Can anyone prove that homework helps young students learn?

I posted an article/commentary on Walnut Creek Patch yesterday about a proposed new homework policy in the Walnut Creek School District. The school district provided me with a draft of the policy which I include with the article. Check it out and see what you think.

One thing I didn't come out and say yesterday--because I was still mulling the policy over--is that I have something of a pet peeve surrounding the issue of elementary school age kids doing regular homework--and sometimes a lot of it.

I'm just amazed at how much some parents and educators will insist, with the voice of authority, that homework is a really good thing, that it is a vital component to a young children's education. But how do these people know it's important? What proof do they have that doing homework makes kids learn better?

Just so you know, I am not anti-homework. I accept that it could very well be a good thing for my son to do on school nights-even though it is often a frustrating experience for him, as a sixth grader, as it is for other kids his age and younger. I accept that these assignments, even coloring in maps of ancient Greece--could be helping him and other kids learn. The really could.

But can anyone say so definitively? Beyond their own anecdotal experiences as students, parents, and teachers?

As I said in my Walnut Creek Patch story, this topic of homework intrigues me, because the debate over it touches on much larger societal issues about education, learning, parenting, and the definition of academic and personal success.

I became intrigued enough that a couple years ago I read the works and opinions of some of the top experts in the field. One of those experts is Harris Cooper, a Duke University professor who is considered one of America's foremost homework experts. He conducted a landmark metareview of some 60 studies in 2006. This metareview found "some correlation between homework and achievement in the upper grades, but little effect on students from elementary school to seventh grade.

His assertion about the upper grades makes sense. I remember regularly doing homework in high school, and, yes, I remember that studying helped me do better on math and science tests and that writing papers for English or history deepened my understanding of the concepts being taught.

But according to Cooper, regular homework doesn't have the same benefit for kids in lower middle school and elementary school grades.

So, if what Cooper says it correct, we as a society are creating a public policy that affects the daily lives of millions of young students and their teachers and families--but we don't have a lot of evidence that this policy will do any good.

It sounds like we like our kids doing homework because it sounds good; it seems like the more hours they put into studying and doing those columns of math problems the more they will know. Could be.

I accept that there are many different individual experiences out there--that you might have kids that have thrived on doing regular homework since they were in kindergarten. As a teacher, you might have seen students improve do better on quizzes when they took some work home and studied.

Then there is the other side of the issue: the kids who get turned off of school and learning because they resent the free time they have to give up on assignments that may be more busy-work than anything else. Homework for the sake of homework. And, I've seen my fair share of that kind of homework come home in my son's backpack.

I just find it interesting how we as a society make public policy on an assumption, on a faith, really, that it is the right thing to do without really having the evidence.

Then again, making public policy on an idea, rather than evidence, that it's the right thing to do--well there is nothing new in that is that. Actually, that's almost the American Way.

Homework debate going on in Walnut Creek schools about how much, what kind, and the future of those damned 4th grade mission projects

Walnut Creek School District teachers, parents, and administrators are in the midst of drafting a new policy that clarifies how teachers assign homework to students.

They want to create guidelines to prevent some of the homework horror stories we're all familiar with:

--Fifth graders  doing four or five hours of homework a night.

--Third grades crying at the prospect of sitting down to complete dozes of repetitious long-division problems--even though they have already mastered the concept.

--Parents stressing about helping their kids finish the class project that's due the Tuesday after a three-day holiday.

--Kids getting marked down because they didn't apply enough artistic skill to drawing and coloring a map of ancient Greece.
--Fourth-graders and their parents feeling pressure to  craft the most architecturally accurate and artistically beautiful replica of one of California's 21 missions.
--Concerns that teachers are assigning homework for concepts not yet covered in class or not checking homework to see where individual or groups of kids are struggling. 

A committee of teachers has met, and now parents are weighing in, in the form of surveys, e-mails to their parent representatives, and in a meeting of those representatives Tuesday night. I attended the Community Coordinating Council meeting, at which Superintendent Patricia Wool invited parent leaders to share concerns they personally have, or concerns that have been brought to their attention. Wool asked them to summarize ways that a policy could make homework more useful to student learning. She says the district hopes to have a draft policy ready by May.

A couple years ago, I read up a lot on the homework controversy in today's education.  I became acqauinted with some of the books and studies that are often cited in the debate. ( Here's a handy-dandy homework resource guide of those books, studies and other resources from  Diablo magazine, which did a special report on the homework debate in September 2008.) Kerry Dickinson, a Danville mother and former teacher--who pushed for the effort to revise the homework policy in the San Ramon Valley District--also writes on homework and other education issues on her blog, the East Bay Homework Blog. Her blog is included in my blog roll.

Aside from the fact homework affects the daily life of my son and our family, this debate intrigues me because it touches on much larger societal issues about education, learning, parenting, and definition of academic and personal success.

Philosophical differences create tensions between parents and teachers and between parents themselves. Between parents, there are those who say they want their kids challenged and don't mind even K-3 teachers assigning homework over the weekends. They say that being a good parent means being involved in your kids' education. Then there are those who say they are involved, but that schools should not dictate how involved parents will be, or how parents will structure the free time of their children.

One dad at Tuesday night's meeting said he didn't mind his kids getting homework on weekends and that schools shouldn't be gearing their expectations to the lowest common demoninator But other parents  disagreed. They said they want their families to be able to go away for long weekends and not feel required to make sure their kids are spending part of that vacation completing an assignment.

