positives and negatives on homework

20 Pros and Cons of Homework

Homework. It’s a word that sends a shudder down the spine of students and parents alike.

It is also a question that has become divisive. Some people feel that homework is an effective way to reinforce the concepts that were learned at school. Others feel like the time that homework demands would be better spent with a meaningful activity that brings the family together.

Is homework important? Is it necessary? Or is the added stress that homework places on students and parents doing more harm than good? Here are some of the key pros and cons to discuss.

List of the Pros of Homework

1. It encourages the discipline of practice. Repeating the same problems over and over can be boring and difficult, but it also reinforces the practice of discipline. To get better at a skill, repetition is often necessary. You get better with each repetition. By having homework completed every night, especially with a difficult subject, the concepts become easier to understand. That gives the student an advantage later on in life when seeking a vocational career.

2. It gets parents involved with a child’s life. Looking at Common Core math can be somewhat bewildering to parents. If you see the math problem 5×3 expressed as an addition problem, 5+5+5 seems like the right answer. The correct answer, however, would be 3+3+3+3+3. By bringing homework to do, students can engage their learning process with their parents so everyone can be involved. Many parents actually want homework sent so they can see what their children are being taught in the classroom.

3. It teaches time management skills. Homework goes beyond completing a task. It forces children (and parents, to some extent) to develop time management skills. Schedules must be organized to ensure that all tasks can be completed during the day. This creates independent thinking and develops problem-solving skills. It encourages research skills. It also puts parents and children into a position where positive decision-making skills must be developed.

4. Homework creates a communication network. Teachers rarely see into the family lives of their students. Parents rarely see the classroom lives of their children. Homework is a bridge that opens lines of communication between the school, the teacher, and the parent. This allows everyone to get to know one another better. It helps teachers understand the needs of their students better.

It allows parents to find out their child’s strengths and weaknesses. Together, an educational plan can be developed that encourages the best possible learning environment.

5. It allows for a comfortable place to study. Classrooms have evolved over the years to be a warmer and welcoming environment, but there is nothing like the comfort that is felt at home or in a safe space. By encouraging studies where a child feels the most comfortable, it is possible to retain additional information that may get lost within the standard classroom environment.

6. It provides more time to complete the learning process. The time allotted for each area of study in school, especially in K-12, is often limited to 1 hour or less per day. That is not always enough time for students to be able to grasp core concepts of that material. By creating specific homework assignments which address these deficiencies, it becomes possible to counter the effects of the time shortages. That can benefit students greatly over time.

7. It reduces screen time. On the average school night, a student in the US might get 3-4 hours of screen time in per day. When that student isn’t in school, that figure doubles to 7-8 hours of screen time. Homework might be unwanted and disliked, but it does encourage better study habits. It discourages time being spent in front of the television or playing games on a mobile device. That, in turn, may discourage distracting habits from forming that can take away from the learning process in the future.

8. It can be treated like any other extracurricular activity. Some families over-extend themselves on extracurricular activities. Students can easily have more than 40 hours per week, from clubs to sports, that fall outside of regular school hours. Homework can be treated as one of these activities, fitting into the schedule where there is extra time. As an added benefit, some homework can even be completed on the way to or from some activities.

List of the Cons of Homework

1. Children benefit from playing. Being in a classroom can be a good thing, but so can being on a playground. With too much homework, a child doesn’t have enough time to play and that can impact their learning and social development. Low levels of play are associated with lower academic achievement levels, lower safety awareness, less character development, and lower overall health.

2. It encourages a sedentary lifestyle. Long homework assignments require long periods of sitting. A sedentary lifestyle has numerous direct associations with premature death as children age into adults. Obesity levels are already at or near record highs in many communities. Homework may reinforce certain skills and encourage knowledge retention, but it may come at a high price.

3. Not every home is a beneficial environment. There are some homes that are highly invested into their children. Parents may be involved in every stage of homework or there may be access to tutors that can explain difficult concepts. In other homes, there may be little or no education investment into the child. Some parents push the responsibility of teaching off on the teacher and provide no homework support at all.

Sometimes parents may wish to be involved and support their child, but there are barriers in place that prevent this from happening. The bottom line is this: no every home life is equal.

4. School is already a full-time job for kids. An elementary school day might start at 9:00am and end at 3:20pm. That’s more than 6 hours of work that kids as young as 5 are putting into their education every day. Add in the extra-curricular activities that schools encourage, such as sports, musicals, and after-school programming and a student can easily reach 8 hours of education in the average day. Then add homework on top of that? It is asking a lot for any child, but especially young children, to complete extra homework.

5. There is no evidence that homework creates improvements. Survey after survey has found that the only thing that homework does is create a negative attitude toward schooling and education in general. Homework is not associated with a higher level of academic achievement on a national scale. It may help some students who struggle with certain subjects, if they have access to a knowledgeable tutor or parent, but on a community level, there is no evidence that shows improvements are gained.

6. It discourages creative endeavors. If a student is spending 1 hour each day on homework, that’s an hour they are not spending pursuing something that is important to them. Students might like to play video games or watch TV, but homework takes time away from learning an instrument, painting, or developing photography skills as well. Although some homework can involve creative skills, that usually isn’t the case.

7. Homework is difficult to enforce. Some students just don’t care about homework. They can achieve adequate grades without doing it, so they choose not to do it. There is no level of motivation that a parent or teacher can create that inspires some students to get involved with homework. There is no denying the fact that homework requires a certain amount of effort. Sometimes a child just doesn’t want to put in that effort.

8. Extra time in school does not equate to better grades. Students in the US spend more than 100 hours of extra time in school already compared to high-performing countries around the world, but that has not closed the educational gap between those countries and the United States. In some educational areas, the US is even falling in global rankings despite the extra time that students are spending in school. When it comes to homework or any other form of learning, quality is much more important than quantity.

9. Accurate practice may not be possible. If homework is assigned, there is a reliance on the student, their parents, or their guardians to locate resources that can help them understand the content. Homework is often about practice, but if the core concepts of that information are not understood or inaccurately understood, then the results are the opposite of what is intended. If inaccurate practice is performed, it becomes necessary for the teacher to first correct the issue and then reteach it, which prolongs the learning process.

10. It may encourage cheating on multiple levels. Some students may decide that cheating in the classroom to avoid taking homework home is a compromise they’re willing to make. With internet resources, finding the answers to homework instead of figuring out the answers on one’s own is a constant temptation as well. For families with multiple children, they may decide to copy off one another to minimize the time investment.

11. Too much homework is often assigned to students. There is a general agreement that students should be assigned no more than 10 minutes of homework per day, per grade level. That means a first grader should not be assigned more than 10 minutes of homework per night. Yet for the average first grader in US public schools, they come home with 20 minutes of homework and then are asked to complete 20 minutes of reading on top of that. That means some students are completing 4x more homework than recommended every night.

At the same time, the amount of time children spent playing outdoors has decreased by 40% over the past 30 years.

For high school students, it is even worse at high performing schools in the US where 90% of graduates go onto college, the average amount of homework assigned per night was 3 hours per student.

12. Homework is often geared toward benchmarks. Homework is often assigned to improve test scores. Although this can provide positive outcomes, including better study skills or habits, the fact is that when children are tired, they do not absorb much information. When children have more homework than recommended, test scores actually go down. Stress levels go up. Burnout on the curriculum occurs.

The results for many students, according to research from Ruben Fernandez-Alonso in the Journal of Educational Psychology, is a decrease in grades instead of an increase.

The pros and cons of homework are admittedly all over the map. Many parents and teachers follow their personal perspectives and create learning environments around them. When parents and teachers clash on homework, the student is often left in the middle of that tug of war. By discussing these key points, each side can work to find some common ground so our children can benefit for a clear, precise message.

Quantity may be important, but quality must be the priority for homework if a student is going to be successful.

School Life Balance , Tips for Online Students

The Pros and Cons of 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.

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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.

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

27 Top Homework Pros and Cons

There are both pros and cons of homework. This makes whether schools should assign homework a great debating topic for students.

On the side of the pros, homework is beneficial because it can be great for helping students get through their required coursework and reinforce required knowledge. But it also interferes with life outside of school.

Key arguments for homework include the fact it gives students structure, improves their learning, and improves parent-teacher relationships.

Arguments for the cons of homework include the fact it interferes with playtime and causes stress to children, leading to arguments that homework should be banned .

Pros and Cons of Homework (Table Summary)

Pros of homework, 1. homework teaches discipline and habit.

Discipline and habit are two soft skills that children need to develop so they can succeed in life.

Regular daily homework is a simple way that discipline and habit are reinforced. Teachers can talk to students about what they do when they get home from school.

They might develop a habit like getting changed into a new set of clothes, having an afternoon snack, then getting out their homework.

Teachers can also help students visualize these habits and disciplines by talking about where they will do their homework (kitchen table?) and when .

2. Homework helps parents know what’s being learned in class

Parents often appreciate being kept in the loop about what is going on in their child’s classroom. Homework is great for this!

Teachers can set homework based on the current unit of work in the classroom. If the students are learning about dinosaurs, the homework can be a task on dinosaurs.

This helps the teachers to show the parents the valuable learning that’s taking place, and allows parents to feel comfortable that the teacher is doing a great job.

3. Homework teaches time management

Children often have a wide range of after school activities to undertake. They need to develop the skill of managing all these activities to fit homework in.

At school, children’s time is closely managed and controlled. Every lesson ends and begins with a bell or a teacher command.

At some point, children need to learn to manage their own time. Homework is an easy way to start refining this important soft skill.

4. Homework gives students self-paced learning time

At school, a lesson has a clear beginning and end. Students who are struggling may be interrupted and need more time. Homework allows them to work on these tasks at their own pace.

When I was studying math in high school, I never got my work done in time. I understood concepts slower than my peers, and I needed more time to reinforce concepts.

Homework was my chance to keep up, by studying at my own pace.

5. Homework can reduce screen time

Paper-based homework can take students away from their afternoon cartoons and video games and get them working on something of more value.

Screen time is one of the biggest concerns for educators and parents in the 21 st Century. Children spend approximately 5 to 7 hours in front of screens per day.

While screens aren’t all bad, children generally spend more time at screens than is necessary. Homework tasks such as collecting things from the yard or interviewing grandparents gets kids away from screens and into more active activities.

6. Homework gives students productive afternoon activities

Too often, children get home from school and switch off their brains by watching cartoons or playing video games. Homework can be more productive.

Good homework should get students actively thinking. A teacher can set homework that involves creating a product, conducting interviews with family, or writing a story based on things being learned in class.

But even homework that involves repetition of math and spelling tasks can be far more productive than simply watching television.

7. Homework reinforces information taught in class

For difficult tasks, students often need to be exposed to content over and over again until they reach mastery of the topic .

To do this, sometimes you need to do old-fashioned repetition of tasks. Take, for example, algebra. Students will need to repeat the process over and over again so that they will instinctively know how to complete the task when they sit their standardized test.

Of course, the teacher needs to teach and reinforce these foundational skills at school before independent homework practice takes place.

8. Homework helps motivated students to get ahead

Many students who have set themselves the goal of coming first in their class want to do homework to get an advantage over their peers.

Students who want to excel should not be stopped from doing this. If they enjoy homework and it makes them smarter or better at a task, then they should be allowed to do this.

9. Homework gives parents and children time together

When a parent helps their child with homework (by educating and quizzing them, not cheating!), they get a chance to bond.

Working together to complete a task can be good for the relationship between the parent and the child. The parents can also feel good that they’re supporting the child to become more educated.

10. Homework improves parent-teacher relationships

Parents get an inside look at what’s happening at school to improve their trust with the teacher, while also helping the teacher do their job.

Trust between parents and teachers is very important. Parents want to know the teacher is working hard to support students and help them learn. By looking at their children’s homework, they get a good idea of what’s going on in the classroom.

The parent can also feel good about helping the teacher’s mission by sitting with the child during homework and helping to reinforce what’s been learned at school.

11. Homework helps teachers get through the crowded curriculum

Teachers are increasingly asked to teach more and more content each year. Homework can be helpful in making sure it all gets done.

Decades ago, teachers had time to dedicate lessons to repeating and practicing content learned. Today, they’re under pressure to teach one thing then quickly move onto the next. We call this phenomenon the “crowded curriculum”.

Today, teachers may need to teach the core skills in class then ask students to go home and practice what’s been taught to fast-track learning.

12. Homework provides spaced repetition for long-term memorization

Spaced repetition is a strategy that involves quizzing students intermittently on things learned in previous weeks and months.

For example, if students learned division in January, they may forget about it by June. But if the teacher provides division questions for homework in January, March, and May, then the students always keep that knowledge of how to do division in their mind.

Spaced repetition theory states that regularly requiring students to recall information that’s been pushed to the back of their mind can help, over time, commit that information to their long-term memory and prevent long-term forgetting.

13. Homework supports a flipped learning model to make the most of time with the teacher

Flipped learning is a model of education where students do preparation before class so they get to class prepared to learn.

Examples of flipped learning include pre-teaching vocabulary (e.g. giving children new words to learn for homework that they will use in a future in-class lesson), and asking students to watch preparatory videos before class.

This model of homework isn’t about reinforcing things learned in class, but learning things before class to be more prepared for lessons.

14. Homework improves student achievement

An influential review of the literature on homework by Mazano and Pickering (2007) found that homework does improve student achievement.

Another review of the literature by Cooper, Robinson and Patall (2006) similarly found that homework improves achievement. In this review, the authors highlighted that homework appeared more beneficial for high school students’ grades than elementary school students’ grades.

Several progressive education critics , especially Alfie Kohn , have claimed that homework does not help student grades. We have not found the critics’ evidence to be as compelling.

15. Homework helps the education system keep up with other countries’ systems

All nations are competing with one another to have the best education system (measured by standardized tests ). If other countries are assigning homework and your country isn’t, your country will be at a disadvantage.

The main way education systems are compared is the OECD ranking of education systems. This ranking compared standardized test scores on major subjects.

Western nations have been slipping behind Asian nations for several decades. Many Asian education systems have a culture of assigning a lot of homework. To keep up, America may also need to assign homework and encourage their kids to do more homework.

See Also: Homework Statistics List

Cons of Homework

1. homework interferes with play time.

Play-based learning is some of the best learning that can possibly occurs. When children go home from school, the play they do before sunset is hugely beneficial for their development.

Homework can prevent children from playing. Instead, they’re stuck inside repeating tasks on standardized homework sheets.

Of course, if there is no homework, parents would have to make sure children are engaging in beneficial play as well, rather than simply watching TV.

2. Homework interferes with extracurricular activities

After school, many children want to participate in extracurricular activities like sporting and community events.

However, if too much homework is assigned to learners, their parents may not be able to sign them up to co-curricular activities in the school or extracurricular activities outside of the school. This can prevent students from having well-rounded holistic development.

3. Homework discourages students from going outside and getting exercise

Homework is usually an indoors activity. Usually, teachers will assign spelling, math, or science tasks to be repeated through the week on paper or a computer.

But children need time to go outside and get exercise. The CDC recommends children ages 6 to 17 need 60 minutes of moderate to intense exercise per day.

Unfortunately, being stuck indoors may prevent children from getting that much needed exercise for well-rounded development.

4. Homework leads to unsupervised and unsupportive learning

When students get stuck on a task at school, the teacher is there to help. But when students are stuck on a homework task, no support is available.

