Episode 18: The Homework Dilemma…To Help or Not to Help?

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Take the quiz today. Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school administrators and educators, as well as the micro discriminations I faced while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be discussing the appropriateness of homework, the ongoing homework debate, and the current homework gap. The topic of homework can elicit fears and frustrations for parents as well as children. Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether homework is valuable or whether it's a waste of time. One thing is for sure, the homework debate is not going away. Neither is the fact that teachers will continue to assign homework. As with most things in life, there are benefits and detriments pertaining to homework. Homework can reinforce concepts that were taught in the classroom, yet there are non academic benefits of homework that are even more valuable. Let's start out with a brief discussion about the background of homework and then proceed to discuss other topics, including the homework gap and the overall importance of the intent of homework. Homework that is assigned generally follows the Common Core Standards, which are established by the state, but it seems to overwhelmingly focus on rote learning. This, according to researcher and writer Stephen Sawchuck in EdWeek in 2019. For example, in a survey of nearly 200 pieces of homework that were collected nationwide, researchers examined skills required for each task. Most of the Math homework, or 76% of that math homework, involved performing procedures, while another 11% involved memorization. None of the math homework asked students to solve non routine problems or to make connections between the homework and life skills. In language arts homework, 47% of the homework involved memorization and and 33% involved performing some type of procedure. A paltry 18% of the homework asked students to demonstrate understanding, and only 3% of the homework involved showing both sides of an argument. As far as the language arts homework was concerned, homework is one of those never ending debates in the K12 education space. Most of the debate centers on whether students have too much homework or whether there should be a cap on how much homework is assigned. With the sprinkling of folks that feel that homework should be eliminated altogether, parents and teachers argue that having too much homework puts unnecessary stress on students and may not be helping them learn, but maybe the focus should be on quality instead of quantity. A new analysis from the center of American progress in 2018 indicates that what should be examined is what the student is being asked to do in take home assignments and how well the homework supports learning goals. One of the reasons that the homework seems to be of lower cognitive demand is because many teachers believe that homework should be for practicing content that is already known and not for learning something new. This seems to be their attempt at helping to close the homework gap that has come about because some students have access to help with technology or while other students don't have that same access. This is not to say that memorization doesn't have its place in learning, but homework should also be thought provoking. So let's define what the homework gap is. It is basically the inequality between students who have Internet at home and those who don't, and the difficulty that students without the access face in completing assignments. In 2015, about 40% of students didn't have Internet access at home, yet 70% of teachers assigned homework that required connectivity, according to a Pew Research center survey. In 2022, nearly a third of the U.S. teenagers reported facing at least one academic challenge that that was related to a lack of access to technology at home. This is what has been defined as the homework gap. The Survey found that 22% of U.S. teenagers between the ages of 13 to 17 say they often or sometimes have to do their homework on a cell phone. 12% said that at least sometimes they weren't able to complete homework assignments because they didn't have reliable access to a computer or Internet connection, and 6% said that they had to use public WI fi to do their homework because they didn't have an Internet connection at home. The homework gap is basically a term that is used to describe the difficulty students have in getting online at home in order to complete school projects. It is another concept that shows the disproportionality of impact on students in low income households, students of color, and students in rural areas. 16% of Hispanic teens reported they were unable to complete homework because they lacked reliable computer or Internet access, as compared to 7% of black teens and 10% of white teens. Hispanic teens were also four times more likely than white teens to say that they had to complete their homework on a cell phone or use public WI fi for homework. According to the Pew report, the social aspect of learning is very important for teens, so being physically present in school is of high importance when compared to virtual or hybrid learning. Teenagers indicated that they were extremely concerned or very worried that they may have fallen behind in school because of the COVID 19 related disturbances. This was true for 28% of Hispanic teens compared with 19% of black teens and 11% of white teens. 46% of teens from households making less than $75,000 annually were concerned about falling behind in school as compared to 13% of teens from households making over $75,000 annually. So what is the right amount of homework? Is there a right amount of homework to be assigned? A recent article in the journal Education Next in 2018 indicated that many American students do not have too much homework. In fact, they have too little. While some students may have upwards of three or four hours of homework per night, findings indicate that low income students aren't getting enough homework which would have a direct impact on them suffering academically as a result. If the approach is to eliminate all homework, this probably wouldn't be a big problem for high income kids because their parents can expose them to whatever they may not be getting in school. However, lower income students will be the ones that are hurt because of the potential to a lack of access or exposure to other learning experiences. A widely endorsed metric for how much homework to assign is the 10 minute rule. In other words, it dictates that you should receive 10 minutes of homework per grade level. So for example, a first grader would be given 10 minutes of homework per day while a senior in high school would be given 120 minutes of homework per day. Again, this is a generally accepted guideline and there are other studies that indicate variances within these guidelines per grade level. Also, these metrics obscure the range in assigned work between low income and high income students wherein disadvantaged students in the US spend three hours less per week on homework than advantaged students, which boils down to five hours versus eight hours of homework per week. Low income students at low performing schools often receive minimal homework so such as one or two worksheets or textbook pages, an occasional project and 30 minutes of reading per night. This is not the high quality homework that advances learning. The type of homework that allows students to problem solve and develop strategies for working through difficult problems. One of the benefits of homework is that it can help prepare students with perseverance they need to hold jobs in the future. Other benefits of homework include goal setting, self regulation, and resilience in the face of challenge. These skills become more important as students progress into higher grades when there's a greater expectancy for autonomy. Foreign have you had a chance to.

