There have been two significant pushes for school improvement during the second half of the 20th Century. One, Sputnik in 1957, and the other was the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. Both events exposed the ranking of the United States compared to other countries. How do we provide more enrichment without extending the school day? Homework.
Researchers Maltese, Tai, and Fan set out to determine if there is an association between homework and achievement in high school mathematics and science courses. Data collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) for the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) and for the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS) contains data on the amount of time spent on assignments and appropriate achievement measures.
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In an attempt to produce more reliable results, researchers looked at student transcripts and eliminated student data if they were enrolled in more than one math or science course. To control for oversampling (minority groups), weights were applied during the statistical analysis that lead to unbiased estimates for the parameters. Lastly, because the study only analyzed 10th grade students in math or science courses, outcomes/results can only be applied to those groups.
Maltese, Tai, and Fan found a lack of a consistent significant relationship between the time spent on homework and the final course grades. However, they did find a relationship between time spent on homework and scores on standardized tests. The researchers noted that students who spent more than 120 minutes on math homework had similar SAT scores as students who reported spending less than 30 minutes on homework each day. The optimum SAT results were from students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes on homework each
Parents have been vocal for some time about their young child coming home with homework after spending a solid eight hours in class. Kids and adults alike are frustrated with the push of academic expectancy and minuscule creativity. The
One more reason why American students should receive less homework is that students who have a lot of homework, tend to get overwhelmed and they won 't even attempt to complete their work. Anne Michaud of Newsday makes an argument by saying, “Cutting back on homework can make the difference in whether some students even attempt the assignment” (84). This quote shows that assigning less homework can be a major factor to if the students make an attempt to complete the homework. Students can get very overwhelmed when facing endless homework and some of these students might not even attempt to complete the homework because there is too much. Cutting back on homework will make students less overwhelmed and more motivated to complete the homework.
Over recent years, the debate has gotten more attention as to whether students should have homework as homework has seemed to increase. Students having homework does not benefit them in their academic skills and should be abolished. In countries like Japan and Denmark, the students don’t have much homework, but exceed the United States on international tests. A lot of tests have proven that homework does not help improve a student’s performance of skills.
Globally, as many as 41% students spend 17 hours each week for doing college homework assignments. Another study, which compared the academic pressure among high school students and college students, said that unlike high school, students need to learn most of the syllabus outside the class to crack the semesters. Colleges or universities demand students to spend almost 8 hours in the class and attending lectures. Reports are that they are simultaneously assigned with academic assignments to test their expertise over the program they have selected. These homework assignments range from many types, and one cannot flunk one such paper; because it can influence their overall grade.
“Homework has been a part of students’ lives for so long that the idea of not doing it can seem incredible, surreal, or even impossible. But if [people] stop to think about it, the truth is that homework is not necessary” (Mathprepa). Seeing that there are enough school hours in one day, students are puzzled on why homework is called for. In this case,
Oftentimes, teachers give out loads of homework that are not essential to student learning. Some people believe that homework teaches students discipline by teaching them time management. This study shows quite the contrary, writing “[e]xcessive amounts of homework [...] teach students to take shortcuts, rather than instill in them discipline and time-management skills” (“Is Homework Beneficial to Students?” n. pag.). When students receive busy work they often turn to their classmates for answers or go through the assignment hastily and without effort.
One of the most stereotypical things in school is homework. Not only is it stereo typical, but it’s also despised by all students in school. To them, it’s an abomination that no one likes. But even through all of this, there are easy ways to fix the way students feel towards homework. Some of the many reasons why students hate homework is because they think homework should only be used as additional practice for students who need it, or to study for tests and quizzes when possible.
Since, homework act as practice, students realistically just practice what they have learned in school. Assigning homework to students only reinforces those topics making the students have a better understanding of a subject. So being assigned math and science homework on a regular basis will improve testing scores. Having raised test scores will make a school look better because it shows parents they care about their students future education. A student in high should get 2 hours of homework a night.
Homework has done nothing but make the school experience miserable for students, as students dread receiving it. Day after day students are repeating the same routine of going to school, coming home, doing homework, and waking up to do it all over again. Oftentimes, there is no room for students to take any breaks. Instead, they are pressured to stay up late to complete inestimable amounts of homework. In addition, homework can prevent the opportunities to socialize with one’s family, and to be physically active.
The sample population that can be used in this study will include students from the previous semester that were enrolled in the sections. To gather up the previous students, an email will be sent to all. The sample population will be chosen by using a system that chooses every fifth respondent. The email will simply ask each students’ earned grade in the course and the gender of their professor. This is done in order to determine the experimental and control groups.
At Stanford University studies were done that proved that too much homework can negatively impact kids, especially their lives outside of school, with their families, and participating in extracurricular
If you take the right amount, you’ll get better,”(Reilly). This illustrates that schools need to talk to their students and find the happy medium for homework and do what 's right for the majority of the minors. The time consuming assignments are taking away many childhoods across the globe, and no one wants that, do
Sugata Mitra, a TED prize winner and Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, England, once exposed a sad truth about our educational system: “We cannot continue teaching with the methods of the 19th century and hope to prepare our children for the 21st century.” Twenty-first century students, like myself, agree with Mitra as nineteenth-century teaching methods often feel suffocating. Most often, we have to sit impatiently in a confined traditional classroom and mindlessly stare at the board for hours. In addition to typical 7 hours spent in school, we have to laboriously endure through an average of 4 hours of homework, innumerable community service hours, and insufferable extracurricular activities. As a result, a whopping 98 percent of students said they were bored in school according to a survey of more than 81,000 students in 110 high schools across 26 states by Indiana University’s High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSEE) (Bryner, Jeanna.).
It is not an uncommon occurrence to discover that many students dedicate a majority of their time focusing on education. Many students spend hours a night studying. So, why is it that these students are only passing with average grades? Perhaps it is the grading system. Perhaps it is the student is a poor test taker.
In an article titled “Homework: How much is too much” by John Buell published on October 25, 2000, Buell discusses that children today face more stress and standardized tests than ever. He states “Over the last decade and a half, children as young as 9, have seen a 40% increase in homework” (Buell, 2000, para.4). This theory, Buell states, is proved by research from the University of Michigan’s Survey Center that convey children who are aged 9-11, have seen homework go from 2 and 3-quarter hours a week to 3 and a half hours through the past decade. Buell even brings up the topic of foreign schooling to show how the United States compares with other countries.