is homework busy work

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in.

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas about workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework.

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says, he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy workloads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold , says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace , says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.

And for all the distress homework can cause, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says, homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night.

"Most students, especially at these high achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends, from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no-homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely but to be more mindful of the type of work students take home, suggests Kang, who was a high school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the past two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic , making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized. ... Sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking up assignments can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

More: Some teachers let their students sleep in class. Here's what mental health experts say.

More: Some parents are slipping young kids in for the COVID-19 vaccine, but doctors discourage the move as 'risky'

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

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

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The Homework Debate: The Case Against Homework

This post has been updated as of December 2017.

It’s not uncommon to hear students, parents, and even some teachers always complaining about homework. Why, then, is homework an inescapable part of the student experience? Worksheets, busy work, and reading assignments continue to be a mainstay of students’ evenings.

Whether from habit or comparison with out-of-class work time in other nations, our students are getting homework and, according to some of them, a LOT of it. Educators and policy makers must ask themselves—does assigning homework pay off?

Is there evidence that homework benefits students younger than high school?

The Scholastic article Is Homework Bad? references Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , in which he says, “There is no evidence to demonstrate that homework benefits students below high school age.”

The article goes on to note that those who oppose homework focus on the drawbacks of significant time spent on homework, identifying one major negative as homework’s intrusion into family time. They also point out that opponents believe schools have decided homework is necessary and thus assign it simply to assign some kind of homework, not because doing the work meets specifically-identified student needs.

“Busy work” does not help students learn

Students and parents appear to carry similar critiques of homework, specifically regarding assignments identified as busy work—long sheets of repetitive math problems, word searches, or reading logs seemingly designed to make children dislike books.

When asked how homework can negatively affect children, Nancy Kalish, author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It , says that many homework assignments are “simply busy work” that makes learning “a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience.”

Commenters on the piece, both parents and students, tended to agree. One student shared that on occasion they spent more time on homework than at school, while another commenter pointed out that, “We don’t give slow-working children a longer school day, but we consistently give them a longer homework day.”

Without feedback, homework is ineffective

The efficacy of the homework identified by Kalish has been studied by policy researchers as well. Gerald LeTendre, of Penn State’s Education Policy Studies department points out that the shotgun approach to homework, when students all receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed individually with the student, is “not very effective.” He goes on to say that, “If there’s no feedback and no monitoring, the homework is probably not effective.”

Researchers from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia had similar findings in their study, “ When Is Homework Worth The Time ?” According to UVAToday, these researchers reported no “substantive difference” in the grades of students related to homework completion.

As researcher Adam Maltese noted, “Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be.” The report further suggested that while not all homework is bad, the type and quality of assignments and their differentiation to specific learners appears to be an important point of future research.

If homework is assigned, it should heighten understanding of the subject

The Curry School of Education report did find a positive association between standardized test performance and time spent on homework, but standardized test performance shouldn’t be the end goal of assignments—a heightened understanding and capability with the content material should.

As such, it is important that if/when teachers assign homework assignments, it is done thoughtfully and carefully—and respectful of the maximum times suggested by the National Education Association, about 10 minutes per night starting in the first grade, with an additional 10 minutes per year after.

Continue reading — The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.

Is Your Child Being Sent Home With Busywork?

Many parents think the quality of their child’s homework is not up to par. It’s not the children's efforts parents are complaining about—it’s the homework being assigned. Parents wonder whether it's just busywork rather than assignments that are of value to their child's education.

If it's just busywork it might be taking up time better spent by your child in healthy physical activity and valuable free play, both of which are essential for physical and mental development. Families have only a limited time together in the afternoon and evening. If the child is doing busy work, they have less opportunity to participate in family life that is crucial for their emotional and social development. Children and teens also require a good night's sleep, and busy work might mean delaying bedtime to ensure that it gets done.

What Is Busywork?

Busywork is an assignment that may take a lot of time but doesn’t impart anything of educational value to a student. In other words, your child may look really busy, but they're actually just doing work to stay occupied and aren't really learning anything from it.

Busywork keeps the students occupied often by practicing skills they’ve already learned and not necessarily teaching anything new.

In the classroom, busywork sometimes has its merits. Lesson plans for substitute teachers often contain busywork, especially when a teacher had planned on introducing new concepts to the class and would rather wait until they return to do so.

What Is Homework?

Homework, on the other hand, serves a different purpose than busywork. Effective homework assignments supplement learning and practice and integrate newly learned skills. Homework gives students the chance to develop study habits and discern between the concepts they are having trouble with versus those which they have mastered.

Some skills are best learned by repetition. Twenty-five math problems using the same process can seem like busywork, but by the 20th problem, most students will find that knowing how to solve the problem has become automatic. Spelling homework can also be boring and repetitive, although there are some unique ways to practice spelling that can make it a little more exciting.

Sometimes homework can look like busywork, particularly in vocabulary and math.

Is It Busywork or Homework?

The question on many parents' minds is how to tell whether homework is really homework or whether it’s busywork. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Unless your child needs to improve their fine motor skills , homework asking them to cut, color, and glue doesn’t have a whole lot of educational value. An exception to this is when a project is assigned to be completed as a family. Family projects teach the value of teamwork and help kids understand that parents are an important part of their education.

Sometimes the answer depends on your child. When it comes to skill practice, what holds educational value for one child may be busy work for another. Some children need repetition to help them learn, while others are able to “get it” and move on.

What Can Parents Do?

If your child seems to be zipping through their homework without any challenges, it’s probably busywork. In that case, it’s a good time to talk to their teacher about how this can be handled.

Some teachers hold fast to the idea that every student needs to complete the same homework, while others are more willing to provide individualized homework. Advocating for no homework may not be a good approach, but speaking with the teacher about the difference between being “fair” and providing “equal” learning experiences is a good tactic.

