Reminds me of a post by Borderland awhile back about an interview with Alfie Kohn, author of “The Myth of Homework” (2006):
http://www.educationnews.org/writers/michael/An_Interview_with_Alfie_Kohn_About_the_Homework_Book.htm

I think you’ve nailed the less-than-honourable reasons for giving homework (poor planning and time management), but let me add one more: to allow parents to goof off (“Dad! Dad! Dad!! Let’s play!” “Aw, I’m, erm, busy. Don’t you have any homework to do?”)

There is 1 other reason for giving homework, and that is as prep for the next class. This is particularly true for subjects where background or prior reading are vital or extremely helpful, e.g. English Lit or Social Studies. Don’t know about Math, tho.

I can not tell you how excited I was reading this post. After much soul searching, I have recently decided to return to school to become a math teacher. In preparation for that, I have been reading everything I can get my hands on concerning education. One book I read entitled “The End of Homework” said pretty much what you did, but when I suggested the “no homework” concept to some teacher friends of mine, they all but laughed me out of the room. The fact that you are successfully removing homework from your classroom gives me renewed hope.

Not with you on this one. I limit homework (and ask students to report back to me how long they spend on assignments), but a little bit of practice on their own helps identify what kids know and what they don’t. Weaker kids come afterschool for extra help or a head start with homework. And I assign 3 pieces: practice, regular, and challenge. Everyone does regular, and one of the others. So the stronger kids get a couple of challenge problems, and the weaker kids get a fistful of easier exercises to build up some proficiency. And since it is easier, they are more likely to do it.

I agree with Jonathan. One hour a day (or two hours every other day) in class seems like hardly enough to master anything. Students must be reading at home for English or history, why would mathematics be different?

This is a tough one. I give homework because I want students to work on math outside of school. I realize, of course, that many don’t do it or that they try to copy. But think of the logic here: We know people will ignore the speed limits. Do we, in turn, decide to do away with them? No, we post them and kinda enforce them. We know every speeder doesn’t get caught. But somewhere between the letter of the law and what people would do without structure, we come to a kind of social compromise on the general norms for driving.

This may be a totally invalid analogy. I haven’t done any research on it and I don’t have a master’s degree. The questions you raise about how homework is used (or misused) and how we value our time versus their time and how we are huge. But there are kids out there in, you know, the “good schools” who do homework every night in addition to getting a lot of good instruction and practice in class. How do students who aren’t getting homework stack up against that?

I get that there are issues and questions about homework you think it’s important to consider. But with this awareness, you also choose not to give any homework. I see those as two different things. Do you do what you do because getting to a workable version of a thoughtful system like Jonathan’s is really hard? Or are there other factors that haven’t come out yet in this discussion? I’m just confused — it seems like you have a very well-considered take on what’s good and what’s not good about homework. What’s the problem then with assigning it in a good way? Would it take away from what you do now to, without changing anything else, give 5-10 practice problems every night that reinforce or recombine what your students did during the day?

One deeper reason for me, underneath wanting students to think about math outside of school, is wanting students to learn that some personal responsibility and some self-direction in their learning is important. Now I know better than to leave huge, critical pieces of insight for them to find (or not find) on their own via homework. But if we teach our kids in high school that they don’t have to do homework as long as the teacher is good, what will happen when they get to college? Do we just say, well, that’s a different game and I hope that you will learn to do homework at some point during your first year of college?

I guess I just don’t buy the reasoning behind “strong math students and hard workers will do it and the struggling students or lazy ones won’t, so therefore don’t assign it”. To return to the speed limit analogy, there actually are a lot of things that could go wrong there too: racial profiling, falsifying radar readings to meet ticket quotas, or unnecessarily restrictive speed limits. We address those problems not by removing all speed limits, but instead by making sure the laws are set and enforced in ways that accord with our ultimate goal of safety. I will also at this point acknowledge the irony of this analogy given my own driving habits.

