American students aren’t overworked, says a report from the Brown Center for Education Policy at Brookings.
The typical U.S. student, even in high school, does not spend more than an hour a day on homework — an amount that hasn’t changed much since the 1980s, according a report to be released today by the Brookings Institution that summarizes four U.S. studies on homework trends.
Tom Loveless, lead researcher, cites a UCLA study that asked college freshmen how much they worked in high school the year before.
In 1987, the first year the question was asked, 47 percent of kids said they spent more than five hours a week on homework as high school seniors. But the figure has shrunk every year since, and hit a record low of 34 percent in 2002.“These are our top students, and two-thirds say they spent no more than five hours a week on homework in high school,” Loveless said. “I think that’s troubling. … It leads me to question if they are being adequately prepared for college.”
The 1995 Third International Mathematics and Science Study showed American high school seniors tackle “an extraordinarily light load” compared to their counterparts in other countries, the Brookings report contended. U.S. 12th-graders tied for second-to-last among 20 countries in the amount of time spent studying.
And the 1999 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicates 39 percent of 17-year-olds reported not receiving or not doing any homework at all the night before the test. Another 26 percent said they did less than an hour of homework. All told, that means two-thirds did an hour or less of homework.
Brookings’ results jibe with a study called “A Nation at Rest: The American Way of Homework,” which contends that for the last 30 years, only about 10 percent of high school students spent more than two hours a day on homework. Only during the post-Sputnik decade did that number increase to as high as 20 percent, according to the study, to be published in the Nov. 12 Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis journal.
A small number of students are working very hard to get into competitive colleges; most kids are sliding through school with minimum effort.
In this story, a fourth grade math teacher doesn’t assign homework for fear parents will encourage children to memorize the multiplication table.
June Shoemaker, a fourth-grade teacher in Twin Lakes, Wis., tries not to assign any homework. She’d rather contain her math lessons to class, where she can teach students to think about the concepts, than assign work at home, where memorization drills may be encouraged by parents.“Many of our families have two people working, and the kids go home to empty homes or to day care, so there’s just not a lot of support for homework,” Shoemaker said. “That’s not fair to the kids.”
If it’s bad to have parents drilling the kids on 6 x 7, why is it unfair that some kids don’t have such parents? Aren’t they the lucky ones? Actually, most working parents will make sure their kids have completed homework, if the teacher is clear on what she wants the parents to do.
One factor that may skew that result is study periods and/or studying done after school but before going home. I remember doing quite a bit of work during a free period or during math club meetings, or even during lunch. If the question asked “How much time do you spend out of school on classwork?” or the equivalent, some may have forgotten work done “in school” but after classes. Also, I remember having very little daily homework for IB History or AP English, but multiple short papers and a couple research/term papers. I would probably lowball any weekly average of time spent on those papers.
That said, I’ve never been able to figure out where those “6 hours a night” figures that get media attention actually came from. I certainly don’t remember 6 hours of work a night, even with a loaded schedule and taking the “in school but not in class” time from above into account.
I think these studies are bogus. It is my belief that the average student does very little homework. And most average students go to 1/2 to one year of college because they quickly flunk out. So asking a freshman how much homework they did in high school is silly. My daughter is taking all honors classes and I know that these students are working a minumum of 2 hours a day including weekends. Many nights my daughter has 3-4 hours of work. Lastly, I ask where are the parents? If your student is doing 19 minutes of homework a night then you are a failure as a parent. With that amount of effort what does it matter how good or bad the school is?
I know that this is hard to measure in a study, but I think that the quality of homework is as important an indicator as the quantity. In ninth grade, my social studies homework consisted primarily of answering questions from the back of each chapter in the textbook by looking up the relevant paragraph in the preceeding pages. This took up about an hour a night, five days a week.
In tenth grade, I took AP Euro, and had to write one essay every two weeks, and 40-question take-home quizzes due every monday. Both involved all material covered to that point, were recommended to be taken under test conditions (60 minutes each, no interruptions). Obviously, this relied on the honor system, but I took it seriously. Needless to say, I learned a heck of a lot more in those 90 minutes/week that year than I did in 5 hours/week the previous year.
Obviously, this is a little different with a subject like math or foreign language, which requires constant drills to learn effectively. Even then, though, I think the type of homework matters more than the quantity.
