “but when it’s done to silence the expression of the joy that young children have at the beginning of the month of Ramadan, that act creates a sense of exclusion and isolation.”

Ahmad, the student, says she has noticed a similar chilling effect at her school, where Muslims make up a small percentage of the campus population. When conversations about Islamic countries come up in government class, for example, she sometimes feels compelled to minimize her identity. 

At the very least, she said, “I just wish school would mention (Ramadan) and make all the students aware of it.”

“I wish I didn’t have to feel awkward.”

COMMENTS

  1. Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

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

  2. Is homework a necessary evil?

    In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful. "Students are assigned a lot of busywork. They're naming it as a primary stressor, but they don't feel it's supporting their learning," Galloway says. "Homework that's busywork is not good for anyone," Cooper agrees.

  3. Homework Pros and Cons

    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.

  4. Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs

    It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose. ... any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can ...

  5. Is Homework Necessary for Student Success?

    But ranking students on homework production favors students with quiet places to go home to, good Wi-Fi, and access to tutors and parents who can provide help. In other words, it favors students ...

  6. Is Homework Good for Kids?

    Research finds that homework can academically benefit middle and high schoolers, but not elementary students. There are non-academic benefits to homework, but too much work may interfere with ...

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

    Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor. • Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The ...

  8. Is Homework Good for Kids? Here's What the Research Says

    Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned. "A good way to think about homework is the way you think about ...

  9. Key Lessons: What Research Says About the Value of Homework

    Too much homework may diminish its effectiveness. While research on the optimum amount of time students should spend on homework is limited, there are indications that for high school students, 1½ to 2½ hours per night is optimum. Middle school students appear to benefit from smaller amounts (less than 1 hour per night).

  10. Does Homework Work?

    Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s, and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on ...

  11. Does homework really work?

    After two hours, however, achievement doesn't improve. For high schoolers, Cooper's research suggests that two hours per night is optimal. If teens have more than two hours of homework a night, their academic success flatlines. But less is not better. The average high school student doing homework outperformed 69 percent of the students in ...

  12. Should Kids Get Homework?

    Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary. "Every child should be doing homework, but the ...

  13. Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?

    Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning ...

  14. Research Trends: Why Homework Should Be Balanced

    Here's what the research says: In general, homework has substantial benefits at the high school level, with decreased benefits for middle school students and few benefits for elementary students (Cooper, 1989; Cooper et al., 2006). While assigning homework may have academic benefits, it can also cut into important personal and family time ...

  15. The Value of Homework

    High school teachers (grades 9-12) reported assigning an average of 3.5 hours' worth of homework a week. Middle school teachers (grades 6-8) reported assigning almost the same amount as high ...

  16. The Pros and Cons: Should Students Have Homework?

    Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can't see it in the moment. 6. Homework Reduces Screen Time.

  17. PDF Does Homework Really Improve Achievement? Kevin C. Costley, Ph.D ...

    homework may impact negatively on student achievement" (2004, p.3). Apparently, if teachers give too much homework, students may be overwhelmed, not complete the homework and ultimately achieve nothing a result. Homework Can Be Beneficial; Yet Nothing Replaces What is Learned in The Classroom

  18. Is homework beneficial? The pros and cons of homework for kids.

    4. Homework routines increase stress for the whole family. Many families dread "the homework battle," and with good reason. Not all parents have the knowledge, time, or (frankly) patience to be homework monitors, and not all students have the self-regulatory skills to do so themselves. And then comes the deluge of distractions.

  19. Is Homework Good or Bad for Students?

    Homework is a good opportunity to connect parents, classmates, and siblings with your education. The better your support network, the more likely you are to succeed in class. Homework, however tedious it might be, teaches responsibility and accountability. For some classes, homework is an essential part of learning the subject matter.

  20. Why Homework Doesn't Seem To Boost Learning--And How It Could

    Our students don't really do homework." If and when disadvantaged students get to college, their relative lack of study skills and good homework habits can present a serious handicap.

  21. Infographic: How Does Homework Actually Affect Students?

    Homework also provides students with the ability to think beyond what is taught in class. The not-so-good news is these benefits only occur when students are engaged and ready to learn. But, the more homework they get, the less they want to engage. The Negative Effects on Students. Homework can affect students' health, social life and grades.

  22. How important is homework, and how much should parents help?

    Research finds that homework provides some academic benefit for middle and high school students but is less beneficial for elementary school students. Research suggests that homework should be none or minimal for elementary students, less than one hour per night for middle school students, and less than 1.5 to 2.5 hours for high school students.

  23. Is homework beneficial in today's education landscape?

    Studies have shown that homework is not really beneficial for younger learners and it also depends on the amount assigned to students. Enquire to study in the UK . Universities; Schools; ... For high school students, homework is indeed beneficial for a learning boost but it should also not be too challenging or take up too much of their free time.

  24. Protect against eye damage from April 8's solar eclipse, doctors say

    When the April 8 solar eclipse draws eyes upward, having proper solar filters and solar eclipse glasses is essential to avoid potentially permanent eye damage, doctors say.

  25. Ramadan in schools: What teachers can do to support Muslim students

    Flexible homework and testing DeCuir stressed that Ramadan is a time of joy and reflection, when families may pray late at night and early in the morning. With fasting and limited sleep, students ...