Students Under Stress - K12

Students Under StressDo schools assign too much homework?

The average homework load for first- through third-

graders has doubled over the past two decades,

even though research shows homework doesn’t

benefit such young children. Indeed, some schools

require preschoolers to tackle academic subjects like reading and

writing. In response a parents’ movement has arisen — mainly in

middle- and upper-income suburbs — protesting excessive home-

work and other forms of academic pressure, including so-called

high-stakes testing. Parents say the added pressure robs children

of needed play and family time and can cause stress, sleep depri-

vation, depression and family strife. Some schools have responded

by limiting homework for the youngest children and downplaying

stress-causing programs, such as academic honor rolls. At the same

time, however, U.S. high school students spend less time in class

than students in most other countries, and their homework loads

remain far below the two hours per day that research shows is

optimal for college-bound students.

I

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S

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THE ISSUES ......................579

BACKGROUND ..................586

CHRONOLOGY ..................587

AT ISSUE ..........................593

CURRENT SITUATION ..........594

OUTLOOK ........................595

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................598

THE NEXT STEP ................599

THISREPORT

Six-year-old Aisha Jones does her homework inBolingbrook, Ill. A growing number of parents oppose

the trend toward homework for young children.

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CQ Researcher • July 13, 2007 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 17, Number 25 • Pages 577-600

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

578 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

579 • Are students today undermore academic pressure?• Are schools assigningtoo much homework?• Do high-stakes testscause too much pressure?

BACKGROUND

586 Schooling ExpandsEducation is seen as thepath to success.

588 Different VisionsBest learning practices forstudents are debatable.

589 Cold War FearsCompetition with the SovietUnion sparks homework.

590 Bulging Backpacks?Homework has increasedsince the Reagan era.

CURRENT SITUATION

594 Reevaluating HomeworkSchools are questioningthe value of homework.

594 Testing the TestsSome say the No ChildLeft Behind law breedsstress.

OUTLOOK

595 Learning to TeachSchools face pressure toteach more.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

580 Should Students Be PushedHarder?Many parents think so.

581 Students Do More Socializing Than StudyingAt least half spend over sixhours a week with friends.

582 Low-Income Kids FaceMost Pressure in ClassA family atmosphere helps.

583 School Is Top Cause of StressMany blame homework.

584 Parents Say Children GetEnough Free TimeLess than a fifth say they don’t.

585 Few Homework ComplaintsParents and students say theright amount is assigned.

587 ChronologyKey events since 1890.

588 Foreign Middle-SchoolersDo More HomeworkWorkload is twice U.S. average.

590 Tailoring Teaching to Fitthe BrainNeuroscience overcomescognitive difficulties.

591 How Cognitive ScienceHelps EducatorsResearch findings are notwell understood.

593 At IssueDo American students gettoo much homework?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

597 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

598 BibliographySelected sources used.

599 The Next StepAdditional articles.

599 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

STUDENTS UNDER STRESS

Cover: AP Photo/Stacie Freudenberg

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Students Under Stress

THE ISSUESWhen Nancy Kalish’s

daughter was inseventh grade,

she suddenly began saying,“I hate school,” recalls Kalish,a journalist in New York City.“She started saying it everysingle day.”

Kalish soon discoveredthat what had been “a rea-sonable amount” of home-work for Allison in gradeschool “had mushroomed intofour hours a night” in middleschool.”

Soon, “our entire rela-tionship revolved aroundhomework,” with “the firstquestion when she came inthe door each afternoon,‘How much homework doyou have?’ ” says Kalish. Theanswer determined whetherAllison would see friends, at-tend a concert or a grandparent’s birth-day party or stay home studying.

The resulting family tension andtheir daughter’s newfound anger to-ward school turned Kalish and herhusband — once “true believers” inthe value of homework — into ac-tivists who sought a school policy lim-iting homework at Allison’s school.With a coauthor, Kalish wrote the 2006book The Case Against Homework.

Kalish is part of a new wave ofparents, many in middle- and upper-income communities, protesting whatthey say is too much homework —particularly in elementary and middleschool — causing stress, sleep depri-vation, depression and family strife.

Over the last two decades, worriesabout global competition have prompt-ed U.S. business leaders and lawmakersto increase pressure on schools toraise achievement. Most of that pres-sure has fallen on the youngest chil-

dren, however, even though it’s U.S.high-schoolers who score lowest oninternational achievement tests.

But high school homework loadshaven’t increased, while first-, second-and third-graders have been gettingmore homework, even though datashow homework doesn’t improve learn-ing for young children. And with con-gressionally mandated standardizedtesting also aimed mainly at elemen-tary school students, some schoolsalso are pressuring kindergarten andpreschool teachers to teach academicsubjects to 4- and 5-year-olds, whooften lack the physical and cognitiveskills to handle them.

Meanwhile, under the 2002 No ChildLeft Behind law, teachers — especiallyin high-poverty schools — fear they’llbe unable to bring their students tomandated achievement levels, whichcould lead to firings and schooltakeovers. That pressure on teachers

may be seeping down to stu-dents in such schools, someresearchers say.

Piles of homework dimchildren’s love of learning —while depriving them of vitalfree time — without im-proving their school achieve-ment, says Kalish’s coauthor,Sara Bennett, a New York Citylawyer.

“Polls say that kids no longerread for pleasure after age 8,”mainly because of too muchhomework, “and I didn’t likethe future I was seeing formy children,” says Bennett,who organized parents to fighthomework at her children’sschools. Many teachers arguethat homework “is reinforce-ment” of what’s studied inclass, “but there’s no evidencethat it helps younger chil-dren,” she says.

After a years-long strug-gle, the parents Bennett or-

ganized won a new homework poli-cy that limited tests to two per week,declared Monday test-free and bannedschool projects over certain vacations.

A number of schools around thecountry are mulling similar moves.

In Massachusetts, for example,Needham High School Principal PaulRichards sought to limit stress after threestudent suicides in recent years. Richardsurges teachers not to give homeworkover school vacations and to be moreflexible about assignment deadlines. Healso ended the tradition of publishingthe school’s academic honor roll in thelocal newspaper, which made him thebutt of jokes and criticism from “Tonight”host comedian Jay Leno and conserv-ative commentator Rush Limbaugh.

But Richards has stood firm, sayingthat critics don’t understand the amountof stress his college-bound students feel,even as they try to act cool. For exam-ple, “there are perceptions that Boston

BY MARCIA CLEMMITT

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To reduce stress on students, a number of high schoolsaround the country are reducing homework and othersources of stress that can cause depression, anxiety and

family strife. Over the past two decades, high schoolhomework loads have not increased, while first-,

second- and third-graders have been getting more.

580 CQ Researcher

College only takes two seniors from eachhigh school,” said Richards. “Studentshear this and start ranking each other,”adding more pressure to an already“product-oriented and competitive” cul-ture that’s “gone into overdrive.” 1

Education researchers who studystudent workloads say that such high-pressure situations may be more theexception than the rule, however.

“Most of what you hear” about ex-cessive homework “is anecdotal,” saysTom Loveless, director of the BrownCenter on Education Policy at theBrookings Institution, a Washingtonthink tank. “You have a group of kidswho take tons of Advanced Placement(AP) classes and have lots of ex-tracurricular activities” who experiencea major school-related time crunch, hesays. “But they’re not numerous.”

Overall, “all the data show thathomework is not increasing,” says Love-less. Currently 30 to 40 percent of U.S.students say that they have zero home-work. Furthermore, a survey of col-lege freshmen that’s been repeatedsince the 1960s shows that high school

homework reported by those students“is hitting all-time lows,” about fivehours per week — less than an hourper night, Loveless says.

Nevertheless, “I wouldn’t want totrivialize the part of the populationthat’s saying there’s an overload,” saysHarris M. Cooper, director of DukeUniversity’s Program in Education. “It’sunusual but not unheard of to find ateacher who’s piling it on.”

Especially in schools where manyparents are professionals, some stu-dents voluntarily take on heavy home-work burdens as they seek a com-petitive academic edge, says Cooper.

“There’s lots of pressure to get intothe best universities, and this has ledsome kids to take the most challengingcourses they can,” he says. “If you finda student with two AP courses and twohonors courses, then each of those willbe 45 minutes of homework a night”— three hours overall, more than theusually suggested maximum for highschool of two hours a night, says Coop-er. “Non-elite courses would only assignabout 30 minutes a night each,” he says.

Researchers agree that, to the ex-tent homework burdens have increasedin the past 20 years, it’s the schoolbackpacks of the youngest kids thathave gained the most weight.

From 1997 to 2002, for example,the proportion of 6-to-8-year-old chil-dren being assigned homework onany given day rose from 34 percentto 64 percent. 2

The increase has occurred eventhough reviews of research on home-work by Cooper and others have turnedup no evidence that homework actu-ally improves achievement for childrenof that age.

“In my professional opinion, thesetrends suggest that the emphasis in theUnited States is kind of backwards,” saysGerald LeTendre, a professor of educa-tion at Pennsylvania State University.

Some school critics also say that newhigh-stakes testing mandated by somestates and by the federal governmentover the past decade has increasedpressure on teachers, whose anxietyoften spills over onto students.

“We have a lot of discouragedteachers,” especially in low-incomeschools, from standardized tests cou-pled with insufficient resources, saysDavid C. Berliner, a professor of ed-ucation at Arizona State University.“Schools of education aren’t perfect,”he acknowledges. “But it’s bad whenthe students come back and say, ‘Thisis not why I became a teacher.’ Theyend up being drill sergeants.”

Test pressure is increasing home-work pressure in some schools, saysWendy A. Patterson, an associate pro-fessor of education at Buffalo State Col-lege, in New York. As “the curriculumbecomes more loaded with require-ments, such as expanded literacy class-es” — extra reading-skills classes thathave been added to improve testscores — “teachers get to the end ofthe day with material left, so they sendit home” as homework, Patterson says.Such assignments, originally scheduledas in-class work, are usually “bad


Should Students Be Pushed Harder?

More than half of U.S. adults say parents are not pushing their children hard enough in school. Only 15 percent think students are under too much pressure.

Source: Richard Wike and Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Parental Pressure on Students: Not Enough in America; Too Much in Asia,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 24, 2006

How much pressure are parents putting on students?

Too little

56%

Too much

15%

Right amount

24%

5%

No opinion


homework” — work that childrenshould be doing with the teacher pre-sent and can’t be expected to completeon their own — she says.

As parents and teachers debate theproper role of homework, testing andcompetition in American schools, hereare some questions that are being asked:

Are students today under moreacademic pressure than in pastgenerations?