Bento G, Dias G. The importance of outdoor play for young children's healthy development . Porto Biomed J . 2017;2(5):157-160. doi:10.1016/j.pbj.2017.03.003

Bzostek SH, Berger LM. Family Structure Experiences and Child Socioemotional Development During the First Nine Years of Life: Examining Heterogeneity by Family Structure at Birth . Demography . 2017;54(2):513-540. doi:10.1007/s13524-017-0563-5

Taylor J. District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Supporting Your Children in School – A Teamwork Approach .

Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

Print article

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

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

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

Homework haterz

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

Nothing more than common kid bellyaching?

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

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

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

How much is too much?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less is often more

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

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

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

More family time

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

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

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Is homework a necessary evil?

After decades of debate, researchers are still sorting out the truth about homework’s pros and cons. One point they can agree on: Quality assignments matter.

By Kirsten Weir

March 2016, Vol 47, No. 3

Print version: page 36

After decades of debate, researchers are still sorting out the truth about homework’s pros and cons. One point they can agree on: Quality assignments matter.

Schools and Classrooms

Homework battles have raged for decades. For as long as kids have been whining about doing their homework, parents and education reformers have complained that homework's benefits are dubious. Meanwhile many teachers argue that take-home lessons are key to helping students learn. Now, as schools are shifting to the new (and hotly debated) Common Core curriculum standards, educators, administrators and researchers are turning a fresh eye toward the question of homework's value.

But when it comes to deciphering the research literature on the subject, homework is anything but an open book.

The 10-minute rule

In many ways, homework seems like common sense. Spend more time practicing multiplication or studying Spanish vocabulary and you should get better at math or Spanish. But it may not be that simple.

Homework can indeed produce academic benefits, such as increased understanding and retention of the material, says Duke University social psychologist Harris Cooper, PhD, one of the nation's leading homework researchers. But not all students benefit. In a review of studies published from 1987 to 2003, Cooper and his colleagues found that homework was linked to better test scores in high school and, to a lesser degree, in middle school. Yet they found only faint evidence that homework provided academic benefit in elementary school ( Review of Educational Research , 2006).

Then again, test scores aren't everything. Homework proponents also cite the nonacademic advantages it might confer, such as the development of personal responsibility, good study habits and time-management skills. But as to hard evidence of those benefits, "the jury is still out," says Mollie Galloway, PhD, associate professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. "I think there's a focus on assigning homework because [teachers] think it has these positive outcomes for study skills and habits. But we don't know for sure that's the case."

Even when homework is helpful, there can be too much of a good thing. "There is a limit to how much kids can benefit from home study," Cooper says. He agrees with an oft-cited rule of thumb that students should do no more than 10 minutes a night per grade level — from about 10 minutes in first grade up to a maximum of about two hours in high school. Both the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association support that limit.

Beyond that point, kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress.

In a recent study of Spanish students, Rubén Fernández-Alonso, PhD, and colleagues found that students who were regularly assigned math and science homework scored higher on standardized tests. But when kids reported having more than 90 to 100 minutes of homework per day, scores declined ( Journal of Educational Psychology , 2015).

"At all grade levels, doing other things after school can have positive effects," Cooper says. "To the extent that homework denies access to other leisure and community activities, it's not serving the child's best interest."

Children of all ages need down time in order to thrive, says Denise Pope, PhD, a professor of education at Stanford University and a co-founder of Challenge Success, a program that partners with secondary schools to implement policies that improve students' academic engagement and well-being.

"Little kids and big kids need unstructured time for play each day," she says. Certainly, time for physical activity is important for kids' health and well-being. But even time spent on social media can help give busy kids' brains a break, she says.

All over the map

But are teachers sticking to the 10-minute rule? Studies attempting to quantify time spent on homework are all over the map, in part because of wide variations in methodology, Pope says.

A 2014 report by the Brookings Institution examined the question of homework, comparing data from a variety of sources. That report cited findings from a 2012 survey of first-year college students in which 38.4 percent reported spending six hours or more per week on homework during their last year of high school. That was down from 49.5 percent in 1986 ( The Brown Center Report on American Education , 2014).

The Brookings report also explored survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which asked 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students how much homework they'd done the previous night. They found that between 1984 and 2012, there was a slight increase in homework for 9-year-olds, but homework amounts for 13- and 17-year-olds stayed roughly the same, or even decreased slightly.

Yet other evidence suggests that some kids might be taking home much more work than they can handle. Robert Pressman, PhD, and colleagues recently investigated the 10-minute rule among more than 1,100 students, and found that elementary-school kids were receiving up to three times as much homework as recommended. As homework load increased, so did family stress, the researchers found ( American Journal of Family Therapy , 2015).

Many high school students also seem to be exceeding the recommended amounts of homework. Pope and Galloway recently surveyed more than 4,300 students from 10 high-achieving high schools. Students reported bringing home an average of just over three hours of homework nightly ( Journal of Experiential Education , 2013).

On the positive side, students who spent more time on homework in that study did report being more behaviorally engaged in school — for instance, giving more effort and paying more attention in class, Galloway says. But they were not more invested in the homework itself. They also reported greater academic stress and less time to balance family, friends and extracurricular activities. They experienced more physical health problems as well, such as headaches, stomach troubles and sleep deprivation. "Three hours per night is too much," Galloway says.

In the high-achieving schools Pope and Galloway studied, more than 90 percent of the students go on to college. There's often intense pressure to succeed academically, from both parents and peers. On top of that, kids in these communities are often overloaded with extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs. "They're very busy," Pope says. "Some kids have up to 40 hours a week — a full-time job's worth — of extracurricular activities." And homework is yet one more commitment on top of all the others.

"Homework has perennially acted as a source of stress for students, so that piece of it is not new," Galloway says. "But especially in upper-middle-class communities, where the focus is on getting ahead, I think the pressure on students has been ratcheted up."