Thanks for the further explanation. I also think it’s really brave that you’re willing to just put out here what you do and let us talk about it, so thanks for that.

I can assure you that just because they enroll in my classes does not mean that they want to be there. The high correlation between interest and enrollment happens in higher level classes. Calculus, and below (and even some ways above) are classes that are often required by student’s major and are in their eyes unnecessary.

Best,
e

I am so enjoying this site! I crave conversations like this. Conversations that make us reflect and have darn good reasons for what we do!!

My thoughts on the discussion so far:

Homework as teaching responsibility or about learning outside the classroom: I have found that the students who didn’t do homework in fifth grade are the same students who don’t do homework in eighth grade. Their fifth, sixth and seventh years of assigned homework did not teach them personal responsibility. I think it takes a parent at home to teach that. And if you assign homework, the kids who are not motivated intrinsically to do it, and who don’t have a parent at home to help them with the motivation, these are the kids who will be the high school seniors who still aren’t doing homework.

I really don’t see any evidence that assigning homework helps develop responsibility, unless the parents are involved and, if they are involved, they are helping their child develop responsibility with other methods anyway. They don’t need our homework assignments to help them do that.

Homework as practice: There is a quote (from who knows?) that says, “Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes PERMANENT.” So if struggling kids are going home and practicing something they don’t fully understand, there is the distinct possibility that they are making their errors even more entrenched. And that, in turn, means that valuable face-time in class has to be used to find their misconceptions, to “unteach” their errors and set them on the right track.

And on the other side, students who fully understand how to do it, don’t really need to practice it anyway.

By fully understand, I don’t mean they can repeat the method without looking it up. That they’ve memorized a formula. I mean CONCEPTUALLY understand. If they conceptually understand (and we spend our class time getting them to this point) why we invert fractions when we divide, then they don’t really need a lot of practice to make it perfect. That conceptual understanding is now a part of them and when they divide fractions, they know exactly what to do.

I rarely assign homework. I want to see what my students are doing. I want to be there when they ask questions. Only when I know what they know and where they are struggling, can I plan meaningful instruction for the next day.

If I do assign homework it’s after the kids have reached a conceptual understanding and I want them to process the idea, evaluate, and make connections and personal meaning. An example: I ask them to talk with their parents about the concept to see how it occurs in “real life”. Then we start the next day with a rich discussion of what they discovered.

At the beginning of the year, I explained all of these thoughts to the parents at Open House. I saw plenty of nods of agreement, and I have received positive feedback throughout the year. So no parents or administrators have questioned my practices.

Dan, what you describe is that ol’ education catch-22 about services and attention not getting to the folks who need it the most. It’s not a fun place to hang out.

That said, I teach the lowest 7th graders in East San Jose, literally. That puts them in the running for some of the lowest in the state, and I homework the hell out of em, and they get it done. How? It’s always easy, short, predictable, and explicitely tied to what we do in class.

I give numerous small assignments. Five minutes vocab, five minutes spelling, 10 minutes grammar, 10 minutes writing response, and the big one, 30 minutes reading. Of these, the only thing we struggle with is the reading, and that improves as accountability (an extra period to accomplish the reading) is added.

I think homework, and the work ethic it develops, is too important to disregard, and too especially important to the kids who need it.

That said, if you bring your students to proficient without it, that’s impressive as hell. As always, results over process.

There’s a lot of meaty stuff in this discussion, and I’m only chewing on a small, somewhat-left-of-point, chunk of it here.

One thing this highlights for me is the need for much more varied, nuanced approaches to these big questions. It’s part of the problem of the “education” discourse as a whole (and most discourse of any importance, actually): namely, too much generalization.

I’m not blaming anyone … it’s just the nature of the beast (and Dan did ask for perspectives from other disciplines, so that’s a start).

When I hear things like “studies show homework is good / bad,” I think … in which grades? What kind of homework? How much of it? Always? etc.