With businesses and state and fed-eral governments looking more toschools to produce savvier workersand entrepreneurs, some parents saytoday’s kids face unprecedented school-related stress beginning as early askindergarten. Critics of that view, how-ever, point to data showing that manystudents, especially high-schoolers, mayactually spend less time on school-work than in the past.

While some students probably areworking harder these days, “about 90percent aren’t under much pressure,”says Laurence Steinberg, a professor ofpsychology at Philadelphia’s TempleUniversity and author of one of themost extensive nationwide surveysever done of U.S. teens. “A very highpercentage of kids in our sample saythey do as little as they can withoutgetting into trouble,” he says.

“Compared to high school kids inJapan or Korea, for example, our kidsare coasting through a dream,” saysSteinberg. The difference shows up oninternational achievement tests. Ameri-can elementary school students scorewell on tests, but by middle school U.S.scores begin to fall, and on the highschool tests “we’ve fallen off the charts.If we were really making such greatdemands, this wouldn’t be happening.”

More information exists for today’schildren to absorb, but that isn’t trans-lating into excess academic pressure,said Lynn Spampinato, deputy super-intendent of the Pittsburgh PublicSchools. “There’s more for children tolearn today, more exposure to all

kinds of information at younger ages.”Nevertheless, “I’m not sure I believewe’re pushing children to the edge.I’d say in many cases we’re not chal-lenging them enough.” 3

Education trends, such as a heavyfocus on children’s learning differencesand “discovery” learning in which chil-dren follow their own interests, aremaking many classrooms less chal-lenging, according to some analysts.

Learning “inevitably requires verysubstantial commitments of student time

and effort,” but contemporary trendsrequire teachers “to produce learningin ways that are stimulating yet mini-mally obtrusive,” with “only minimallevels of exertion” from students, saidJ. E. Stone, a professor of educationalpsychology at East Tennessee StateUniversity in Johnson City. 4

Today’s education mindset puts thewhole burden on teachers to enticestudents to learn and to avoid bor-ing or pushing them, a far cry fromcreating excessive stress, Stone says.

Students Do More Socializing Than Studying

A far higher percentage of high school students spend at least six hours per week on non-homework activities, such as socializing with friends, playing sports and surfing the Internet, rather than on homework or studying.

* Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Source: Ethan Yazzie-Mintz, “Voices of Students on Engagement: A Report on the 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement,” Center for Evaluation & Education Policy, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2006

No. of Hours High School Students Spendon Various Activities in a Typical 7-Day Week

Number of Hours

Activity 0 1 or fewer 2-5 6-10 10+

Written homework 7% 36% 40% 12% 5%

Reading/studying for class 12% 43% 35% 7% 2%

Reading for self 16% 40% 30% 9% 5%

Participating in school- 32% 17% 21% 13% 17%sponsored activities

Practicing a sport or 30% 12% 23% 16% 19%musical instrument

Working for pay 34% 13% 18% 13% 21%

Volunteer work 48% 30% 16% 3% 2%

Exercising 8% 22% 36% 18% 15%

Watching TV/playing 6% 24% 39% 18% 13%video games

Surfing/chatting online 21% 27% 30% 14% 9%

Talking on the phone 8% 32% 32% 15% 13%

Socializing with friends 4% 10% 32% 27% 27%outside of school

582 CQ Researcher

The American educational system putsever more pressure on teachers but lesson students, according to Paul A. Zoch,a longtime high school Latin teacherand classics scholar and the author ofa recent book on school trends. In-creasingly, “too many people in our so-ciety see the teachers as the ones who

bear the responsibility for creating ex-cellence,” said Zoch. “When studentsfail to learn” today, parents and others“blame the teachers for not teaching inthe correct way for each student.” 5

But others point to what they sayare new, intense pressures on at leastsome children.

For example, as more families in theUnited States and around the worldhope to send their children to top-tiercolleges, students in those families andneighborhoods face more intense pres-sure to compete for limited spots.

“It’s fair to say the pressure has in-creased on the top tier of kids applying


S tress is a universal affliction among students, but the im-pact of psychological stress and school pressure is par-ticularly hard on low-income students, many analysts say.

New high-stakes testing required by the federal No ChildLeft Behind (NCLB) law, for example, puts more pressure onstudents in low-income areas, says Peter Sacks, the author ofseveral books on standardized testing and the relationship be-tween social class and education.

In suburban areas, where children typically enter schoolwith the social, physical and cognitive skills needed to masteracademic requirements later on, test pressure doesn’t constantlyhaunt the classroom, says Sacks. “Teaching and learning canbe done for the sake of teaching and learning, not with [test-ing] proficiency targets always in mind.”

In low-income schools, however, many kindergarteners startout with well under half the skills and knowledge that school-ready children are expected to have, “so the ground they haveto cover over time is so much greater,” says Sacks.

“You want to talk about pressure? The entire school has asiege mentality because failure to meet the [NCLB} goals can leadto the firing of teachers” and takeover of the school, he says. “Asa consequence, in many low-income schools teaching and learn-ing is reduced to whatever is necessary to score on the test.”

In the new age of high-stakes testing, “over and over again,I hear teachers say, ‘We have no time if students have a ques-tion,’ ” says Sharon L. Nichols, an assistant professor of educa-tional psychology at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Be-cause schools with many low-income students have the mostground to make up, “this is disproportionately affecting poor andminority kids and further disenfranchising them,” Nichols says.

High-stakes testing also can act as “a disincentive for re-cruiting” the neediest kids to good schools, since administra-tors may fear an influx of high-needs children will harm over-all test scores, says Vielka MacFarlane, principal and founderof Celerity Nascent Charter School in Los Angeles. Neverthe-less, her school “gives priority to kids who are several yearsbehind” developmental and academic norms, she says.

She hopes to overcome testing hurdles by persuading stateschool auditors to “compare us to the specific schools our kidsare coming from” and to “show progress through longitudinalassessment of our own kids,” she says.

Even modest homework demands take a higher toll on poorstudents, according to John Buell, a former professor at theCollege of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine, and the authorof two books on homework. Students in poor families oftenhave greater family responsibilities and lack basic supports fordoing homework, such as a quiet, well-lit place to study, dic-tionaries and Internet access, he says.

In a study of high dropout rates among low-income, rural stu-dents in Maine, Buell and a colleague conducted extensive inter-views, asking dropouts “if there was a point in their education whenthey knew they simply were not going to make it,” he said. “Muchto our surprise, every student had a story about homework.” 1

Indeed, among the lowest-income students, mostly blackand Hispanic, “half don’t even graduate” from high school inan era when graduation is expected of virtually everyone, saysLaurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Philadelphia’sTemple University and author of one of the largest sociologi-cal surveys ever done on U.S. teens. Impoverished childrenalso have the highest rate of mental-health problems, anothersign of stress in their lives, he says.

Building in supports to help students withstand such pres-sures is a mission of some schools that seek to raise academ-ic achievement in city neighborhoods. To provide a support-ive family atmosphere in the classroom, the New City PublicSchools Charter School in Long Beach, Calif., teaches somelessons in mixed-age classrooms, says Co-Director StephanieLee. New City also aims to make its students bilingual in Eng-lish and Spanish, so afternoons feature multi-age K-5 groups,with “the older kids serving as language models,” says Lee.New City children also keep the same homeroom teacher forthree years running, and teachers make frequent home visits.

“Many of our kids are coming in here feeling like failures,”says MacFarlane. To boost students’ faith that they can achieve,“every kid needs to feel success throughout the school day,” shesays. To do that, Celerity Nascent also “infuses the [extended]school day with martial arts, dance, painting and yoga,” she says.“We’re here on Saturdays and Sundays, too,” says MacFarlane.“We have to kick the kids out.”

1 Quoted in “Author Does His Homework on Hot Topic,” Education World,Feb. 10, 2006, www.education-world.com.

Low-Income Kids Face Toughest PressuresCreating a family atmosphere in the classroom helps


to competitive colleges and universities,”says Steinberg.

“It’s gotten about 200 percent hard-er to get into Harvard than it was inthe 1960s,” says David P. Baker, aneducation professor at PennsylvaniaState University.

In suburban areas where manyparents are educated professionals,“we are seeing increasing anxietyand depression levels” and sleep de-privation, from students under pres-sure to be accepted at a handful ofelite colleges, says Denise Clark Pope,a lecturer at Stanford University’sSchool of Education and author of abook on stressed-out students. In arecent survey of 10 schools in theSan Francisco Bay area, Pope foundschools reporting “higher percentagesof kids with stress and anxiety andkids cheating.”

In the Northeast, too, more affluentparents are “inappropriately pushing” kidsbeyond their capabilities to be “superkids,”says Carl Arinoldo, a psychologist inStony Brook, N.Y., who has written bookson managing stress. The pressure reach-es to the youngest children, says Ari-noldo. “There are a number of preschoolsin Manhattan, for example, that are ham-mering away at academics,” even though3- and 4-year-olds “need to run aroundand play spontaneously” instead.

To the extent that increased schoolpressure exists, it’s hitting youngerchildren harder, many experts agree.

For example, the only place thatschool homework levels have been in-creasing “is the only place where itreally doesn’t make sense — elemen-tary school,” says Penn State’s LeTendre.

From 1997 to 2002, the proportionof 6-to-8-year-old students assignedhomework rose from 34 percent to 64percent, according to professors fromthe University of Maryland and McGillUniversity. 6

“I have witnessed firsthand thechanges in grade-level expectations,”a parent from Roanoke, Va., wrote inan online chat. What were fifth-grade

lessons three decades ago are third-grade lessons today, she said. 7

Are schools assigning too muchhomework?

Several recent books have calledfor an end to homework, describingit as a growing burden on Americanchildren that threatens family life. Someanalysts argue, however, that while afew teachers may go overboard, moststudents still bring home only modestamounts.

In surveys, about 10 percent of par-ents complain students get too muchhomework, 25 percent say not enoughis assigned and the remainder — astrong majority — says the amounts

are just about right, said Loveless ofBrookings. “The issue has been over-hyped,” partly because “journalists runin the high-powered crowd whose chil-dren feel pressured to take four Ad-vanced Placement courses,” he says.There are students in that position,and some likely are overburdened, “butthey’re not numerous.” 8

In a 2006 Associated Press-AOL poll,57 percent of parents said amounts ofhomework are “just right,” and the restsplit between “too little” and “too much,”says Cooper of Duke. “Educators willnever be able to please everyone, andthey’re doing well when three-out-of-five people are pretty happy with thecurrent amounts.” 9

School Is Leading Cause of Stress

Nearly two-thirds of San Francisco Bay-area parents say the amount of schoolwork assigned to their children is a cause of stress. More than half the parents said pressure to excel also exerts stress.

* Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Source: “Child Stress, by Source: 2006” Kids Data, August 2006

Factors Contributing to Children’s Stress,According to San Francisco Bay-Area Parents

(by amount of stress)

Very Somewhat Not very Not at all Too young Source much much to say

Amount of 23.8% 40.0% 15.0% 16.8% 4.1%schoolwork

Pressure to excel 11.2% 42.6% 11.5% 29.5% 4.4%in school

Peer relationships 11.6% 35.5% 21.9% 28.6% 1.1%

Extracurricular 4.9% 28.1% 13.5% 52.0% 1.4%activities

Difficulties with 4.0% 18.3% 10.0% 65.9% 1.2%family members

Divorce or 8.5% 13.8% 5.0% 70.1% 1.1%separation issues

Family financial 3.8% 12.2% 11.6% 69.3% 2.8%pressures

Illness or death of 4.5% 12.9% 8.6% 70.7% 2.3%loved one

584 CQ Researcher

Given the level of distractions inmodern life, it’s likely that somefamilies who complain about home-work overestimate the amounts,says Loveless. “Compare a middle-class kid’s bedroom today to one 30years ago,” he says. “It didn’t havecell phones or instant messaging ordownloading from the Internet. Sowhen kids are supposedly in theirrooms doing homework, how muchtime are they actually spending onhomework?”

East Tennessee University’s Stoneargues that many adults are “too like-ly to ignore the key reality about learn-ing: It’s more than play.”

“Learning takes work; it’s a life-dislocating activity” that will inevitablylead to some parent-child struggle,Stone says. It’s parents’ job to requirechildren to complete school chores,despite struggles, because the short-term pain brings long-term gain, hesays. “Kids aren’t aware of their long-

term needs,” so they protest, he says.“They don’t realize they’re going torun into a world where there are noexcuses.”

Homework loads are about the sameas they’ve always been for most stu-dents, says Penn State’s LeTendre. Whathas changed is the amount of “struc-tured time” experienced by childrentoday, a fact that “has been left outof policy discussions,” he says. Unlikein the past, most “parents are nolonger home to welcome the kids afterschool,” in part because many chil-dren play sports or attend classes untilnearly dinner time. The result is achanging perception about what con-stitutes “too much” homework, he says.

“Fifteen minutes of homeworkdoesn’t seem like a lot if you havenothing to do,” but it can seem over-whelming if a child arrives home fromanother structured activity at 5:30 in theafternoon and has a 7:30 or 8 o’clockbedtime, LeTendre says.

But homework opponents say there’sevidence that many children are assignedunreasonable amounts of work.

In the recent Associated Press-AOLpoll, elementary school students reportedan average of 78 minutes of homeworkeach school night, and middle-school-ers reported 99 minutes, says The CaseAgainst Homework coauthor Bennett.That’s a far bigger homework load thanchildren would have if teachers werefollowing the so-called 10-minutes-per-grade rule of thumb endorsed bygroups like the National Education As-sociation and the National Parent TeacherAssociation, Bennett points out.

In addition, “there is no evidenceof any correlation between homeworkand achievement in elementary school,”yet homework amounts for grade-school children have been rising, saysBennett, and possibly causing harm.

In researching her book, Bennettfound that “homework can cause a lotof family conflict.” Moreover, assigninghomework to young children may beconditioning them to cheat later on, shesays. Many parents “say their kids comehome and need help in math” or helpwith a project, like a diorama or sci-ence project. “When the kids get a lotof parental help” in the early years, “theyget dependent on it,” Bennett says. “Itconfuses them about whether it’s OKto get help with your work.”

Researchers have found that aboutfive math problems “are enough totell whether a child understands theconcept and can move on or doesn’tunderstand and needs help,” yet manyteachers assign 30 or more problems,says coauthor Kalish.

“Even the U.S. Department of Ed-ucation” makes the five-problem rec-ommendation, says Kalish. “If a childwho didn’t get the right idea in classslogs through 30 problems, she’s justcementing the wrong method in herbrain.” Meanwhile, a child who didcatch on, finds the 30 problemsdrudgery and ends up hating school,Kalish says.


Parents Say Children Get Enough Free Time

More than three-quarters of San Francisco Bay-area parents say their children have the right amount or more than enough free time, despite homework and other activities. Affluent parents are typically concerned about their kids’ lack of free time.

* Percentages do not total 100 due to rounding.

Source: “Parent Ratings of Adequacy of Child’s Free Time: 2006,” Kids Data, August 2006

How much free time do you believe your child is getting?

About the right amount

53.5%

Not quite enough

13.9%

Not nearly enough

3.7%

Do not know

1.6%More than

enough

27.2%


Excessive homework has causedsome low-income students to drop outof school, according to Etta Kralovec,an associate professor of education atthe University of Arizona at Sierra Vistaand author of the book The End ofHomework. The more hectic familylives and greater responsibilities ofmany lower-income students, alongwith a lack of the Internet and otherlearning tools at home have led someto give up on school altogether,Kralovec said. 10 (See sidebar, p. 582.)

Despite popular belief, eighth-graders in some industrialized coun-tries actually do less homework thanU.S. children while scoring just as wellor better or achievement tests, saidKralovec. (See chart, p. 588.) Manyother countries depend on more in-class time and less homework thanthe United States, with better results,because classrooms are a “sacred space”specially set aside for study, and teach-ers’ help is available, she said. 11

“It’s not that homework is wrong,”it’s that too much current homeworkis of the fill-out-the-worksheet varietyand keeps children from other valu-able activities, like social interaction,says Arizona State’s Berliner. “If home-work has the effect of isolating thechild from his family, then that’s bad,generally,” says Berliner. A better ideawould be to ask children and parentsto play some games together and talkabout them or watch and discuss atelevision program, he says.

Experts on all sides of the issueagree that the current American prac-tice of increasing homework foryounger kids while allowing manyhigh-schoolers to carry a relativelyeasy load makes little sense.

“All the data suggest that home-work helps at the high school level,has mixed results in middle schooland either makes no difference oreven has negative consequences forelementary students,” says LeTendre,yet current U.S. homework trends goexactly the other way.

Are high-stakes tests putting toomuch pressure on students?

About 20 years ago, some statesbegan implementing so-called high-stakes tests — exams that studentsmust pass to earn diplomas or moveto the next grade. The 2002 No ChildLeft Behind law added another layerof tests, this time with high stakes forschools themselves. Under federal reg-ulations set by NCLB, schools that don’tproduce required test scores could even-tually have their entire staffs replacedor be taken over by the state or a pri-vate group. 12

Some critics argue that the tests un-duly increase pressure on students.Others, however, say there’s no evi-dence that testing is creating rushedor anxious classrooms.

In a study of Arkansas fourth-graders,University of Arkansas Professor of Ed-ucational Statistics Sean W. Mulvenonfound “the vast majority of studentsdo not exhibit stress and have posi-tive attitudes towards standardizedtesting programs.” 13

While some students did expressanxiety, the “overall student senti-ment” was that the tests didn’t raiseanxiety or result in greater pressurefrom teachers or parents to perform,according to Mulvenon. Furthermore,students who did report more anxietyor pressure didn’t do worse on thetests, Mulvenon reported.

In a study of Minnesota’s high-stakestests, University of Minnesota AssistantProfessor of Evaluation Studies StuartS. Yeh found that most principals andteachers believed that the state’s pro-gram — which takes pains to maketests match the school curriculum —has improved the learning environmentin many schools.

To prepare students for the tests,teachers now work as teams to “enrichthe curriculum,” a middle-school prin-cipal told Yeh. Contrary to what manyexperts fear, teachers aren’t “teaching tothe test” — by exclusively drilling stu-dents on questions similar to those onthe exam or alerting them to test-takingtricks, said an elementary school

Few Complain About Homework

A majority of parents and students think the right amount of homework is being assigned. Only one-fifth of students complain about too much work.

* Percentages do not add to 100% due to rounding.

Source: “Reality Check 2006: A Report from Education Insights at Public Agenda,” Public Agenda, 2006

Overall, do you feel that you/your child is getting too much homework, too little or about the right amount?

010203040506070

80%

Too littleToo muchAbout the right amount

72%68%

21%11% 7%

20%

Parents*Students

586 CQ Researcher

principal. Instead, teachers concentrateon teaching academic “skills that enablekids to take the test without a high levelof anxiety,” the principal said. 14

Minnesota’s testing has also helpedstudents with learning deficiencies, someteachers and principals told Yeh. Be-cause of the tests, funding is now pro-vided to bring in learning specialists.Under the testing regime, “we’re seeingthat help is made available to” more stu-dents who face learning difficulties, saida high school science teacher. 15

Overall, “the upside” of the age ofhigh-stakes testing “is that everybodytakes school much more seriously now,”says Steve Peha, an education con-sultant in Carrboro, N.C.

Under the new testing regimes, manyteachers are “feeling an extraordinaryamount of pressure,and that does affectthe kids,” says Peha.Nevertheless, “most ofthe pressure” teachersare feeling “is out ofproportion to the re-ality,” Peha argues.“Schools with lowscores don’t get shutdown; some states dorequire passing tests,but most states havedevised other ways forstudents to get diplo-mas, like attendance.Most of the pressureis really the fear ofthe unknown,” be-cause “we’re reallyonly 10 years into theaccountability culture.”

In at least some classrooms, teachers’testing anxiety clearly affects students,says Marshalita Peterson, an associateprofessor of education at historically blackSpelman College in Atlanta. “There aresome teachers who say, ‘You have todo well on this test,’ and in responsestudents self-impose requirements” toachieve, Peterson says. “Some can’t takethe emotional strain of that, and it shows.”

What gets lost for such students isnot only “the pleasure of learning” butalso the ability to apply their learningoutside of the test, Peterson says. “Ifthe class focus is, ‘You have to do thisbecause of the test,’ ” the goal of “mas-tery learning” — learning to transfernew skills to other places — oftensuffers, she says. “You end up onlygoing through the motions.”

Some testing pressure falls on theyoungest children, preschoolers throughsecond-graders, who aren’t even oldenough to be required to take the tests.

“If a school is getting pressure forstudents to perform on tests in thirdgrade, then the third-grade teacher islooking to the second-grade teacherand the first-grade teacher” to helpmake that happen, says Peterson. Such

pressure has an upside, when “agroup of teachers ends up workingmore together.”