This leads to a situation where students’ learning and development is harmed. Furthermore, those students who do understand the task can go ahead and get more homework practice done while struggling students can’t progress because the teacher isn’t there to help them through their hurdles.

Often, it’s down to parents to pick up the challenge of teaching their children during homework time. Unfortunately, not all students have parents nearby to help them during homework time.

5. Homework can encourage cheating

When children study without supervision, they have the opportunity to cheat without suffering consequences.

They could, for example, copy their sibling’s homework or use the internet to find answers.

Worse, some parents may help their child to cheat or do the homework for the child. In these cases, homework has no benefit of the child but may teach them bad and unethical habits.

6. Homework contributes to a culture of poor work-life balance

Homework instils a corporate attitude that prioritizes work above everything else. It prepares students for a social norm where you do work for your job even when you’re off the clock.

Students will grow up thinking it’s normal to clock off from their job, go home, and continue to check emails and complete work they didn’t get done during the day.

This sort of culture is bad for society. It interferes with family and recreation time and encourages bosses to behave like they’re in charge of your whole life.

7. Homework discourages children from taking up hobbies

There is an argument to be made that children need spare time so they can learn about what they like and don’t like.

If students have spare time after school, they could fill it up with hobbies. The student can think about what they enjoy (playing with dolls, riding bikes, singing, writing stories).

Downtime encourages people to develop hobbies. Students need this downtime, and homework can interfere with this.

8. Homework creates unfairness between children with parents helping and those who don’t

At school, students generally have a level playing field. They are all in the same classroom with the same resources and the same teacher. At home, it’s a different story.

Some children have parents, siblings, and internet to rely upon. Meanwhile, others have nothing but themselves and a pen.

Those children who are lucky enough to have parents helping out can get a significant advantage over their peers, causing unfairness and inequalities that are not of their own making.

9. Homework causes stress and anxiety

In a study by Galloway, Connor and Pope (2013), they found that 56% of students identified homework as the greatest cause of stress in their lives.

Stress among young people can impact their happiness and mental health. Furthermore, there is an argument to “let kids be kids”. We have a whole life of work and pressure ahead of us. Childhood is a time to be enjoyed without the pressures of life.

10. Homework is often poor-quality work

Teachers will often assign homework that is the less important work and doesn’t have a clear goal.

Good teachers know that a lesson needs to be planned-out with a beginning, middle and end. There usually should be formative assessment as well, which is assessment of students as they learn (rather than just at the end).

But homework doesn’t have the structure of a good lesson. It’s repetition of information already learned, which is a behaviorist learning model that is now outdated for many tasks.

11. Homework is solitary learning

Most education theorists today believe that the best learning occurs in social situations.

Sociocultural learning requires students to express their thoughts and opinions and listen to other people’s ideas. This helps them improve and refine their own thinking through dialogue.

But homework usually takes place alone at the kitchen table. Students don’t have anyone to talk with about what they’re doing, meaning their learning is limited.

12. Homework widens social inequality

Homework can advantage wealthier students and disadvantage poorer students.

In Kralovec and Buell’s (2001) book The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning , the authors argue that poorer students are less likely to have the resources to complete their homework properly.

For example, they might not have the pens, paper, and drawing implements to complete a paper task. Similarly, they might not have the computer, internet connection, or even books to do appropriate research at home.

Parents in poorer households also often work shift work and multiple jobs meaning they have less time to help their children with their homework.

Homework can be both good and bad – there are both advantages and disadvantages of homework. In general, it’s often the case that it depends on the type of homework that is assigned. Well-planned homework used in moderation and agreed upon by teachers, parents and students can be helpful. But other homework can cause serious stress, inequality, and lifestyle imbalance for students.

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.

Galloway, M., Conner, J., & Pope, D. (2013). Nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools.  The journal of experimental education ,  81 (4), 490-510. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2012.745469

Kralovec, E., & Buell, J. (2001).  The end of homework: How homework disrupts families, overburdens children, and limits learning . Beacon Press.

Pressman, R. M., Sugarman, D. B., Nemon, M. L., Desjarlais, J., Owens, J. A., & Schettini-Evans, A. (2015). Homework and family stress: With consideration of parents’ self confidence, educational level, and cultural background.  The American Journal of Family Therapy ,  43 (4), 297-313. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2015.1061407

Ren, H., Zhou, Z., Liu, W., Wang, X., & Yin, Z. (2017). Excessive homework, inadequate sleep, physical inactivity and screen viewing time are major contributors to high paediatric obesity.  Acta Paediatrica ,  106 (1), 120-127. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.13640

Yeo, S. C., Tan, J., Lo, J. C., Chee, M. W., & Gooley, J. J. (2020). Associations of time spent on homework or studying with nocturnal sleep behavior and depression symptoms in adolescents from Singapore.  Sleep Health ,  6 (6), 758-766. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2020.04.011

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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i love this it helped me a lot in class and it can be used more around the United States of amarica

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College Reality Check

Should Students Have Homework? 8 Reasons Pro and 8 Against

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students in the US spend an average of 6.64 hours in school per day.

It doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that they can spend the rest of the day — excluding sleep hours — as they please. Doing homework, for one, should be squeezed into a student’s schedule to get good grades.

Homework instills many skills students can benefit from throughout their academic and professional careers, too. They include self-discipline, time management, organizing and communication skills. However, it can also leave students stressed, not to mention that some studies suggest homework does not make them smarter.

Got some homework and torn between doing it ASAP or saving it for later? Read on.

While there are many good reasons why students should have homework, all of which can be helpful in the pursuit of a grade school or high school diploma or an undergraduate degree, there are also some downsides that are hard to overlook.

8 Reasons Why Students Should Have Homework

Let’s kick things off by enumerating some of the perks that homework brings to a student’s life. Many of them can be beneficial for them not only during the time being but also in their future academic and professional endeavors.

Students Forget 95% of Things They Learn in School

Students tend to forget up to 95% of the things they learn in the classroom after 3 days.

Of course, some may forget less and some may forget more in a shorter or longer period of time. But the main takeaway is that the way information is retained can look different from one student to the other.

This is when homework can help students keep the lessons intact, reviewing allows students to remember and retain particulars in the long term.

So, in other words, doing homework facilitates the transfer of lessons learned from their short-term to their long-term memory.

By giving students homework to take care of, say, over the weekend, all the information obtained in the classroom in the past week can be reinforced, thus allowing them to benefit from them going forward.

Homework instills self-discipline

Since homework is done without any teacher in sight, it encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning.

To put it another way, it gives students the opportunity to learn how to be disciplined .

Discipline is essential to helping students obtain their academic goals. It adds that being disciplined does so effectively as a result of the following:

• Fostering of positive academic performance
• Encouraging to stay focused on goals
• Minimizing problems brought about by peer pressure

Other than bad grades, lack of discipline that homework helps fight off can cause many other problems, too.

For one, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) says that indiscipline can result in disobeying school rules and being late to class .

The organization adds that it can also promote all kinds of anti-social behaviors and vices, all of which, if allowed to continue, may manifest later in life.

Homework hones time management

A tell-tale sign of poor time management is procrastination, and many students are no strangers to it.

As a matter of fact, the counseling office at the University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) says that around 25% of students end up being chronic procrastinators .

Having excellent time-management skills can prove to be extremely beneficial to students whose everyday schedules are hectic. It lets them stay organized, well-prepared and on schedule by enabling them to use their time wisely.

In the process, students also develop self-confidence and self-reliability, both of which can help them excel in and out of academia.

But, like many other vital skills, managing time well is something that requires students to learn and practice, too, and doing their homework dutifully each and every time helps ensure that they are on the right path.

Studying for 3 to 4 hours Gets the Work Done

Scientists say that, as reported by Think Impact, students should study 3 to 4 hours daily to get the best results.

But it’s possible to cut down on the number of hours students spend studying outside of the classroom by developing good study habits. So, in other words, if they want to study less, they should study more for the time being!

Doing homework is an effective way for students to develop much-needed study skills. This makes it possible for the brain to be able to process and retain information so much better.

The brain may be made of soft tissue called the gray matter and white matter alright. However, it’s like a muscle that needs to be exercised on a regular basis for strength and efficiency.

Good study habits can help students in more ways than one.

Besides their grades, it can also increase their self-confidence and self-esteem. Additionally, it can lower stress and anxiety related to examinations and deadlines.

And since it can promote more effective studying, students need not spend a lot of time trying to remember everything that needs to be remembered, thus giving them plenty of time to do other things.

More Homework Limits Screen Time

According to a report by Medline Plus, most American children spend around 3 hours a day in front of the TV.

But because there are things such as smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles and computers, added together, the online health information resource, which is a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), says that all screen time types daily can total 5 to 7 hours.

But here’s the deal: young ones aged 2 and above should have screen time of only between 1 to 2 hours a day of high-quality programming, says the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Too much screen time in kids may lead to the following problems:

• Difficulty sleeping at night
• Increased risk of anxiety, depression and attention issues
• Increased risk of obesity (due to lack of physical activity and unhealthy food choices resulting from ads)

It’s a good thing that there are many ways to reduce screen time in school-age kids, such as encouraging unplugged and unstructured playtime as well as urging them to do their homework instead.

Homework fosters communication

In some instances, homework has to be done in groups.

This helps students hone good communication skills as they discuss and share their views with their co-members on the various elements of the task at hand.

In the process, they also get to know some of their classmates better and even establish friendships with them in case they haven’t already in school.

On the other hand, homework that needs to be done separately by students gives the child and the parent the opportunity to communicate with one another and strengthen their bond.

Experts say that parents helping with homework brings the following benefits:

• Cultivates positive learning behavior
• Reinforces knowledge learned in the classroom
• Gives kids the sense of just how important education is

Homework helps parents see what their kids are learning

Sending a child to a public school may be cheaper than sending him or her to a private school. But it doesn’t mean that parents have no more various education-related expenses to shoulder.

Due to the fact that money is involved, it’s important that kids are getting the best education possible.

Thanks to homework, parents can have an idea of what sort of things their youngsters are learning in school.

It also allows them to have a sense of their children’s learning style or progress and inform the teachers or school administration of any problem encountered that could have an impact on their academic achievement or development.

Homework helps teachers improve their craft

Believe it or not, it’s not just the students who can benefit from having homework and doing them diligently, too. In many instances, teachers who assign homework themselves can also gain something positive from it.

For one, homework allows them to determine whether or not their students understand the lessons well.

Depending on their observations, it also enables them to come up with alternative teaching approaches to help students become better learners, which requires them to become better teachers — much of teaching is learning on the job.

Besides, teaching methods are constantly changing, and teachers need to keep up every single time.

8 Reasons Why Students Should Have No Homework

And now, let’s enumerate some of the things that make students better off without any homework to complete after school hours or over the weekend, many of which can prove to be beneficial for their academic performance and overall well-being.

Homework causes additional stress

Based on a stress statistics report by Finances Online, 75% of high school students and 50% of middle school students report that schoolwork makes them often or always feeling stressed .

It goes without saying, then, that bringing some schoolwork to their homes for them to complete can make matters worse for them.

Especially if the goal is for the student to earn a diploma, too much stress is a no-no because it can cause:

• Demotivation to study
• Reduced overall academic achievement
• Increased dropout rate

It’s no secret, too, that a lot of stress can affect the mental health of a person, student or otherwise.

Homework promotes a sedentary lifestyle

While we were talking about the reasons why students should have homework, it was mentioned that doing schoolwork at home lessens screen time, which can lower the risk of obesity.

But on the flip side, homework can be a reason for students to pack on excess pounds.

Instead of spending time in the playground with their friends, students sit at their desks at home for hours until such time that they have completed their homework.

Clearly, homework promotes a sedentary lifestyle , which, according to a warning issued by WHO, can double the risk of obesity as well as many other serious health concerns such as diabetes and heart disease.

Homework takes away quality time

Most of the waking hours of students are spent with their classmates and teachers. But they also have a relationship with family members and friends outside of the campus they need to build and foster.

Rather than spend their time away from the books with people they care about and who care about them, students have no choice but to devote their remaining energy to school-related matters because of homework.

It can also keep them from partaking in extracurricular and/or everyday activities they are interested in or are passionate about.

Homework has no favorable impact on grades

It can be easy to assume that the more homework assigned, the brighter students get.

However, data obtained by Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMSS) says not so fast — there’s no proof that homework can be associated with increased academic achievement .

Going by the said information, needless to say, some of the perks that come with doing homework, including better study habits and knowledge consolidation, are complete baloney.

Doing homework also does not guarantee improvement in a student’s knowledge and academic performance.

Access to the internet, for instance, allows them to find answers without much effort with the help of Google or send their smart classmates (who probably have already completed their homework) emails or DMs, which fosters cheating.

Homework takes no account of various types of learners

The name itself pretty much explains what homework is: schoolwork students need to do at home. Needless to say, without any teacher in sight, students have to complete their homework on their own accord and at their own pace.

According to a report by Digital Promise, whose mission is to shape the future of learning as well as to advance equitable education systems by collating solutions across research, practice and technology, not every student is capable of working at his or her own pace.

It adds that, for some children, self-paced learning means no-pace learning.

So, in other words, not all students are very good with homework , depending on their learning style or preference.

Homework does not go well with all types of homes

Earlier, it was mentioned that one of the reasons why students should have homework is that it helps in building good study habits, which is a critical component of attaining academic success.

And the #1 tip for developing good study habits?

Find a good place to study.

Unfortunately, not all students have homes that are conducive to homework completion. Someone who is from a big family that lives in a small home where space is constrained, undeniably, will have a hard time finding a nice quiet spot in which to do his homework.

The same conundrum will surely be faced by a student who lives in a very busy and noisy neighborhood.

Also mentioned above is the fact that homework gives the child and parent the opportunity to bond over the assignment. Clearly, this perk excludes students whose parents are juggling multiple jobs or are from broken homes.

Homework may cause conflict with parents

Speaking of which, not all parents are good at guiding their little ones in doing their homework.

As a matter of fact, according to many child psychologists, the relationship between a parent and child can create a learning environment at home that can pose a lot of challenges.

Parents, for instance, may contrast their kids’ accomplishments and failures against their own. Children, on the other hand, may see criticisms from their parents as personal attacks.

Because the parent-child dynamic can vary from one home to the other, it’s not all the time that homework can have a positive impact on the student’s grades and relationship with the parentals.

Homework makes teachers even busier

Last but not least, it’s not just students who end up with even more hectic everyday schedules by being given homework to work on but also those who assign the homework themselves — teachers!

Based on a global report that was featured by Australia-based The Educator Magazine , teachers are overworked and underworked professionals.

And that is why allowing their students to leave the school grounds without any homework to worry about later, which they will have to check during the following class meeting, can be immensely favorable for teachers.

Recap: Should Students Have Homework or Not

Assigning students with homework comes from a good place — teachers allocate them daily or weekly to reinforce knowledge learned in the classroom and instill good study skills, not to torture them.

For many students who have to go to school 160 to 180 times each year, however, homework that they need to take care of at the end of the day or over the weekend can be easily mistaken for punishment because, more often than not, it feels like one.

As a result, it’s not unlikely for many to overlook the positives of having homework and see only the negatives.

Indeed, as discussed above, homework comes with both pros and cons.

Here’s a great suggestion to allow students to continue to enjoy the benefits homework brings while minimizing the associated negatives: the Center for American Progress (CAP) recommends the 10-minute rule, which, simply put, means that students should be able to finish their homework in no more than 10 minutes multiplied by their grade level.

