Reconsidering Homework

What Teachers should Know about Homework

by Harvey Craft

The recent push for Common Core is, I believe, a good idea that has one major omission: even if teachers can agree on exactly what to teach, it will make little difference if they don't know how to teach. Inconsistencies litter the teaching profession and while there may be thousands of ways to teach, many of them are wrong. Teaching doesn't happen with the same consistency that doctors apply in treating specific diseases. That can be a problem.

After a century of assigning homework, there is still much disagreement on its effectiveness as a teaching tool. Specifically, there are three main issues: (1) What is does a "good" homework assignment look like? (2) Why is homework necessary? (3) What is the reason for grading homework?

Breaking these three issues down, there are at least fourteen reasons many teachers and administrators either discourage its use or limit its use. The reader may think that homework is necessary to the learning process, but I've yet to see conclusive evidence.

Fourteen Reasons to Reconsider Homework 

Teachers give homework primarily because that's what teachers do – they learned to give homework when they were students.They had homework and assumed their teachers knew what they were doing. They continued the practice when they became teachers. Perhaps times have changed, but during my formal education as a teacher and administrator, I cannot remember any discussion about homework, and I have attended four different colleges and universities.

My ideas about homework are based on experience and research. I believe homework is a poor instructional tool because:

(1) it is easy to cheat. Copying homework is common and easy.

Copying homework is common.

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

(3) The conditions at home do not equally favor completion of homework.

(4) A main reason teachers give for assigning homework is to "develop responsibility," but that is not supported by research. Responsible students are more likely to do homework, but they do homework because they are responsible; they don't become responsible by doing homework. 

(5) Teachers tend to assign too much homework to the beginning learners even though that is when it is least useful according to research.

(6) 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. I am still surprised at the number of teachers who don't know the difference between formative assessment and summative assessment.

(7) 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.

(8) Students who don't do homework tend to not do it despite bad grades – therefore we are using a teaching method with them even though we KNOW they will always fail it. 

(9) Stressing grades for 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. Also, learning should be the preferred reason for attending school. We talk too much about grades.

(10) The 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 will use.

(11) Often, undone homework is a "personal" issue with teacher and they get angry because they feel that students are disobeying interfering 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.

Some parents can help with
homework, but many cannot
or just don't.

(13) if homework is linked to standards-to-be-assessed, then students will learn that homework raises grades on summative assessments (tests, quizzes). That sends a message that doing or not doing homework affects their grades on tests and quizzes and there is no need to grade it – test grades are sufficient. More teachers should make this connection. After all, if homework is given it should address things that will be tested.

(14) Homework is maximally effective when graded by teachers and corrections are made. This can be very time consuming and takes valuable time away from more worthwhile instructional preparation.

Homework is one of those ideas in education that is taken for granted since it became fashionable in the late 50's when Russia launched Sputnik. If homework was meant to improve learning as measured by standardized tests, it hasn't.