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Homework: Myth or Burden?
A new report contradicts some media claims that today's students are swamped by after-school studies. It found that kids average about 20 minutes a day hitting the books at home and that many do no homework at all.
Between dance classes, breaks to jump on the back yard trampoline and telephone calls from friends, evenings can get a little hectic at the Mosley home just west of Mobile.
But 10-year-old Katie, 13-year-old Jenna and 16-year-old Anna know that homework is the priority.
Between the interruptions, the girls spend about 45 minutes each night with their after-school studies, according to their mom, Darlene Mosley. Ironically, Katie, the youngest, usually has the most to do.
Their homework load might seem typical for American school pupils. But it is not, according to a new report by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. That study argues that children today do not toil with the hours upon hours of homework often portrayed in the media.
A Time magazine cover story in 1999 stated that kids had more homework than ever before. "The sheer quantity of nightly homework and the difficulty of the assignments can turn ordinary weeknights into four-hour library research excursions, leave kids in tears and parents with migraines and generally transform the placid refuge of home life into a tense war zone," the article stated.
Newsweek and People have published similar stories.
But according to the Brown Center study, which analyzed the most recent numbers available, students in kindergarten through 12th grade will spend 20 minutes a day on homework, on average. They will spend far more time -- 13.5 hours a week -- in front of the television set.
The report, released last month, says the homework load hasn't changed much since the 1980s.
"Some nights I feel like I have too much homework, but most nights it's fine," Katie said one night last week as she sat at an antique school desk next to a foosball table in the family's den. That night, she wrote out the definitions to all of her spelling words -- which included "burglar" and "tractor" -- to prepare for her weekly test.
Katie is something of a perfectionist. The worst grade she has ever received on her report card was a B in spelling in the third grade. The Collier Elementary School student said she doesn't want to make another B, and won't go to sleep until her homework is complete and correct. That's usually around 9 p.m.
Jenna, a Causey Middle School eighth-grader whom her mother describes as the "social butterfly" of the family, gets her homework done fast so she can move on to other things -- especially messaging her friends on the family's computer. Most days, she gets a head start on her assignments during her afternoon homeroom class.
Science gives her the most trouble. With prodding from her mother, she spent extra time Thursday studying a physics chapter at a desk in her room.
Anna, a junior at Baker High School, studies quietly. Most of her homework is reading for her Advanced Placement English class, and sometimes her most productive reading time is around 10 p.m. in her bedroom just before she goes to sleep. Anna just finished "The Great Gatsby," reading at least 20 pages each night for almost two weeks.
Darlene Mosley, a special education teacher at Baker, said she encourages her daughters to take breaks from homework, if only to have a snack or play with their 5-month-old terrier, Bailey.
"They can finish one subject's homework, and then it's important to get up and get the blood flowing again," she said. "I don't think we waste any time around here."
Fifty percent of the students analyzed for the Brown Center report said they didn't do any homework at all, bringing the overall average down. Eighty-three percent of 9-year-olds, 66 percent of 13-year-olds and 65 percent of 17-year-olds did less than an hour of homework daily, according to the report.
"I can't tell you just how many children here just don't do their homework," said Michelle Adams, principal at Mobile's Woodcock Elementary School. "Unfortunately, it's a lot."
Fewer children were doing homework in 1997 than in 1981, according to the report.
American school children ranked next-to-last in a survey of 23 countries the amount of homework they performed. Students in France, Italy, Russia and South Africa did twice as much homework, according to the Third International Math and Science Study, which is quoted in the Brown Center report.
Only 33 percent of college-bound seniors in the United States spent more than five hours per week studying in 2002. High school seniors spent more time socializing, working after-school jobs or participating in sports than doing homework, according to the report.
Eighteen-year-old Terrell McDuffie of Mobile's Davidson High School, said the Brown Center study seems accurate when it comes to him and most of his friends. Last year, McDuffie said, he didn't do much homework at all and made Ds on his report card. This year, he's doing better, making Bs and Cs by doing 20 to 30 minutes of homework daily.
He said he'll probably never do more homework, unless he goes to college one day.
Davidson honor student Alesia Brown, meanwhile, said she's lucky if she finishes her homework, which she starts as soon as she gets home from school, by 10 p.m.
"I'd rather spend five hours or more doing homework and learning something than not doing it and not learning at all," she said.
Several studies have shown that the benefits of homework to elementary students cannot be measured, because the amount a child studies does not necessarily affect test scores at such a young age. But, according to a study at the University of California, San Diego, students who do an extra 30 minutes of math homework every night from the seventh- through 11th-grades are two grade levels ahead of their counterparts.
Darlene Mosley said it is the homework ethic instilled at Collier Elementary -- which Katie is experiencing now -- that has helped Jenna and Anna excel in middle and high school.
"From kindergarten on, they know exactly what they have to do," she said.
Elizabeth Hohn, secondary curriculum coordinator with the 65,000-student Mobile County Public School System, said a general rule of thumb is that children should have 10 minutes of homework per grade level, meaning third-graders should have 30 minutes and sixth-graders 60 minutes.
There are no written guidelines to govern how much or what kind of homework that Mobile County teachers should give, Hohn said.
Generally, homework should reinforce what children have learned in class that day. It should not require the students to learn new material on their own, she said.
Adams said she encourages her teachers at Woodcock Elementary to give math and reading homework every night. They should never assign more than 30-minutes' worth for kindergartners through second-graders or an hour's worth for third- through fifth-graders, she said.
"Homework should not be something to prove to parents that we did something during the day, and it should not be busy work," Adams said. "It should not be excessive."
Most of the time, she said, it's just as effective to give students four math problems as it is 10.
"Homework is used to assess the depth of understanding," Adams said. "The next day, a teacher should go over it and ask questions. If the student hasn't done it, it's either because they're lazy or because they didn't understand it."
Communication between teachers and parents is important, especially by the time students enter middle school, where they first change classes and teachers several times a day, said Monte Tatom, principal at Semmes Middle School.
There, teachers work in teams and go over what they are doing in class, Tatom said. That way, a science teacher knows not to assign a major project the same week that a long English paper is due.
Students are given calendars at the beginning of the year for writing down their assignments. Teachers initial the notebooks daily, so parents know what is expected of their children.
"My sixth-graders use the calendars religiously, but by the eighth grade they're not using them as much, because they're already in the habit of doing their homework," Tatom said.
He said he asks his teachers to give no more than 15 to 20 minutes of homework in each subject per day, so the students are not overloaded.
By the time students reach high school, gaps occur between the honor students and those who don't do any work at all, Hohn said.
"A senior should have more homework than a freshman, though a senior in regular classes may have the same amount as a ninth-grader in advanced classes," Hohn said. "It's hard to nail down."
In addition, as students get older, many become involved in extracurricular activities that can take up even more time than homework.
In the Mosley house, all three girls participate in student government, the two older girls are cheerleaders and all three take dance lessons. Anna, the oldest, also teaches dance and often drives her younger sisters to and from class.
"I have no complaints about the amount of homework being done by any of my children," Darlene Mosley said. "We're at a real comfortable point. Their grades are great, and they still have plenty of time to do extracurricular activities."
— Rena Havner
The Homework Myth
Mobile Register
2003-11-02
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/1067768258195650.xml
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