I graduated with BA in Nursing and $36,000 in student loan debt from the UCF. After a decade in the workforce, I went back to school to obtain my MBA from UMGC.

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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 pros and cons of homework

Should schoolwork be left at the school gate?

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1. Pro: improves academic achievement

2. con: risk of artificial intelligence, 3. pro: other benefits of homework, 4. con: less time with family and friends, 5. pro: parent involvement, 6. con: stress for students and teachers.

Homework should be scrapped to give children more time for “other creative things”, the president of Ireland has said.

UK pupils do more homework than many European countries Irish president Michael D Higgins begins historic UK visit

Speaking to Irish broadcaster RTE, Michael D. Higgins said school work should be “finished at the school” rather than at home, “an utterance likely to be seized upon by children for years to come in classrooms far beyond the shores of the Emerald Isle”, said the Independent .

Here are some of the benefits and some of the negative effects of homework for schoolchildren.

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A 2006 meta-analysis of research by Duke University in North Carolina found that children who have homework perform better academically at school. But it doesn’t benefit all students equally, the research found. The correlation was stronger for older students (12 and over) than younger students.

But the evidence is far from conclusive over whether homework really does increase student achievement. Other studies have found that it has a positive effect only under certain conditions, while others have found negative effects, and some studies suggest homework does not affect student achievement at all.

The arrival of highly sophisticated artificial intelligence chatbots, such as ChatGPT , could make it easier for students to cheat on their essays or homework – or even force teachers and professors to scrap homework altogether.

ChatGPT has been “trained on a gigantic sample of text from the internet” and can “understand human language, conduct conversations with humans and generate detailed text that many have said is human-like and quite impressive”, said the Daily Mail .

Kevin Bryan, an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto, tweeted that he was “shocked” by the capabilities of ChatGPT after challenging the AI to answer numerous exam questions and found that it gave A-grade answers.

Evidence suggests that homework can bring non-academic benefits, particularly for younger school students. These include “learning the importance of responsibility, managing time, developing study habits, and staying with a task until it is completed”, said Reading Rockets , a national public media literacy initiative in the US.

The British Council agreed that it helps to develop “study habits and independent learning”, as well as helping students to “retain information taught in the classroom” and involving parents in learning.

TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp weighed in on the debate recently, urging parents to “enjoy the weekend” with their children, branding homework a “waste of time”.

“Find a book, cuddle up and read it together, or watch Winterwatch, or cook something with kids doing all the weighing and chopping. Then put that in the homework diary and enjoy your weekend with your kids,” she wrote on Twitter .

“There is nothing better for children than spending time with you, talking, doing and learning at the same time,” she said. “Following a recipe is reading, maths, science and fine motor skills in one activity.”

Homework can be a good way for parents to stay up to date with what their child is being taught in class as well as monitor their progress. But the extent to which parental involvement with homework is beneficial for children is still a matter of debate.

According to Reading Rockets, some studies show that homework assignments that require interactions between students and parents are “more likely to be turned in” than assignments that don’t require parental input. But other studies have found that “parent involvement in homework has no impact on student achievement”.

Educators and parents responded to President Higgins’ comments to say homework is a source of stress for all involved.

Replying to a Facebook post by Hull Live , one teacher said it was “a pain sourcing, copying, chasing and marking it”, while other parents said homework placed undue stress on young children. “I think they do enough work in the school hours as it is,” said one parent, while another commented: “Children need to switch off when they get home. No wonder children suffer mental health issues, they are burnt out before they reach secondary school.”

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  Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.

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Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

• Posted January 17, 2012
• By Lory Hough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed School Professor Howard Gardner basically agrees.

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

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

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

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

Read a January 2014 update.

Homework Policy Still Going Strong

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Pros and Cons of Homework: What You Should Know

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Homework can be a great tool for students to improve their academic performance, but there are also some drawbacks.

Some pros to assigning homework are that it can help students practice and master the material they learned in class, it can help students develop good study habits, and it can give students a sense of accomplishment. Some cons to assigning homework are that it can be a burden for students if they have a lot of homework to do, it can take away time from family and friends, and it can cause students to stress out.

In this post, I am going to explore the various benefits and drawbacks of using homework in your classroom. Let’s get started!

Pros of homework

Homework can be a great tool for you to improve the learning process of your students if you use it correctly. The following are some of the benefits of homework for teaching and learning:

1. It helps students learn.

Homework has been proven to help students learn effectively. It can help them retain information, increase their focus and improve their recall. By providing a routine for homework, students are able to better manage their time and stay on track with their education.

For example, homework can help students keep track of their progress and reinforce what they have learned. It can also help them focus on what they are doing in class, which will improve the amount of time that they spend in class.

2. It improves test scores.

Homework is a common assignment that students receive in school. It can be thought of as a way for teachers to help students learn and practice the material they have learned. Research has shown that homework can improve students’ test scores. This is because homework helps students learn the material more thoroughly and retain it better.

If a student does their homework, they will be able to answer questions from the test that they will take on that topic. The more homework a student does, the better their test scores will be. For example, in one study, it was found that homework helps improve students’ scores on standardized tests . The more homework a student doe s, the better it is for their grades.

3. It increases student engagement and motivation.

Homework has been proven to increase student engagement and motivation. When done correctly, homework can help students learn by engaging them in challenging tasks and helping them develop skills.

Homework can have a number of benefits for students, both in terms of engagement and motivation. By helping to reinforce the learning process, homework can help students retain information better and increase their understanding of what they are studying. With this, students become engaged and motivated to continue learning.

Additionally, homework can provide a sense of accomplishment and help students feel responsible for their own learning. This motivates students to engage in their studies.

Finally, homework can be used as an opportunity for students to connect with other classmates and share ideas about the material they are studying. Connecting and sharing ideas with classmates about homework helps students become engaged and motivated.

4. It enhances productivity.

Homework has been shown to be beneficial to student productivity in the classroom. Homework allows students to focus on their work and learn more about the material being taught. It also helps students develop better study habits, which can lead to them performing better in class.

Additionally, homework can provide a sense of accomplishment that can encourage students to continue learning. Overall, homework enhances student productivity in the classroom by helping them focus on their work and learn more about the material being taught.

5. It teaches responsibility.

Every student knows the feeling of dread when they have to do their homework. For some, it can be tedious and time-consuming. But homework has a far bigger purpose than just helping students pass exams-it teaches them how to be responsible citizens in the classroom.

Homework can help students develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, organizational skills, and time management skills. It also encourages them to stay on top of their studies and stay up-to-date with new information. In short, homework helps students become better learners overall.

While there are many benefits to doing homework, it can also be frustrating when it’s not done on time or when it’s not done well. That’s why teachers value homework so much; it helps students learn how to be responsible members of society.

6. Homework develops time management skills.

Many students believe that homework is a waste of time because they think it only helps teachers track their progress and keeps them from having fun. In reality, homework is one of the most important tools teachers have to help students develop time management skills.

The reason homework helps students develop these skills is because it forces students to focus on their schoolwork in addition to their other responsibilities. By doing this, students learn how to manage their time better and stay on track with their goals.

Additionally, homework can also help students learn how to problem-solve and work independently. When students are able to do these things, they are more likely to be successful in the classroom.

In all, homework can help students learn how to manage their time by planning and organizing their work, dividing up tasks into manageable chunks, prioritizing homework over other responsibilities, and scheduling time for schoolwork.

7. It helps students develop study skills.

When students are assigned homework, they are learning to develop important study skills. Homework helps students learn how to organize and focus their attention, manage their time, and build discipline. It also teaches them how to solve problems. These skills will help the student in the classroom and in life.

For example, a student who can better organize their time and work independently may be more likely to finish homework assignments that are harder.

8. Homework builds self-discipline.

When students work on their homework, they are developing self-discipline. Self-discipline is the ability to focus, organize and manage time, plan, solve problems, and follow directions. Self-discipline is vital to success in school and in life.

For example, a student who has developed self-discipline is less likely to be distracted by friends and television, which are two common distractions that many students face in school.

9. Homework helps students learn to work independently.

When students are required to complete their homework, they become more independent learners. They gain skills in time management, organization, and problem-solving. These skills will help them in the classroom and in life.

For example, a student who has learned to work independently is more likely to be able to plan and schedule his or her time throughout the day, which will help him or her become more organized.

10. Homework helps students learn to follow directions.

In the classroom, following directions can be difficult for students. This is especially true for students who have difficulty paying attention to what is happening in class. Homework can help students learn how to follow directions.

By doing homework, students are required to complete a task that has been assigned by the teacher. This makes it easier for the student to pay attention in class and follow directions.

For example, students often get homework that requires them to pay attention and follow directions before completing the tasks assigned to them. With that, they learn to follow instructions and directions, which is a critical skill in life.

11. It enhances critical thinking skills.

How does homework enhance the critical thinking skills of students in the classroom? Homework can help improve the critical thinking skills of students in the classroom by requiring them to apply their knowledge and skills in a practical context.

In addition, homework can also help students learn how to use their critical thinking skills to solve problems. Furthermore, homework can help students develop patience and perseverance when faced with difficult tasks. Overall, homework helps students become better thinkers and more effective learners.

12. It boosts academic achievement.

Homework can boost academic achievement by helping students focus and retain information, work ahead in their lessons, and build valuable study skills.

Additionally, staying organized and completing tasks on time can help students build good habits that will carry over into other areas of their lives. For example, homework helps students develop skills that propel them to become successful in the classroom.

13. It promotes teamwork and cooperation.

Many people believe that homework promotes teamwork and cooperation among students in the classroom. This is because homework often requires students to work together on tasks, which helps them learn how to work cooperatively.

Additionally, when students are required to complete homework, they are more likely to try hard and cooperate with their classmates. This is because they know that if they do their homework, they will receive good grades.

For example, when students are given group homework, it can help them to learn how to cooperate and work with other people to achieve a particular task.

14. Prepare for future academic challenges.

Homework can help students better prepare for future academic challenges. This is because it allows them to develop skills that will be useful in their academic careers.

For example, homework can help students learn how to organize their information, study for tests, and think critically. In addition, homework can also help students build vocabulary and learn new concepts.

15. It promotes good work habits.

The benefits of homework are well known among educators, but what about students? There are many reasons why homework promotes good work habits among students.

One reason is that it helps students learn how to manage their time. They learn how to prioritize and how to plan their days. Homework also teaches critical-thinking skills. Students must be able to analyze information and come up with solutions on their own.

Homework can also help strengthen relationships between parents and children, as parents support and supervise students to complete their homework. Parents can see the value in homework, and children may have a better attitude towards school if they know their parents expect them to complete their work.

16. It enhances problem-solving skills.

Problem-solving is a critical skill for students to develop. Problem-solving is the process of making decisions about how to solve problems. Homework can help students learn problem-solving skills by providing opportunities to practice them. In fact, homework has been shown to improve problem-solving skills .

One reason why homework is so effective in teaching problem-solving skills is that it provides a consistent and systematic format for practicing these skills. Homework assignments provide students with opportunities to practice critical thinking skills, identify and solve problems, and develop persistence. Additionally, homework can help students learn how to work cooperatively with others. All of these abilities are essential for success in school and in life.

17. A greater understanding of the material.

Homework has been shown to enhance a greater understanding of the material among students. This is because homework allows students to practice what they have learned and to reinforce it. It also allows them to explore the material further and experiment with it.

In addition, homework can help students develop their critical thinking skills. This is because homework helps students not to only understand the material, but to also organize it and think about it. It can help them develop their memory and recall abilities, which are essential for success in school and life.

Cons of homework

When you don’t use homework appropriately in the classroom, the following problems will arise:

1. It can leave students feeling overwhelmed.

Homework can be a daunting task for students, leaving them feeling overwhelmed and stressed. As homework has become more and more common in schools, students are often left with little choice but to complete it.

This can lead to students feeling overwhelmed and stressed, as they have no break from the workload and are often expected to perform well in class while also completing the homework. This can create a difficult balance for students, as they are faced with two competing demands.

2. It can be a distraction from other activities or interests.

Homework can be a distraction from other activities or interests because it can be time-consuming, boring, and repetitive. It can also stress people out, which can lead to problems at school or in their personal lives. There are ways to make homework less of a distraction and more of a learning experience. For example, teachers could make assignments that are relevant to the class material, make sure the homework is done in a reasonable amount of time, and give students feedback on their work.

There are a few reasons why homework can be a distraction from other activities or interests. One reason is that homework often requires concentration and focus, which can be difficult to maintain when there are other distractions around. Additionally, many students find it boring or tedious to do homework, which can lead to them losing interest in the task overall.

Finally, because homework often takes up a large amount of time each night, it can prevent students from spending time with friends or family members, which can also lead to boredom and loneliness.

3. It can create stress and anxiety in students.

Homework can create stress and anxiety in students for a variety of reasons. For some, homework can be a daunting task that requires hours of uninterrupted concentration. For others, it may be a source of frustration due to the lack of consistency in its delivery or because it conflicts with other duties outside of school.

Regardless of the reason, homework can often lead to feelings of stress and frustration. This is particularly true for students who are struggling academically or who have other responsibilities at home. Consequently, homework can be a major contributor to stress and anxiety in students.

4. It can lead to cheating.

Cheating on homework has become a common phenomenon among students across the globe. There are many reasons why this may be the case, but one of the most common reasons is that homework can be a source of stress for students. When assignments are difficult or when there is pressure to perform well, some students may feel like they have to cheat in order to get through them.

Another reason why cheating on homework can occur is that it can be an easy way for students to get ahead. If they know the answers to certain questions, they can simply copy them off of their classmates and submit their work as their own. This type of cheating is unfair to other students who have worked hard on their assignments.

And finally, it can be a way for students to hide their mistakes or try to cheat on tests. All of these reasons are why homework should not be given out as punishment, but rather as a way to help students learn and improve.

5. It can cause health problems.

How can homework cause health problems for students? Numerous studies have shown that a large number of students experience negative health effects from doing homework. These health problems can include stress, anxiety, insomnia, and even depression.

One reason why homework can be so problematic is that it often takes up a lot of time and energy that should be spent on other activities. Additionally, homework can be extremely tedious and requires a great deal of concentration. For these reasons, many students find it difficult to complete it proficiently.

Consequently, excessive amounts of homework may actually be harmful to your overall health.

6. It can interfere with family time.

Homework can interfere with students’ family time if the student is not able to complete their homework in a reasonable amount of time. This can lead to tension between the student and their parents, as well as less time for the student to spend with their families.

Excessive homework can create stress for parents, who may have to pick up the children after school or help them with their studies. Ultimately, homework can cause tension between students and their parents, and it can be a barrier to communication between the two parties.

There are many benefits to having a homework system in place, but it must be done in a way that does not interfere with family time.

7. It can interfere with sleep.

Homework can interfere with the sleep of students for a variety of reasons. For some students, homework can lead to feelings of overwhelm and stress. This can disrupt the natural sleep cycle and cause students to have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Additionally, completing homework can take up time that could be spent relaxing and enjoying downtime with friends or family. As a result, homework may actually reduce the amount of sleep that students get each night.

8. Too much homework can affect students’ achievement.

Too much homework can have negative consequences for students’ academic achievement and future success. Too much homework can lead to a decrease in student productivity, diminished focus, and diminished enjoyment of learning.

Furthermore, it has been shown that students who do too much homework tend to have lower grades and lower test scores. There are several reasons why too much homework can have these detrimental effects.