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Home, it's more important that parents support completion of homework rather than giving hands on help with assignments. So here's how this applies in a little more detail to K12 education. It turns out that there's a link between parents, homework anxiety and students progress. According to Sarah Sparks in an Ed Week Journal article In December of 2018, math is one of the primary subject areas of where parents show high stress and anxiety. And it turns out that children of parents who showed anxiety around math actually learned less math from first to third grades than the children of parents who had no math anxiety out of school. Family time around math may help students succeed, even when their parents may dread the subject. When other math interactions seep into other components of life, it tends to boost math scores for the kids. It wasn't so much that the parents stopped dreading math over the course of a three year study in which a math app like Bedtime Math was used. It was more that the parents were more confident in their children's math abilities. The parents actually developed higher expectations for their kids in math and saw math as being more valuable to for their children than they had before. There's a battle afoot about whether assigning homework to kindergartners is too much too early. According to researchers including Martha Hinton in 2018 and Harris Cooper, who is a Duke University psychology and neuroscience professor, homework has minimal academic benefits for children in the early elementary years. The 10 minute metric that I talked about earlier applies to first grade and beyond. The guideline doesn't even mention kindergarten. Parents and administrators are at odds with each other on this topic. Some parents feel that 30 minutes of homework per night for kindergarten is too much. On the other hand, administrators and parents at Arlington Traditional school in Arlington, Virginia, have an expectation that kindergartners will have 30 minutes of homework per night. Monday through Thursday. The homework consists of 15 minutes of reading, and if the child isn't reading yet, then the parents are expected to read to them. The other 15 minutes is spent doing things like dictating a story to their parents, using words that start with the sound they've been learning in class or exercises that involve circling that letter. There's a waiting list of parents eager for their children to attend this school. Yet some kindergarten teachers continue to remain firm in their opposition to mandatory homework. Most kindergarten teachers assign nightly reading of the child's choice, which is usually two books. In any case, the assignments need to be short, simple, and lead to success so that the children don't get frustrated with homework at such an early age. So what's a parent to do? What can you do to assist with this homework dilemma? If at all possible, provide an appropriate, appropriate workspace. Minimize distractions, and make yourself available for questions when your child is doing homework. Should any questions arise, set aside a regular time of day. Use a kitchen timer to give your child a better sense of the time spent. The idea is to establish a routine so that your child associates the routine with doing homework. These routines can provide security and comfort and can often last a lifetime. Many people who are highly accomplished attribute their success to deliberately establishing effective work ethics and routines. Here are this episode's takeaways. A unique role for homework in a modern era is to provide social communication and connections among peers, as well as self regulatory processes such as budgeting time and prioritizing tasks. According to Lynn Corno from the elementary School Journal, an article written in May 2000, self regulation also involves controlling emotions, bringing a positive attitude to the task, and developing effective strategies for processing information and solving problems. Homework involves important social, cultural, and educative issues. Teachers have always assigned homework and always will because homework is an out of school learning experience. The dynamics of homework are different because of the home settings involved. Some children do homework at libraries, some on buses, some in the homes of their friends. That this academic work is done outside of school provides an interesting opportunity to bring out the best and worst of schools as well as the these other settings. There are certain priorities and certain properties that homework acquires because it comes from school. For example, homework is work, not play. In general, it's not supposed to be fun, although with the right combination of challenge and skill, it can be made gratifying. Homework is academic in nature, and academic work is more mental than physical. It requires cognitive organization of objects and events. Teachers expect their students to take on homework to the best of their abilities and to return their work as one way for the teacher to gauge the student's progress. Children who do additional academic work outside of school are likely to become more acclimated to the academic rigor of homework. A certain amount of complexity is important in homework assignments There's a balance in this