But some schools take the collabo-ration too far, pushing teachers of youngerchildren into teaching content that mostof the children in their classes aren’tready to master, Peterson says.

International comparisons warn thattoo-early academic lessons actually may

slow students down, says ArizonaState’s Berliner. Finland and Sweden,for example, delay many formal lessonssuch as reading until first grade andlater, and yet their students are “amongthe highest achievers” on internationaltests, he says.

BACKGROUNDSchooling Expands

T oday’s lawmakers and businessleaders have upped the pressure

on American schools, urging them toraise graduation rates to100 percent. Meanwhile,a growing number ofstudents, mostly from af-fluent families, competeever more fiercely for alimited number of spotsin top colleges. 16

At the root of the pres-sure, according to PennState’s Baker, is a single,big idea that has cometo dominate the think-ing about education:Academic achievement“has become about theonly way to invest inyour kids’ future.”

In the past, numerouspaths could be taken tosuccessful adulthood, in-cluding joining a family

business and learning a trade. Buttoday, in the United States and, in-creasingly, worldwide, alternate op-portunities “are gone,” Baker says. Asa result, “Longer and longer schoolcareers are being seen everywhere.You’re ending up with a schooled so-ciety, where school is the only gamein town, so everybody has to play it.”


Continued on p. 588

Eighth-graders in Madison, W. Va., practice for an archery tournamentin May 2006. Compared with students from other countries, Americans

have less academic work but more extracurricular activities — lessons, team sports and after-school jobs — which may partly

account for the feelings of pressure that some report.

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Chronology1880s-1940sSome educators and doctorsargue against homework onhealth grounds. Boston, SanFrancisco and other cities banor limit homework.

1890Less than 6 percent of Americanstudents attend high school.

1900Ladies’ Home Journal Editor Edward W. Bok calls homework“barbarous,” publishes articles bydoctors and parents who argue itharms children’s health.

1930Nearly 51 percent of Americanstudents attend high school, butacademic courses begin to giveway to classes that have no testsor homework, such as health.

1940More than 73 percent of Americanteenagers attend high school.

1948Only 8 percent of high schoolstudents do two hours or more ofhomework daily.

•

1950s-1960sHigh school homework increasesamid fears that the U.S. is becom-ing less economically competitive.

1957U.S. high schools increase home-work in response to the SovietUnion’s surprise launch of thefirst satellite, Sputnik 1. For mostof the 1960s, about 20 percent ofhigh-schoolers do two hours ormore of homework daily, an all-time high.

1958National Defense Education Actfunds schools to beef up math,science and foreign-languagecourses.

1961Sociologist James Coleman’s bookThe Adolescent Society declaresthat a separate, influential, teenageculture has developed that valuesgood looks over learning.

•

1970s High schoolstudents’ homework drops topre-1950s levels.

1970Percentage of students taking demanding academic courses falls.. . . Harvard University acceptsabout a third of students whoapply.

•

1980s U.S. students’scores slip on international tests,prompting a rise in homeworklevels, especially for elementary-and middle-school students.

1983National commission initiated byPresident Ronald Reagan reportsin A Nation at Risk that a “tide of mediocrity” is overwhelmingAmerican schools.

•

1990s Parents and ed-ucators fight rising homeworkloads for children. Some statesinstitute standardized tests asa high school graduation re-quirement.

1997Students 6 to 8 years old do twiceas much homework as in 1981.

1999TV host Oprah Winfrey highlightsparents’ complaints about an “on-slaught of homework.”

•

2000s Congress inau-gurates “high stakes” testing forschools, which can eventuallyface takeover or mass firings ifthey fail to meet federal goals.

2002Congress passes No Child Left Behind law (NCLB).

2006The principal of Needham HighSchool in Massachusetts limitshomework and stops publishingthe honor roll in the local news-paper. . . . College freshmen re-port some of the lowest levels ofhigh school homework ever. . . .Associated Press poll finds 57 per-cent of parents say their childrenget the right amount of home-work. . . . Schools in Greenville,S.C., limit homework.

2007School districts in San Marcos, Calif.,and Middletown, Ohio, try excludinghomework from course grades. . . .Norwalk, Conn., considers limitingdaily homework and banning week-end homework for grade-schoolers.. . . Several San Francisco Bay-areaschools ban elementary-grade home-work. . . . Harvard accepts about 10percent of applicants.

2014All U.S. students must demonstrateproficiency in math and readingby this date under NCLB.

588 CQ Researcher

Even for students who don’t fit thelinguistic/mathematical mode of mostacademic schooling, “there are far feweralternatives” than in the past. “That’swhat creates the pressure,” he says.

It was only a hundred years agothat industrial nations came to believethat government should provide basiceducation to all, says Baker. Since then,the proportion of children attendingschool has grown rapidly. During the

early 20th century, wealthier countriesexpanded their primary education,and in the 1930s and ’40s secondaryeducation took off. But “only in themid-’60s was it assumed that every-body should finish high school,”Baker says.

As early as 1930, about half of allAmerican students attended highschool. And by the late 1960s, onlyhalf of all students were graduatingfrom high school, Baker says.

The change didn’t happen just be-cause modern jobs require more train-ing, says Baker. Instead, it reflects“the success of a cultural idea — thatwe can make people better througheducation.” That’s evident in the factthat vocational training now takes aback seat to academic courses in mostplaces, including the United States,says Baker. Governments around theworld “have totally bought into” theidea that higher-order thinking skillsand academic subjects, rather thanvocational skills, should be the maincontent of education for virtually allstudents, he says.

Baker doesn’t foresee any letup inthe expansion of academic schooling.“Every time people predicted over thepast 100 years that schooling wouldn’texpand, they were totally wrong,” hesays. Today “graduate students andundergraduate want two degrees ratherthan one. A smart kid in law schoolwants a PhD in economics,” too.

Different Visions

B ut while the world’s children goto school in ever greater num-

bers, exactly how students learn bestremains a matter of debate.

Among Americans, especially, someparents believe in allowing children todevelop largely at their own pace,pressure-free, says Brookings’ Loveless.These parents are likely to opposeboth homework and testing, he says.Meanwhile, some cultures embrace ageneral belief “that children’s mainjob is to master all the stuff that theculture thinks is important,” leadingparents there to value study highly,Loveless says.

Most American students are belowthe international average for timespent on academics, taking class timeand homework time together, al-though many may be busier in someways than students in other countries.


Continued from p. 586

Foreign Middle-Schoolers Do More Homework

The percentage of American elementary school students who spend four hours or more a day on homework is roughly the same as for the average student overseas. Among middle-schoolers, however, the percentage of Americans is half that of the average foreign student.

Source: Gerald K. LeTendre and Motoko Akiba, “A Nation Spins its Wheels: The Role of Homework and National Homework Policies in National Student Achievement Levels in Math and Science,” paper presented to the Comparative and International Education Society, February 2007

Percentage of Students Who SpendFour or More Hours Daily on Homework

(in selected countries)

Elementary Students

Iran 18%

Armenia 17

Morocco 17

Tunisia 16

Philippines 12

Italy 10

Hong Kong 9

United States 8

Australia 7

Taiwan 5

Russia 5

Singapore 5

England 4

Netherlands 3

Japan 1

International average: 9%

Middle School Students

Lebanon 24%

Armenia 23

South Africa 22

Iran 18

Russia 15

Italy 14

Egypt 13

Philippines 9

Israel 9

Singapore 8

United States 5

Australia 3

Sweden 3

England 3

Japan 1

International average: 10%


American teenagers“go to school less,”with “a shorter schoolyear . . . a shorterschool day . . . andless homework,” saidLoveless. “When youlook at how educa-tion is thought of aspart of a teenager’s lifein Europe and Asia, itis totally different thanthe United States.” 17

By internationalcomparisons, Ameri-can students haveless academic workbut “more structuredtime” — in extracur-ricular lessons andclubs, team sportsand after-school jobs— than in othercountries, perhapspartly accounting forthe stress that somefeel, says Penn State’sLeTendre.

“Over half of Amer-ican seniors workpart time at some point during theschool year,” said Loveless. Around theworld this is . . . absolutely unheard of.In fact, it is a stigma in most of Europeand Asia if you work when you are ateenager; it means something bad. Itmeans your parents don’t care enoughabout education. Your family needsmoney,” he said. 18

When it comes to homework, inter-national comparisons are tricky, partly be-cause cultures have different notions aboutwhat actually counts as homework.

Some “high-achieving Asian nationsreport almost no homework,” but thatreport may be deceiving, says Loveless.In China, for example, “a child may comehome without a homework assignment,but nevertheless the kid will sit down ata table with mom and study all evening,”he says. In countries like Korea andFrance, there’s “a thriving market of after-

school schools,” but that work often isn’tcalled “homework” when people are sur-veyed, he says. Whether there’s formalhomework or not, however, in most Eu-ropean and Asian countries “the kids arereally focused on learning” as their mainoccupation, Loveless says.

Moreover, when it comes to as-signed homework, international stud-ies don’t show a clear connection be-tween homework and achievement.

For example, on international testsmany countries with the highest scores,including Japan, the Czech Republicand Denmark, report very little assignedhomework, says Penn State’s Baker.Meanwhile, students in countries in-cluding Thailand, Greece and Iran getlow average scores but attend schoolsthat assign a lot of homework. 19

Differing views of homework’s pur-pose also make cultural comparisons

difficult. For example, theUnited States is one ofthe few nations whereteachers include home-work scores as an ele-ment of course grades.Elsewhere, homework isoften regarded as prac-tice or preparation only.Eighty-two percent ofAmerican teachers givegrades to homework,compared to 14 percentin Japan and 6 percentin Germany. 20

Cold War Fears

I n the United States,the pros and cons of

homework are regular-ly debated. However,many researchers saythat while attitudeshave varied, the aver-age American studenthas seldom been over-burdened with take-home work.

Beginning in the final decades ofthe 19th century, education theorists,doctors and others launched a longcampaign against what many thoughtwas an overemphasis on at-homedrill and memorization, especially inhigh schools. 21

In 1901, for example, California leg-islators banned homework for childrenunder age 15, who lawmakers declaredwould be better off playing outdoors.In 1941, an article in the Encyclopediaof Education Research declared that “thebenefits of assigned homework are toosmall to counterbalance the disadvan-tages.”

By the 1940s, homework oppo-nents had largely won the day, andin 1948 only 8 percent of U.S. highschool students reported doingmore than two hours of homeworkdaily.