First, when students are excessively busy with assigned work, they may lose opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities or other enrichment programs that could help them improve their skills and knowledge.

Second, when students become bogged down by excessive amounts of homework, they may find it difficult to devote sufficient time to studying for tests or completing other academic tasks.

Third, when students are spending too much time working on schoolwork rather than engaging in other enjoyable activities, they may lose interest in learning and forfeit valuable opportunities for personal growth.

All of the above negatively impact the academic achievement of students.

9. Homework can lead to boredom.

Many students find homework to be a tedious and time-consuming chore. This can lead to boredom and a lack of focus in the classroom, which can adversely affect student learning. Too much homework can actually make students feel tired and stressed, making them less likely to enjoy their schoolwork.

To conclude, homework can be a great way to help students learn and retain information. If done correctly, however, homework provides valuable instruction that reinforces what was learned in class. Too much of it, on the other hand, can result in students feeling overwhelmed and not getting the benefits they need from their studies. It’s important for educators to strike a balance between providing enough challenges for students while also ensuring they are well-rested so they are able to excel academically.

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Pros and Cons of Homework

“Not until you finish your homework.”

“I want you to finish your dinner and get right to work on your homework.”

“Is your homework done? Then, no, you get up those stairs and finish first.”

We’ve all heard something similar from our mom, dad, or caretaker. Homework is a big staple of the American school scene, just like lockers, the school bell, and big yellow buses. Portrayed in media from the Brady Bunch to Cocomelon, homework has been an academic given for decades. 

Despite its popularity, this after-school activity has been under scrutiny for over a century. Britannica explains , “In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal , decried homework’s negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores.”

Regardless of opposition, homework persevered, and millions of American students still spend long hours completing bookwork in their bedrooms after school. 

What are the modern objections to homework? What if the opposition is right? Is there merit to the concerns, or is homework a helpful tool for a well-rounded and comprehensive education? If you’d like to find out, now’s the time to keep reading!

How Much Time?

When analysts crunch the numbers, children spend far more time doing homework than many believe necessary. According to One Class, elementary school students spend an average of 42 minutes a day on homework. Some parents and educators argue that five additional hours of schoolwork per week is too much for elementary students. 

High schoolers spend even more time on after-school assignments. Pew Research published a 2019 article in which they explained , “Overall, teens (ages 15 to 17) spend an hour a day, on average, doing homework during the school year, up from 44 minutes a day about a decade ago and 30 minutes in the mid-1990s.”

Globally, the U.S. ranks 15th for the average amount of time spent on homework by high school students. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development conducted a worldwide study on 15-year-old students to evaluate the homework load for high schoolers worldwide. 

Among the countries included in the study, China ranked first, with students spending an average of 13.8 hours a week on homework. The Netherlands ranked the lowest, with their students studying after school for an average of 5.8 hours a week. American students spent an average of 6.1 hours per week completing their homework.

What Students Think

Homework has become a point of significant stress for American students. 

One Stanford study found that 56% of students who participated in the survey stated that homework was a primary source of stress. Another study found that the decline in adequate teenage sleep may be partly due to homework. In yet another study, 82% of students interviewed admitted that they were “often or always stressed by schoolwork.” 

It’s not just the students who object to frequent homework. Parents have begun to voice their displeasure as well. One mother in Canada went viral on social media when she announced that she and her husband were done watching their ten-year-old daughter stress over her homework every night. They decided that homework wasn’t a useful educational tool for their child.

Another mother in Kansas expressed how frustrating it is when her daughter has homework that she as a mother is unsure how to help with. “I feel bad for emailing a teacher in the evenings. I’m slightly annoyed at homework in general because I don’t know what the teacher taught.” 

What Teachers Think

Educators debate whether or not homework is a positive educational tool. One Duke University professor recommends homework, believing there is a correlation between homework and academic success for older students. He recommends implementing the “10 Minute Rule.” Essentially, students receive 10 minutes of homework per day for each grade. (For instance, 1st graders would receive 10 minutes of homework, 5th graders 50 minutes, 12th graders 120 minutes.)

A Texas teacher informed the parents of her 2nd-grade students that she would not be assigning homework anymore. Instead, she asked that the children participate in real-life activities that encourage growth and success. These activities included outdoor play, family meals, and reading with parents. As her plan evolved, she acknowledged that some students actually enjoyed homework and missed the challenge. Other students received extra work here and there on an as-needed basis. 

Defining the Need

One question that desperately needs to be asked is, “What’s the purpose of homework?” 

The answer to this question can provide parameters, determine whether or not homework achieves the goal(s), and establish if it should continue to be a staple in the American education system.

Psychology Today wonders the same thing , without any clear-cut resolution. “I started the blog with a question ‘What’s the purpose of homework?’ I’ll end with the same question. If a teacher who is assigning the homework can’t provide a clear rationale behind this question, then maybe the homework shouldn’t be assigned.”

However, Honest Pros and Cons makes a case for homework in more detail. Their reasoning for homework includes :

• Practicing what they learn in the classroom
• Improving study habits
• Developing self-discipline
• Enhancing independent problem-solving skills

McRel International notes that many factors play into whether or not homework is an effective strategy for students. They acknowledge that after-school assignments have pros and cons and state that the research is by no means definitive.

Proponents of homework present several positives: 

• It improves student achievement – “Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades.” – Britannica ProCon

While the data is not conclusive, numerous studies have shown a correlation between academic success and the use of homework. 

• It involves parents – “Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.” – US News

Homework encourages parents and children to spend time together problem-solving and working toward a goal. It also gives parents a window into what their child is learning and the progress they are making. 

• It encourages time management – “Homework is an effective tool when teaching your child about time management. This means that time management should extend beyond the classroom and into your home. ” – Edugage

American students spend roughly six hours a day at school. This schedule doesn’t leave much flexibility for sports, a social life, and a healthy amount of free time on top of homework. Kids have to learn time management if they want a life outside of their education. 

• It tracks progress – “Homework allows teachers to track students’ progress, meaning that homework helps to find out the academic strengths and weaknesses of children.” – Honest Pros and Cons

Homework gives teachers a chance to see what the student can achieve independently. Students must put into practice what they learned in the schoolroom in a different environment and without their teacher present.

• It develops working memory – “Revising the key skills learned in the classroom during homework increases the likelihood of a student remembering and being able to use those skills in a variety of situations in the future, contributing to their overall education.” – The Guardian

Environment can play an active part in memory. Biologically, our brains more easily recall memories and facts when we’re immersed in the same surroundings in which we created that memory or learned those facts. Homework removes the environmental factor, forcing students to strengthen their working memory. 

Concerned about the effects of homework on students, opponents note these objections:

• The science isn’t settled – “There is no conclusive evidence that homework increases student achievement across the board.” – Reading Rockets

As we’ve noted before, the data isn’t conclusive despite the numerous studies conducted. To many, the negatives suggested by various studies outweigh the proposed positives.

• It adds stress – “Researchers have found that students who spend too much time on homework experience more levels of stress and physical health problems.” – Psychology Today

Studies have concluded that too much homework creates undue stress on developing minds and bodies. This translates into mental, emotional, and physical issues for many students. This stress also affects their sleep , both the amount of sleep and the quality of that sleep. 

• It impacts other interests/pursuits – “Homework prevents self-discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system.” – University of the People

Critics of homework fear that, in addition to time spent on school grounds, after-school assignments stunt students’ abilities to experience life outside academia. Students who struggle with completing work at home are even more susceptible to a lifestyle void of other interests. 

• It expands the gap – “One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it ‘potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who already experience some privilege in the school system while further disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position.’” – Britannica ProCon

Homework often involves a computer and/or an internet connection. During the Covid-19 pandemic, 30% of students didn’t have the necessary technology at home to effectively participate in distance learning, raising questions about inequality affecting homework that relies on at-home technology. 

• It creates family tension – “Assigning homework forces a person to take on added disciplinary responsibilities.” – Front Range Christian School  

While homework can bring children and parents together, it can also drive a wedge between them. Students who feel overwhelmed or who need a break from focusing on academics often buck their homework requirements, leaving parents to enforce education standards that the teachers created. Parents and students alike can end up frustrated, with little progress made. 

A World of Unknowns

While the homework debate rages on, researchers continue to work toward a conclusive answer. In the meantime, teachers, parents, schools, and communities can work together to find a solution that meets the needs of their students. 

Without a doubt, homework has positive aspects that encourage students to advance through personal and academic growth. The trick is to nurture this positivity without stunting progress with adverse side effects. 

It’s a double-edged sword that’s well worth considering to ensure the best for our kids.

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Purpose, Public Attitudes toward Homework, The Positive and Negative Effects of Homework, Extensiveness of Homework

Homework is defined as tasks assigned to students by school teachers that are intended to be carried out during nonschool hours. This definition excludes in-school guided study (although homework is often worked on during school), home-study courses, and extracurricular activities such as sports teams and clubs.

The most common purpose of homework is to have students practice material already presented in class so as to reinforce learning and facilitate mastery of specific skills. Preparation assignments introduce the material that will be presented in future lessons. These assignments aim to help students obtain the maximum benefit when the new material is covered in class. Extension homework involves the transfer of previously learned skills to new situations. For example, students might learn in class about factors that led to the French Revolution and then be asked as homework to apply them to the American Revolution. Finally, integration homework requires the student to apply separately learned skills to produce a single product, such as book reports, science projects, or creative writing.

Homework also can serve purposes that do not relate directly to instruction. Homework can be used to (1) establish communication between parents and children; (2) fulfill directives from school administrators; (3) punish students; and (4) inform parents about what is going on in school. Most homework assignments have elements of several different purposes.

Public Attitudes toward Homework

Homework has been a part of student's lives since the beginning of formal schooling in the United States. However, the practice has been alternately accepted and rejected by educators and parents.

When the twentieth century began, the mind was viewed as a muscle that could be strengthened through mental exercise. Since this exercise could be done at home, homework was viewed favorably. During the 1940s, the emphasis in education shifted from drill to problem solving. Homework fell out of favor because it was closely associated with the repetition of material. The launch of the satellite Sputnik by the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s reversed this thinking. The American public worried that education lacked rigor and left children unprepared for complex technologies. Homework, it was believed, could accelerate knowledge acquisition.

The late 1960s witnessed yet another reversal. Educators and parents became concerned that homework was crowding out social experience, outdoor recreation, and creative activities. In the 1980s, homework once again leapt back into favor when A Nation at Risk (1983), the report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, cited homework as a defense against the rising tide of mediocrity in American education. The push for more homework continued into the 1990s, fueled by increasingly rigorous state-mandated academic standards. As the century ended, a backlash against homework set in, led by parents concerned about too much stress on their children.

The Positive and Negative Effects of Homework

The most direct positive effect of homework is that it can improve retention and understanding. More indirectly, homework can improve students' study skills and attitudes toward school, and teach students that learning can take place anywhere, not just in school buildings. The nonacademic benefits of homework include fostering independence and responsibility. Finally, homework can involve parents in the school process, enhancing their appreciation of education, and allowing them to express positive attitudes toward the value of school success.

Conversely, educators and parents worry that students will grow bored if they are required to spend too much time on academic material. Homework can deny access to leisure time and community activities that also teach important life skills. Parent involvement in homework can turn into parent interference. For example, parents can confuse children if the instructional techniques they use differ from those used by teachers. Homework can actually lead to the acquisition of undesirable character traits if it promotes cheating, either through the copying of assignments or help with homework that goes beyond tutoring. Finally, homework could accentuate existing social inequities. Children from disadvantaged homes may have more difficulty completing assignments than their middle-class counterparts.

Extensiveness of Homework

In contrast to the shifts in public attitudes, surveys suggest that the amount of time students spend on homework has been relatively stable. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress suggests that in both 1984 and 1994, about one-third of nine-year-olds and one-quarter of thirteen-and seventeen-year-olds reported being assigned no homework at all, with an additional 5 percent to 10 percent admitting they did not do homework that was assigned. About one-half of nine-year-olds, one-third of thirteen-year-olds, and one-quarter of seventeen-year-olds said they did less than an hour of homework each night. In 1994 about 12 percent of nine-year-olds, 28 percent of thirteen-year-olds, and 26 percent of seventeen-year-olds said they did one to two hours of homework each night. These percentages were all within one point of the 1984 survey results.

A national survey of parents conducted by the polling agency Public Agenda, in October, 2000, revealed that 64 percent of parents felt their child was getting "about the right amount" of homework, 25 percent felt their child was getting "too little" homework, and only 10 percent felt "too much homework" was being assigned.

International comparisons often suggest that U.S. students spend less time on homework than students in other industrialized nations. However, direct comparisons across countries are difficult to interpret because of different definitions of homework and differences in the length of the school day and year.

Appropriate Amounts of Homework

Experts agree that the amount and type of homework should depend on the developmental level of the student. The National PTA and the National Education Association suggest that homework for children in grades K–2 is most effective when it does not exceed ten to twenty minutes each day. In grades three through six, children can benefit from thirty to sixty minutes daily. Junior high and high school students can benefit from more time on homework and the amount might vary from night to night. These recommendations are consistent with the conclusions reached by studies into the effectiveness of homework.

Research on Homework's Overall Effectiveness

Three types of studies have been used to examine the relationship between homework and academic achievement. One type compares students who receive homework with students who receive none. Generally, these studies reveal homework to be a positive influence on achievement. However, they also reveal a relationship between homework and achievement for high school students that is about twice as strong as for junior high students. The relationship at the elementary school level is only one-quarter that of the high school level.

Another type of study compares homework to in-class supervised study. Overall, the positive relationship is about half as strong as in the first type of study. These studies again reveal a strong grade-level effect. When homework and in-class study were compared in elementary schools, in-class study proved superior.

The third type of study correlates the amount of homework students say they complete with their achievement test scores. Again, these surveys show the relationship is influenced by the grade level of students. For students in primary grades, the correlation between time spent on homework and achievement is near zero. For students in middle and junior high school, the correlation suggests a positive but weak relationship. For high school students, the correlation suggests a moderate relationship between achievement and time spend on homework.

Research on Effective Homework Assignments

The subject matter shows no consistent relationship to the value of homework. It appears that shorter and more frequent assignments may be more effective than longer but fewer assignments. Assignments that involve review and preparation are more effective than homework that focuses only on material covered in class on the day of the assignments. It can be beneficial to involve parents in homework when young children are experiencing problems in school. Older students and students doing well in school have more to gain from homework when it promotes independent learning.

Homework can be an effective instructional device. However, the relationship between homework and achievement is influenced greatly by the students' developmental level. Expectations for home work's effects, especially in the short term and in earlier grades, must be modest. Further, homework can have both positive and negative effects. Educators and parents should not be concerned with which list of homework effects is correct. Rather, homework policies and practices should give individual schools and teachers flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students so as to maximize positive effects and minimize negative ones.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C AMPBELL , J AY R. ; R EESE , C LYDE M. ; O'S ULLIVAN, C HRISTINE; and D OSSEY , J OHN A. 1996. NAEP 1994 Trends in Academic Progress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

C OOPER , H ARRIS. 2001. The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents, 2nd edition. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.

C OOPER , H ARRIS, and V ALENTINE , J. C., eds. 2001. "Homework: A Special Issue." Educational Psychologist 36 (3).

