The Homework Debate

This week’s article summary is The Homework Debate: What It Means for Elementary Schools, and it focuses on how one elementary school moved away from the more traditional approach to homework to one more like what Trinity does.

While homework at Trinity is not the incendiary topic that it is at many other schools, it is nevertheless appropriate for us to remind ourselves and to take any opportunity to educate our parents about what educational research says and what Trinity’s position is regarding homework.

As the article states in elementary school “there is little to no correlation between homework and performance.”

What’s important for elementary school children when they get home?

Reading nightly (independently as well as listening to an adult), physical exercise, a good night’s sleep (10 hours or more), face-to-face family time (meals, game night, etc.), and, vital from my perspective, time to explore interests/curiosities that might develop into future passions.

The end of the article focuses on how schools can help parents understand and see what their child is learning and experiencing at school in the absence of traditional homework—things that Trinity does like robust classroom web pages and use of social media to highlight and chronicle classwork and student progress.

This article is a good reminder of how we can help parents who push for more traditional homework understand what is truly beneficial for their child’s development.

Joe

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A parent of third grader is in my lower school office. The conversation turns to homework. “I feel like I am chasing him down every night,” she says. “I’ve tried everything, but it always turns into a battle.”

Having spent nearly two decades as a lower school principal, I have heard this lament time and again. Homework is causing conflict and eroding time for other activities such as reading, outdoor play, family dinner, extracurriculars, and sleep.

Does homework prepare students for middle school and beyond? To create a better policy that centers on student needs, our school investigated the value of homework. We reviewed research on the effects of homework, as well as articles addressing both sides of the homework debate. With consultation from researchers Harris Cooper and John Hattie, we crafted an approach that translates research into practice.

The question of homework’s effect on student achievement has been studied for years. Hattie has compiled the largest body of educational research on the subject to date. He has found that homework has a more positive effect on student achievement at the middle and high school levels. In the elementary grades, however, there is little to no correlation between homework and performance. Also, the positive effects of homework are negatively related to the length of time spent on homework. In other words, for all grade levels, shorter is better.

Meanwhile the daily amount a child reads independently is positively linked to higher-order literacy skills and long-term academic success.

And there are activities that promote academic performance and wellness simultaneously: physical exercise (60 minutes per day); proper sleep (10–11 hours a night for young children); shared family meals (three or more per week); and time to explore talents, interests, and passions. 

With research in hand we began our overhaul of traditional homework practices by giving it a new name: “home learning.” This inspires us to think intentionally about promoting student learning in thoughtful, research-based, and developmentally appropriate ways.

Hefty weekly math packets used to be the norm and often eliminated time for healthy, academically beneficial activities. With home learning, our focus is now on nightly reading for 20 minutes. For our youngest students, this means reading with a parent. Occasionally, we recommend extra learning activities such as math games or tying shoes. We ask parents to limit these activities to no more than 10 minutes for kindergarten through second grade and 20 minutes for third through fifth grades.

We had some parents who wanted suggestions for activities to do at home or who wanted the traditional math packet. As much as parents may not like homework, it provides some structure and gives them a peek at what their child is learning. When some parents started to feel out of the loop, we began to share curriculum plans and updates through weekly emails, our learning management system, and apps such as Seesaw, which showcases student portfolios.   

Parents often want to know how children will learn time-management and study skills. We made sure to implement a more structured study-skills curriculum in fifth grade and mandated the use of student planners in third through fifth grade. There are a few deadline-driven projects during the year for the lower school, and teachers work closely with students to stay on track.

Parents were concerned that teachers wouldn’t know how their child was doing without having homework. This gave us the opportunity to explain the many assessments that teachers use (observation, discussion, unit tests, etc.) that provide a wealth of information about each child’s learning. Homework was never a good source of information about student learning because it so often involves parent assistance.

While schools can’t eliminate every stressor in children’s lives, homework is well within our sphere of control. Rethinking homework in all grades, and especially in the lower grades, is critical and timely work. For our school, it has been a powerful means for enhancing the mental, physical, and emotional health and wellness of children as well as the quality of family life.