Julia Austin teaches her middle school students in Orlando, Fla., not touse instant-messaging slang in their writing. Some educators say high-stakes testing mandated by the federal government and some states hasincreased pressure on teachers, who pass on their anxiety to students.

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Beginning around 1950, however,a new wave of critics complained thatAmerican schools had become anti-intellectual and soft.

In 1957, the Soviet Union’s surpriselaunch of Sputnik 1, the world’s firstsatellite, further roused the critics. Wor-ried that schools weren’t preparing stu-dents to best America’s Cold War rivals,Congress in 1958 passed the NationalDefense Education Act, increasing fed-eral aid for math, science, foreign lan-guage and technical education.

The new national focus on educa-tion ushered in an era of more home-

work, primarily in high schools. By 1960,more than 20 percent of high schoolstudents reported doing more than twohours of homework each day.

But the trend survived only for abouta decade. By the early 1970s, highschool homework levels were nearlyback to the very low levels of the 1940s,with fewer than 10 percent of studentsreporting more than two hours daily.By the early 1980s, the proportion ofhigh school students reporting more thantwo hours of daily homework edgedup slightly, to just over 10 percent,where it has largely remained ever since.

Bulging Backpacks?

I n the early 1980s, homework againbecame a national issue. In 1983,

President Ronald Reagan’s NationalCommission on Excellence in Educa-tion issued A Nation at Risk, a reportarguing the once mighty American ed-ucation system was “being eroded bya rising tide of mediocrity.”

Effort and discipline were promi-nent among the elements missing fromthe schools, the commission said. “Oursociety and its educational institutions


L earning research suggests that “the more homework isindividually structured to the student, the better it maywork,” says Pennsylvania State University Professor of

Education Gerald LeTendre. But time-pressed teachers often re-spond to demands for improved student achievement with one-size-fits-all assignments like worksheets. And “there is not a lotof evidence this is effective,” says LeTendre.

Some education experts say that as the findings of neuro-science seep into schools of education, the tide may turn infavor of more individualized instruction. That prospect isn’t asscary as some teachers think, says Mary Dean Barringer, CEOof the All Kinds of Minds Institute, in Chapel Hill, N. C., whicheducates parents and teachers on individualized approaches toteaching children, based on cognitive science.

“The main mistake teachers make is they think you needa different plan for every kid,” says Barringer. “That’s not it.The key is: Just don’t go right down the middle” in your in-struction, she says. Teachers can learn the particular cognitivechallenges presented by different subject matter and point themout to students, along with some strategies that will help thosewith differently wired brains.

For example, many youngsters are more spatially than ver-bally oriented, says Michael Gurian, a family therapist in Col-orado Springs who has written several books on learning.

One strategy that helps spatially oriented kids succeed atwriting is having them tap into their spatial-thinking abilitiesbefore committing pen to paper, Gurian says. “Allow the kidsto draw a storyboard of what they want to write; then, afteran hour of drawing it have them start writing,” he says. Thevisual kick-start makes their writing better organized and moredetailed, he says.

Different lessons call for different learning skills, and stu-

dents can be shown how to compensate if they’re weaker inthose areas, says Barringer.

For example, in a science course, “there are lots of se-quences that students must keep track of,” such as the indi-vidual steps of an experiment they’re carrying out in class, shesays. “You will have some kids whose minds aren’t wired fortemporal sequences,” so it’s important to point this out andsuggest other ways they can approach the task, like visualiz-ing a sequence as they read or hear about it, Barringer says.

Over the past three decades, neuroscience studies of con-ditions like Alzheimer’s disease and dyslexia have shown a lotabout the very different wiring of individual human minds, saysBarringer. “There have been just amazing breakthroughs inbrain research and learning,” she says.

But while “much of the new science has emerged in thelast decade, many teachers were trained 20 to 30 years ago”and aren’t aware of the information, she says. Nevertheless,many observant teachers already have a repertoire of strategiesthat facilitate learning different kinds of material, although theydon’t often realize that they do, says Barringer.

The place for teachers and parents to start is by observing anindividual child’s behavior and schoolwork to see how the child’smind is wired. Too often, when a child has learning difficulties,the entire focus is on what is going wrong, says Barringer. Instead,“look first at what’s going right,” she recommends. “You get a verygood profile from looking at the child’s strengths,” which enablesteachers and parents to help the child compensate for deficiencies.

“Kids who have differences in learning have faced added pres-sure from being in schools where their minds were misunder-stood, she says. But today there’s a much greater possibility offinding a parent or an educator who has the knowledge to help.Kids in this decade have a better chance of finding someone.”

Tailoring Teaching to Fit the BrainNeuroscience helps overcome students’ cognitive difficulties


seem to have lost sight of the basicpurposes of schooling and of the highexpectations and disciplined effortneeded to attain them.” 22

In response, schools began in-creasing homework, but mostly foryounger children. Indeed, over the past25 years, elementary and middleschools have increased homeworkloads, with the largest increases forthe very youngest children — first-

through third-graders.Between 1981 and 1997, time di-

aries filled out by families showed that6-to-8-year-olds’ homework time morethan doubled, from an average 52minutes per week to 128 minutes. 23

Meanwhile, in the same survey, av-erage weekly homework time for 9-to-12-year-olds only rose from three hoursand 22 minutes in 1981 to three hoursand 41 minutes in 1997. 24

High school students’ homeworkburden has increased little overall. Ina national survey in 1999, for exam-ple, 11th-graders reported only slight-ly more homework than eighth-graders.

Only 12 percent of 11th-graders re-ported two hours or more of daily study,compared to 8 percent of eighth-graders,although two hours of homework is oftenconsidered the gold standard for high

A re our children overscheduled? Should preschool chil-dren be taught to read? When does academic chal-lenge become academic pressure?

Cognitive science is beginning to answer such questions,but the findings don’t always make it into the classroom.

Putting discoveries in cognitive science — the study ofthought and learning processes — to work in education willhappen, but the process is only beginning, says Bror Saxberg,chief learning officer at K12 Inc., a Herndon, Va., firm that de-velops online-learning products. “When you look at how teach-ers are trained, there’s still not much said about how mindswork,” he says.

Here are some of the research findings that analysts sayshould be more widely understood by schools and families:

• Many American children and teens are overscheduled andoverstimulated, putting their health and ability to learn atrisk. What look like activities that lead to children’s suc-cess, such as sports teams and music lessons, are “over-stimulation that actually can stress a growing child’s brain,”says Michael Gurian, a family therapist in Colorado Springs.

Parents should remember that “boredom is crucial”for children to develop their own personalities and talentprofiles, Gurian says. “You have to let your kids be boredfor at least an hour a day” — with no TV or computer— to figure out what they enjoy doing. “If they’re neverbored, they’ll never find out who they are.”

Sleep is also crucial for brain development and learn-ing, and “about 40 percent of children don’t get enough,”Gurian says. Sleep deprivation is an unrecognized problemfor many teenagers, too, says Denise Clark Pope, a lectur-er at the Stanford University School of Education. “Not a lotof people know that adolescents need nine and a half hours.”

• Studies show “that kids who attend preschool — tradition-al, non-academic preschool — do well in K-12,” says GaryMangiofico, CEO of Los Angeles Universal Preschool, an in-dependent public-benefit corporation promoting preschool.

“However, some have backward-mapped from that toargue that we should focus on preschool as an academ-ic thing, to begin preparing children at age 4 for the high-stakes testing they will face later,” Mangiofico says. But4-year-olds’ main developmental jobs include learning howto socialize, use their bodies in large-motor and fine-motorskills and get better control of their emotions — skillsthey must master before they can successfully tackle read-ing and writing, he says.

• Cognitive scientists say mastering a complex skill takes“10 years of deliberate practice,” according to Saxberg.“It’s the way Tiger Woods keeps rethinking his swing.”After a period of slow, conscious practice, though, skillsare mastered and move into “the huge infrastructure ofsubconscious modules in which expertise you’ve alreadydeveloped is stored,” he says. That’s what has happenedonce we can write longhand and think through an essayat the same time, he explains.

There’s “no short cut” to going through an initial pe-riod of slow practice building any skill, says Saxberg. Butthe good news is that mastering a skill doesn’t dependon innate talent but “whether you have the will, patienceand interest to put in that practice,” he says.

• Another lesson from cognitive science is that minds dobest “when they’re challenged, but not too challenged,”says Saxberg. Teachers assigning homework must makesure that the work is doable and that kids have a wayto prove that they’ve mastered the task; then they canstop practicing, Saxberg explains.

“Some teachers think they’re doing the right thing byassigning mounds of worksheets for practice, he says. Butonce children know how to do it, they begin to hate thework, and their performance drops off, Saxberg says. As-signments that are too difficult also prevent students fromperforming well, he says.

How Cognitive Science Helps TeachersEducators say research findings are not widely understood

592 CQ Researcher


school students and too much formiddle-schoolers. Close to two-thirds ofboth eighth- and 11th-graders said thatthey had less than an hour of dailyhomework. 25

Research shows little evidence thathomework improves learning orschool achievement for children inthe early grades, says Arizona State’sBerliner. “Through junior high, therelationship betweenhomewo rk andachievement doesn’texist, while in highschool there is a re-lationship,” he says.

For older students,a moderate amountof homework — 60to 90 minutes pernight for middle-schoolers and 120minutes for high-schoolers — hasbeen shown to im-p rove s tuden tachievement, saysCooper of DukeUniversity. Studentswho do less as wellas those who reportdoing more bothachieve less, saysCooper, who pub-lished a study in 2006synthesizing all ex-isting research onhomework amounts.(See “At Issue,” p.593.)

For elementary school students, noamount of homework raises academ-ic achievement, Cooper says. Never-theless, a rule of thumb for many ed-ucators is that 10 minutes of dailyhomework per grade of school is ap-propriate, and that principle seems tobe in line with children’s developingattention spans and grasp of studyskills, he says.

Even more important than howmuch homework is what kind, say

many educators. Nevertheless, whileschools of education acquaint teachers-in-training with theories of learningand lesson planning, none actually of-fers specific classes on assigninghomework.

“I called 15 schools of education,and I’ve spoken to thousands of teach-ers, but I never came across a teacheryet who has taken a course” on home-

work, says The Case Against Home-work coauthor Bennett.

Teachers don’t always give enoughthought to the ramifications of theirassignments, but they should, said BeaMcGarvey, an education consultant whoformerly was executive director for ed-ucation in the Portland, Maine, pub-lic schools.