INTERNET RESOURCES

H ENDERSON , M. 1996. "Helping Your Student Get the Most Out of Homework." Chicago: National PTA and the National Education Association. < www.pta.org/Programs/edulibr/homework. htm >.

P UBLIC A GENDA. 2000. "Survey Finds Little Sign of Backlash Against Academic Standards or Standardized Tests." < www.publicagenda.org/aboutpa/aboutpa3ee.htm >

H ARRIS C OOPER

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12 Pros and Cons of Homework

Last Updated on March 11, 2021 by Filip Poutintsev

Homework is defined as tasks assigned to students by school teachers that are intended to be carried out during non-school hours. Homework is designed to reinforce what students have already learned. Homework is a word that most students dread hearing.

Pros and Cons of Homework

The teachers assign homework to the students as they believe that homework will help the students to recollect the topics that were covered in the class. There are some lessons that are perfect for the classroom environment, but there are also some things that children can learn better at home. So homework helps to maintain the balance between them.

Generally, homework includes reading, writing, or completion of a certain problem which will improve the overall performance of the student. This means that kids who do homework are more committed to doing well in school.

Purpose of Homework

The most common purpose of homework is to have students practice material already presented in class so as to reinforce learning and facilitate mastery of specific skills. It is found that appropriate homework in the right amounts can enhance younger students’ learning and prepare them for a routine of studying as they get older.

Homework impacts students’ academic achievement—test scores. Homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness, and independent problem-solving skills.

Preparation assignments introduce the material that will be presented in future lessons which helps students obtain the maximum benefit when the new material is covered in class.

Should Students Have Homework?

The type and amount of homework given to students have been debated for over a century. For years, teachers and parents thought that homework was a necessary tool when educating children. But studies about the effectiveness of homework have been conflicting and inconclusive.

Proponents of homework say that it improves student achievement and allows for independent learning of classroom and life skills. Also, homework allows parents to monitor their child’s learning. Opponents of homework say that too much may be harmful to students as it can increase stress, reduce leisure and sleep time, lead to cheating, and is not proven to be beneficial for younger.

According to Harris Cooper, a professor at Duke University, there is a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school.

As a general rule, the maximum amount of time that a student should spend each day on lessons outside of school is 10 minutes per each grade level. This means a first grader should spend 10 minutes daily on his homework while a senior high school kid should spend about 2 hours.

Should students have homework or not? Let’s discuss some of the key pros and cons of the homework.

Pros of Homework

1. homework encourages practice.

One of the positive effects of homework is that it helps to encourage the discipline of practice. Repetition is necessary to get better at skills. Practising the same problem over and over helps to reinforce the discipline of practice. Homework helps make concepts more clear and helps to build a career in the future.

2. Keep Track of the Progress

Homework allows teachers to track students’ progress, meaning that homework helps to find out the academic strengths and weaknesses of children. Homework can also help clue teachers into the existence of any learning disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust learning strategies as needed.

3. Improved Academic Outcome

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs.

It has also found that students who regularly do homework have scored better in standardized tests than other students who didn’t do homework at all.

4. Teaches Time Management

When homework is assigned to the students, students are able to manage their time and make effective study plans. Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks but also teaches time management skills.

It helps to manage study time by completing all assignments on time. Time management is a necessary skill that a student must have which is very useful not only in school life but also in the future.

5. Parents are Involved in the Learning Process

Parents need to know what their children are learning in school. Homework helps parents to track down what their children are learning at school and their class performance. By sending homework from the school, it allows the entire family to encounter the assignments that their kids are doing when they are in school during the day. A study shows that parental involvement in homework can improve class performance.

6. Creates Communication Bridge

Homework helps to create a communication network between student, teacher, school, and parents. Teachers are unaware of the lives of the students at home and the parents are unaware of their lives at school. Communication helps to understand each other in a better way, as teachers get to know the needs of students and parents about their children’s strengths and weaknesses.

7. Provides More Learning Time

School hours aren’t always enough for students to grasp the core knowledge. Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. Setting homework allows students to revise content learned during the day and also helps to get things thoroughly because there is sufficient time for research and also there is less disturbance in the home.

Cons of Homework

1. encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

As the students get long assignments/homework, hence require much time to complete it. If students are given more homework, then they get less amount of time for extracurricular activities and also affect social development. A sedentary lifestyle can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity.

2. Causes Unnecessary Stress

With a large workload and difficult tasks, homework causes students to feel anxious and stressed. Unnecessary stress causes demotivation. In some cases, homework may even be assigned over term breaks or the summer holidays.

This causes severe stress for some children, leading to issues such as sleep deprivation. This causes behavioural changes in students and also ingraining homework as a negative aspect of school life.

3. Eats up Free Time

Free time allows children to not only relax but also discover the world. Childs spend hours completing the assignment which eats up the valuable time kids have to spend with their family, attend extracurricular activities, and catch up with friends. During that time kids can learn many things like riding a bike, reading novels, attending social activities, attending family functions, etc.

4. Not Always Effective

A study found that homework creates a negative attitude towards schooling and the education system. Research by John Hattie, Professor of Education at the University of Melbourne, has found that homework in primary school has a negligible effect on students’ academic growth, as students are completing separate and unrelated projects rather than reinforcing learned knowledge. Homework doesn’t necessarily help to improve students’ academic performance rather it puts a burden on students.

5. Discourages Creative Endeavours

As we know homework eats up the leisure time because students spend hours completing their assignments. During that time students might like to do creative works that they are interested in such as, painting, singing, playing games, learning an instrument, etc . There might be a case where a student is much interested in doing creative work rather than spending hours on homework.

Concluding the article, both the pros and cons of homework are valid. Teachers and parents find homework as a necessary task for the children’s academic success while students find it as a burden or headache. The main purpose of homework is to bridge the gap between children’s learning at school and at home.

On the one hand, homework is an effective way to reinforce the concepts that were learned at school which helps to improve the academic outcome of the students. On the other hand, homework puts a burden on the student and the time that homework demands would be better spent with meaningful activity.

Thus, a good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements. 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.

• https://www.goodschools.com.au/insights/parental-advice/pros-and-cons-of-homework
• https://www.goodschools.com.au/insights/parental-advice/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-homework
• https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-pros-and-cons-of-homework/
• https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/should-students-have-homework1808.html

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The Pros and Cons of Homework: Is Homework Really Worth It?

Homework has been a long-debated topic in the realm of education. Homework used to be a given for teachers; all students were assigned homework. Nowadays, especially because of the initial year with COVID- 19, teachers are not assigning as much homework.

With COVID-19, the majority of students in a class do not complete homework. They sat around and texted while their classes were occurring. Some students have learned that they can get away with not completing it. Teachers are frustrated with the back and forth regarding homework so there has been a shift in the perspective. It is not assumed for each class anymore, but generally just assumed for certain core classes such as Math or Language Arts. So, what are the pros and cons of assigning homework to students?

The purpose of homework is to reinforce what students learn in the classroom and to prepare them for future academic tasks. However, there are a number of potential disadvantages to assigning homework. It can create more work for teachers and parents, be a source of stress for students, and can interfere with family time On the bright side, assigning homework can help students learn new material, help them develop study skills, and significantly reduce screen time.

The Cons of Homework

Completing homework incorrectly does more harm than good.

A large part of having homework is practicing a previous concept a student already learned. The student learns something that day during class, takes it home, and works on it a handful more times in order to instil the procedures and strategies in their head.

Occasionally, or sometimes more frequently with certain students, a student brings back a homework assignment almost all wrong. They didn’t pay attention during class and so when it came to the homework, they just guessed. As a teacher, it can be incredibly frustrating; the teacher is upset because they don’t know the concept and they’re starting to develop an incorrect way of solving or doing the concept.

If a student completes homework incorrectly, they become discouraged. They are also frustrated that they don’t understand the concept. They feel as if their time has been wasted. Well, because it kinda has. They spent 20 minutes, 45 minutes, or whatever it was, doing nothing beneficial with their time. The outcome they had from the homework didn’t create anything positive other than showing diligence in attempting to complete work.

Not Every Home Is Supportive of Completing Homework

For some students, their parents are incredibly supportive of the school; they continually check grades, they ask their students how school was that day, and some parents even help their students with their homework. This also creates a positive atmosphere to complete homework in. Students are more motivated and likely to complete their homework if someone else is showing interest in them completing it. Also, if the homework is challenging, it is better for the student’s level of understanding if an adult can help them.

Some parents could care less about school. Maybe the parent is so busy with work, they have no time to help and support their student. It could also be a circumstance where the parent struggled in school as well so they feel like individuals place too much emphasis regarding school.

In these instances where students are not supported, why would they do the homework? How could they do the homework? Students are generally motivated by things like getting their phone taken away or losing friend time, so if the parent doesn’t care enough for there to be possible negative outcomes, there might not be motivation there to do the homework.

It Discourages Opportunities for Other Activities

If students are doing homework, they are missing out on other activities. Spending time inside doing homework means no spending time outside on a bike. Spending time inside doing homework means not spending time watching a favorite TV show either. It is important for students to engage in other interests in their life outside of school. School goes alongside other interests a student has. School should not be the only thing they are worried about.

Play is an important part of a kid’s development. It gives kids the opportunity to be creative. Through being creative, they can develop in areas of dexterity, cognitive, emotional strength, and imagination, just to name a few. It is crucial for kids to run outside and play to make discoveries on their own.

Play can also strengthen a student’s interest in school . If they develop outside interests, they can apply these interests in a school setting. For example, if a student is interested in a specific football team, they might be provided with the opportunity to write a creative writing piece regarding a game played by that favorite team.

The Pros of Homework

Parents get more involved in their children’s learning.

When a parent knows more of what’s going on in a classroom, they can be more involved if they chose to do so! A parent can get more involved by helping their student with homework, working on the additional practice of what the student is currently learning, helping improve grades, and even asking the teacher questions.

Teachers most certainly appreciate when a parent wants to be involved in a student’s learning. It shows that they care. It also shows that they have their back when teaching the child. If a child is acting up, as a teacher, it is nice to know that the parent at home will support your efforts in trying to diminish a behavior or further understand a concept.

If requested by a parent, most teachers will even provide extra work for a student to practice more at home. Even though it might not account for any sort of credit, continually practicing a concept that the student does not understand will benefit them in the long run. Unfortunately, parents being supportive of homework is less common in the education world than you might think.

Even though the student is the one working on the homework, the homework is also the teacher providing the parent with the opportunity to speak up and become more involved. Teachers want parents to know what their child is working on during school. Teachers want parents to assist in making sure their student understands the concepts that are gone over during class.

Reinforces Learning and Practicing Good Study Habits

By having students complete homework, you are having them practice learning. Most things in life are learning. We constantly take in new information and remold it into a way that benefits us or a way we want to see it. With learning, we adapt new ways of doing something or even dislikes we might have. Students practicing a skill is important to mastering that skill. As time goes on, the hope is that students will realize they need to continually work on learning something in order to be a pro.

Practicing good study habits is a key outcome of homework. Most students are in school Kindergarten through 12th grade, with some even extending 15 years after 12th grade. Some individuals don’t realize the full extent of time they are in school. It is years and years and years. It is crucial to set yourself up for success by attending school for such a long time. By developing positive routines and effective methods of studying, a student will experience more wins during their time in school.

One of the more important study habits that develop from homework is t ime management skills . Developing the skill to know how long to spend on what things in life will allow a person to succeed. Students can use these skills on a daily basis to figure out how much time they will get to spend with friends or how long it takes them to get to and from school.

Time management skills are also so applicable to other things later in life. When students are learning time management skills with homework, they can apply this to spending time with friends, watching a television show, or even a job.

Can Reduce Screen Time

We spend so much time on devices, just about everyone included. We are on social media, reading articles, buying things, watching movies, etc. Especially now in the world of COVID- 19, even more, has been transferred to an online format. Students are on computers daily at most schools. When they get home, oftentimes students are on phones texting friends or on Snapchat. Completing homework instead of being on social media, means a reduced amount of time in front of a screen .

Now, some homework might be online, but not all homework is. Depending on the subject, teachers assign plenty of homework on paper. Most homework is on paper because teachers cannot assume a child has a device available at home to complete homework. Some families are low income and can’t afford to have a computer at home. Assigning homework on the computer would put low-income families at a disadvantage.

Related: What are the Pros and Cons of Virtual Learning?

The Bottom Line – Pros and Cons of Homework

Is assigning homework beneficial or hurtful? Every subject, teacher, and circumstance is different.

Homework can be a mainly positive item for some students and mainly a negative item for other students. The reason why it is such a debate is that a teacher is assigning homework for an entire class, not just one student. Even if they know each student well, there is no way that every single student has a supportive household.

If a teacher assigns homework, they are benefiting only part of the students. If a teacher doesn’t assign homework, they are giving the students, who would be completing it, a disadvantage.

Do the pros outweigh the cons with homework? What do you think?

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Pros and Cons of Homework: The Great Homework Debate

1)    enforcing discipline, 2)    increased learning, 1)    prevents outside growth, 2)    causing stress, the bottom line, alternatives.

There are many pros and cons of homework. If you remember back to your childhood, one of the most annoying parts of school might have been homework. Many of dreaded having to get home, because instead of doing something fun, we had to whip out the textbook and start doing some problems – not a great way to have to spend the afternoon. We didn’t understand the importance of homework, we saw it as a chore. The same is true of children today.

Homework has been heavily debated for years, with popular opinion shifting in and out of favor over the generations. As both a teacher and a mother, I have mixed feelings on the issue. On one hand, I know the importance of skill practice. However, I also know how crucial it is for children to have time for play and exploring interests outside of school.

Thankfully, I think there is a way to settle the ‘great homework debate’ by finding better alternatives.

Pros and Cons of Homework: The Good

The most influential part of homework is the habits it instills in students. In class, students are not often challenged to study and learn on their own; they are instead guided. With homework, students must force themselves to get the work done on their own time, instilling discipline and habits of work.

Discipline is especially relevant when these students start to work and, eventually, consider college. If they lack important studying habits, they will struggle in the self-lead world of college. But homework isn’t the only way teachers and parents can help children be more disciplined.

There are many other ways to strengthen this ability as well. One being providing structure and two, teaching problem-solving skills.

Believe it or not, homework does help the student to learn the subject faster and with higher accuracy. In fact, scientific research shows there is no ‘math gene’ that makes people good at math. Instead, it takes practice.

When students approach high school, the amount of work assigned per night slowly rises. Additionally, the amount of work a student can handle with positive results raises over time as well. A high school student and an elementary schooler can’t handle the same amount of homework, which is why it is assigned in different quantities.

The benefits of homework start to degrade after two hours for high schoolers, an hour and a half for grades 7-9, 45 minutes for grades 3-6, and 15 minutes for grade k-2. So instead of getting rid of homework altogether, teachers can focus on assigning a reasonable amount of what really matters.

Pros and Cons of Homework: The Bad

Excessive amounts of homework can take away from a student’s free time to engage in other activities. My middle schooler has struggled with this as tons of homework got in the way of doing what she loves, singing.

From sports to work to hobbies and clubs, there is a variety of things outside of homework that’s worth a student’s time. Finding balance is key. This can often be accomplished through schedule and routine.

Along with preventing outside growth, homework can lead to not just a full schedule, but a packed one. It is no secret this generation’s children are pressured more than any in the past to excel. From travel sports for elementary schoolers to thousand-dollar tutoring sessions to endless college visits – the stress is mounting.