Yet homework can be a problem at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well. Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, Internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs, says Lea Theodore, PhD, a professor of school psychology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. They are less likely to have computers or a quiet place to do homework in peace.

"Homework can highlight those inequities," she says.

Quantity vs. quality

One point researchers agree on is that for all students, homework quality matters. But too many kids are feeling a lack of engagement with their take-home assignments, many experts say. In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful.

"Students are assigned a lot of busywork. They're naming it as a primary stressor, but they don't feel it's supporting their learning," Galloway says.

"Homework that's busywork is not good for anyone," Cooper agrees. Still, he says, different subjects call for different kinds of assignments. "Things like vocabulary and spelling are learned through practice. Other kinds of courses require more integration of material and drawing on different skills."

But critics say those skills can be developed with many fewer hours of homework each week. Why assign 50 math problems, Pope asks, when 10 would be just as constructive? One Advanced Placement biology teacher she worked with through Challenge Success experimented with cutting his homework assignments by a third, and then by half. "Test scores didn't go down," she says. "You can have a rigorous course and not have a crazy homework load."

Still, changing the culture of homework won't be easy. Teachers-to-be get little instruction in homework during their training, Pope says. And despite some vocal parents arguing that kids bring home too much homework, many others get nervous if they think their child doesn't have enough. "Teachers feel pressured to give homework because parents expect it to come home," says Galloway. "When it doesn't, there's this idea that the school might not be doing its job."

Galloway argues teachers and school administrators need to set clear goals when it comes to homework — and parents and students should be in on the discussion, too. "It should be a broader conversation within the community, asking what's the purpose of homework? Why are we giving it? Who is it serving? Who is it not serving?"

Until schools and communities agree to take a hard look at those questions, those backpacks full of take-home assignments will probably keep stirring up more feelings than facts.

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Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

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Homework – what’s the point of it?

Senior Lecturer in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of Canberra

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A middle school student I know came home from school with the task to recreate a medieval fort out of cake. I expect the History teacher thought this was a creative and engaging activity. This particular student, from a refugee background living with his single uncle, first had to figure out how to make a cake and spend scarce money on cake tins and ingredients.

Even putting aside the cultural and economic challenges the task presented to this boy, what was the point of that homework?

What is the point of any homework?

Who likes homework?

It’s a question I pose my preservice teachers and the responses always fall into three categories, which I suspect are also reflective of the broader community.

There are the righteous supporters – they tend to be swats whose memories of gold stars give them warm feelings to this day. Who wouldn’t want to do homework, they wonder?

There are the vocal opponents – they tend to be parents who have wasted too many evenings trying to figure out how long division is taught these days, and too much money on sheets of coloured cardboard.

Then there’s the rest – they think you should do homework, because well, they had to do homework at school. They are the status quo majority. For some of them, the idea of setting and marking homework is inextricably tied up with the vision they have of themselves ‘doing’ teaching – but they’ve not really thought much about what homework achieves.

Does homework improve learning outcomes?

Research finds that homework doesn’t improve learning outcomes in primary school, and has a weak link to improved outcomes in junior high school. Those improvements are connected to parental involvement – but parents who are keen supporters of homework may be disappointed to hear that their positive contribution is largely just ensuring their children hand in their homework.

Parental involvement in the homework itself can actually reduce the child’s success at school . Parents rarely have the expertise to fill in gaps in their children’s understandings of concepts, and the predilection of some parents to take over the homework reduces the autonomy of the children, leaving them less able to work independently at school, and less confident of their own abilities.

There are many parents, dedicated and desperately interested in their children’s education, who cannot involve themselves in their children’s homework. They may not have had schooling opportunities themselves, they may speak English as an additional language, they may work long hours or shifts, or they may just be like most of us, and simply can’t remember what a quadratic equation is.

Those with spare cash buy the homework support, in the form of after hours tutoring. In high school, where homework tasks contribute substantially to the course grade, homework is the great unequaliser, contributing to the achievement gap.

Homework generally falls into two categories: practising or catching up on work done in the classroom, and creative extensions of work being done in the classroom. The latter – like making a fort out of cake – is really just busy work.

There are children who enjoy this busy out of school project work, but they don’t need a teacher to set a project for them. Kids find projects everywhere: they build the birdhouse they saw on the lifestyle channel, they create complicated archives for their card collections, they make shields out of paint can lids and they create secret languages for their secret clubs. Or they would, if they weren’t busy trying to make a fort out of cake.

Homework that involves practising or catching up on what was missed in class simply exacerbates the challenges those trailing students are already facing. If there is a child who is behind in classwork, an untrained parent is not going to achieve what a teacher is failing to. If success at school is dependent upon the work being sent home, then the work should be done at school.

There are enough hours in a school day to teach the curriculum. If a school thinks there aren’t, they should audit their use of the school day and teacher expertise. Colouring in, show and tell, roll call, whole school assemblies and assigning and marking homework during class are all examples of ineffective use of teachers’ skills and student learning time.

Homework does not enhance connections between home and the school

Perhaps the most beguiling of contemporary arguments for homework is that it provides the connection between home and school.

The raised voices and tears around the homework table suggest this particular home-school connection is rarely a productive one. Tired and emotional parents, feeling inadequate about their knowledge of improper fractions, helping tired and emotional children, feeling inadequate that they can’t understand what their parent is saying – and anyway it’s not what Ms J said in class today.

A recent photo story of a young child crying as she struggles with her homework makes a compelling case for how damaging homework can be for some.

Better connections between school and home are important, but homework seems more likely to kill the connection than build the connection.

So what should parents do?

Spend those precious after school hours talking to your children about anything and everything, reading to them and with them, loving them and being interested in them. It’s not work, but it is what home is for.

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Is It Homework or Busy Work?