She had traditionally asked hergrade-school students to build diora-mas depicting favorite scenes in the

children’s book Make Way for Duck-lings, McGarvey recounted. But as sheconsidered the issue of homeworkmore closely, she decided that the as-signment didn’t make sense.

Did students need to complete a three-to-five-day project that in the end woulddemonstrate only a literal understandingof the story? No, McGarvey decided.Writing a short description of a favorite

scene would demonstrateexactly the same amountof learning without wast-ing hours with scissors andglue, she concluded. 26

The question of howmuch and what home-work to assign will becrucial as long as schoolslook for the best waysto help students learn.

But the current battle— mostly led by parentswho decry homework’sthreat to family time —reflects “larger culturalwars” over the place ofwork in Americans’ livesgenerally, said John Buell,an education scholar andcolumnist for the Bangor[Maine] Daily News andthe author of two bookson homework. 27

As commutes length-en and more adults havea 24/7 connection to theirjobs through cell phonesand laptops, “Americansincreasingly have a . . .

love-hate relationship with work,” con-sidering it “one of the central mean-ings of life” but resenting the time ittakes from other things, said Buell. “Al-though the debate over homework in-volves genuine pedagogical issues, onecannot fully understand . . . the heatsurrounding it without . . . attention tothis cultural civil war over whether workis to retain its all-encompassing placein our culture.” 28

Continued on p. 594

Heavy backpacks suggest these Boston students have plenty ofhomework. The National Education Association and the

National Parent Teacher Association endorse the so-called 10-minutes-per-grade rule of thumb for homework.

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At Issue:Do American students get too much homework?Yes

yesNANCY KALISHCOAUTHOR, THE CASE AGAINST HOME-WORK: HOW HOMEWORK IS HURTINGOUR CHILDREN AND WHAT WE CAN DOABOUT IT

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, JULY 2007

w hen most of us were growing up, our homeworkwas manageable. We were able to complete itwithout constant supervision, then run out to play

(and burn some calories), have dinner with our families and goto bed at a reasonable hour. But today many young childrenare giving up all those things to spend hour after sedentaryhour at their desks.

According to a 2006 Associated Press-America Online poll,elementary school students average 78 minutes of homeworkper night while middle school students average 99 minutes.That might not sound like much. But it means children areroutinely spending 50 percent more time on their homeworkthan the 10 minutes total per grade level per night recommend-ed by the National Education Association, the National PTA andDuke University’s Harris M. Cooper (essay at right). And whenresearching our book, my coauthor and I had no trouble find-ing many children who put in much more time, including first-graders working more than an hour each night.

Those time limits were established for a reason: Whenschools push beyond them, many children, including teens,are developmentally unable to cope. They react by misbehav-ing, becoming anxious, burning out and eventually coming tohate school — not exactly the way we want our young peo-ple to feel about learning. The stated goals of homework —to foster responsibility and reinforce learning — are oftenovershadowed by the crushing load.

For all this sacrifice, you’d assume there’s a great payoff.But there isn’t. Cooper’s own review of the homework re-search found little correlation between homework and achieve-ment in elementary school and only a moderate correlation inmiddle school. Even in high school, Cooper says more thantwo hours of homework can diminish its effectiveness and be-come counterproductive. Ironically, there’s plenty of researchshowing that exercise, play and the family dinner — all thingschildren are giving up — are more highly correlated with cog-nitive development and achievement than is homework.

So where does this leave us? I don’t believe homeworkshould be abolished — just brought back into balance. It’s truethat homework overload doesn’t affect every child. But even ifonly 10 percent of America’s 54 million schoolchildren are suf-fering (and I believe it’s much more), it’s still a serious prob-lem for those 5.4 million. All children need time for activeplay, time to spend with their families and time to be, well,children. No American child deserves any less.No

HARRIS M. COOPERPROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND NEURO-SCIENCE, DUKE UNIVERSITY

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, JULY 2007

a n Associated Press poll in 2006 found that about 57percent of parents felt their child was assigned aboutthe right amount of homework. Another 23 percent

thought it was too little, 19 percent thought it was too much.Educators should be thrilled. Pleasing a majority of parents

and having equal numbers shouting “too much!” and “too lit-tle!” is about as good as they can hope for.

My colleagues and I have conducted a combined analysisof dozens of homework studies to examine whether home-work is beneficial and what amount is appropriate.

The question is best answered by comparing students whoare assigned homework with students assigned no homeworkbut who are similar in other ways. Such studies suggest thathomework can improve scores on class tests. Students as-signed homework in second grade did better on math, third-and fourth-graders did better on English skills and vocabulary,fifth-graders on social studies, ninth- through 12th-graders onAmerican history and 12th-graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link the amount ofhomework to achievement but control for other factors thatmight influence this connection. Such studies, often based onnational samples of students, also find a positive link betweentime on homework and achievement.

Yet other studies correlate homework and achievement withno attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such stud-ies, about 77 percent find the link between homework andachievement is positive. Most interesting, though, these resultssuggest little or no relationship between homework andachievement for elementary school students.

Why might this be so? Younger children have less-devel-oped study habits and are less able to tune out distractions.Studies also suggest that young students who are struggling inschool take more time to complete assignments.

So, how much homework should students do? A parentguide from the National PTA and the National Education Asso-ciation states, “Most educators agree that for children in gradesK-2, homework is more effective when it does not exceed 10-20 minutes each day; older children, in grades 3-6, can handle30-60 minutes a day; in junior and senior high, the amount ofhomework will vary by subject.” These recommendations areconsistent with the conclusions reached by our analysis.

My feeling is that policies should prescribe amounts ofhomework consistent with the research evidence, but also giveschools and teachers some flexibility. In general, teachersshould avoid either extreme.

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594 CQ Researcher

CURRENTSITUATION

Reevaluating Homework

A spate of recent books and newsreports questioning the value of

homework has prompted many schoolsto reevaluate their policies. Mean-while, data are just beginning to emergeabout how the new era of high-stakestesting under NCLB is affecting stu-dents and teachers.

Dialogue among parents, teachers,and school administrators often leadsto lighter loads of more carefully de-veloped assignments, says anti-homework author Kalish. The dia-logue can be a bit hard to launch,she says. Parents tend to considerhomework such a time-honored tra-dition “that there’s no hope ofchange,” she says. At the same time,“the school administration often thinksparents want more homework.”

“The most important step is notabolishing homework but thinkingthrough what will work to help ourkids become lifelong learners,” whichprobably means limiting assignmentsto the most thoughtful and importantones, says Kalish.

Efforts to make such changes areoccurring in private and public schoolsaround the country. In 2006, for ex-ample, Greenville, S.C., public schoolslimited daily homework and how heav-ily homework could count in a stu-dent’s final grade. 29

Last spring, Norwalk, Conn., beganconsidering a new policy to limithomework: Homework would not beassigned as a punishment; kinder-garteners and first- and second-graderswould have a maximum of 10 min-utes of homework daily; and no ele-

mentary students would have home-work over the weekend, although theywould be expected to read on theirown each day. 30

Middletown, Ohio, is consideringa ban on grading homework. Thepolicy would establish a more “levelplaying field” among students byputting “the emphasis of homeworkon practicing for assessments such astests, projects and quizzes” andavoiding the possibility of some stu-dents ending up with higher coursegrades based on homework forwhich they got substantial help fromtheir parents. 31

Some parents and teachers haveloudly opposed the plan, however.Older students won’t study at all ifthey don’t get an immediate paybackfor it in the form of grades for com-pletion of homework, said a high schoolteacher. 32

The private Hopkins School in NewHaven, Conn., is also reconsidering itshomework policies to ensure that onlyhomework that really increases learn-ing is assigned. “If five problems helpstudents understand a concept, thendon’t assign 15,” said Assistant Headof School John Roberts. 33

Testing the Tests

S chools that fail to meet NCLB goalscould eventually face compulsory

reorganization, mass firings and stateor private takeover.

With NCLB testing only a few yearsold, its effects on students are stilllargely unknown. Some information isemerging, however, about how thetests are changing things in class-rooms.

“Teachers aren’t all opposed toNCLB, but we saw a big problem withteacher morale” in a new large-scalestudy of teachers’ and administrators’ re-sponses to high-stakes testing in Cali-fornia, Georgia and Pennsylvania, saysLaura S. Hamilton, a senior behavioral

scientist at the Rand Corporation, a PaloAlto, Calif., research organization. “Ma-jorities of teachers were telling us thatNCLB was badly affecting teachermorale,” but majorities “also said it washaving a good effect on coordinationin the schools.”

Teachers are particularly bugged byNCLB’s measurement standard forschools — called Average YearlyProgress, or AYP — because it “doesn’treflect what they’re really doing,” Hamil-ton says. The AYP compares, for ex-ample, achievement by this year’sfourth-grade class to last year’s, andmany teachers and education analystspoint out that the two classes may notbe comparable.

In addition, many teachers don’tfeel confident that current tests ac-tually match their states’ learning stan-dards or curricula, and virtually allbelieve NCLB’s ultimate goal — hav-ing 100 percent of students test at“proficient” levels by 2014 — is un-realistic, says Hamilton. For some,that dissatisfaction could lead to“dumbed-down” classrooms whereteachers focus on test-taking strate-gies rather than important content,she says. “When people perceive goalsas impossible to attain, they’ll tendto take shortcuts,” such as “teachingto the test,” she says.

Many schools, especially in low-income areas, “can’t possibly meetnext year’s goals,” let alone the 2014goal, says Hamilton. 34 That may cre-ate a feeling of defeat, even in teach-ers who believe they’ve made realprogress, she says. “The teachers say,‘I’ve moved these kids up significantly,but it doesn’t show up in the results.’ ”

The Rand study finds that “teach-ers are spending a fair amount of timewith practice tests, test-taking strate-gies and problems that mirror whatwill be on the tests,” says Hamilton.In addition, “a lot of states now havebenchmarking tests,” which don’t carryany stakes but help teachers see howwell students are doing and enable


Continued from p. 592


them to readjust theirteaching accordingly —“four to six times ayear,” Hamilton says. “Allthese things togetherhave classrooms very fo-cused on tests.”

In addition, today’stest questions, statelearning standards andtextbooks “don’t alwaysfit with one another,”says Hamilton.

That’s a problem, be-cause it means that tests— not decisions aboutwhat content studentsshould master — “aredriving what we teach,”says Sharon L. Nichols,an assistant professor ofeducational psychologyat the University ofTexas, San Antonio.