And the interesting question is…what impact will all this have on the work habits of these students after they get out into the world? I cynically suspect that:
a) Many of those who have learned that they don’t have to work hard will continue in these habits
b) Many of those who have exhausted themselves to get into a top college will feel that they have done what they had to in order to insure success, and will thereafter feel entitled to lifelong raises and promotions without great effort…
One more point - this doesn’t all students, but when I was in school, additional homework would probably have hurt my education due to the number of extracurriculars I was involved in. I suppose they’re related - I took part in all those clubs because I was bored with my schoolwork, but I think I got more out of it. Model UN ran for an hour before class, and the demands of the Literary magazine and yearbook after school meant that, starting in 10th grade, I was rarely home before 5 on most school days (or 7 when deadlines approached). My grades never suffered, and the experiences - and recommendation letters from my advisors - certainly improved my chances at college.
How did they balance the comparison with other countries? German schools send their students home at lunchtime, for example. I would expect German students to receive more homework, because they are spending a smaller proportion of the day in school.
It has been 20 years since I was in high school, but a do not recall bringing work home more than 1 night a week for most weeks. That was typically if the last class of the day gave something large to do. Most of the time I would be working on stuff from other classes while in a class and could wrap up most loose ends in a single study period. On one hand, I was content with a solid high ‘B’ average so did not due additional work in comes classes. On the other hand, I have difficulty paying attention to only 1 thing at a time. Perhaps it is a form of ADD
Only under crisis type situations can I focus on only 1 thing.
I haven’t been in high school for a while, but I sure had more than 5 hours of homework a week, even with doing it during breaks and classes.
I don’t know what it’s like now in high school, but I can guess based on my freshman students’ behavior. Those that pass their first midterm usually complain about the amount of homework. I fill them in on why 12 credit hours is considered a full-time course of study (2 hours outside of class for every one hour inside).
If they don’t pass, they come in to complain about failing their first midterm. First I ask them why they couldn’t do the problems on the test; they say they just didn’t know how. Then I ask them “were you able to do the problems on the homework, just not the ones on the test?” This question is usually followed by either an awkward silence or a defensive complaint about how the homework is just too hard or long to be done. Sure I gave out the homework assignment, but I didn’t expect them to actually *DO* it, did I?
What I’d like to know is if anyone’s ever done a study to see if there’s a correlation between hours of homework and SAT scores or grade performance in college.
My gut tells me there’s a correlation but it’s probably not as much as some people think.
Along with homeschoolers, parents whose kids have math teachers like Shoemaker are probably one of the leading markets for the Singapore Math books. I find them very useful for supplementing what my (now 6th grade) daughter gets from her school’s defective new-new-math curriculum.
Shoemaker is _especially_ cheating the very students she pretends to be most worried about. This is a familiar point, but after years of having it hammered home by all and sundry, the public-school establishment _still_ doesn’t get it.
Well, how many of those students not doing any homework were *assigned* homework they didn’t choose to do? I might get 75% of my students handing in any given assignment (and yes, those who make it a habit fail).
All of the after-school-care programs I’ve heard of set aside time for kids to do their homework. This math teacher is making up excuses for the kids. She can’t shirk teaching them because she feels sorry for them.
My kid isn’t assigned a lot of homework. She’s a junior in high school, in honors classes. I’ve explained to her several times, and she’s starting to understand, that the teachers aren’t going to hold her hand and assign every little thing she needs to do. At this level, she’s supposed to take some responsibility for studying on her own. Read ahead in the book, look over the chapter reviews, and so on. We’re getting there. I wish I’d had a tough high school. College would have been a lot easier for me.
The Shoemaker theory aims at equality of (poor) outcome. It’s not fair that some parents are (assumed to be) unable to supervise their kids’ homework, therefore no one gets the chance to do homework.
In the real world, many parents supplement the assigned homework, when they perceive it to be deficient. Her policies cripple those children most in need of assigned homework.
Why does this woman think that memorizing the times tables is a bad thing? My experience, from both my third grader, and from some substitute teaching, is that by far the majority of kids take great pride in being able to recite the tables.
But then of course I suppose we can’t possible let the kids build their self-esteem on actual accomplishements…
In tutoring high school students, I’ve seen many kids who have no math sense. They have to stop, think and, often, use a calculator to solve the simplest problem. What’s 10 x 10? They don’t know automatically. They’re so bogged down in half-learned basics they have no time or energy to think about concepts.
