Teachers reassess value of homework

Long hours seen as less productive

A growing number of Triangle teachers are questioning the value of homework this year, though students' bulging backpacks might suggest otherwise.

From schools that no longer grade homework to districts that have gone soft on deadlines, the idea that all homework is good has faded.

Veteran teachers who once assigned homework every night have not forgotten the message it once sent. "People would have thought I didn't know how to teach," said Charlene Taylor at Chapel Hill's Culbreth Middle School.

Today, the 27-year veteran thinks that hassles over homework's due dates and grades outweigh its benefits: She has scaled back to just two simple assignments each week. "With parents or with kids, I refuse to make homework a battle," she said.

After lugging their books almost a month now, students are well aware that homework still enjoys strong support among many teachers. But a recent study from Harris Cooper, Duke University's nationally recognized homework guru, shows that flooding students with assignments doesn't help them excel.

Students can handle more homework as they age, according to Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience. But each grade level has a corresponding breaking point.

"After that point in time," Cooper said, "their achievement actually goes down."

The rule

It's called the 10-minute rule. According to Cooper's work, first-graders are best suited to 10 minutes of homework. Second-graders can comfortably handle 20 minutes and so on. The formula holds through middle school and high school.

Variations of the rule are printed in guidebooks put out by the National Education Association and the Parent Teacher Association. Some school districts, including the Wake County system, suggest it in policy.

What Cooper did, in a report published this year, was back it with research. He analyzed 60 research studies on homework conducted in various states between 1987 and 2003.

Most students pushed much beyond the recommended length of time and performed worse than students who stuck to the rule, Cooper said. For high school students in particular, performance diminished after two hours of homework.

"That curve fit perfectly with what educators had been saying," Cooper said.

Still, for teenagers such as Marianna Abraham, homework is a lifestyle.

The East Chapel Hill High senior spends roughly five hours on homework each school day. It takes up an hour of her morning and most of her afternoon.

"My workload increased slowly, so I didn't notice at first," Abraham said. "But my grades told me. And my parents told me I needed to be more studious."

'The Homework Myth'

Some educators, however, say the significance of homework should be downplayed. School leaders in Wake are encouraging teachers to stop giving zeros for late or missed homework assignments. East Millbrook Middle School in Raleigh does not count homework as part of the academic grade.

And in "The Homework Myth," author Alfie Kohn denounces homework as a rarely questioned yet unproven approach to teaching.

Most homework assignments are rote drills that do more to dull curiosity than aid learning, said Kohn, who has researched and written extensively about school accountability issues during the past 15 years.

Dwight Rogers, who teaches introductory classes at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, agrees that too many homework assignments are meaningless.

"It's a skill practice on a set of, in some ways, inane problems in math or vocabulary," Rogers said. "But teachers, who are under pressure to help kids do well on tests, don't have enough time in the school day," he said. "So they give out homework."

Lessons on crafting assignments are mostly an afterthought in education schools, Rogers said.

And most young teachers-in-training form their impressions about how to handle homework by watching older teachers.

Too much help

The best assignments, according to Cooper, are quick reinforcements of material taught in the classroom.

Taylor approaches homework the same way, sprinkling just a few challenges in her worksheets. Her assignments mostly recount concepts she has covered in class.

"It should not be a big chore," Taylor said. "The challenge should be minimal, not so much that you have to get help from your rocket scientist uncle at NASA."

Speaking of students who rely on relatives, Taylor doesn't care much for that either.

Teachers can control the classroom, but students go home to very different families.

"Parents shouldn't be involved in homework," Taylor said. "But they are. No child should fall behind because of what their parents can't provide."

(Staff writer T. Keung Hui contributed to this report.)