Common sense tells us bad homework (i.e. busywork) is always bad. Most studies tell us homework in elementary grades does more harm than good. Most studies tell us homework in the middle grades can be effective if it’s intelligently designed and kept minimal. Most studies tell us that homework at the high school level is generally helpful (again, providing the assignments are worthwhile to begin with).

But those are grades, not levels of intellectual / social / emotional development, and not disciplines, and not specific goals within each discipline. These need to be considered, as well.

I guess I’m just calling out, perhaps unnecessarily, the need to think and talk in ways that show we are aware of the particularly and context that informs our discourse and our practice.

Case in point: TMAO says “results over process.” This may be true in math. It’s nearly anti-thetical to a composition class.

Reading, reflection, and writing of any value is going to require “work outside of school” (or a significantly smaller scope to the curriculum) because of the simple limitation of time and because of the importance of process in those tasks.

But even there, the work we’re asking kids to do better really be worth their time.

For me, that’s the crux of Dan’s post. We are using their time–in class and out–whether they can appreciate that fact or not. We should use it well.

I didn’t read every word in these comments, but in my scan of them I didn’t see any mention of the value of having students learn to learn something on their own. I realize I am working with community college students–so therefore older than elementary school kids–but I believe in helping students become more independent learners. Nothing I know of does that better than homework, as long as it is coupled with in-class learning and work and out-of-class support.

I’m a parent who’s really happy to see so many teachers so thoughtfully pondering what’s best for their students. In my public school district, teachers don’t have a lot of individual choice about homework. Even our kindergarteners (who all go to school for a full day) get homework M-Th, in spite of the research that shows it’s either useless or harmful. I despise it — I think my 6-year-old has given school enough of his time during the day. He’s gone 7.5 hours/day, including the bus ride. I think that’s more than enough school time.

In general, even for older kids, I’m a homework minimalist: it had better be infrequent and meaningful when it’s assigned. I would not be happy with an hour of homework for one 7th grade class. What if all teachers gave their 7th graders an hour of homework each night? That’s ridiculous, especially if they’re spending only 50 minutes in each class! If the homework time exceeds class time, we have a problem. (Not to mention that kids work at different paces — for some kids “one hour” of homework can take longer.)

Kids need more time to come home and do the things that are important to them. I honestly don’t think you teach responsibility by compelling kids to do things and then punishing them if they don’t. Carrots and sticks don’t teach responsibility. Kids learn to be responsible when they make real choices and commitments and then honor them.

Having said all that, I think the real issue here isn’t whether homework is good or bad. It is the one-size-fits-all nature of most public (and many private) schools. An entire class of students is covering the same material at the same time and pace, regardless of their ability to do so. The kids who can move faster wait for others to catch up. The kids who need more time — those who supposedly need the homework the most, but who really need more time with the teacher — have to try to keep up and often move to new topics without mastering the current one. The one-size-fits all model is the real problem, not homework itself.

why even have math teachers? why not just have books? the good students will learn from them, the bad students won’t anyway. with good time management, they can practice in 2 hours.

what are you for?

you know, this talk of responsbility, etc. is irrelevant. what is relevant is behavior.

Carrots and sticks DO teach behavior. A 14 yr old is not a perfectly formed adult. They need their behavior modeled, constrained, shaped, and reinforced. To think otherwise is to be unfair to the adolescent.

Assigning homework, rewarding positively those who do it, and negatively those who don’t, reinforces positive behavior.

Practicing what you learned in school also reinforces positive behavior, too. Because the ability to write a proof, or use the angle of cosines is a behavior as well as sitting still is.

Behaviors aren’t learned by deducing them. They are learned by practicing them. Knowing the appropriate time to use the law of cosines vs. deMoivre’s theorem is a learned behavior. you are depriving your students of the opportunity to learn those behaviors to mastery.

You don’t solve the mastery problem by throwing out homework. You solve it by homework AND more teacher time.

