Homework is notoriously known as a burden to students that takes time away from doing the things that they enjoy doing. As students get older the value of the homework assignments decreases dramatically, while the quantity of these assignments increases exponentially. Instead of helping students to learn and retain the material they are being taught, these assignments turn into busy work, offering no benefit to the student. But still, students are expected to complete hours of homework in addition to maintaining a long list of extra curriculars so that they can be competitive in college applications. Unrealistic expectations such as these make succeeding in school a near impossible task for students in an increasingly competitive academic. These practices beg the question: why assign the work if it is not going to help the student? How can educators work to create assignments that will be of the most use to students, while not requiring hours of work? Homework assignments today reflect outdated outlooks on the value of such assignments and the pressure students experience both in and out of school: their purpose, to review and to aid the process of learning, is rarely achieved, and for students to truly benefit teachers need to construct assignments that ensure students will master the material in an efficient manner.

A common belief is that the more time a student invests into his education, the better he will do in school; however, due to other time-consuming factors contributing to a student’s success, succeeding in school is not as simple as it is made out to be. On average, students are supposed to be assigned ten minutes of homework per grade level each night, but a study done by The American Journal of Family Therapy found that students receive nearly three times this recommended amount (Wallace). On top of this, college admissions become more competitive each year which forces students to take on more clubs and activities, and thus create a greater time commitment that must compete with time spent on homework. Too much homework and large time commitments to extra curriculars makes success for students nearly impossible. In addition, those students who do perform well and attend competitive schools are placed under an additional amount of stress to maintain their high achievements. Denise Pope conducted a study which analyzed the negative effects homework had specifically on students from these competitive communities. Much like similar studies with more diverse demographics found, high amounts of homework have an overwhelming number of negative impacts on student’s lives; however, Pope responds to these results saying, “The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being” (Pope). This conclusion calls into question whether the reward of an advantage in college applications if worth the risk of overwhelming students with such large amounts of work. 

While students play the largest role in determining their success in school, it has become clear that the student’s parents can also heavily influence their child’s success. In a study done by J. Bempechat, she analyzed the ways in which parents play a role in affecting their child’s motivation to succeed in school. The study found that when parents were actively involved in their child’s schoolwork, meaning they did things like helped with homework, students were more likely to have a greater drive to do well in school (Bempechat). In contrast, parents who are not as involved in their student’s education typically had students who were unwilling to try in school because they believed they would not succeed. Overall, the amount of time parents were willing to devote to helping their child, the greater the likelihood that their child could be successful. 

While updating the practice of assigning and grading homework would help students, doing this would require an immense amount of time, time that teachers do not have. Donald Snead and Kathleen Burris conducted a study in which they surveyed middle school teachers to gain first hand opinions on their beliefs surrounding assigning homework, creating homework assignments, and grading homework. The survey found that when homework assignments were specifically tailored to each student, or at least to a specific need of a group of students, these assignments yielded more effective learning and eventually better performance on assessments. However, creating such assignments requires a large amount of time, and the teachers that partook in this study did not have this luxury. In addition, most teachers in this study used traditional homework assignments and grading practices and they reported no issues with these practices. Moreover, abolishing homework entirely would award both students and teachers with more time for other activities, but in doing this overall work and learning in the classroom would suffer. As Diane Ravitch claims, substantial assignments such as reading a book or writing an essay take large amounts of time, and it is not possible to complete these types of assignments using only class time (Ravitch). If a teacher were to assign a book, for example, that could only be read during class time, as opposed to assigning it as homework, this would take time away from class discussions or other activities that would help students better understand the text. While the traditional method of homework may not be as efficient as it could be, it is less time consuming for teachers to create and grade, and it allows for class time to be used to learn new material or reexplain previous material. 

A student’s education, at all levels, is cumulative, it builds upon itself, and as it builds it increases in difficulty. Students start by learning very basic material, the ABCs and how to count, and as the student progresses this material becomes more complex and evolves into writing sentences and paragraphs and computing advanced math problems; however, if a student cannot display full mastery of the material, like getting a perfect score on an assessment, that student becomes at risk for developing gaps in his understanding of the material and falling behind as the material gets harder because the teacher must continue to progress through their curriculum. As Sal Khan describes, educating students should be similar to building a house in that a house cannot be constructed unless the foundation is complete, and first and second floors of the house cannot be added until the previous level is finished (Khan). A finished level is the equivalent of a student having full mastery and understanding of the material, whereas an unfinished level is like a student who did not receive a perfect score on a test and thus did not master the material. The only difference is that even if a student does not show mastery the teacher still moves forward with the curriculum, ignoring the concepts students do not understand. The issue with this analogy is that teachers, in most cases, do not have the time or resources to check that every student is proficient in the material, so they must continue with the curriculum with the hope that the student is able to fill in the gaps himself. 

Education is constantly evolving, from what is being taught in schools to developing new and innovative ways to teach, but while some areas are changing too fast to measure, others are left unchanged. The most prominent part of education that needs to be reformed is homework. Students, today, face greater pressures than ever before to perform at an extremely high level. The greatest of these pressures is the pressure to be accepted into a top college, but in order to do this students must have exceptional grades and a long list of extracurricular activities. Getting good grades requires a large time commitment to homework and studying, but so does being an active member of a variety of clubs and activities. Combined with the time students must spend doing other things such as sleeping or spending time with friends and family, something has to be sacrificed so that the necessary amount of time can be devoted to something else. In most cases, homework is what suffers the most, whether it be total time spent on homework or effort put into completing the homework. In turn, the quality of the student’s learning is significantly lowered. While homework poses a great issue to the education system, it has become too valuable and too commonly used to be abolished all at once. The solution to this problem is for educators to devote the time to modifying these assignments so that students can spend the least amount of time as possible completing the assignment, while reviewing the most material in a way that enables the student to learn as much as possible. Doing so will require a large amount of time on the part of the teachers, but it will, in turn, greatly benefit the students which should be the main priority of any education system. This will allow students the time to participate in extracurriculars to make them competitive college applicants without sacrificing their overall education.