Chad Ostrowski December 7, 2016 Blog , Innovate Better , Lead Better

It’s The Age Old Debate.

Depending on which camp you belong to, you are either starting to get fired up about students needing practice at home, OR you are thinking “down with homework!”

To be honest, I see the merit of both arguments and there is a lot of research out there that supports practice and also says additional work doesn’t improve student outcomes. I could reference and review all of this research but you probably don’t want to read it and I’d really like to get to my primary point here. The real debate shouldn’t be “practice v. no homework.” It should be about what KIND of work you are assigning.

Is What You’re Assigning Worthwhile for YOU and Your Learners?

Instead of taking a firm stance on either side of this argument, I’m gong to propose a new one. I don’t think the argument should be “homework v. no homework.” I think it should be “meaningful v. busy work”. I cringe when I hear about homework quotas or required amounts of assigned work that is to be done at home for students.

Your students are the victims of these mandates.

Is the homework you are assigning worth it? Most of the time we end up creating assignments out of thin air, with very little thought or planning in terms of continued growth or mastery from the classroom. When homework is mandated, the purpose of this work is diminished.

Homework (or as as a mentor of mine once called it, “Continued Learning Opportunities”) should either extend knowledge from the classroom in short amounts (seriously like 15 – 20 minutes tops) OR it should help students complete unfinished work they did not get to during the allotted time.

Yes…this means some students won’t have homework if they finished their class work. But why should they? Just because you want something else to grade?? It doesn’t make any sense. If they accomplished what you feel the needed to accomplish, they’re good. The question is, did you assign what was needed to get them where they need to be?

Questions to Ask When Assigning Homework:

Is it worth the student’s time? – If the homework is meaningless repetition and does not extend learning or help the student complete learning they started in class, its probably not worth their time.

Is it worth your time? – I know some of you are saying, “I just do homework for participation.” But if no corrective feedback or meaning is given to the actual work being done, is it worth your time to assess and grade the work?

Is it busy work or meaningful work? – If the homework you are assigning was manufactured to exist “just because it is supposed to,” save yourself and your students the time and pitch it. If the assigned work doesn’t have meaning or thoughtful purpose, quit wasting your learner’s time, and quit wasting yours!

In My Classroom.

For my students, homework is only assigned to them if they fail to complete an assignment during normal class time. Even then they are given the opportunity to complete it the next day. It is only when they are not able to complete it during class time during a given week that it becomes homework.

This creates a culture and environment where students end up assigning themselves homework and owning their decision to not utilize their classroom time properly. This increases ownership and makes the learning more meaningful. The learning opportunities provided to my students are laid out and put into a mastery based system so that their entire learning journey is mapped out and clear to them. This journey does not require busy work, or “extra” practice, because that is built into the system.

Next Time You Want to “Make” Homework for Your Students

Please think about what you are actually assigning them. Think about the meaning and the purpose behind it. And most importantly, ask yourself, “is this helping my students learn more, or just keeping them busy?”

Homework: An Hour a Day Is All the Experts Say

Too much homework can be counterproductive..

Posted April 20, 2015

How much time does your teen spend doing busy school work each night? According to a recent study, if it's more than one hour… then it's too much. A study from Spain published in the Journal of Educational Psychology by the American Psychological Association found that spending more than one hour on math and science homework can be counterproductive. Students seem to gain the most benefit when a small amount of homework is consistently assigned, rather than large portions assigned at once.

The study examined the performance of 7,725 public and private school students (mean age 13.78 years). Students answered questions about the frequency of homework assigned and how long it took them to complete assignments. Researchers looked at standardized tests to examine academic performance in math and science. They found that students in Spain spent approximately one to two hours per day doing homework. Compare that to studies that indicate American students spent more than three hours a day doing homework!

Researchers found that teachers who assigned 90-100 minutes of homework per day had students who performed poorer on standardized tests than those with less homework. However when teachers consistently assigned small amounts of homework students scored nearly 50 points higher on standardized test than those who had daunting amounts of homework. Another interesting finding from this study was students who were assigned about 70 minutes of homework, of which they needed help from someone else to complete, scored in the 50th percentile on standardized tests. Whereas those who were assigned the same amount of homework, but could do it independently, scored in the 70th percentile. So clearly, not only is the amount of homework assigned of importance, but so is the ability to master it independently.

There are several possible explanations for these findings. First, teachers may be using homework as a means to cover what was not completed in class. So rather than practicing concepts taught in class, students are left to self-teach material not covered in class. Homework should supplement learning, and not be used as a tool to keep up with a curriculum pacing guide. Another explanation for testing gains is those who work to master material independently experience more academic success.

The study out of Spain supports findings from another study published a year ago published in the Journal of Experimental Education which found that too much homework can have a negative impact on teens’ lives outside of the academic setting. In this study, researchers surveyed 4,317 American high school students’ perceptions about homework, in relation to their well-being and behavioral engagement in school work. On average, these students reported spending approximately 3.1 hours of homework each night—a far reach from the hour per night recommendation by the first study.

This second study found that too much homework can be counterproductive and diminish the effectiveness of learning. The negative effects of lots of homework can far outweigh the positive ones. Researchers found that a lot of homework can result in:

Students reported high levels of stress associated with school work. Below is the breakdown of student responses.

56% of students in this study reported that homework was a primary source of stress 43% of students in this study reported that tests were another source of stress 33% of students in this study reported that pressure to get good grades was a source of stress

• Physical Problems:

Students reported that homework led to:

poor sleep frequent headaches gastro intestinal problems weight loss/gain.

• Social life problems.

How can students expect to spend time with others when they are too busy completing homework? Students reported that having too much school work keeps them from spending time with friends and family.

Plus too much school work keep them from participating in extra-curricular activities and engaging in activities they enjoy doing. Interestingly, many students reported that homework was a “pointless” or “mindless” way to keep their grades up. In other words… it was "busy" work.