Worse, though, is that you’ve abdicated teaching to mastery. You have no way of knowing which of your students could learn–you’ve assumed you already know. You have no way of salvaging an incorrect assumption by thorough student evaluation, either. You expect them to do that themselves. If they could, they wouldn’t need you at all.

My high school calculus teacher spent large portions of our math period going over LAST night’s assigned homework, for those of us (and I include myself) who struggled with it.

More direct instruction up front, and less reteaching later, would have helped immensely. I often got home to do homework in high school about a concept we’d only vaguely covered in class. As an A+ student it was assumed I could “figure it out”. If that were the case, I wouldn’t need a teacher.

Homework does have its purposes, but it isn’t going to teach kids something that they failed to learn through direct instruction, only reinforce what they already got from it. I think it’s very useful for kids with processing speed problems and memory issues (such as the group I now work with) who can’t get through enough practice problems during the class period because their learning disabilities slow them down. Then they get home, and it’s a struggle to remember what they did in class. If homework is not assigned, they return to class the next day barely remembering what we even covered, and very likely have lost much of the hard work that they put in the previous day.

BTW, Dan, you sound like a great teacher. Please move to my district soon.

You asked: But what’s the alternative for educating our heterogeneous population en masse?

Montessori schools do a good job of educating mixed age and ability classes of students. Each child learns at his or her own pace by using self-correcting materials. Montessori schools truly offer individualized education, particularly in reading, writing, and math.

Quick response to e who mentioned that students must be doing HW in English and History. My kids do now and then have HW in both English and history, but it’s project based and not particularly frequent. In math on the other hand, they both have 20-30 problems every single night. So I see thought going into the English and History homework assigned. In math I see tradition.

Lisa

Dan , you have a great conversation going here and it’s good to see multiple perspectives. Let me add my two cents.

Jonathan’s point on repetition makes sense on the surface but misses an important component of drill, and that is feedback. At home, there may be no appropriate feedback, so a student could do a drill incorrectly 15 times, thereby reinforcing the wrong skills. Hal says that students should “learn to learn for themselves”. I agree, but that motivation must be intrinsic not directed from outside. As John Taylor Gatto (author of the 7 Lesson Schoolteacher) said; “to do your homework is a fake responsibility”.

Another issue is that math homework competes with homework from all the other subjects, so students get a potpourri of unrelated assignments. Dan Pinker wrote in Slate Magazine, “Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist. Science has to be taught in a way that knowledge is organized, one hopes permanently, in the minds of students.” Your learning flow in the classroom probably accomplishes more than any homework assignment could possibly do.

You ask, “But what’s the alternative for educating our heterogeneous population en masse? Apprenticeship? Trade school? Nah”. One of the more interesting proposals is from Alvin Toffler. Here are some things he proposes for the school of the future:

Open twenty-four hours a day
Customized educational experience
Kids arrive at different times
Students begin their formalized schooling at different ages
Curriculum is integrated across disciplines
Nonteachers work with teachers
Teachers alternate working in schools and outside

To me, this approach is better than “one-size-fits-all”, which I don’t believe is working.

What I find interesting in our school system (I only speak from knowledge of our local department of education) is how little the curriculum developers, administrators and teachers know about cognitive science. Too often, discussing education is like discussing religion – too many beliefs and not enough facts.

Keep up the good work. I wish my sons had you as a teacher.

Thanks for adding the link. Not sure how I screwed up on the name (not enough coffee, I guess).

There was one good thing about homework when I was in elementary school and high school. It gave me an idea of what the teacher wanted me to learn, but it was studying the matierial that was covered that was helpful. However, if I had too much homework one night, then I would neglect studying that subject later on. I would feel stressed that I had spent so much time on one thing so I woud move on to something else that I was not as sick of seeing. Having huge amounts of homework irritated me more than helped. If I was irritated enough, I would avoid it for as long as possible and then try to do it last minute if only so I could get partial credit. I am not saying that all homework is bad, but I think that if it is important enough to a student to do well, then they are probably going to study, ask questions, pay attention in class, etc. without a huge bunch of homework. Also, as DAN said, students who did not really care would not benefit from the homework anyway because they would not do it. If anything, teachers taking the assignments up for a grade hurt them.

