Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes

Education Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes April 28, 20265:00 AM ET From Hechinger Report By Ariel Gilreath Federal data suggests that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining. Stanislaw Pytel/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Stanislaw Pytel/Getty Images A few days into the new semester this January, the LaSalle Parish school district in rural Louisiana made a pronouncement: No more homework. Since then, none of the 2,500 students in this district — from the youngest learners up through high school seniors — have been required to do schoolwork at home. Parents can request practice problems if they'd like, Superintendent Jonathan Garrett said, but that work won't be mandatory or graded. Homework assignments, it turned out, were among the biggest sources of complaints Garrett had heard from parents and students over the years. "When there was a negative feeling about school, it usually stemmed from what kids are bringing home, the frustrations they feel completing that, and that parents and guardians feel trying to help them complete it," he said in an interview. Sponsor Message Education Inflation is sucking the life out of teacher pay raises, report says Beyond that, Garrett said the move was driven by concerns – shared by many educators – that much of the homework students are assigned – especially in math – is needlessly repetitive, takes too long to complete and hasn't adapted to the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence. The response to Garrett's announcement was swift — and overwhelmingly positive. The message is the district's most "liked" post on Facebook by far this year, with hundreds of shares — many of them by parents from neighboring parishes asking how they could get their own schools on board. The scope of the district's no-homework guidance is new, but it follows a trend that educators and researchers have been noticing for years: More teachers are moving away from homework. Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade. Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated. Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later. Sponsor Message Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed. More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study. "The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control," and that's what happens during the school day, Superintendent…

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