For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name. Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. What kinds of assignments seem pointless? Which ones are confusing or frustrating? Which ones are most engaging and interesting? Which onesĪre you fairly sure help you learn and grow? Students: Tell us how effective you think your homework is. “interleaving,” in which problems are not grouped into sets by type, but rather scattered throughout an assignment, which makes the brain work harder to grasp the material.
She goes on to enumerate some of the aspects of effective independent assignments, like “retrieval practice,” which basically means doing practice tests to reinforce learning and commit it to memory, and (The authors did note a positiveĮffect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter. In a 2008 survey, one-third of parents polled rated the quality of their children’s homework assignments as fair or poor, and 4 in 10 said they believed that some or a great deal of homework was busywork.Ī new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has “little to no impact” on student test scores. Results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December. Although surveys show that the amount of time ourĬhildren spend on homework has risen over the last three decades, American students are mired in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to And evidence suggests that as of now, homework isn’t making the grade. The quantity of students’ homework is a lot less important than its quality. In the Sunday Review article “The Trouble With Homework,” Annie Murphy Paul reviews the research on homework: How would you characterize the homework you get?
New research suggests that a lot of assigned homework amounts to pointless busy work that doesn’t help students learn, while more thoughtful assignments can help them develop skills and acquire knowledge.
Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.
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