Teens' homework time fell significantly in the pandemic era, writes Jean M. Twenge on Generation Tech. new data from 2022 and 2023 shows the average time spent on homework fell 24 percent for 10th-graders -- from an hour to about 45 minutes -- and 17 percent for eighth-graders.
Furthermore, the percentage of students saying they do no homework "spiked," she writes. In 2021, 6 percent of high school sophomores did no homework. That's up to 10.3 percent. Eleven percent of eighth-graders said they did no work at home in 2021. Now it's 15.2 percent.
The decline started before ChatGPT was available, Twenge notes.
Test scores are down for "Covid kids," but grades are up. Check out the graph, which shows more than 40 percent of students are earning A's, but only a bit more than 15 percent study 10 or more hours a week.
Twenge thinks "students have given up on doing hours of homework, and teachers have given up on holding students to high standards."
Everybody's "phoning it in."
The 15 percenters who are working for their A's have a right to complain about stress. They're doing homework and extracurriculars and community service to impress some jaded college admissions officer. But they're not the norm.
The homework research aligns with a slide in 18-year-olds' work ethic: As they leave high school, they are less likely to say they plan to work overtime or make their jobs a priority. In a sense, they're "quiet quitting" before they even enter the workforce.
Teens are less likely to work after school and in the summer, missing out on lessons about how to meet workplace expectations and manage their time and money. Gina Rich, who happens to be my stepdaughter, writes about her 14-year-old's first job for Business Insider.
Teachers aren’t giving up—their autonomy has all but disappeared. They are being told to give grades, even if work is not turned in at all. We have very little support to maintain standards of excellence, but most of us are trying. For some students, it is a fine balance between getting the work or blowing their mental health. Things have definitely changed since COVID.
"Phoning it in" seems both reductive and wrong. If grades are improving doesn't that call into question the impact of homework? And if homework isn't being assigned then there is no standard to hold students to in that regard. Drawing a conclusion about teacher expectations based on the assigning or not assigning of homework is a poor inference to make.
Particularly, if the other aspect you write about is true, students are getting higher grades