“The more you specif-ically practice a skill ina single situation” — suchas for a standardized test— “the less transferableyour learning is,” Nicholssays. For example, “whenteachers teach formulaicwriting because theyknow that kind of writ-ten answer will succeedon a certain test,” they are not actual-ly preparing students to write in thereal world, she explains.

High-stakes tests “are also dictatingthe pace and the timing of what’staught,” sometimes in ways that makea hash of the curriculum, says Nichols.For example, middle school teachersshe surveyed complained about teststhat include Civil War information thestate curriculum dictates should betaught in the weeks after the test. “Sothey have to roar through it” to coverit in time for the exam.

Too much focus on tests can dam-age students’ motivation, Nichols says.Many who fear they won’t pass give

up too easily, while others who are con-fident of passing lose interest in schoolbecause the tests “don’t challenge themand the test has become the only thingthat matters in the classroom.”

Meanwhile, beyond homework andstandardized testing, an era of ultra-competitiveness has overtaken studentsin many affluent neighborhoods, saysStanford’s Pope.

The belief among many parentsand teachers that only superkids whograduate from Harvard are truly suc-cessful takes a devastating toll onsome students, Pope maintains. Nev-ertheless, she says there’s a growingawareness among psychologists, col-

lege admissions officers andschool administrators thatcurrent ideas about successare skewed.

Some colleges now focusless on test scores and moreon effort and other factorsin admissions decisions, saysPope. “That gives me somehope” that criteria for suc-cess are beginning to broad-en and that pressure mayease for teenagers, Pope says.

Pope and some of herStanford colleagues arelaunching a campaign toalert families and schoolsto the dangers of whatshe calls overcompetitive-ness, which she says isperpetuated by myths andignorance.

For example, whilemany suburban parentsfocus on a handful of thebest-known colleges fortheir children, “in fact thereare about 200 differentschools” whose graduatesattain the same levels ofcareer achievement, Popesays. “Two hundred vs. 10.That’s a much healthiermessage to send.”

OUTLOOKLearning to Teach

O ne thing is certain for the fu-ture: The pressure on schools

to provide more academics to morestudents is here to stay.

Education systems around the worldare inexorably moving to require moreyears of strictly academic educationfor more students than ever before,says Baker of Penn State. The “slow

According to a survey of college freshmen that has beenrepeated since the 1960s, amounts of high school homework

are hitting all-time lows — about five hours per week. Today between 30-40 percent of U.S. students

say they typically have no homework.

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death of vocationalism” that sees vir-tually all students pursuing a math-and-literacy-heavy curriculum throughhigh school is occurring globally andin the United States, he says.

Exactly what that implies for home-work and testing, however, is unclear.Much is still unknown about how par-ticular homework practices and test-ing policies affect students and abouthow to teach academic subjects suc-cessfully to everyone.

For her part, anti-homework activistBennett sees the tide turning against home-work, especially for younger children.

“I’ve noticed that many people takeit as a given now that homework andachievement don’t go together,” Bennettsays. Ten years ago, when she first be-came alarmed about homework’s ill ef-fects on her own family, Bennett saysmost other parents in her children’s schoolssimply assumed that more homeworktranslated to greater academic success.

Today, more people question thatassumption, and the questioning is be-ginning to pay off in revised home-work policies as well as more scrutinyof other school traditions that reinforceovercompetitive attitudes, Bennett says.She expects that trend to continue.

“A school in Menlo Park [Calif.] justgot rid of homework, and one in Ohiorecently dropped grades altogether,”Bennett says. “In a school in Alberta,Canada, the principal asked the teach-ers to read up on homework over thesummer, and when school started in

the fall they changed their policies,”greatly limiting the homework assigned,Bennett says.

Many education researchers say thedemands of educating all students toa high academic standard will requireunderstanding much more about howstudents learn. Some also say Ameri-cans may have to make a tough shiftto a more academics-friendly societyto see real results.

“If you believe in very high acad-emic achievement, you can’t be satis-fied” with the current U.S. showing oninternational tests, says Brookings’ Love-less. To improve U.S. standings, in-creased study time on academic sub-jects would be required, as well asincreased attention to academics andlearning by families and the society atlarge, he says. But “even thougheverybody wants the nation’s schoolsto be better, there’s not a huge push”for that kind of cultural change.

Furthermore, just requiring kids tospend more time studying, in schoolor out, won’t help all that much, Love-less says. Research shows that “youcan add an hour to the school day”and “get a small gain in achievementbut not nearly as much as you’d ex-pect,” he says. “The missing elementis — productivity,” says Loveless. Extrahours must be spent addressing indi-vidual children’s specific academic de-ficiencies to pay off, he says.

In coming years, cognitive sciencewill help in that direction, says Bror

Saxberg, chief learning officer at K12,a Herndon, Va., firm that develops on-line learning products.

The current need is to find out howpeople learn and then figure out whatinterventions can help learners past iden-tifiable stumbling blocks, says Saxberg.Research to tackle those questions isjust beginning, he says. “As we go for-ward and develop more sophisticationabout what goes wrong” when peopleget stuck in learning a skill, “we’ll beable to provide teachers with a betterset of tools” to diagnose individualproblems and remedy them.

Notes

1 For background, see Lauren K. Meade,“Honor Roll Story Makes Media Splash,”The Boston Globe, Dec. 17, 2006 and Lau-ren K. Meade, “An Urgent Message forStressed-Out Students: Relax,” The BostonGlobe, Feb. 1, 2007.2 Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg,“How American Children Spent Their Time,”Journal of Marriage and Family, May 2001,p. 295.3 Quoted in Sally Kalson, “Back to School:From Reading to Algebra, Everything in SchoolIs Starting Earlier,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,Aug. 27, 2006, p. A12.4 J. E. Stone, “Developmentalism: An Ob-scure but Pervasive Restriction on EducationalImprovement,” Education Policy AnalysisArchives, April 21, 1996, http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v4n8.html.5 Quoted in Michael F. Shaughnessy, “An In-terview With Paul Zoch: Doomed to Fail,”EducationNews.org, March 21, 2007, www.ed-news.org.6 Hofferth and Sandberg, op. cit.7 Quoted in Peg Tyre, “Talk Transcript: TheNew First Grade,” Newsweek and MSNBC.com,Sept. 6, 2006, www.msnbc.com.8 For background, see Marcia Clemmitt, “APand IB Programs,” CQ Researcher, March 3,2006, pp. 193-216.9 For more data from the poll, see “Attitudesof Parents and Teachers About Homework,”eSchoolNews Online , Feb. 14, 2006,www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstory.cfm?ArticleID=6111.

About the Author

Staff writer Marcia Clemmitt is a veteran social-policyreporter who previously served as editor in chief of Medi-cine & Health and staff writer for The Scientist. She hasalso been a high-school math and physics teacher. Sheholds a liberal arts and sciences degree from St. John’sCollege, Annapolis, and a master’s degree in English fromGeorgetown University. Her recent reports include “Cli-mate Change,” “Health Care Costs,” “Cyber Socializing”and “Prison Health Care.”


10 Quoted in “Forum Brief: The End of Home-work,” American Youth Policy Forum, Nov. 20,2000, www.apyf.org.11 Ibid.12 For background, see Barbara Mantel, “NoChild Left Behind,” CQ Researcher, May 27, 2005,pp. 469-492; Kenneth Jost, “Testing in Schools,”CQ Researcher, April 20, 2001, pp. 321-344;Kathy Koch, “National Education Standards,” CQResearcher, May 14, 1999, pp. 401-424.13 Sean W. Mulvenon, “Impact of Account-ability and School Testing on Students: IsThere Evidence of Anxiety?” paper presentedat the annual meeting of the Mid-South Ed-ucational Research Association, Nov. 13-16,2001, http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/cus-tom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED460155&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=ED460155.14 Quoted in Stuart S. Yeh, “Limiting the Un-intended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing,”Education Policy Analysis Archives, Oct. 28, 2005,http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v13n43/.15 Quoted in ibid.16 For background, see David Baker and Ger-ald LeTendre, National Differences, GlobalSimilarities: World Culture and the Future ofSchooling (2005).17 Transcript, “The 2006 Brown Center Reporton American Education: How Well Are OurStudents Learning?” Brookings Institution,Oct. 18, 2005.18 Ibid.19 “Too Much Homework Can Be Counter-productive,” Physorg.com, www.physorg/print-news.php?newsid=4333.20 Chick Moorman and Thomas Haller, “Syn-thesis of Research Findings on Homework,”Jane Bluestein Instructional Support Services,Inc., www.janebluestein.com.21 For background, see Brian P. Gill andSteven L. Schlossman, “A Sin Against Child-hood: Progressive Education and the Crusadeto Abolish Homework, 1897-1941,” AmericanJournal of Education, November 1996, p. 27;Brian P. Gill and Steven L. Schlossman, “TheLost Cause of Homework Reform,” AmericanJournal of Education, November 2000, p. 27;Brian P. Gill and Steven L. Schlossman, “ANation at Rest: The American Way of Home-work,” Educational Evaluation and PolicyAnalysis, fall 2003, p. 319.22 National Commission on Excellence inEducation, A Nation at Risk: The Imperativefor Educational Reform , April 1983,www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/title.html.

23 Gill and Schlossman, “A Nation at Rest:The American Way of Homework,” op. cit.24 Ibid.25 Ibid.26 Quoted in Kathy Checkley, “When Home-work Works,” Classroom Leadership, September2003, Association for Supervision and Curricu-lum Development, www.ascd.org.27 Quoted in “Author Does His Homeworkon Hot Topic,” Education World, Feb. 10,2006, www.education-world.com.28 Ibid.29 Nancy Keates, “Schools Turn Down theHeat on Homework,” The Wall Street Jour-

nal, Jan. 19, 2007, p. W1.30 “Norwalk, Connecticut, Board of EducationConsiders Homework Policy Change,” stophome-work blog, May 22, 2007, http://stophome-work.com/category/in-the-news/.31 Megan Gildow, “Research Gives No Guid-ance on Policy,” Middletown Journal, June 10,2007, middletownjournal.com.32 Quoted in ibid.33 Quoted in Keates, op. cit.34 For background, see Marcia Clemmitt, “Fix-ing Urban Schools,” CQ Researcher, April 27,2007, pp. 361-384.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAlfie Kohn, www.alfiekohn.org/index.html. The Web site of an education writerand critic posts articles and research questioning the value of homework and testingand what Kohn says is the overcompetitive nature of U.S. education.

All Kinds of Minds, 24-32 Union Square East, 6th Floor, Suite A, New York, NY10003; (888) 956-4637; www.allkindsofminds.org. A nonprofit institute that educatesteachers and parents about neurodevelopmental differences that create differentlearning challenges for students.