Add homework on top of all this work, and the student is going to feel stressed out. The key is helping them feel successful while not overworking them at such a young age. I’ve found that a great way to do this is by making studying fun! If your child is one that hates math or doesn’t see the importance of reading , using interactive alternatives to study time is important.

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I know you may be thinking, I don’t assign the homework, I don’t have control. But most teachers are flexible and will work with you if you explained how other practice alternatives are helping your child.

I think the proper way to go about handling the issue of homework is not full support or a complete ban, but a middle-ground approach.

Most of the cons of homework come from an excess of it, while most pros are from homework in moderation. It is clear homework helps, at least to an extent, and too much is indeed a bad thing. We can’t coddle our kids forever, but it’s irresponsible to force a 45+ hour work week on students.

If we want students to succeed, we need to add in extra work when they need it. We also need to include it in a personalized manner to work their weak spots and hold their interest.

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Homework is boring, we all know it, so why not look for a better option? Sometimes, students do need an extra push of outside learning to succeed; homework alone might not just be enough. ArgoPrep’s new K-8 math program might be the solution you need. Keep extra work useful, and with purpose, that’s why ArgoPrep’s service is such a great addition, it adds in what you need when you need it.

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Does Homework Have a Greater Negative or Positive Effect on Students?

26 sep 2017.

Homework is a ubiquitous activity that helps students learn material outside of the classroom. Since homework increases the likelihood that students will remember and apply what they have learned, it comes as a surprise to many that homework can have a detrimental impact on learning. If approached correctly, however, homework ultimately has a more positive effect on student achievement, academic outcomes and nonacademic pursuits.

Explore this article

• The Benefits of Homework
• The Drawbacks of Homework
• Finding the Balance

1 The Benefits of Homework

In the most comprehensive study of homework to date, the Review of Educational Research found that homework is positively correlated with classroom achievement, measured through test scores. In addition, the report found that homework improved students' study habits, problem-solving skills, self-discipline and views toward school, among others. A stronger correlation between homework and classroom achievement was observed when the student, rather than the parent, worked on homework. In addition, the correlation between homework and academic achievement was stronger among students in high school than students in grades K–6.

Homework can also have nonacademic benefits. As noted in the academic journal Theory Into Practice, homework helps children "develop positive beliefs about achievement, as well as strategies for coping with mistakes, difficulties, and setbacks." Especially relevant for younger students, homework can help learners stay on task and prepare them for more demanding assignments that require a great deal of focus. In addition, homework can help students develop time-management skills and assume more demanding responsibilities.

2 The Drawbacks of Homework

Homework is so entrenched in education that many fail to see its weaknesses. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development notes that despite its near-universal acceptance in American culture, homework can increase students' stress levels and lower their overall physical and emotional health. Some researchers believe that homework that goes beyond the "10-minute rule" – from 10 minutes in first grade to two hours in high school – can have an adverse impact on student achievement and learning.

This concern is supported by research from the Journal of Experimental Education, which found that too much homework can lead to increased academic stress, poorer physical health and an uneven school-life balance. According to the report, which studied students averaging 3.1 hours of homework per night at high-performing high schools, more than half of the students (56 percent) mentioned homework being one of their primary sources of stress. In addition, many students in the study claimed that that the amount of homework they received led to sleep deprivation and other health issues.

3 Finding the Balance

Homework has both academic and nonacademic benefits when it is assigned properly. Too little can lead to a poor understanding of material and outlook on learning, but too much can lead to increased academic stress and poorer health. A good rule of thumb is to follow the 10-minute rule; that is, a first-grader's homework should take no longer than 10 minutes, a second-grader's homework should take no longer than 20 minutes, and so on, adding 10 minutes for each grade level. When used in moderation, homework can be an excellent tool for students to gain knowledge and obtain essential skill sets.

• 1 Review of Educational Research: Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003
• 2 Time: Is Homework Good for Kids? Here's What the Research Says
• 3 Theory Into Practice: The Motivational Benefits of Homework: A Social-Cognitive Perspective
• 4 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs
• 5 The Econometrics Journal: The Impact of Homework on Student Achievement
• 6 The Journal of Experimental Education: Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools
• 7 Stanford University: Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework
• 8 The Guardian: Homework: Is it Worth the Hassle?
• 9 American Psychological Association: Is Homework a Necessary Evil?

About the Author

Tim Zimmer is an Associate Consultant at Manhattan Strategy Group (MSG), a management and social services consulting firm that works with Federal, State, and local government agencies.

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18 Advantages and Disadvantages of Homework Should Be Banned

Homework has been a part of the schooling experience for multiple generations. There are some lessons that are perfect for the classroom environment, but there are also some things that children can learn better at home. As a general rule, the maximum amount of time that a student should spend each day on lessons outside of school is 10 minutes per each grade level.

That means a first grader should spend about 10 minutes each night on homework. If you are a senior in high school, then the maximum limit would be two hours. For some students, that might still be too much extra time doing work. There are some calls to limit the amount of time spent on extra limits to 30 minutes per day at all of the older K-12 grades – and some are saying that homework should be banned outright.

Can teachers get all of the lessons taught in an appropriate way during the 1-2 hours per subject that they might get each day? Do parents have an opportunity to review what their children learn at school if none of the work ever gets brought back home?

There are several advantages and disadvantages of why homework should be banned from the current school structure.

List of the Advantages of Why Homework Should Be Banned

1. Homework creates a longer day for students than what parents work. There are times when parents need to bring work home with them after a long day of productivity, but this time is usually part of a compensation package. Students do not receive the same luxury. After spending 6-8 hours at school, there might be two more hours of homework to complete before getting through all of the assignments that are due. That means some kids are putting in a longer working day than their parents. This disadvantage means there are fewer moments for going outside, spending time with friends, or pursuing a hobby.

2. There is no guarantee of an improved academic outcome. Research studies provide conflicting results when looking at the impact of homework on a student’s life. Younger students may benefit from a complete ban so that they can separate their home and classroom experiences. Even older students who perform projects outside of the school benefit from time restrictions on this responsibility. Design flaws exist on both sides of the clinical work that looks at this topic, so there is no definitive scientific conclusion that points to a specific result. It may be better to err on the side of caution.

3. Homework restrictions reduce issues with classroom burnout for students. Homework stress is a significant problem in the modern classroom for K-12 students. Even kids in grade school are finding it a challenge to maintain their performance because of the pressure that daily assignments cause. About 1 in 4 teachers in North America say that there are direct adverse impacts that happen because of the amount of learning required of students today. It can also cause older students to drop out of school because they can’t stay caught up on the work that they need to do.

When students have a chance to have time to pursue interests outside of the classroom, then it can create healthier learning opportunities in the future for them.

4. Banning homework would give families more time to spend together. One in three American households with children say that the homework assignments that teachers give are the primary source of stress in their home. When kids must complete their work by a specific deadline, then there is less time for families to do activities together. Instead of scheduling their time around their free hours, they must balance homework requirements in their plans. There are even fewer moments for parents to be involved in the learning process because of the specific instructions that students must follow to stay in compliance with the assignment.

5. Student health is adversely impacted by too many homework assignments. Kids of any age struggle academically when they do not have opportunities to finish their homework by a specific deadline. It is not unusual for school administrators and some teachers to judge children based on their ability to turn work in on time. If a child has a robust work ethic and still cannot complete the work, the negative approach that they might encounter in the classroom could cause them to abandon their learning goals.

This issue can even lead to the development of mental health problems. It can reduce a child’s self-esteem, prevent them from learning essential learning skills, and disrupt their ability to learn new skills in other areas of life outside of the classroom. Even the risk of self-harm and suicide increase because of excessive homework. That’s why banning it could be a healthy choice for some people.

6. Banning homework would help students get more sleep. Teens need up to 10 hours of sleep each night to maximize their productivity. Students in grade school can need up to 12 hours nightly as well. When homework assignments are necessary and time consuming, then this issue can eat into the amount of rest that kids get each night. Every assignment given to a K-12 student increases their risks of losing at least one hour of sleep per night. This issue can eventually lead to sleep deficits that can create chronic learning issues. It may even lead to problems with emotional control, obesity, and attention problems. Banning homework would remove the issue entirely.

7. It would encourage dynamic learning opportunities. There are some homework projects that students find to be engaging, such as a science fair project or another hands-on assignment. Many of the tasks that students must complete for their teachers involves repetition instead. You might see grade school students coming home with math sheets with 100 or more problems for them to solve. Reading assignments are common at all grades. Instead of learning the “why” behind the information they learn, the goal with homework is usually closer to memorization that it is to self-discovery. That’s why it can be challenging to retain the data that homework provides.

8. Banning homework would provide more time for peer socialization. Students who are only spending time in school before going home to do homework for the rest of the evening are at a higher risk of experiencing isolation and loneliness. When these sentiments are present in the life of a child, then they are more likely to experience physical and mental health concerns that lead to shyness and avoidance.

These students lack essential connections with other people because of their need to complete homework. The adverse impact on the well being of a child is the equivalent of smoking more than a pack of cigarettes each day. If kids are spending time all of their time on homework, then they are not connecting with their family and friends.

9. Some students do not have a home environment that’s conducive to homework. Although some kids can do their homework in a tranquil room without distress, that is not the case for most children. Numerous events happen at home that can shift a child’s attention away from the homework that their teacher wants them to complete. It isn’t just the TV, video games, and the Internet which are problematic either. Family problems, chores, an after-school job, and team sports can make it problematic to get the assignments finished on time.

Banning homework equalizes the playing field because teachers can control the classroom environment. They do not have control over when, where, or how their students complete assignments away from school.

10. It would eliminate the assignment of irrelevant work. Homework can be a useful tool when teachers use it in targeted ways. There are times when these assignments are handed out for the sake of giving out busy work. If the content of the work is irrelevant to the lessons in the classroom, then it should not be handed out. It is unreasonable to expect that a student can generate excellent grades on work that is barely covered in the classroom.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that given students just four hours of take-home assignments per week has a detrimental impact on individual productivity. The average U.S. high school already pushes that limit by offering 3.5 hours of extra assignments per week.

List of the Disadvantages of Why Homework Should Be Banned

1. Teachers can see if students understand the materials being taught. Homework allows a teacher to determine if a student has a grasp on the materials being taught in the classroom. Tests and school-based activities can provide this information as well, but not in the same way. If the data sticks outside of the educational setting, then this is an excellent indication that the process was effective for that individual. If there are gaps in knowledge that occur in the homework, then the learning process can become individualized to ensure the best possible results for each child.

2. Homework can reduce the stress and anxiety of test-taking. Students often study for tests at home to ensure that they can pass with an acceptable grade. Walking into a classroom only prepared with the notes and memories of previous lessons can create high levels of fear that could impact that child’s final result. Banning homework could place more pressure on kids to succeed than what they currently experience today. This disadvantage would also create more labels in the classroom based on the performance of each child in unfair ways. Some students excel in a lecture-based environment, but others do better at home where there are fewer distractions.

3. Assignments can be an effective way to discover learning disabilities. Kids do an excellent job of hiding their struggles in the classroom from adults. They use their disguises as a coping mechanism to help them blend in when they feel different. That behavior can make it a challenge to identify students who many benefit from a different learning approach in specific subjects. By assigning homework to each child periodically, there are more opportunities to identify the issues that can hold some people back. Then the teachers can work with the families to develop alternative learning plans that can make the educational process better for each student because individual assignments eliminate the ability to hide.

4. Parents are more involved in the learning process because of homework. Parents need to know what their children are learning in school. Even if they ask their kids about what they are learning, the answers tend to be given in generalities. Without specific examples from the classroom, it is challenging to stay involved in a student’s educational process.

By sending homework from the school, it allows the entire family to encounter the assignments that their kids are doing when they are in school during the day. Then there is more adult involvement with the learning process, reinforcing the core ideas that were discovered by their kids each day.

5. Homework provides opportunities for students to use deeper research. The average classroom in the United States provides less than 60 minutes of instruction for each subject daily. Generalist teachers in grade school might skip certain subjects on some days as well. When there are homework assignments going home, then it creates more chances to use the tools at home to learn more about what is happening at school. Taking a deeper look at specific subjects or lessons through independent study can lead to new thoughts or ideas that may not occur in the classroom environment. This process can eventually lead to a better understanding of the material.

6. The homework process requires time management and persistence to be successful. Students must learn core life skills as part of the educational process. Time management skills are one of the most useful tools that can be in a child’s life toolbox. When you know how to complete work by a deadline consistently, then this skill can translate to an eventual career. Homework can also teach students how to solve complex problems, understand current events, or tap into what they are passionate about in life. By learning from an early age that there are jobs that we sometimes need to do even if we don’t want to them, the persistence lessons can translate into real successes later in life.

7. Assignments make students accountable for their role in the educational process. Teachers cannot force a student to learn anything. There must be a desire present in the child to know more for information retention to occur. An education can dramatically improve the life of a child in multiple ways. It can lead to more income opportunities, a greater understanding of the world, and how to establish a healthy routine. By offering homework to students, teachers are encouraging today’s kids how to be accountable for their role in their own education. It creates opportunities to demonstrate responsibility by proving that the work can be done on time and to a specific quality.

8. It creates opportunities to practice time management. There can be problems with homework for some students when they are heavily involved in extra-curricular activities. If you give a child two hours of homework after school and they have two hours of commitments to manage at the same time, then there are some significant challenges to their time management to solve. Time really is a finite commodity. If we are unable to manage it in wise ways, then our productivity levels are going to be limited in multiple ways. Creating a calendar with every responsibility and commitment helps kids and their families figure out ways to manage everything while pushing the learning process forward.

Verdict of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Banning Homework

Some students thrive on the homework they receive from their teachers each day. There are also some kids that struggle to complete even basic assignments on time because of their home environment. How can we find a balance between the two extremes so that every child can receive the best possible chance to succeed?

One solution is to ban homework entirely. Although taking this action would require teachers and parents to be proactive in their communication, it could help to equalize the educational opportunities in the classroom.

Until more research occurs in this area, the advantages and disadvantages of banning homework are subjective. If you feel that your child would benefit from a reduced workload, then speak with the teacher to see if this is an option. For teens and older students, there is always the option to pursue a different form of education, such as a vocational school or an apprenticeship, if the traditional classroom doesn’t seem to be working.

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For/against: pros and cons to saints drafting tulane qb michael pratt, share this article.

Smart NFL analysts will say that teams should draft a quarterback every year, until they know they have one they can count on. The New Orleans Saints probably aren’t in the market for a young passer after recommitting to their contract with Derek Carr, locking in his starting role for at least the next year (and probably the next two or three seasons) with a costly restructure earlier this offseason.

Still, you never know. And Carr floundered often enough in 2023 that it’s worth questioning whether the team shouldn’t look for a better backup plan, with one eye on the future, going into the 2024 draft. Enter Tulane quarterback Michael Pratt.

Pratt has led an impressive college career, doing his part to elevate Tulane into a nationally-recognized program while breaking all sorts of school passing records. And now he’s going into the 2024 NFL draft as a favorite prospect of some scouts and coaches who will have the chance to stand on a table for him on draft day.

