Fourteen Considerations for Homework

What’s wrong with Homework – Quick and Dirty

by Harvey Craft

OK, as teachers, time is precious. Let’s cut to the chase. If you have doubts about homework and need to bolster your case against it, I have listed fourteen reasons below. If you have been a proponent of homework for years and need grounds to change then the same fourteen reasons apply. This short read that will validate what you do or criticize what you do – it depends on what you do. I would advise that you do additional research as time allows to find support for these brief rationales. I’ll provide links at the end.

Teachers give homework primarily because that's what teachers do; they learned to give homework when they were students. But if one thinks about it, homework is a poor instructional tool because:

(1) It is easy to cheat on homework.

(2) Some students have parents who will oversee the homework; some have parents who don't care.

(3) Conditions at home do not equally favor completion of homework for all students.

(4) A main reason teachers give for assigning homework is to "develop responsibility," but that’s not supported by research.

(5) Teachers tend to assign too much homework to beginning learners even though that is where it is least useful – supported by research.

(6) Teachers often sign too much homework without regard for family time for recreation.

(7) Homework is a "formative assessment," meaning that it is a type of informal assessment given before students have mastered a standard, and it is not best practice to grade things before they are mastered – that's what tests and quizzes are for.

(8) No student should fail because of low homework grades, especially if his tests and quizzes indicate that he has learned the material, but that can happen if homework is graded;

(9) Students who don't do homework tend to not do it despite bad grades. It is ethically questionable to use a teaching method when we know a student will fail.

(10) Stressing grades as a reason to do homework sends a message that school is about grades and we know that students (when taught well) don't need grades to learn. School is about learning.

(10) Application of homework as a teaching method is highly inconsistent across the nation and we need to move toward finding consistently effective methods that everyone can agree on.

(11) Often, undone homework is a "personal" issue with teacher and they get angry because they feel that students are disobeying and it interferes with student/teacher relationships;

(12) Homework doesn't have to be graded to keep parents informed.  Send a note home or give them a phone call.

(13) If homework is linked to standards-to-be-assessed, then students will learn that homework raises grades on summative assessments (tests, quizzes), then doing or not doing homework affects their grades on tests and quizzes and there is no need to grade it. Test grades are, therefore, also homework grades.

(14) Grading homework often isn’t really grading; often it consists of a check-off method indicating that the assignment is done, partly done, or not done. These checks are magically changed into some kind of subjectively obtained number of questionable accuracy and no feedback about correctness.

More:

The Homework Myth, Alfie Kohn

Homework: An Unnecessary Evil?  Alfie Kohn

Issues Concerning Homework,  Molly Sadler

Why gifted kids don’t want to do their homework, Dr. Barbara Klein

Common Sense and Homework, Harvey Craft