When is homework beneficial? If homework is used as a tool to facilitate learning and reinforce concepts taught in the classroom then it enriches students academic experience. While homework does serve a purpose, so does having a life outside of school. Sometimes social development can be just as important as academic development. So the answer may be helping youth find a balance between school and social life.

Journal Reference:

Rubén Fernández-Alonso, Javier Suárez-Álvarez, José Muñiz. Adolescents’ Homework Performance in Mathematics and Science: Personal Factors and Teaching Practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2015; DOI:10.1037/edu0000032

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

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5 Signs Your Kids are Doing Busywork, Not Useful Homework

March 26, 2024
Homeschooling FAQS , Homeschooling methods , Why Homeschool (Reasons)

5 Signs Your Children are Doing Busywork, Not Useful Homework

In this article, we’ll talk about what busywork is and how it’s different from helpful homework .

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post. If you want to do my course on how to homeschool, click here .

We’ll also identify the signs of busywork.

Then, we’ll identify useful work and time-wasting activities in class.

Finally, we’ll examine why some curriculum (or teachers) assign busywork.

Let’s dive in and get started!

Affiliate links are used in this post.

What is Busywork

Busywork is material in a curriculum that might take much of your child’s attention and time but doesn’t give them any educational value.

Even though a child might look extremely busy, they’re not learning much from the work they’re doing.

The work is often given to keep students occupied.

Simultaneously, little thought is given to the educational content of the material.

Some teachers think busywork is useful if substitute teachers take a class and don’t want to introduce new material until the old teacher is back.

However, this is often only useful for the teachers and fails to use students’ precious time .

If busywork is given to reiterate a concept that’s already been learned, it’s arguable it’s not busywork but useful homework.

Signs Its Busywork, Not Useful Work

There are a few signs that your child’s work isn’t useful work they can learn from, but busywork.

Below, we look at five signs that could indicate your child is doing busywork .

1. It’s Been Done Before

One of the hallmarks of busywork is repetition .

If your child has done the work several times before, it could be a time-wasting activity.

While children sometimes need repetition to learn a concept (such as a difficult math problem or some reading words), work is often assigned far too often.

It’s like children do a lot of overkill homework .

It’s much better to let children go outside to run around and enjoy the air instead of embittering them toward education by making it mind-numbingly repetitious.

2. Busywork Doesn’t Further Education

The purpose of education is often to further our knowledge in specific areas.

At the point where children are not furthering their education, we must question whether it’s educational, or just busywork.

Ask yourself if your child would gain more if they did something else like spending the time:

doing physical education
playing outdoors and enjoying nature or
with family.

If children attend school, much of their time is already eaten away by their schoolwork.

Busywork takes away valuable time with parents but doesn’t give children anything in return .

Unfortunately, busywork is a favorite of some teachers .

They have to keep kids busy while they are stuck inside a building.

‘They need something to do!’ says the teacher.

However, if children could follow their interests, they wouldn’t have to be assigned material that didn’t further their education.

To be clear, this is an inherent criticism of the setup of school classrooms and models.

(Often, students are given a video which some teachers pass off as ‘educational’.

Don’t be fooled into thinking videos are always – or even often – educational.

Many are just time-wasters where children learn nothing.)

3. It’s Irrelevant to the Subject

Sometimes children are given time-wasting work to do that’s irrelevant to the subject .

They might be handed sheets of work on things they’ve never studied or things that are too simple or hard for them.

While some might be useful, many are irrelevant busywork activities designed to fill up time at the end of the classroom period.

(I recently heard of a teacher who was himself studying a course at a tertiary institution and assigned his high school students busywork so they could research his homework for him!)

4. It’s Boring

Another way to identify busywork is when you see students doing something they’re not interested in.

They remain on a base level of functioning , trying to get through the monotonous work they’ve been given.

Surely, learning shouldn’t work like this!

Children – especially young children – learn best when they’re interested in a subject .

They learn best when they’re exploring the world around them.

This is because it activates more of the brain to help with the task.

Children integrate previous learning and add to their knowledge as they do this.

So, unless absolutely necessary, stay away from curricula that tend to bore children instead of engendering them with a love of learning.

5. Your Child is Too Advanced for Their Class

Some children might find teacher handouts or activities busywork, while others might benefit from the work.

That is, it might not be busywork for some, but if you have a gifted child, they may already know the work.

A customized education like homeschooling is a great option if you have a child who’s particularly frustrated at the slow pace of work they’ve been given at school.

Homeschooling allows children to work at their own pace in every subject.

They can follow their interests and study what truly fascinates them.

Ever feel frustrated at the amount of work your children bring home from school that they don't need to do? This is called busywork and these are the signs your kids are doing it.

Why Teachers Assign Busywork

Teachers assign busywork for a few reasons.

Some of these are fair enough, while others indicate lazy teachers who don’t care about their students.

Sometimes substitute teachers assign busywork because they don’t know what the regular teacher is up to in the curriculum the children follow. Staff shortages mean teachers may be changed from time to time. The substitute teacher may not want to ‘mess up the curriculum’ by teaching something that hasn’t been taught before. So, they assign busywork.
Proper work takes preparation. This can be time-consuming for teachers, and the best teachers will do this work. However, the worst teachers won’t care about their class and will arrive unprepared. This is another hallmark of substitute teachers (and who can blame them) because who wants to put in hours of preparation for a class you’ll only be teaching for a day or two?
A teacher who doesn’t care if her class is interested in the work they’re doing won’t prepare for the day. If a student is unfortunate enough to have a teacher like this for a whole year, they can expect to emerge from that year having learned little of what they might have had if they had a teacher with more pizazz.
They’re exhausted. Sometimes, teachers are exhausted from a hard term, and they are hanging out for a break. We all have days when, even if we’re usually a good worker, we put in a bad day’s work on specific days. For teachers, their exhaustion days come at the end of the week, after an excursion, or towards the end of the term. For example, teachers tend to hand out more busywork the day before Christmas break than the first day of school.