Should the Saints be interested? What could Pratt offer that they don’t already have? Are the costs to get him too high, given all of their team needs? Let’s break it down while weighing the pros and cons:

Why the Saints should draft Michael Pratt

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – SEPTEMBER 02: Michael Pratt #7 of the Tulane Green Wave in action against the University of Southern Alabama at Yulman Stadium on September 02, 2023 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

Remember the mantra: draft a quarterback until you have a good one. Carr is who he is at this point in his career with 10 years and 159 games to evaluate, in a variety of different systems. We know where his ceiling is with or without Klint Kubiak calling plays for him. Jake Haener was uninspiring to say the least on limited snaps in preseason last summer. The less said about Nathan Peterman’s presence on the team, the better.

Pratt, meanwhile, has performed at a high level in college and proven he can compete against other future pros. He brings the leadership qualities that NFL teams look for; they appreciate seeing him cheer on teammates during the bench press at Tulane’s pro day and speaking out on the sidelines when things are getting dicey in close games. He can lead the huddle, make big-time throws, and rally those around him. Those are qualities the Saints have missed at quarterback since Drew Brees retired three years ago.

There are other quarterbacks in this draft class who can do the same. It’s unlikely one of the top four passers will make it to the Saints’ first-round pick at No. 14, and it would be a surprise to see either Michael Penix or Bo Nix on the board in the second round at No. 45. Pratt could be available, though, and he might be worthy of that second-round choice. The Saints could draft an impactful rookie in the first round before adding a quarterback the next day. Having Pratt on an affordable rookie deal would make it easier to move on from Derek Carr in a year or two; that split, whenever it happens, is going to leave a lot of dead money behind.

Why the Saints should not draft Michael Pratt

Sep 2, 2023; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Tulane Green Wave quarterback Michael Pratt (7) looks on against the South Alabama Jaguars during the first half at Yulman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s start with the obvious: there is no indication the Saints are preparing to move on from Carr. Dennis Allen recruited him and convinced the Saints to pay him so highly because he believes he’s the right quarterback for this team. Restructuring Carr’s contract makes it very, very difficult to get out of in 2025 at the soonest. Odds are good that they will restructure his deal again and set him up to play out a contract year in 2026. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

To that end, spending one of the two picks the Saints own in the first four rounds on a quarterback is reckless. This team needs new starters at left tackle and left guard and improved depth at wide receiver, defensive end, and defensive tackle, to say nothing of other positions with long-term questions like tight end and running back. They must at least upgrade the backup plan if Ryan Ramczyk can’t start at right tackle, or else look for his replacement, too. There are too many holes to address to justify an early-round quarterback. New Orleans needs immediate contributors.

And maybe Pratt isn’t all his numbers and rah-rah efforts suggest him to be. He didn’t throw many interceptions in college (just 26 on 1,204 pass attempts) but he did try a lot of risky throws. Pro Football Focus charting found he threw a turnover-worthy pass on 3.5% of his attempts. For comparison, Jameis Winston was at 5.1% on his 335 passes with the Saints the last four years. Carr was at 2.3% on 548 throws last season. Passing windows tighten up in the NFL and quarterbacks can’t get away with as many risky throws as they did in college. Maybe Pratt gets intercepted more often.

So will the Saints draft Michael Pratt?

Nov 24, 2023; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Tulane Green Wave quarterback Michael Pratt (7) warms up before a game against the UTSA Roadrunners at Yulman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Hinton-USA TODAY Sports

Don’t bet on it. Sink or swim, the Saints are Derek Carr’s team so long as Dennis Allen is steering the ship. Nathan Peterman was brought in to get knocked down by Jake Haener during training camp, allowing the second-year pro to say he earned the opportunity to back up Carr (without having anyone question the decision to start Carr over him if he struggles, as happened whenever Jameis Winston got into games last year). Drafting someone as competent as Pratt, with his baked-in local support, would put pressure on Carr that Allen probably isn’t looking for.

And besides all that, the Saints don’t have the luxury of spending a top-50 draft pick on a player who won’t see the field as a rookie. They need starters at two, maybe three different positions. They’re going to be looking for backups who can play heavy minutes in rotations at several other groups. Passing on the opportunity to put out one of those fires could burn them badly.

Still, Pratt is the exact kind of quarterback the Saints have looked for in the draft in recent years. He’s a more-accomplished passer than Ian Book was coming out of Notre Dame but brings similar athletic testing numbers. He achieved more than Haener did at Fresno State and is closer to the physical prototype, standing two inches taller and weighing 10 pounds heavier. Scouts in New Orleans have gotten a good look at him over the years and it shouldn’t shock anyone if he’s highly-regarded by the team’s college personnel department. But when we get to draft day and the Saints are on the clock, it would be a big upset for Pratt (or any other quarterback) to end up in black and gold during the first three or four rounds.

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MLS referees, league find positives and negatives in new labor deal

Major League Soccer ’s crew of full-time referees will return to the field this weekend after agreeing to a new, seven-year collective bargaining agreement with the Professional Referees Organization (PRO), the MLS-funded entity that administers professional refereeing in North America.

Talks between PRO and the Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA, the labor union that represents professional refs in the United States) broke down earlier this year and in mid-February, PRO locked its officials out. MLS started its season with replacement refs as the two sides continued to work towards an agreement. The federally mediated talks were sometimes volatile, with both sides publicly accusing each other of unfair practices and speaking out to the media.

Eventually, the two sides reached an accord on a new CBA, one which features significant increases in pay — 28% in the first year alone — for MLS officials. In the days following the agreement, figures on both sides of the agreement had plenty to say about it.

Terms and length of the deal

Sources associated with the league and club ownership groups seemed largely positive about the agreement. One source briefed on negotiations said that owners are especially pleased about its length, and in particular pointed out that the final two years, which take place after the 2026 World Cup, feature only modest salary bumps for the officials.

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That viewpoint tracks with a memo sent by MLS senior vice president of sporting competition Nelson Rodriguez to team owners after the deal was signed on Tuesday morning. In his memo, which was acquired and verified by The Athletic, Rodriguez suggested that the CBA, in the long term, “will be net-neutral, if not more favorable, over that seven-year period.”

The 2024 MLS anonymous executive survey, part 1: Coaches, teams and players

Rodriguez pointed out that while the new deal represents an overall 28 percent increase for match officials from 2023, “when comparing salaries, game fees, benefits, and travel upgrades, (the CBA features) an average increase in compensation of approximately 4.35% in the subsequent six years of the deal.”

Rodriguez went on to characterize the gains made by the PSRA in the final version of the agreement as a “small increase” from the agreement that PSRA membership shot down in February.

According to the PSRA’s data, the final figures of the agreed-upon CBA represent an increase of $1.06 million over five years from the first tentative agreement. Over the full seven years of the agreement that amount rises to $2.7 million.

On the flipside, the seven-year term proved to be the biggest disappointment regarding the deal among PSRA referees contacted by The Athletic . Multiple such officials suggested they thought the PSRA would be in a less desirable negotiating position for the next CBA, with talks set to come years after at least one and possibly two World Cups, depending on whether the U.S. wins its bid to host the Women’s World Cup in 2027.

Anonymous MLS execs on roster rules, Apple TV and the Leagues Cup

Still, most of those polled were largely positive about the new agreement, impressed by a deal that sees an immediate and significant increase in compensation.

“If you look at the pay for senior (center) referees, you can actually begin to plan a future with that money,” said one PSRA member said, who was granted anonymity to protect their relationships in the game. “We have consistent raises that we can depend on, we have the match guarantees. All of that means that for the first time, you can sort of do some serious financial planning around your salary. To me, you can’t undersell the value of that.”

Tenor of negotiations

Rodriguez and MLS commissioner Don Garber repeatedly shared the league’s belief that the replacement referees that PRO employed during the lockout were “up to a professional standard,” and at a similar level as PRO’s full-timers.

Garber himself suggested that the league’s players and coaches felt the same way, adding that the league had done market research that indicated the work stoppage mattered little to its fans and wouldn’t affect the long-term perception of the league itself.

“There is no consumer blowback,” Garber told The Athletic in a roundtable in March . “Not only do we not see that through the research we do, but we’ve got to look at where we are. The replacement officials are — not by our standards, but by the standards of PRO — are up to a pro(fessional) standard.”

Garber’s suggestions drew the ire of a contingent of MLS players, fans and head coaches, several of whom spoke out publicly after each of their matches had been marred by what they perceived as a blown call. The Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA) went a step further and put out a public statement, one which suggested Garber’s comments were “grossly inaccurate” and that the replacement refs were under-trained, lacked experience and were “not nearly at the level that a league of MLS stature deserves.”

How kickoff times and child labor laws have impacted Julian Hall's MLS career

Garber and Rodriguez’s view is also not universally shared among team ownership groups.

“The quality of the replacement referees was an embarrassment at times,” said a stakeholder at an MLS club, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationships. “Some of the missed calls, and the blown calls, they were really tough to deal with. I have no idea what they were talking about when it comes to the refs being at (a professional) standard. They pretty clearly weren’t. It was bizarre to read that.”

Every referee who spoke to The Athletic expressed some dismay at the tenor of negotiations as they unfolded. Earlier this month PRO, represented in negotiations by New York-based law firm Proskauer Rose, took the step of offering a “take it or leave it” mandate of sorts, suggesting that if PSRA membership didn’t approve their tabled offer they’d begin negotiating a deal with “less favorable terms.”

Proskauer Rose has earned a reputation for playing hardball in these types of negotiations, having advised the NBA , NHL and NFL in their respective labor stoppages over the past three decades. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and former NBA commissioner David Stern were both former Proskauer attorneys, and the firm represented MLS when it won a landmark antitrust suit in 2000, a decision that solidified the league’s entire single-entity business model. It also represented MLS during the 2014 referee lockout.

The PSRA, responding to Garber’s comments earlier this month, characterized the league and PRO’s handling of the negotiations as having included “anti-union tactics,” a view mirrored by multiple referees amongst PSRA membership.

“Realistically, the league waited us out,” said one. “I am not surprised, at all, that they played dirty here — it’s been their M.O. in every labor negotiation they’ve ever had with players or anybody else. I am very, very curious to see how ugly their next negotiation with the MLSPA gets.”

The most recent CBA between MLS players and the league was agreed in early 2020 and runs until January 2028.

“There’s power in our union,” said another referee, “but financially, there is only so long a stoppage that any of us were equipped to deal with.”

Comparison to referee pay worldwide

Earlier this month, Garber also suggested that February’s tentative agreement PSRA’s membership had rejected would have made its membership “among the highest-paid officials in the world.”

“Think about that — third (highest-paid) or whatever the number was,” Garber said. “I think we all could agree that our players are not among the highest-paid in the world. We have supported the growth of officials because it needed it. We’re building again, with energy and resources, the growth of an entire new ecosystem of professional referees who are now on the field with world-class players.”

Data on referee compensation across the globe isn’t publicly available but The Athletic’s reporting, along with data compiled by the PSRA, does paint the deal struck between the PSRA and PRO in a favorable light. At the very least, MLS’s referee salaries are comparable to the top leagues in the world based on pure compensation, though officials in Spain and England tend to make more.

However, officials in those leagues also have a robust package of benefits that include a sizable payout on retirement, something lacking in the PSRA’s pact with PRO. A senior MLS referee with over a decade of experience, for example, is only entitled to six months of severance pay.

Referees in the German Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A are also well-compensated, paid a match fee nearly four times higher than that of an MLS referee (though they receive a lower base salary.)

“I think most (owners) across the league feel that the refs are fairly compensated now,” said a stakeholder at an MLS club, who spoke anonymously to protect their relationships. “But if we’re paying a salary that’s globally competitive, we want better officiating. That’s I think what the general feeling is. The refs just have to be better. There are a few owners out there who think that the league is giving these guys too much money but even those guys will probably be fine with it if the quality gets better.”

The math gets more complicated, though, when you start to think about other factors — cost of living, inflation and the like.

“On paper our deal looks great,” said one PSRA member, “but it’s just cheaper to exist in some places than others — that’s true even within the U.S., let alone abroad.”

(Photo: Jeremy Olson/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

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Pablo Maurer is a staff writer for The Athletic who covers soccer, with a particular focus on the history and culture of the game. His writing and photography have been featured in National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Gothamist and a variety of other outlets. Follow Pablo on Twitter @ MLSist

Transportation | Which 5 routes are being considered for Lehigh…

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Transportation | which 5 routes are being considered for lehigh valley passenger train service here are the pros and cons for each.

About a dozen years from now, if you hopped on a passenger train in the Lehigh Valley, where would you end up?

Penn Station in the heart of Manhattan? Center City Philadelphia? How about 30th Street Station in Philly? Perhaps Reading?

All four of those places were listed as potential final destinations in the Lehigh Valley Passenger Rail Analysis that was released Wednesday by PennDOT and consultant WSP.

After going over 12 potential routes, the study narrowed it down to five. You can view them in the map above.

Here are the pros, cons, costs and likely travel time for each:

Allentown to New York via Hackettstown, New Jersey

• Description: Utilizes the Norfolk Southern Railway to Phillipsburg and Dover & Delaware River Railroad to connect with the NJ Transit Morris & Essex Line in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
• Pros: Active rail corridor with Norfolk Southern Railway Class 1 freight infrastructure in place. The route can avoid some of the freight line by using the shortline Dover & Delaware Railroad.
• Cons: Could affect Norfolk Southern freight supply chain. Less direct of the two routes to New York. Must utilize New Jersey Transit and Amtrak lines east of Hackettstown, possibly pushing capacity. New Jersey cooperation needed.
• Estimated capital cost: $474.9 million. $145 million for rolling stock.
• Estimated annual operating costs: $23.6 million to $28.8 million.
• Estimated travel time to New York: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Allentown to New York via High Bridge, New Jersey

• Description: Uses the Norfolk Southern Railway to connect with the NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line in High Bridge, New Jersey.
• Pros: Most direct route to New York. Class 1 freight infrastructure in place.
• Cons: Could affect Norfolk Southern freight supply chain. Operations use active New Jersey Transit, Conrail and Amtrak lines east of High Bridge, possibly pushing capacity. New Jersey cooperation needed.
• Estimated capital cost: $469.9 million. $145 million for rolling stock.
• Estimated annual operating cost: $16.5 million to $20.1 million.
• Estimated travel time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Allentown to Philadelphia via Lansdale

• Description: Uses the Norfolk Southern Railway to Bethlehem, Lehigh Valley Rail Management within Bethlehem, Saucon Rail Trail (SEPTA) to Coopersburg, Upper Bucks Rail Trail (SEPTA) to Quakertown, East Penn Railroad (SEPTA) to Telford, and Pennsylvania Northeastern Railroad (SEPTA) to connect with the SEPTA Lansdale Doylestown Line in Lansdale.
• Pros: Most direct route to Philadelphia. Uses mostly in-service corridors.
• Cons: About 12 miles of track have been removed for rail trails. Could affect Norfolk Southern freight supply chain. Routing through Bethlehem is unclear. Potential conflict with SEPTA routes south of Lansdale. SEPTA may not permit dual-mode (diesel/electric) locomotives through the Center City tunnel in Philadelphia.
• Estimated capital cost: 635.8 million. $102 million for rolling stock.
• Estimated annual operating costs: $5.1 million to $10.2 million.
• Estimated travel time: 1 hour, 46 minutes.

Allentown to Philadelphia via Norristown

• Description: Uses the same routes as the Lansdale corridor, then connects with the SEPTA Norristown Line in Norristown.
• Pros: Can provide a diesel-only route to 30th Street Station.
• Cons: About 12 miles of track have been removed for rail trails. Could affect Norfolk Southern freight supply chain. Routing through Bethlehem is unclear. Potential conflict with SEPTA Norristown Line operations.
• Estimated capital cost: $739 million. $102 million for rolling stock.
• Estimated annual operating costs: $5.5 million to $10.8 million.
• Estimated travel time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.