as too much complexity can lead to frustration and frustration is the stress of complexity causing anxiety and self consciousness. On the other hand, homework can be too easy and bore students the opposite of frustration. Boredom is the stress of tedium signaling the need to buckle down. Many times boredom leads to distractions and daydreaming. Beyond the nature of homework, there are surrounding expectations to consider. Like the expectations of the teachers, the parents, peers and the students themselves. Expectations exert powerful effects, some negatively as when parents and teachers hold the expectation that every completed assignment must be perfect. Relentless pursuit of perfection wreaks havoc on well being. When children are just starting out in school, they often benefit when adults check their homework. This assistance should decrease over time so that the child knows that they are the ones responsible for both completing the homework and the quality of the homework. Homework could be considered a bridge for knowledge to travel back and forth between school and home. The learning that occurs outside the classroom is just as important as the academic work inside the classroom. Fishing trips, soccer games, community service projects, library trips, and other activities are all experiences that children can apply to school lessons. Unfortunately, it's rare for teachers to utilize these experiences and learnings in an applicable homework assignment. There's no good reason for a one way homework bridge. Parents and siblings who help their family member with homework can provide an opportunity to model and reinforce the mannerisms of a careful and dedicated learner. There's a plethora of research on the effects of parent involvement in homework, especially when parents are involved in helping their child with homework. It results in higher rates of homework completion, fewer homework problems, and potentially improved academic performance among elementary school children. The research also suggests that different types of parent involvement in homework have different relationships to achievement and the type of parent involvement changes as children move through the next grade levels. This, according to researcher Patal et al. In the Review of Educational research, December of 2008. Despite many of the positive effects of parent involvement, some researchers have highlighted that involvement may lead to negative experiences for both the parents and the students. An interesting study by Levin et al. In 1997 found that Greater maternal help with homework was related to increased fatigue, frustration and disappointment for the mother and it caused tension between the mother and the child, particularly when the child was a low achiever. When parents overreach in homework assistance, for example by giving correct answers or completing the entire assignment themselves, this may impede learning as well as hinder the development of self regulatory skills. If the child comes to rely on their parents for correct answers or external regulation and motivation to say the least. Research suggests the relationship between parent involvement in homework and achievement is complex. There are conflicting findings within the literature on parent involvement in homework and factors such as the type of involvement, the subject matter of the homework, the achievement outcome assessed, and the ability level of the child may all be variables that affect whether parent involvement in homework will positively or negatively influence achievement. It's been noted of the positive effects of parent assistance and homework with academic achievements achievement outcomes for students in elementary school grades two through five it's important to consider the developmental stage of the child when parents become involved in assisting with homework. Additionally, the parents skills in the subject area may be an important consideration in the effect of helpfulness with the child and his or her homework tasks. I certainly found this to be true when I provided any necessary assistance to my kids when they were in elementary school. My goal was to establish a routine in which the time and space were set aside for dedicated homework and I also provided the expectations that homework would be completed to the best of each child's ability and with high quality. The need for challenging homework is not going away. The academic and non academic benefits far outweigh any downsides. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a comment, a review or a rating and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Additionally, you can connect with me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with the handle KimJ Fields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current issue or a specific topic that you'd like for me to explore and discuss, shoot me a quick email@kimiberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day. Love my show. Consider being a regular subscriber. You can subscribe for as little as $3 per month. Just go to Forward Slash Podcast Support. There's no contractual obligation you can cancel at any time. If you choose to subscribe, I'll give you a special shout out thanking you in an upcoming episode. Remember, that's tinyurl.com com podcast support to subscribe.