What You Can Do

If parents want to involve their children in education that will help them learn more, consider creating activities for your children yourself.

You don’t need a teacher to give your children educational experiences!

This is what a lot of homeschooling parents do.

They take their children’s education into their own hands, and they certainly haven’t seen any negative test scores as a result .

What you can do to stop the busywork

If you’ve identified that your child has too much busywork at school, you have two popular options:

Talk to their teacher about a more individualized homework plan
Homeschool your children

A good way to tackle too much busywork is to talk to your child’s teacher and ask them to reassess the amount of homework they’re assigning your child.

Maybe they’ll be willing to personalize your child’s homework or exempt them from it entirely.

Unfortunately, some teachers assign the same homework to all their students and want all their students to do the work, even if they know the material.

Over the years, this wastes a huge amount of time.

The Homeschool Option

This is when homeschooling could be a great option.

Many people homeschool their children because they get frustrated with the amount of time they spend doing busy work at school .

They see that their children will learn so much more if they can study at their own pace with an individualized, self-paced curriculum .

For this reason, gifted children make up a large proportion of homeschoolers, as home education allows them to put their busy minds to work with more of a challenge than most schools can give them.

(You can find out more about homeschooling at this link.)

I Was Homeschooled – A Great Experience

I’m a homeschool graduate myself, and I love homeschooling.

You can read about my experience here .

As I now look at homeschooling my own son, I wonder if it would be enjoyable and if our family could afford it .

I aired these concerns to my parents, and my mother said she loved homeschooling us.

My dad said the years he spent homeschooling were – by far – the happiest years of his life.

They said that parents might have to give up some things in life to homeschool (having said this, they thrived financially on one income), but it’s so worth it!

And you get back so much in return.

Does More Homework Give Students Better Grades?

Many people believe there is a correlation between students’ time spent on books and their marks.

But this is a huge misconception .

This is what Alfie Kohn, an education author, said on the topic:

[N]o research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school . In fact, there isn’t even a positive correlation between, on the one hand, having younger children do some homework (vs. none), or more (vs. less), and, on the other hand, any measure of achievement. If we’re making 12-year-olds, much less five-year-olds, do homework, it’s either because we’re misinformed about what the evidence says or because we think kids ought to have to do homework despite what the evidence says .

Furthermore, too much homework can actually lower test scores !

So, we must be careful when assigning work to our children.

We need to change the way we think about the work we give our students by realizing these things don’t always lead to learning in our students.

What is Homework or Useful Work

Homework differs from busywork in that it continues a child’s learning from where it left off in the classroom.

In school, students can take work home, learn at their own pace, and discover concepts they must work on.

In a homeschool situation, useful work adds to a child’s learning.

So they don’t reach the end of the lesson and realize they’ve learned nothing new.

Of course, students may need to repeat concepts in different ways.

This happens in subjects like chemistry, mathematics, and vocabulary.

However, this repetition is normal in some subjects.

Indeed a lot of concepts are taught effectively when students repeat ideas multiple times .

(Like Latin curriculum programs . There’s lots of repetition in them.)

To better understand chemistry math problems, students benefit from tackling slightly different problem sets.

This lets them approach the same concept from various angles.

The concept they’re learning might be very difficult, but by the time they’ve done it 10 times, they’ll find they know how to solve it easily.

Note: Parent/family involvement may be for family bonding.

Busywork in Packaged Homeschool Curricula

Sometimes, there’s busywork included in a curriculum that you might buy to homeschool with .

This is because many of these curricula are designed for use in schools.

Parents can circumvent this by buying alternate-year packages if they have a gifted student.

I skip the review lessons in my curriculum BJU Press .

You can also quickly review your child’s work for the day and leave anything that looks like busywork .

If your child always gets 90 to 100 percent on tests, this could be a sign that the work is too easy for them.

Another way to avoid busywork is to choose an eclectic homeschooling method .

This lets you to be flexible about what your children learn .

It allows you to say, ‘We’re going to do this bookwork, leave this bookwork, and go outside and do some garden work later.’

We too often make the mistake that for children to learn, they have to do an ‘educational’ activity. Like a workbook or assignment. But this isn’t true because learning happens all the time! Learning happens best when we incorporate interest-based learning in the subject. Don’t worry if you can’t quantify your children’s knowledge through testing or other grading methods. Chances are they’ll be taking a lot in. And maybe even understand more than they ever did when filling out a worksheet!

Rebecca Devitt

Most adults don't particularly want to relive their schooling experience on a daily basis. They would gladly move on to a new life devoid of homework and teachers. Very, very few adults will passionately blog about their schooling some 15 years after graduating. This makes Rebecca Devitt somewhat unique. As it happens, she was homeschooled. And she loved it. Still does. And she wishes every kid could get a taste of homeschooling at its very best. Her website How Do I Homeschool , is a springboard for parents to see what a life of homeschooling could be for both them & their children. When she's not blogging Rebecca is still homeschooling her-adult-self by learning Latin, growing weird vegetables and most importantly looking after her two children Luke & Penny. She has a husband Tristan and is a participant at Wollongong Baptist Church. She's also written a book about why parents should homeschool called 'Why on Earth Homeschool' .

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Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

* Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

* Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

* Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Media Contacts

Denise Pope, Stanford Graduate School of Education: (650) 725-7412, [email protected] Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected]

Civic Issues

Just another Sites At Penn State site

Homework or Busy Work?