Allentown to Reading

• Description: Uses the Norfolk Southern Railway to connect with the planned Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority service between Reading and Philadelphia.
• Pros: Lowest anticipated operating costs of all the alternatives. Class 1 freight infrastructure in place.
• Cons: Could affect Norfolk Southern freight supply chain. Future rail connections to Philadelphia are proposed by the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority, but not yet certain. Downtown Reading may not have the same travel demand characteristics of New York and Philadelphia.
• Estimated capital cost: $450.3 million. $102 million for rolling stock.
• Estimated annual operating costs: $2.2 million to $4.3 million.
• Estimated travel time: 46 minutes.

Other routes considered

• Allentown to Pottstown via Boyertown.
• Allentown to Norristown via Pennsburg and Oaks.
• Allentown to Trenton, New Jersey, via Phillipsburg, New Jersey.
• Allentown to New York via Bloomsbury, New Jersey, and Flemington, New Jersey.
• Shorter connector corridors were studied inside the cities of Allentown and Bethlehem to determine station sites along with approaches to the Trenton Transit Center to connect with New Jersey Transit.

Read the full Lehigh Valley passenger train study

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A recession indicator flashing red for 23 straight months just reversed — and that's great news for stocks

• A closely watched recession indicator has stopped flashing red after a 23-month decline. 
• The Leading Economic Index gained 0.1% month-over-month in February.
• "The end of extended Conference Board LEI declines has generally been a positive signal for stocks," Carson Group said. 

A closely watched recession indicator has stopped flashing red after a 23-month decline, and that's great news for stocks, according to Carson Group strategist Barry Gilbert.

The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index gained 0.1% month-over-month in February, ending a near two-year decline.

Sustained declines in the Leading Economic Index have historically foreshadowed an imminent recession, but this time around it looks like a recession will have been avoided as the Federal Reserve attempts to engineer a soft landing. 

It's important to note that the Conference Board LEI is heavily weighted toward the goods economy and less so the service economy.

That's a problem when you consider that the makeup of today's economy is roughly 85% services, which is why the LEI has been trending negative for so long, as much of the strength in economic growth over the past year has been driven by services.

Related stories

According to Carson Group, its internal Leading Economic Index, which puts a greater emphasis on the services economy, suggests trend growth for the economy through the rest of the year. That's in line with the Fed's GDPNow forecast of 2.1% growth in the first quarter.

From a stock market perspective, Carson Group crunched the numbers and found that the end of a decline in the LEI is typically followed by higher stock prices.

"The end of extended Conference Board LEI declines has generally been a positive signal for stocks," Gilbert said. 

Gilbert pointed to previous LEI declines, including a 22-month decline in 1975 and a 24-month decline in 2009, that were followed by double-digit returns for the stock market over the next year.

"It is noteworthy that the end of these two longer streaks corresponded to the end of some longer recessions. That gives us added confidence that we are past near-term recessionary risk," Gilbert said.

The average one-year return for the S&P 500 after the LEI turned positive following a negative streak is 15.6% with a win ratio of 85.7%. The median one-year return is even higher, at 19.2%. 

"The bottom line is that no matter which indicators you pay attention to, economic headwinds are slowly being taken out of play. Despite a strong first quarter so far for equities and the likelihood of bumps along the way, the outlook for stocks over the rest of the year still looks solid, whether looking at the macroeconomic backdrop or market history," Gilbert concluded.

Watch: Antonia Wade, PwC's global CMO, tells Insider how B2B spending changes in tough economic times

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Answers to All Your Burning Questions About Sunscreen

How much SPF is enough? Is mineral better than chemical? We’ve got you covered.

Credit... By Maggie Shannon

Supported by

By Nancy Redd

Nancy Redd is a senior staff writer covering health and grooming at Wirecutter.

• March 28, 2024

While most experts agree that you should wear sunscreen year-round to prevent damage from the sun, harmful ultraviolet rays are strongest during the late spring and early summer.

The Times’s Well section partnered with Wirecutter , a New York Times Company that reviews and recommends products (and publishes annual ratings of sunscreens for the face and body ), to answer common questions about sunscreen, including about how safe and effective it is, how to use it properly, and how to pick the right one for you.

How much SPF is enough?

Sun protection factor (or SPF) is a measure of how well a sunscreen protects against sunburn, which usually results from exposure to ultraviolet B (or UVB) rays, the type that cause most skin cancers. Most experts recommend an SPF of at least 30 for most people and most climates.

“There’s no harm in going higher, though,” especially if your skin burns easily or you have sun-exposure allergies , said Dr. Vinod Nambudiri, a dermatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Once you go past SPF 30, the protection becomes more incremental. When properly applied, for instance, an SPF 30 sunscreen shields skin from about 97 percent of the sun’s UVB rays, while an SPF 50 protects against roughly 98 percent. No sunscreen blocks 100 percent of the sun’s rays.

Most experts we spoke with said that what’s more important is finding a broad-spectrum sunscreen — one that protects against both UVB and ultraviolet A (UVA) rays, which mostly cause skin aging and wrinkles — that you enjoy wearing and can afford to reapply and use consistently.

“Most people aren’t getting the SPF benefit on the sunscreen’s label because they aren’t applying a thick enough layer to their skin, and they usually aren’t reapplying often enough — usually every 80 minutes or two hours, depending upon the formula,” said Dr. Belinda Tan, a dermatopathologist in Torrance, Calif.

The average adult needs about one ounce of sunscreen to cover all exposed skin. “We often say a shot glass of sunscreen for the whole body,” said Dr. Jenna Lester, an associate professor of dermatology at the U.C. San Francisco School of Medicine, “but I tell my patients to fill the shot glass up to the brim and use even more if needed so you don’t miss any spots.”

Are there any alternatives to sunscreen?

Avoiding the sun (especially between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when its rays are strongest) is one excellent way to protect your skin from sun damage. So is wearing protective clothing, like long-sleeved shirts and wide brimmed hats . Alternatives like sunscreen pills or supplements “are being studied right now,” Dr. Nambudiri said, but none are approved by the Food and Drug Administration and there is no evidence that they are safe and effective.

Which type of sunscreen is better: chemical or physical?

Sunscreen can mitigate a lot of potential damage from the sun. However experts have acknowledged that some people may be concerned by past reports that active ingredients in many chemical sunscreens can reach the bloodstream and remain there for days.

“We don’t know what the health implications are yet, or even if there are any,” Dr. Lester said, “but we want to give credence to people’s concerns.”

The best sunscreen for you is the one that you will apply, and reapply, often.

Physical (or mineral) sunscreens reflect UV rays away from your skin, while chemical sunscreens absorb UV rays so that your skin does not.

One pro of mineral sunscreens is that their active ingredients — zinc oxide and titanium dioxide — haven’t been shown to absorb into the blood.

If you’re concerned about potential safety issues with chemical sunscreens but also want to protect your skin from harmful UV rays, “mineral is best,” Dr. Tan said.

Keep in mind that sunscreen is just one of many topical products whose potential health effects are not completely understood. “Of course it’s very alarming when people think there’s a chemical being absorbed by their skin and detectable in blood,” Dr. Tan said, “but we put a lot of things on our skin — lotions, cosmetics, fragrances.” It’s important to take a “step back and put the sunscreen conversation in context,” she said.

Mineral sunscreens have some cons, too. They “are generally more expensive and less cosmetically elegant than chemical ones,” said Dr. Lawrence Eichenfield, chief of pediatric and adolescent dermatology at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. They are often harder to rub in, appear chalkier and feel more noticeable on the skin.

If you don’t like the way a particular sunscreen looks or feels, you’ll be less likely to use it consistently, Dr. Lester said. In her own practice, people with darker skin “often avoid mineral sunscreens because they tend to leave a white cast on the skin,” she said.

Testing by Wirecutter has found that chemical sunscreens with active ingredients including avobenzone, octocrylene and oxybenzone tend to feel lighter on the skin, rub in easier and appear less visible.

Does sunscreen harm coral reefs?

It can, Dr. Lester said.

Oxybenzone, octocrylene and octinoxate are among the primary sunscreen ingredients that can contribute to coral reef damage. The only two “reef safe” active ingredients approved by the F.D.A. are “non-nanotized” zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. (Non-nanotized means that the ingredient is 100 nanometers in diameter or more.)

However, no sunscreen is known to be totally safe for aquatic life , so the best way to protect yourself and the environment is to cover as much of your body as possible with ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) clothing (though you’ll still need to use sunscreen on exposed skin).

Do you need sunscreen if you have dark skin?

Yes. “It’s a misconception that darker-skinned people can’t get skin cancer,” Dr. Nambudiri said. Even though darker-skinned people may not burn as quickly as fairer-skinned people, they can still get sun damage that contributes to sunburns, aging, uneven skin tone and hyperpigmentation, Dr. Lester added.

Should I wear sunscreen every day?

Yes . “Whether it’s sunny or cloudy, UV rays are present 365 days a year, and I encourage my patients to use sunscreen year-round,” Dr. Nambudiri said.

While it is not necessary to wear sunscreen on skin that isn’t exposed, it’s important to apply it to the face, ears, neck, hands, forearms and other often-exposed body parts to help prevent sun damage.

Can you be allergic to sunscreen?

Yes, said Dr. Whitney Bowe, a dermatologist in New York City. “Every summer, I have patients who come in with rashes, itchy skin or irritation, and they’re concerned they might be allergic to their sunscreen,” she said.

In these cases, allergies are possible. But these patients may also be having what dermatologists call irritant contact dermatitis, a nonallergic skin reaction to an ingredient in sunscreen that can cause mild redness, itchiness or stinging. This reaction tends to appear almost immediately after applying sunscreen and only on the skin where the sunscreen has been applied, said Dr. Hope Mitchell, a dermatologist in Ohio.

An allergy, on the other hand, “may take several days or even years of consistent use of the same product to develop,” Dr. Mitchell said, and it may spread to other body parts. Signs of an allergy may include swelling, extreme itching or a blistering rash.

Fragrances, preservatives, oils and botanical extracts are the most common sunscreen ingredients that cause either irritant contact dermatitis or an allergy, Dr. Bowe said.

Active ingredients in chemical sunscreens, such as oxybenzone, avobenzone and octocrylene, have caused skin reactions, though research suggests this is rare. And interactions between your sunscreen and “certain medications, topical creams or lotions may cause or exacerbate reactions,” Dr. Mitchell said.

Another possible reaction is photocontact dermatitis, which can occur when sunlight interacts with certain sunscreen ingredients. If you develop a rash on parts of the body that have been exposed to both sunscreen and the sun (such as your face), but not on parts that have been exposed only to sunscreen (such as under your chin), “photocontact dermatitis is possible,” Dr. Bowe said.

She suggested using fragrance- and essential oil-free formulations and sticking to mineral sunscreens, which have active ingredients that are less likely than those in chemical sunscreens to cause reactions. (Wirecutter’s guide to sunscreens includes several mineral-based and “sensitive” formulas that tend to contain fewer known irritants.)

If you think your skin is reacting to an ingredient in your sunscreen, stop using that formula, Dr. Mitchell said, but do not stop wearing sunscreen altogether. And if you’re concerned, consult a dermatologist, who can prescribe medication if needed.

If the problem persists after making these substitutions, Dr. Bowe and Dr. Mitchell both suggested patch allergy testing, which can help determine the specific ingredients that are causing the reactions.

Taking Care of Your Skin

A great complexion is not something you are simply born with. follow the tips below and feel more confident in your skin..

Want to start taking better care of your skin? This guide can help .

Some skin care products can help treat dark circles under your eyes. But they may not live up to their brightening claims .

Considering lip fillers? It’s key to understand the potential risks  and have realistic expectations about the results.

Those tiny blood vessels that typically crop up around your nose, cheeks or chin are common and can be unsightly, but spider veins are not a nuisance you have to live with .

Pimples can pop up at any age  because of hormones and genetics, experts say. But at-home treatments can help adult acne.

Too many products can stress out your skin. Here’s how to scale back .

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Electric vs. Hybrid Cars: Pros and Cons of Each

Know the difference between EVs and hybrids to better inform your choice between these electrified powertrain options.

The march toward electrifying all the vehicular things gives consumers lots of options but makes selecting the best one for them a bit more complex. Where a buyer may have once decided between a smaller, more efficient engine and a big, powerful one within a model line, now there’s the added consideration of batteries, charge ports, and electric motors.

Two such electrified options—EVs and hybrid vehicles—have a lot of overlap but are suited to different uses and buyers. Understanding the differences can help you make the choice that’s best for your needs.

Electric Vehicles Explained

While more and more models see some level of electrification, EVs go all the way, getting their power only from a battery that must be recharged to keep them moving. Sometimes referred to as battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), they have at least one electric motor that drives the wheels to get them down the road.

The main environmental advantage of an EV is their total lack of smog-forming emissions in the local neighborhood in which they operate. In almost all cases they also drastically cut the amount of greenhouse gasses they're responsible for, but that depends on how the electricity they use was generated, which can range from renewable hydroelectric, wind, and solar to a messier coal-fired plant. Crucially, when such "stationary sources" of electricity are modernized and upgraded, every EV downstream effectively gets cleaner. On the technical side, an EV has fewer moving parts compared to a car with an internal-combustion engine, and it provides instant torque that results in brisk (and often addictive) acceleration. They're also quieter and smoother, and give off a premium vibe as a result.

That said, batteries are heavy, and a larger, longer-range battery increases weight further, making long-range EVs and electric trucks comparatively tough on roads (which they don't currently support with gas taxes), while they tend to be expensive to repair in the event of an issue with the pack. This is mostly a future consideration for those that purchase a used EV, because a new EV's high-voltage battery pack is covered for at least eight years or 100,000 miles, with some makers stretching that out to 10 years and more miles.

There’s also the environmental impact of the battery itself to consider, as many of the ingredients that go into these big packs involve not-so-earth-friendly mining activity, but these impacts are lessening as battery technology improves.

The Advantages of Hybridization

Hybrids are sometimes thought of as the best of both worlds when it comes to efficiency, packaging an internal-combustion engine with one or more electric motors that can generate electricity when hooked to the engine, recapture energy through regenerative braking, and power the wheels with or without help from that engine. The vehicle decides which combination of power sources is best for the current conditions, so you may sense a transition from engine to motor or back again.

But the combination of an internal-combustion engine and at least one electric motor makes for a complex powertrain. Most hybrids rely on a gas engine to power the wheels in most circumstances, with the electric motor(s) there to provide some electric-only motoring and augment the engine by adding power or letting it run at a more efficient speed.

Deciding between an EV and a Hybrid

Hybrids, especially the plug-in sort, are a great transitional option for those interested in but not yet sold on the EV life. A plug-in lets you dabble in recharging, both at home and on the go, still carrying along that internal-combustion safety net for longer journeys or times when you just can’t find somewhere to plug in. If you live in an apartment or are in the early stages of your career, a "traditional" hybrid that does not plug in will give you the flexibility you may need while still being cleaner and more efficient than a normal car.

When you’re ready to go electric-only, the expanding array of available EVs provides efficiency-minded and performance-oriented options as well as some that do double duty. Choice can be overwhelming, but there’s something for everyone in the electrified future of the automobile.

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