One basic question that didn't come up at Tuesday night's meeting was whether homework boosts student learning, especially when you're talking about younger kids. Last time I checked, there isn't a lot of hard evidence that homework yields improved achievement among younger students--and that's according to Harris Cooper, a Duke University professor who is considered one of America's foremost homework experts. He is best known for the "10-minute rule" that says that kids should do 10 minutes of homework per grade each night.

He completed a landmark metareview of some 60 studies in 2006. This metareview found "some correlation between homework and achievement in the upper grades, but little effect on students from elementary school to seventh grade," reported Diablo magazine.  While acknowledging that the connection between homework and student achievement in the lower grades is unknown, Cooper echoes a view I've heard from many parents and teachers, including some of my son's. It is that homework in the younger grades teaches kids study skills; it prepares them to do homework in high school an college. Under this argument, K-5 kids are doing homework to learn how to do homework.

Wool said the district is not looking to do away with homework--not at all."We want to refine it, to clarify it, and educate teachers who may have never had a class in how to give out homework," she said.  Homework should have "purpose" and it should be "relevant" to what kids are learning.

The majority of parents of Walnut Creek Intermediate students who participated in a February survey agreed that homework is important part of their children's education.

Some other ideas that came up in the meeting:
--There should be consistency in the amount of homework assigned; for example one fifth grade teacher at a school shouldn't require a 25-page report for the state report, while another only asks for a page and a half.
--Teachers across disciplines should "calendar" major assignments: the big science project shouldn't be due on the same Friday as the big math test.
--Teachers should differentiate homework according to student ability.
--Establish guidelines and limits for how much time kids, depending on their grade, should spend on homework.

As for those damn fourth grade mission projects: grumbling about them took up about 20 minutes of the discussion. Parents have lots of animosity towards them. Everyone agreed that those wind up being homework mostly for parents: to shop for the supplies or kit; to design; to even work on  themselves (like the one, I suspect, pictured here) ... One parent at the meeting called them "back-to-school-night projects": they help decorate the classroom for back to school night. Wool agreed that it was probably time to rethink the fourth grade mission project.




Final personal note on those damn mission projects: 
I had the best damn mission in my fourth-grade class at Parkmead Elementary. That's because my DIY dad came up with a clever idea for building my replica of the Santa Barbara mission. Using his saw, he cut up hundreds of tiny "bricks"  out of redwood, and he showed me how to lay those bricks. He helped me build the tower, and he used some of his model train landscaping equipment to place miniature trees. Yes, dad designed it; I did the grunt work. If I learned anything about missions and California history in the process, I don't really remember. But, I have a clear and pleasant memory of workinig together with my otherwise shy, emotionally remote ather on something.

I tried to recreate that sort of mission-buiding bonding with my son when he was in fourth grade, but he took the choice to opt out of building one. He is not arts-and-crafts minded, and dreads these sorts of projects. He has also has insisted since fourth grade on doing his homework himself.

Is there too much homework and academic pressure on our kids?

Especially at younger ages? And what is the cost to their psychological and emotional well being?

You can hear one local psychiatrist’s viewpoint on these issues at a talk Wednesday evening at Murwood Elementary. David Ritvo, a Yale-trained psychiatrist in private practice in Walnut Creek, works with parents and kids in our community, and sees these issues unfold in his office every day. He’ll hold a question and answer session with parents at the event, hosted by Murwood Elementary’s PTA.

These questions become especially pressing when you’re talking about kids in elementary and middle schools. If you really start looking at the literature on this topic, you’ll find that, contrary to what you’re often told, education experts do not agree on whether regular homework at these grade levels enhances learning.

Homework is definitely a “hot-button topic,” as another suburban blogger, Kerry Dickinson writes, in her latest post on her East Bay Homework Blog. This Danville mom is a parent activist on the homework issue, and her lobbying San Ramon Valley school leaders several years ago prompted that district to look at its policy. You can read about her Dickinson’s attempt, with other parents, to transform thinking around the topic in this 2008 Diablo magazine article.

Dickinson, trained as an elementary and middle school teacher herself, began to worry about how so much evening and weekend family time was taken up by homework, and saw that it made her sons, then in elementary and middle school, anxious and miserable. She had her homework epiphany when she read The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn.

In this tome, Kohn argues that there are no definitive studies proving homework's overall learning benefits, especially at younger ages. Indeed, he says, homework can be detrimental to children 's development by robbing families of quality time together and not allowing a kid time simply to be a kid. He points out that America’s current get-tough approach about homework, as a way of building character, actually nurtures a culture of drudgery, and not just for kids, but for parents and teachers. Homework, especially in the form of “busywork,” kills intellectual and creative curiosity, he asserts.

What do you think? What is your experience with your kids’ homework? Or, if you’re a student yourself, do you find homework helpful and challenging in a good way? Do you get too much of it—or too little?

By the way, the Walnut Creek school district is currently reviewing its homework policy.

And, if you’re worried that homework and academic pressure is stressing your kids out, you’re welcome to attend David Ritvo’s Question and Answer session. “If a healthy balance of work, love, and play is the goal for your children, the time to create that balance is now,” says the invitation to this event.

This event, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Murwood’s library, is free, and childcare will be provided for school-age children. An RSVP is requested, but not required. Contact SMuhlenkort@aol.com