Learning to do sums in your head is essential in order to be able to lhave an instinct for when figures are wrong, or how to set a price or give change, even spend your home budget. Without a sense of number, so to speak, the calculator-bound are adrift in a bewildering world. Hey … is this why capitalism is so unpopular with kids now?
I once was a graduate TA in freshman chemistry and later a college biology teacher, and I saw the ill effects of calculatoritis at first hand. No clue about whether an answer is within the correct order of magnitude to make any sense. Absolutely not the hint of a clue about significant figures. Answers to Mendelian genetics problems, most naturally expressed as fractions, instead written as (sometimes correct, sometimes not) decimals. If it were up to me, kids would be forced to use slide rules instead of calculators until graduate school.
Laura said:
“I wish I’d had a tough high school. College would have been a lot easier for me.”
I agree. I breezed through high school in the early 70s. I never took homework home. I did it in class or study hall. I scored a 1520 on my SATs and graduated with a 3.8 GPA. Then college arrived and I didn’t know how to study. I was on academic probation after my first. It took 6 years to get my degree and I graduated with a 2.7 GPA. Twenty years later I started taking night and satellite classes. I had three kids, a wife, full time job, etc. and I managed to get a Master’s Degree in Computer Science with a 3.6 GPA in only 5.5 years.
The difference? I knew how to study the second time around. I learned a lot in high school but never learned how to study. I missed a lot in college the first time around but did learn how to study - the hard way.
Additionally, about kids in school not learning math tables - my middle school daughter keeps nagging me for a calculator. My standard answer is “You can have a calculator when you’ve learned enough that you don’t need it.” I’m constantly explaining that a calculator is a tool of convenience, not a substitute for the ability to think and do math in your head.
BTW - she averages about 3 hours a night on homework. 30 minutes procrastinating, 30-45 minutes complaining about her homework, 30-45 minutes day dreaming and 60-90 minutes actually working. She’s getting straight A’s.
I tend to agree, the end result is that if you aren’t doing your homework, you aren’t going to get the grade you are looking for (grade inflation being left out here), but Homework is exactly that, school work that you do at home.
Students need to remember that if they manage their time right, everything can get done. If you finish the homework assignment when it’s assigned, you won’t have to burn the candle at both ends to finish it the day before it’s due.
Since I have a 10th-grader who spends considerably more than an hour a night on homework, and goes to a top public high school (in Palo Alto), I think that this article (and others on homework over- and underloads) points up the great variation in quality of public high schools, as well as in the rigor of the courseload any individual might choose.
My son, who is bright and is taking “1A”-track courses (between “regular” and “honors”), would probably have to spend about 2-3 hours per night on assigned homework, but since he has a learning disability that slows him down greatly, it’s more like double that. (I see very few homework assignments that look like “busy work” just to supply illusory difficulty to a course.) I know that the kids taking honors courses have an even heavier workload, because he tried Honors Science last year and had to drop it for that reason. I shudder to think what the workload will be like if/when he starts taking AP courses.
u r gay. homework no fun. me no want. me smart enough me no need. learnding good enuf
me wanna say to that no play all wook mak tad dule boy. me know u tink i on dugs but me ony hook on phonics
me now that u hav nothin to say to me cuz me right. me insult u and u scard and say no things to me cuz me am better than u and u cant take it. this year me might be on the B honur rol cuz me trid. me wil nevr be on th A cuz to muc homwork. im in the 8 grad and me get 1 hour homworc that me cant do.it no rite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!me is mad
One, I never said I didn’t give homework. I said that many of my students do not have support at home if they need help with homework. My students are challenged every day in math. Many of the mathematical concepts I teach now in 4th grade used to be first taught in 7th grade. Many of the parents of my fourth graders can’t do the math their children are doing.
I originally said I would much prefer my students PRACTICE their facts at home then try to do homework with no support. I provide enough time for almost all students to finish their work in class. Why?? Because it is my job to assist them and make sure they are learning it correctly.
I have no doubt that many of my students, when they get to high school, will take AP classes. And when they get there, they will be well-prepared for critical thinking and problem solving. Right now, I assure you, I keep them plenty busy in class.