If students were to take a poll regarding one aspect of their education they wished to improve, it would be safe to assume that a popular response would be ‘no homework’. Although frustrating and time consuming, homework is a common practice in our society’s curriculum throughout grade school and beyond, and the plea to discontinue it has rarely been taken seriously. It has always been a touchy subject—how much should be given? What should it be on? Is it even beneficial? These answers vary depending on the situation, but for young students, extra work after school can actually be harmful. Assigning homework at the elementary school level (grades one through five) has a detrimental effect on the critical development of cognition necessary for a young student’s success.

When children are at the peak of their cognitive growth (young adolescent stages), it is imperative that they be surrounded by a stress-free environment in order to properly develop.

According to Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development, the skill that growing students strive to attain during the ages that line up with elementary school is competency. At this age, children “ feel the need to win approval ,” which they begin to realize can be obtained by demonstrating excellence in specific aspects valued by society. Since education is greatly valued in society, it is a natural instinct for children to find validation in academic success. Homework is a very sensible platform to practice this on, so many students challenge themselves in order to feel the pride subsequent to a good grade. Although receiving the validation is important, being conditioned to depend on obtaining it from homework may be more problematic than it is beneficial. Since society cares such a significant amount about school, and since homework might be one of the few platforms in which students can prove themselves, assigning work at such a young age creates immense levels of stress. Impaired intellectual ability, poor academic performance, and increased need for personalized education programs are all characteristics that show up often in people who encounter stress early in life . This therefore means the impact of homework is potentially leading kids down a path in which they will be hindered from reaching their full potential.

Furthermore, a plethora of research has concluded that the relationship between homework and academic benefit is merely correlation, not causation, and the connection is too weak at the elementary level to confidently prove anything. This lack of confidence in its positive effect further decreases the justifiability of implementing homework at such ages, especially if it will come with great stress and pressure. Overall, after weighing these discovered impacts, it seems like a no-brainer that homework at the elementary level should be significantly minimized or retired as a whole.

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Students who say, “This is just busy work”

Does that irritate anyone else? Sometimes you just have to take it with a grain of salt. I teach high school. I always try to make my lessons interesting and engaging and often let my classes work in partners or groups instead of just me lecturing. This particular student said this today, also didn’t care that I heard, and he has like a 15% in the class.

What do you say in response to students who say this?

INNOVATION FESTIVAL
Capital One

06-20-2024 SECRETS OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE

Why your boss still values performative busyness—and what to do about it

Too many workplaces still encourage a culture of ‘stress-bragging’ and pretending to be busy.

[Photo: Mizuno K /Pexels]

BY Jared Lindzon 4 minute read

Workers feel a lot of pressure to prove that they’re productive, but research shows that “ performative busyness ” and “ stress-bragging ” can be damaging in the long run.

According to a recent survey of over 1,500 American full-time workers conducted by BambooHR almost everyone feels pressure to prove they’re being productive, regardless of whether they work remotely, in-person, or hybrid. As a result, many are employing tactics to signify to their managers and bosses that they’re actually working while on the clock.

According to the survey, 79% of in-office workers and 88% of remote workers feel the need to prove they’re being productive . In fact, 42% of hybrid and in-person workers say they come to the office just for visibility.

“Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of remote teams in our survey admit that they maintain constant online presence even when they may not be actively working,” says BambooHR’s head of human resources, Anita Grantham. “Especially if you have these workplace apps on your phone, you can leave them on even though you’re at the lake or doing something else.”

About a third of in-person workers, meanwhile, admit to intentionally showing up earlier or leaving later than their managers, and spend more time walking around the office, to show that they’re on-site in the wake of return-to-office (RTO) mandates.

Playing the role of a busy worker, however, may be necessary, as nearly a third of managers say they implemented RTO policies to track employee work habits.

Why We Feel the Need to Show Our Work

In recent years the nature of our work has gotten more difficult to quantify, while more of the actual work is getting done behind closed doors, making it harder to benchmark our efforts against our colleagues, explains Terry College of Business management professor Jessica Rodell.

“We still want a measuring stick to be able to understand our value and worth and to be able to compare that value and worth to others,” she says. “I think we are accidentally putting stress and busyness in that bucket to say, ‘well, if I leave work feeling really stressed, it must be because I’m a good employee.’”

Bragging about being stressed or busy can also be contagious, Rodell says—especially when it’s done or encouraged by managers—as it makes others feel self-conscious about their importance at work.

“When you work with people who are bragging about stress, they’re kind of sending a signal, like ‘hey, this is valued around here; if you want to be respected, you should do it, too,’” she says. “Then more people are doing it, and that becomes more stressful for more people.”

Why Performative Busyness Tends to Backfire

According to a study led by Rodell, however, those who brag about being stressed tend to accomplish less, and are often perceived more negatively by their peers.

“When we are quote-unquote ‘looking busy,’ we’re often focusing on those can-do tasks, not the should-do tasks,” she says. “We put the real substantive work on the back burner to instead look busier, which comes at a cost to our productivity and personal fulfillment in our jobs.”

According to Rodell’s study, “stress-bragging”—or talking about being stressed out with pride—is widely perceived negatively by colleagues and peers. In fact, people tend to think of those who do it often as less capable, not more.

“The perception is that they’re not as warm—which means we don’t like them as much—and they’re not as competent or capable in their jobs,” she says. “We still reward the person that is doing a lot and not calling as much attention to it.”

Not only does stress-bragging reflect poorly on the individual, but it can also create an unhealthy workplace culture, one where perception of getting things done becomes more highly valued than actually getting things done.

“If anything, a culture of busyness might backfire in terms of results, where you have people doing a lot of work that’s not overly relevant,” explains Adam Waytz, a professor of ethics and decision management at the Kellogg School of Management. “Furthermore, you’re not really doing any favors to peoples’ mental health.”

How to Reverse the Urge to Stress-Brag

If work cultures that reward performative busyness tend to create more stress and burnout, Waytz says the obvious antidote is for leaders to instead encourage breaks, time off, and work-life balance.

