Homework is dying
Many teachers are phasing it out. Is it the right move?
Originally published in the Moultrie News.
My son’s school no longer requires summer work and during the year he rarely has any homework. Are schools phasing it out?
Increasingly, schools lack the will to do what it takes to truly advance student learning (an exception is college-level high school classes). If learning were still the priority, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because common sense says you can’t master course content without consistent personal practice.
When parents and students complain about having homework, they often cite purposeless assignments, overly complicated projects or digital busywork. And they’re right. There’s a lot of bad homework out there. But the existence of bad homework doesn’t mean the answer is no homework. It means we get smart and assign homework that’s efficient and valuable.
Yet, despite declining achievement among American students, many educators are dumping homework rather than improving it.
As usual, teachers are behind the times. Eliminating homework might have made sense 30 years ago, when kids raced home to play in the backyard with family and friends. But today’s students mostly just scroll social media or play video games with strangers. Data shows that kids ages 8-12 average around 5.5 hours of daily screen time for non-school-related activities. For teens ages 13-18, it’s about 8 hours. Even bad homework would be a better use of time than that.
Recently, I asked a group of English teachers about their homework policies. Most said they rarely assign it anymore, offering three reasons: “The kids won’t do it,” “They don’t need it,” or “They have time to finish it in class.”
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
Kids will do homework if they’re held accountable for it. If your strategy to get them to read Chapter 12 depends on their love of literature, they won’t. If it’s followed by a quiz, they will. Most students respond to structure and expectations.
That’s good because kids absolutely do need homework. You don’t learn history or vocabulary or math without repetition and review. Athletes practice outside of games. Musicians rehearse outside of lessons. Students should be no different.
As for teachers who regularly let students use class time to complete homework, they’re shortchanging you and your child. Teachers are paid to teach — to challenge and guide kids through something new — not supervise homework hall. Teachers who routinely teach for 20 minutes and use the rest of the period as “free time” aren’t educators; they’re frauds contributing to academic decline.
That said, homework can only be a vital part of education if it’s relevant, and here there is some work to do.
Like what? Trim the fat: Don’t assign 50 problems when 10 will do. Make it more efficient: Don’t use 10-page packets to teach a single simple concept. Cut work that doesn’t move the needle: Don’t make students annotate a chapter when reading it is sufficient. And scale back the app-based workload: Kids already spend too much time online — why add more?
Thus, homework is flawed, but fixable. One proven approach that would immediately improve it is the “ten-minute rule”: ten minutes of homework per grade level, per night. This helps ensure kids aren’t overwhelmed and assignments are focused.
As for summer work, I’m more sympathetic to concerns. But if kids are going to spend most of their vacation locked inside with screens, they’d be better off reading books. Taking away that opportunity — when schools know full well most kids won’t be reading anything of value on their own — is a tragic mistake.
If your first-time surgeon told you before your operation that he never did any out-of-class studying or homework in medical school, would it make you more or less nervous? With expectations dropping and AI doing most of what little work remains, such a dystopian future is on the horizon.
So here’s my homework assignment for parents, educators, and policymakers alike, and it’s due ASAP: Figure this out and fix it fast before Gen Alpha becomes the least enlightened generation in the history of public education.
Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance. To submit a question, order his books, or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com.
In your spare time, let’s do a Podcast together about education trends, literacy, and what works in education. These articles are like shedding light in dark places most educators won’t go.
Jody. You need to be our superintendent of education. I agree with everything that you write and I’m betting so do most teachers! Thank you for educating us all!