Interesting discussion, much of which I disagree with, but I will make the following comments:

1. Students _can_ learn from homework. I remember many times working through math assigned math problems unable to quite get it, often because I couldn’t remember what was explained or what I did in class. My solution? To figure it out on my own, usually be re-reading the instructional materials in the book, reviewing my (often poorly transcribed) notes, or–as a last resort–asking someone else for help. Sure, if my teacher had been the stellar, surgically precise, and uncompromising instructor that you describe yourself as I probably would have remembered every iota of information and instruction… Anyway, at the very least I learned how to learn on my own, and the self-directed discovery was quite valuable. If I had been in the classroom I probably would have just feigned along with the rest of the class, or else asked for help, simply because its so much easier that way. At home I had no choice but to figure it out (mmm, the stick). In my own teaching I’ve found that students who are forced to figure out some things on their own are better for the experience, as the impact of such discoveries are often stronger than the spoon-fed or even collectively/collaboratively constructed alternatives.

2. I think there’s pedagogical value it the repetitive pattern of schoolwork + homework _partitioned by time/distance_. My previous anecdote implies the value of distance, but time also can be useful in activating and reactivating memory. The farther your get from the original instance, the harder it will be to recall and apply, and so practice recalling and applying at multiple temporal distances seems appropriate for learning.

3. Someone complained about carrot-stick as being inducive of mere compliance. There’s a difference between compliance, discipline, and self-discipline. Compliance may produce discipline, but self-discipline? Can that ever be developed without loving womb of external disciplinary forces (mmm, the stick)? The positive value of self-discipline takes me back to other positive character traits that can be developed through homework, namely self-reliance and independence–both of which I find to be sorely neglected in public (and even private) schools.

I think those partially answers dan’s question, “What is it about homework that I can’t replicate in class?” I daresay the most significant answer to that question is “more time”.

BTW, I love the concept of omitting every instructional practice that does not show resulted, however my caveat would be, if you’ve absolutely proven that its consistently ineffective when conducted using reliable methods. At present I’m not convinced that homework is ineffective; so far any such evaluations of homework appear to be primarily anecdotal, not to mention limited in breadth.

Interesting results on your homework thesis, dan.

What do other studies on homework show? Well, reading assignments of 20 minutes seems to be the only type of homework shown to benefit learners.

Researchers have found that reading 20 minutes every night improves fluency, writing, concepts and vocabulary acquisition, and OVERALL school performance.

We teach students, not parents. Homework is assigned to the student only, not parents. That’s never the intent of homework, is it? A parent working with a child on homework is a completely unintended side effect that should never be taken into consideration when deciding on homework assignments.

That would be “in their kids’ education”. Oops.

Yes. The title sounds highly “diggable.”

But, this shouldn’t make the topic “Homework or Not” and the questions that come from a discussion less salient.

It is certainly of concern to parents (who are tired of the stress and conflict caused by homework), students (who feel overwhelmed and underengaged by homework), and teachers (who hate assigning homework and grading it).

I didn’t realize how awesome a blog you have running here. Really. I’m on it.

I totally agree with your philosophy on homework. I remember being a student and hating homework that was given to me. I often copied it, rushed through with a minimal amount of effort, or sometimes did not do it. I can recall several lessons given by teachers in class that stuck with me to this day but cannot remember a single homework assignment. Real learning comes from a great teacher in a class, not from homework. A teacher can successfully teach a classroom of students with minimal homework, or possibly none at all, if the class operates with ruthless efficiency and the content is engaging.