“The only way to change those cultures of busyness is through deliberate steps to say ‘we don’t want you to be busy or working all the time,’” he says. “One of the ways to reverse it is for leaders to model behavior that it’s okay to take some time for yourself, or putting policies in place that actually force people off the clock.”

While performative busyness remains pervasive, especially in remote and hybrid work settings, Waytz is encouraged to see the conversation around stress begin to shift in the wake of the pandemic.

“One of the buzzwords of the day is ‘ burnout ’. Every week there’s scores of stories about burnout, how to deal with burnout, how to manage burnout, and that suggests a shift,” he says. “People are talking more about work not as the be-all and end-all of what defines you , or saying ‘maybe work isn’t the most important thing in my life,’ or ‘maybe there are things beyond work in life,’ and that seems a bit new, post-COVID.’”

Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the extended deadline, June 14. Sign up for Brands That Matter notifications here .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jared Lindzon is a freelance journalist, public speaker and Fast Company contributor who has reported on technology and the future of work for over a decade. Through that period his writing has been featured in many of the world’s top news publications—including the BBC , The Globe and Mail , and the Toronto Star , covering a broad range of subject matters, from entrepreneurship and technology to entertainment and politics. More

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COMMENTS

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in
Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you ...
More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research
"This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..
The Homework Debate: The Case Against Homework
"Busy work" does not help students learn. Students and parents appear to carry similar critiques of homework, specifically regarding assignments identified as busy work—long sheets of repetitive math problems, word searches, or reading logs seemingly designed to make children dislike books.
Is Your Child Being Sent Home With Busywork?
What Is Homework? Homework, on the other hand, serves a different purpose than busywork. Effective homework assignments supplement learning and practice and integrate newly learned skills. Homework gives students the chance to develop study habits and discern between the concepts they are having trouble with versus those which they have mastered.
Does homework really work?
To answer this question, researchers have been doing their homework on homework, conducting and examining hundreds of studies. Chris Drew Ph.D., founder and editor at The Helpful Professor recently compiled multiple statistics revealing the folly of today's after-school busy work. Does any of the data he listed below ring true for you?
Is homework a necessary evil?
Beyond that point, kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress.
Should We Get Rid of Homework?
Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes? Should we get rid of homework? In " The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, " published ...
Q&A: Does homework still have value? An education expert weighs in
An education expert weighs in. The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein, co-director of the Center on School ...
Should Kids Get Homework?
But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say. Homework that's just busy work.
PDF Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in
homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."
Homework
Busy work. Homework generally falls into two categories: practising or catching up on work done in the classroom, and creative extensions of work being done in the classroom. The latter - like ...
Is It Homework or Busy Work?
Homework (or as as a mentor of mine once called it, "Continued Learning Opportunities") should either extend knowledge from the classroom in short amounts (seriously like 15 - 20 minutes tops) OR it should help students complete unfinished work they did not get to during the allotted time. Yes…this means some students won't have ...
Homework debate: Too much, too little or busy work?
For many parents, the beef about homework is not whether it's too much or too little but the type of work the kids are bringing home. "I am not an advocate for homework for the sake of ...
Homework: An Hour a Day Is All the Experts Say
Researchers found that a lot of homework can result in: • Stress: Students reported high levels of stress associated with school work. Below is the breakdown of student responses. 56% of ...
Homework
Busy work Homework should not be merely given to occupy student's time. The intention of homework is to further test students' knowledge at home. However, there is a line between productive work and busy work. Busy work has no inherent value; it just occupies time.
PDF Does Homework Really Improve Achievement? Kevin C. Costley, Ph.D ...
Some believe that homework can be beneficial, but is sometimes over used and the pros are outweighed by the cons. Educators have to be careful not to over assign homework assignments because homework will cause additional stress on students (O'Neill, 2008). Assigning hours and hours of homework, sometimes called busy work can backfire by ...
5 Signs of BUSYWORK (& How to AVOID It)
1. It's Been Done Before. One of the hallmarks of busywork is repetition. If your child has done the work several times before, it could be a time-wasting activity. While children sometimes need repetition to learn a concept (such as a difficult math problem or some reading words), work is often assigned far too often.
Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework
"This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," Pope said. ... Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine ...
How Much Homework Is Too Much for Our Teens?
In that poll teens reported spending, on average, more than three hours on homework each school night, with 11th graders spending more time on homework than any other grade level. By contrast ...
Homework or Busy Work?
Homework or Busy Work? If students were to take a poll regarding one aspect of their education they wished to improve, it would be safe to assume that a popular response would be 'no homework'. Although frustrating and time consuming, homework is a common practice in our society's curriculum throughout grade school and beyond, and the ...
Does anyone else feel that their professors are assigning too much busy
Rant. This past year I feel as if several of my professors are just assigning busy work that takes up a chunks of my time. Most of these assignments they will probably just look at it for one second and then give us a grade for just doing it. For this past semester I have a few professors that have giving an excessive amount of work for one ...
Students who say, "This is just busy work"
In elementary, busy work is typically worksheets or workbooks for kids when you are finished teaching/don't have anything to teach. It is rare, but has its place. If it is busy work, they should be able to ace it with time to spare. I'm so glad that's the only buzzword most kids know to talk about a teaching.
Tackle the Boring Work in Chunks, Research Says
It's hard for most people to avoid at least some monotony at work. Complete an Excel. Send a perfunctory email. Read a perfunctory email. Workers often think the most productive approach when ...
My Employee Puts on a Show of Being Busy--but They Shouldn't Be
Sit down with them and say, "I'm really concerned about the extra hours you're reporting having to work. We absolutely don't want you needing to work late or over the weekend, cancelling vacation ...
What is performative busyness and what to do about it?
If work cultures that reward performative busyness tend to create more stress and burnout, Waytz says the obvious antidote is for leaders to instead encourage breaks, time off, and work-life balance.