Homework Is a Tool for Long-Term Success.

PositionSTUDENTS

Are U.S. students assigned too much homework or not enough? On average, high school students report spending less than an hour a day on homework, and only 42% say they do so five days per week. In an article for Education Next, Janine Bempechat, clinical professor of human development at Boston (Mass.) University, contends that, rather than being a burden, developmentally appropriate homework plays a critical role in the formation of positive learning beliefs and behaviors. Furthermore, for the 21% of students who live in poverty--nearly 11,-000,000 children ages five to 17--high-quality homework can help narrow the achievement gap.

Though most research on the homework-achievement connection is correlational, researchers find that, in middle and high school, homework completion is strongly and positively associated with high academic achievement, although findings at the elementary-school level are mixed.

Beyond academic achievement, however, homework can prepare children to confront increasingly complex tasks, develop resilience in the face of difficulty, and learn to embrace challenges.

Bempechat reports that homework is most advantageous when:

It is assigned in proportion to grade level. Harris M. Cooper, professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and a leading researcher on homework, proposes that daily homework be limited to 10 minutes per grade level with a maximum of two and one-half hours for high-schoolers.

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