Now that I am a teacher, my anti-homework philosophy has grown even stronger. I see students copying work or finishing assignments from other classes in my room multiple times a week. Sure, students should do their homework at home but it does not always work that way. Many students have responsibilities or living conditions that make it very difficult to work at home. In addition, some people have posted that students who do not complete homework will be “punished” with a bad grade, but it is these same students who do not do their homework that are unmotivated by poor grades.

The best way to motivate these students is to create a classroom environment that is safe, fun, and highly structured to maximize learning opportunities. I am happy to see other teachers questioning the true nature of homework and looking for the most efficient way to teach students.

I don’t think this idea has been mentioned in the comments, so I’ll share, even though I’m late jumping in.

From years as a tutor, I knew that most of the kids who needed the practice only did homework to “get through it” not generally to practice or understand concepts.

I can’t emphasize enough, as someone who worked with these kids outside of the classroom: the HARDEST thing to do is to tell a student that they need to do more questions when they have “finished” what the teacher assigned. In their mind, they are DONE, even if they couldn’t get through a single one of those questions on their own. This has always been my biggest beef with assigning specific homework questions — it’s seen as the goal itself, not the means to the goal.

So, when I taught, I didn’t want any student to have an arbitrary checklist. I knew from private tutoring that each student would be “done” (as in, well-versed enough to go on) in a different amount of time, with a different number of practice questions. I needed them to understand when and why they were done.

Instead of assigning homework, at the beginning of each class there would be a quiz. Just a short quiz of 2 – 5 BASIC questions covering the bare minimum I’d expect them to have gotten out of the last lesson. Their “homework” was to prepare for the quiz.

For some kids, that would mean a couple of practice questions. For others, it would mean asking me for MORE questions from different sources because they’d done everything in the book but still needed assistance to get through them. I purposely only chose basic questions for the quiz because each kid learns at a different pace, too. And, sometimes it’s only after a few interconnected lessons that things really “click.” But, if they can at least keep up with the basic concepts on a daily level, then there’s time (and hope) for building up to the advanced questions they should expect on a test.

Now, our situation worked well for that because
-we had huge blocks of time for each class, so I could still teach a new lesson, let them work on problems even though the beginning of each period was taken up with assessment
-our schedule was such that students had the same classes every OTHER day, so there was always adequate time to get extra help between classes, or spend 2 nights practicing. I didn’t have to expect “instant comprehension.”

What started to happen was kids would show up early EVERY class, often as much as an hour early, and they would all work on practice problems together (and I’d usually be there, and willing to help). Our schedule meant that math was either first thing in the morning, or right after lunch, so often kids just ate their lunch in the math room working on problems. I found that most students did MORE work than they would have had they just been assigned homework questions, and also that their focus was very different: they strove to be able to do the questions, not just get through them.

The other advantage is they had feedback every single class as to whether they had put enough time/effort in to understanding the last class’ material. Teacher and student both had a very clear picture of how ready each individual was to move on because of the constant assessment. And, with so many quizzes, each one was worth such a small portion of their grade that they could have a bad day and it wouldn’t significantly affect their over all mark.

I don’t buy the “homework is practice in responsibility” argument because it mischaracterizes the goal. The goal is to be able to do, not to check off which questions you have done. Kids need more help/practice/training with being self-assessors, and that’s what I was trying to do with my students. That’s what they would face in the next year or two at university, where self-knowledge is key to academic survival.

So, hats off to no homework, but for helping students to become academically independent so that they can make good, sound decisions for themselves about how to use their time outside of class!