AVID, AVID Center, 5120 Shoreham Place, Suite 120, San Diego, CA 92122; (858)623-2843; www.avidcenter.org. A nonprofit group that establishes in-school supportprograms to help students who might otherwise not attend college.

Center for Public Education, 1680 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314; (703) 838-6722;www.centerforpubliceducation.org. Supported by the National School Boards Founda-tion, the center provides information on homework and other education issues.

Education Next, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; www.educationnext.org.An online quarterly journal on education reform produced by a conservativethink tank.

FairTest (National Center for Open and Fair Testing), 342 Broadway, Cam-bridge, MA 02139; (617) 864-4810; www.fairtest.org. Campaigns against what itcalls the abuses and flaws of standardized testing.

National Education Association, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036-3290; (202) 833-4000; www.nea.org/index.html. The nation’s largest teachers’union posts education articles and studies on its Web site.

Parenting Bookmark, www.parentingbookmark.com/index.html. Posts articles bypsychologists and education experts on topics such as children’s stress andchoosing a preschool.

The Preteen Alliance, 400 Hamilton Ave., Suite 340, Palo Alto, CA 94301; (650)497-8365; http://forum.lpfch.org/index.html?r=Bz7sao1d1OQ. A Web site sponsoredby the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health that posts articles and hostsdiscussions about adolescent issues, including school-related stress.

Stop Homework, www.stophomework.com. A parent’s blog containing essaysand links to news articles about homework and stress in schools.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

598 CQ Researcher

Books

Baker, David, and Gerald LeTendre, National Differences,Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future ofSchooling, Stanford University Press, 2005.Professors of education at Pennsylvania State University

compare education trends gleaned from a four-year investi-gation of K-12 education in 47 countries, including home-work, student achievement in math and science, private tutoring,teacher workloads and curriculum development.

Bennett, Sara, and Nancy Kalish, The Case AgainstHomework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Childrenand What We Can Do About It, Crown, 2006.Two organizers of parental campaigns to change home-

work policies at their children’s schools explain why theybelieve homework is harmful and what steps families cantake to get schools to adopt better homework strategies.

Buell, John, Closing the Book on Homework: EnhancingPublic Education and Freeing Family Time, Temple Uni-versity Press, 2003.A political economist and former professor at the College

of the Atlantic in Bangor, Maine, argues that unstructuredplay is more important for children’s learning than home-work and that anti-homework activism is part of a largercultural debate on the place of work in society.

Cooper, Harris M., The Battle Over Homework: CommonGround for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents, CorwinPress, 2001.A Duke University professor of psychology and neuro-

science examines academic research on homework and ex-plains how it could be put into practice by teachers.

Cutler, William W., Parents and Schools: The 150-YearStruggle for Control in American Education, Universityof Chicago Press, 2000.A professor of history at Temple University traces 150 years

of ongoing struggle between parents and schools over whoshould control children’s lives in and out of the classroom.

Kohn, Alfie, The Homework Myth, Da Capo LifelongBooks, 2006.An education writer and critic argues that homework is

detrimental to family life and discusses a century of researchquestioning homework’s value as an educational tool.

Levine, Mel, A Mind at a Time, Simon & Schuster, 2002.A professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina

Medical School explains how differing brain structures causechildren to struggle with different learning tasks and outlinesstrategies to help.

Pope, Denise Clark, Doing School: How We Are Creatinga Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Misedu-cated Students, Yale University Press, 2nd edition, 2003.A lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education

argues that American society’s overcompetitive view of educationharms students.

Zoch, Paul A., Doomed to Fail: The Built-In Defects ofAmerican Education, Ivan R. Dee, 2004.A longtime teacher of high school Latin argues that current

education trends put the onus for success on teachers andask for far too little effort from students.

Articles

Kalson, Sally, “Back to School: From Reading to Algebra,Everything in School Is Starting Earlier,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 27, 2006.Kindergarteners are filling out the worksheets that first-

graders used to do, and tutoring companies sell academicprograms for preschoolers. Nevertheless, experts are dividedon whether academic acceleration is too much too soon.

Keates, Nancy, “Schools Turn Down the Heat on Home-work,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 2007, p. W1.Public and private schools in some affluent neighborhoods

are changing their homework policies, cutting down on theamounts of homework assigned and asking teachers to ensurethat each assignment is worth students’ time.

Reports and Studies

Gill, Brian P., and Steven L. Schlossman, A Nation at Rest:The American Way of Homework, Educational Evaluationand Policy Analysis, fall 2003, p. 319.An education researcher at the Rand think tank and a

Carnegie Mellon University history professor analyze surveydata and conclude American high school students in the 1960shad substantially more homework than subsequent students.

Hamilton, Laura S., et al., Standards-Based AccountabilityUnder No Child Left Behind: Experiences of Teachersand Administrators in Three States, RAND Education, 2007,www.rand.org.Analysts from a nonprofit research organization survey school

teachers and administrators about pressure and other con-sequences of high-stakes standardized tests.

Loveless, Tom, The 2006 Brown Center Report on Amer-ican Education, Brookings Institution Press, 2006.The latest edition of this annual analysis examines current

student-achievement scores and how student attitudes likeconfidence and enjoyment of classes affect learning.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


Homework

“Less Homework, More Trouble,” editorial, USA Today,July 3, 2006, p. 8A.Ample evidence suggests lack of homework leaves American

students less prepared to compete in the global economy.

Berger, Joseph, “In Homework Wars, Student Wins a Battle:More Time to Unwind on Vacation,” The New York Times,April 4, 2007, p. B7.Sean Gordon-Loebl, a 15-year-old student at prestigious

Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, has convinced schoolofficials to restrict homework during vacations.

Haddock, Vicki, “After Years of Teachers Piling it on,There’s a New Movement to . . . Abolish Homework,”The San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 8, 2006, p. F1.A growing minority of teachers and experts wants to end

homework as it currently exists, while some are out to abol-ish it altogether.

Strauss, Valerie, “As Homework Grows, So Do Argu-ments Against It,” The Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2006,p. A4.Elementary school students do not get any real benefit

from doing homework, according to the country’s best-regarded researcher on the subject.

Wallis, Claudia, “The Homework Myth,” Time, Sept. 4, 2006,p. 59.New research is showing that an increase in dull and repet-

itive homework has little education value.

International Competition

Farhi, Paul, “5 Myths About US Students Outclassed bythe Rest of the World,” The Washington Post, Jan. 21,2007, p. B2.A closer look at American kids’ performance suggests that

U.S. education may not be falling behind the rest of the world.

Landsberg, Mitchell, “Grades Rising as Learning Lagging,Reports Find,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 23, 2007, p. A14.American high school students are taking harder courses

and scoring higher but learning less.

Stress and Students

Hoover, Eric, and Sierra Millman, “Shocking Admission,”The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2007, p. 45.The dean of admissions at MIT speaks out about the stresses

that the college-admissions process places on teens.

Jayson, Sharon, “Gen Nexters Have their Hands Full; Over-

achievement Plus a Drive to Succeed at a Young Age Makesfor Stressful Equation,” USA Today, Aug. 21, 2006, p. D1.Increased competition and teenagers’ drive to succeed in

school are ratcheting up the pressure on many high-schoolers.

Moore, Abigail Sullivan, “Students Choose Brain Over Belly,”The New York Times, Oct. 30, 2005, p. 6C.Some students are skipping lunch to take classes, hoping to

impress colleges by taking more challenging academic courses.

Vaishnav, Anand, “Suburban High Schools Ease Up onTeen Stress,” The Boston Globe, July 31, 2005, p. A1.Some schools are cutting back on tests and homework.

Testing

“New Tests in High Schools? They Have Enough Already,”editorial, USA Today, Oct. 20, 2005, p. A10.Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is recommending

more standardized tests for high schools, but students alreadyhave to take too many exams.

Rivera, Carla, “More Schools Are Ditching Final Exams,”Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2007, p. B1.More and more California schools are choosing oral pre-

sentations over standardized tests in assessing performance.

Whoriskey, Peter, “Political Backlash Builds overHigh-Stakes Testing; Public Support Wanes for TestsSeen as Punitive,” The Washington Post, Oct. 23, 2006,p. A3.In Florida, which is at the forefront of the testing and ac-

countability movement, the backlash against standardizedtests has become broader and more politically potent.

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SUBSCRIBEA full-service CQ Researcher print subscription—including44 reports a year, monthly index updates, and a boundvolume—is $688 for academic and public libraries, $667for high school libraries, and $827 for media libraries.Add $25 for domestic postage.

CQ Researcher Online offers a backfile from 1991 and anumber of tools to simplify research. For pricing in-formation, call 800-834-9020, ext. 1906, or [email protected].

Upcoming ReportsCuba’s Future, 7/20/07

Fish Farming, 7/27/07

Corporate Responsibility, 8/3/07

Superbugs, 8/24/07

In-depth Reports on Issues in the News

Civil LibertiesPrison Reform, 4/07Voting Controversies, 9/06Right to Die, 5/05Immigration Reform, 4/05

Crime/LawGun Violence, 5/07Patent Disputes, 12/06Sex Offenders, 9/06Treatment of Detainees, 8/06War on Drugs, 6/06

EducationPresidential Libraries, 3/07Academic Freedom, 10/05Intelligent Design, 7/05No Child Left Behind, 5/05

EnvironmentFactory Farms, 1/07The New Environmentalism, 12/06Biofuels Boom, 9/06Nuclear Energy, 3/06Climate Change, 1/06

Health/SafetyHPV Vaccine, 5/07Universal Coverage, 3/07Combating Addiction, 2/07Rising Health Costs, 4/06

International Affairs/PoliticsProsecutors and Politics, 6/07Electing the President, 4/07Rethinking Foreign Policy, 2/07Future of the Catholic Church, 1/07Understanding Islam, 11/06

Social TrendsShock Jocks, 6/07Consumer Debt, 3/07Television’s Future, 2/07

Terrorism/DefenseReal ID, 5/07New Strategy in Iraq, 2/07

YouthDebating Hip-Hop, 6/07Drinking on Campus, 8/06Teen Spending, 5/06

CQ RESEARCHER PLUS ARCHIVE

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CQ Researcher Plus Archive delivers fast, online access to every CQ Researcher report from 1991 to the present, PLUS lets you ex- plore the complete archive of Editorial Research Reports* from 1923-1990. Search and browse more than 3,600 in-depth reports.

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Students Under Stress - K12

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