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The Deal with Homework
Harris Cooper, professor of psychology and director of Duke's
program in education, is the co-author of a new report, "Does Homework
Improve Academic Achievement?: A Synthesis of Research," and author
of a new book, The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators,
Teachers, and Parents. Both cover students from elementary through
high school. As the academic year got into full swing and the homework
battles picked up steam, he found himself being quoted and his
work cited in the press by homework advocates and opponents alike.
Why is homework so stressful?
I think homework can be stressful because it's something that families
have to fit into their lifestyles. For some families, it's difficult
to figure out how to carve out the time that children need to
do it.
Is homework a good thing?
Homework can be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon
how much is assigned and what kind it is. Proponents of homework
suggest that it accelerates learning and that it teaches skills
involved in becoming a lifelong learner, like how to study and
how to manage time, and other positive character traits such
as responsibility. It also gets parents involved in their children's
education.
Opponents say that homework activities remain motivating for only
so long, so if we ask kids to do too much of it, it will lose its
intrinsic value. They say that it crowds out children's opportunities
to take part in other activities like soccer and Scouts, in which
they learn important life skills. They also argue that sometimes
parents can get over-involved, either by creating pressure for
children to do their work at unrealistically high levels or by
teaching kids things in a different manner from the way they're
being taught at school.
What does the research show?
Research evidence does seem to suggest that there's a limit to
homework's effectiveness, and that the amount of homework children
can benefit from increases as they get older.
For middle-school children, it shows that the line of progress
relating homework to test scores increased until the students were
doing about an hour to an hour-and-a-half a night. Middle schoolers
who reported that they were doing more than ninety minutes a night
were doing no better than the students who reported stopping at
ninety minutes. For high-school students, the line of progress
kept going up until two to two-and-a-half hours, but then it headed
down again.
So parents who think that second-graders are going to benefit from
two hours of homework a night are probably going to be disappointed.
How common is it for teachers to assign too much homework?
If you surf the Internet looking for school policies on homework,
you find that most of them do conform to what research suggests
is good practice. But there are instances in which children are
bringing home too much homework, and for those families the concerns
are very real.
In those instances, why is it that teachers are assigning so much
homework?
Educators will give you a few reasons. They'll say that for every
parent who's saying that kids are getting too much homework, they've
got another parent who's saying that their child's getting too
little. They want their second-grader to get into Duke, and they
think that they need to be pushed from the get-go.
It's also the case that the federal legislation requires schools
to meet annual progress goals, and expanding the amount of time
children spend on academic material is one of the strategies that
educators use. And some educators have mentioned to me that their
local newspapers have begun printing each school's end-of-grade
test scores, which places a lot of pressure on teachers to maximize
learning. I really think that, from the educators I've spoken with,
they're responding to pressures that are being placed directly
on them.
Is there a general way to characterize a good assignment versus
a bad assignment?
The research evidence shows that the kinds of things kids learn
through practice make for good homework assignments. So spelling,
math facts, vocabulary, foreign languages—those kinds of things
are ideal. They're not fun assignments, but when practice makes
perfect, there's no reason why it can't be done at home.
It's also the case that homework can be used in more creative ways.
Obviously, in high school, students will get longer-term assignments
that ask them to integrate multiple skills, the kinds of things
that will get them ready both for college and for work in the adult
workplace. But for young children, you can use homework to show
them that the things that they're learning in school have applications
to things they enjoy doing out of school.
Can you give an example?
Most kids who are in Little League keep track of their batting
average. So teachers might use sports as a context for studying
percentages and winning rates or predicting how many home runs
someone is going to hit in a particular season.
What should parents' role in homework be?
The parents' role in homework is going to vary as a function of
how well the child is doing in school and how individually motivated
[she is]. For children who are doing well in school, my advice
is that parents stay away unless the teacher has suggested a
particular role or the child has asked for help, in which case
they give guidance and not answers. When children are struggling,
it's likely that there will be more requests for help from teachers
and from children, and in those instances parents should be expected
to play a more active mentoring role.
Sometimes parents forget that it's also possible to enlist the
aid of older siblings. I remember in my family when my younger
daughter asked for assistance with her geometry homework. It was
far beyond me, but it wasn't beyond her older brother, so we traded
off some household chores, and big brother helped little sister
with her geometry homework.
You've been cited in newspapers across the country arguing alternately
for more homework and less homework. Please explain.
One of the interesting things about homework is that it's best
when educators avoid the extremes—too much or too little—and we
know that the media like to find those instances of extremes. So,
when a news report has uncovered a parent whose second-grader is
being sent home with two hours of homework a night, they will cite
my work as saying homework is no good without the important qualifications.
At other times, reporters will say, "Here's a kid who doesn't bring
home any homework," and they'll cite my work suggesting that that
strategy is wrong. So sometimes it's difficult to get a message
of "homework is good in moderation" out.
--interviewed by Jacob Dagger |