I teach high school math to seniors in a suburban Cincinnati school. The class is for students who plan on furthering their education after high school but are not great math students. I assign homework and post the solutions online for the students to use to check their work. I believe a great deal of learning goes on when students are given the opportunity to find their own mistakes and correct them or help others correct their mistakes. We all learn best by teaching others and so I have my students try to help each other as much as possible. They can look at their homework while taking the weekly quiz so the better they do on their homework and the more they show their work the better they do on the quiz which is worth more points. At the end of a unit I give them 2 assessments. One is a traditional test which, if they do poorly, they can retake after correcting their first test. The other is a project based assesment where they must demonstrate their knowledge of the concepts taught through some sort of performance task. There are still some students who don’t do their homework but the ones who truly buy into the system do very well in my class as well as in college after they graduate. I have had many students come back after a few years and tell me they never would have made it through college algebra without my class and that makes it all worthwhile.

I am a 5th grader with the every day homework of 2 hours and when I’m sick it has taken me 3 extra days to finsh missing work. I do not understand why the give us so much homework to have it done in so little tim!!!!!!!! we are punished if we don’t do our homework. the problem I have is Y have so much homework I lose trak of all my other homework! so I hope they will litten up on homework soon!

@Ann: most of the people who write on this website are teachers, and even though I am not one, I am a parent of four children. Let me offer you this advice:

Many times in your life, someone will require you to do something you have a hard time doing. Unfortunately, most of the time, you will still have to finish the task even if you don’t understand why or don’t agree that you should have to do it. You are not alone in finding this frustrating and difficult.

Still, you should do your best to complete the task anyway. There is a great lesson in finishing assignments not just when you want to but also when you are required to.

While you are doing the work, remember two things: 1) someday you will be older, and you will be the one making decisions about what other people should do, and 2) you will find lots of people in the world who are like the teachers on this website, people who are trying to do things differently because they think they can do those things better! The day you find those people will be the day you know all the hard work you are doing now was worth it.

Best wishes,

Stephen

I forgot to put in my response – Thing 4

Apparently, there’s no need to assign homework if other teachers can use your blog as their homework assignment.

There is no irony in education.

Suppose that the amount of work that a student need to do to understand a math concept is a constant. Reducing the amount of homework means more work at school. Could you please tell me how to boost efficiency at class?

If I were to use the no homework approach the reason would be that my theory is that it would improve learning for many students and not do any harm to those who would comply. In my mind, student choice is often confused with compliance to teacher direction. If the goal of school is compliance to authority then penalties for choosing not to practice make sense.

On the other hand, if the issue is “choice” then practice should be a choice without a penalty–if the benefit of practice is clear–for example, improved learning–the students would choose to practice without coercion. I don’t believe that not assigning homework restricts students from making a choice to practice at home–it just doesn’t penalize students for whatever reason are unable to do so.

Here’s an analogy: improved teaching benefits from professional development within the workplace. As professionals, teachers should choose–without any additional pay–to participate in regular improvement of practice (Since many teachers only work 7 hour days–1 hour extra daily sounds a reasonable requirement for professional development.) There’s little doubt that this sort of choice would improve the quality of teaching–after all practice makes perfect. To carry the analogy a little further into the ridiculous, let’s say that teachers who choose not to improve would be faced with failure (firing)–I’m sure we wouldn’t hear any whining.

(I may be guilty of exaggerating one side of an argument to make a point–apologies if it seems that way.)

I totally agree with you in regards to assigning homework. I teach in a Title l school where the students are on their own at home most of the time. They rarely complete the homework if they need help while doing it there is no one there to help. Only my students that earn A’s and B’s consistently do their homework and like you say they don’t really need it.

As a parent and a teacher, I think homework is important–not so much that students should ever have to go to their parents.
I have taught college courses, high school courses, and middle school courses. Students who are hoping to advance to college will need to develop independent learning and time management skills. They will have to learn to learn outside the classroom.

Meanwhile, I discourage parental help–I know the parents can pass middle school, high school and often college courses; the question is, can the kids? Without homework, some kids cruise through the course discussions and exercises, believing that they understand the material and then BAM! the test hits them with surprising results/

Homework in skills/practice is a small way of preparing students for the tests–there should not be an overwhelming amount, but enough so that they can realistically assess their progress before there is anything significant on the gradebook.

Reading the literature can sometimes be done in class, but often needs to be done at home. Students read at different rates and it is an inefficient use of classtime to use all of it reading when some of it needs to be used on writing skills development and the discussion of literature.

While I agree homework should never be a substitute for teacher planning, I do believe it has its place.

Practice is important. You give homework so that students can practice the skill they’re learning. What skill doesn’t need to be practiced? Music? Art? Writing? Reading? Mathematics? Drama? Athletics? They all need practice. No matter how organized you are, students need the opportunity to build their own muscle in an area. A master class is a way to point practice, not in lieu of doing your own work.

My feeling is that if the student knows the material backwards and forwards and can gain nothing from practice, then you’re not teaching enough. If your classes are so hetereogeneous that you have students who are completely wasting their time in class then the problem isn’t homework, the problem is a flawed system that puts too great a range of ability and preparedness in one place. In that case, not giving work to those who are already not being challenged in class is just compounding the injustice.

I really like what you have to say Dan. Like many edu articles I read, I think your ideas are sound. Now I want to see exactly how your class unfolds – a step by step lesson plan that shows how you make sure each moment is used most effectively – and then I want to see how you could do it in the 50 minute periods I have in my school. Would you be willing to share? Notes are great, but a veido would be amazing.

Dan- That sounds great. Keep me posted.

I am a teacher with almost 30 years to my credit. I’ve changed my views about homework dramatically. Homework, given for the right reasons and in a fair amount, is justified. However, loading students down with enormous amounts of work outside of school is counterproductive and just plain wrong! Do we as adults come home from work and say to ourselves, “Oh, I can’t wait to think, think, think, work, work, work, some more!” The human as well as the human brain deserves some rest. Now, having said that, if we could somehow get our students in “ready to learn mode” when they walk in the door, this discussion would be moot. Unfortunately, we get our students, warts and all. Much time is wasted with discipline issues.

For several years now I have assigned homework 3-4 nights a week for the students. I have developed a partern 3 questions about what we did that day and 3 questions about something in the past or something we will do in the future. I have found the previewing to be extremely helpfull in exposing simple skill sets that might be needed for new concepts. Example linear equations in standard form and calculating the intercepts from that form. I write instructions how to work each set of problems. Now for the challenging part getting them to complete the homework. My class is divided into teams they compete for rewards at the end of certain time periods. They never know when the homework will be for a grade or for team points. This motivates them.

I’m finishing my fourth year of teaching and am constantly toying with the idea of doing away with homework. One of the issues I run into is not having the instructional time to get everything done so somethings have to go home. In essence, I hope for the best on those things, knowing that many students won’t complete them or will cheat.

I also struggle with the question of preparing students for their future jobs. Many jobs require students to be self directed and to take work home. By excusing them from the ritual of homework, do we cripple them in the future?

Do what you have to do to teach/survive/feel you’re making a difference. No one “religion” fits all. Keep is simple simon.

I meant to write,” Keep it simple Simon!”
I try to give them what they need: (I teach HS)

No w.end HW- need time to play but all previous week work is due by Mon. so the one’s who didn’t do it have w.end HW.

Honors- higher expectations on products etc Also c.prep below.
C.Prep – outside class work: studying for quizzes/tests, the occasional research topic, and reading assignments related to class work.
Non c. prep – all in class work, when absent, class work becomes HW

I try to minimize cheating by not handing back assignments until after the due date and not giving assignments that are easily copied. If they do, I speak to the individuals, show them a copy of the state university policy on plagiarism, and explain to them they have to become independent workers, looking to friends for help but doing their own work.
I do the same when they ask for help- guide to the answers rather than give.
I ask the athletes if they tell others they got the winning goal etc. if their teams wins and point out that cheating is the same as lying so if they wouldn’t lie about their performance, don’t cheat.

All of this works well for me.