Homework Statistics Don’t Tell the Whole Story
“‘Dramatic increases in the amount of homework are robbing American students of their childhood, turning kids off learning, and destroying family life,’ declares a popular national news story. The problem is…almost everything in this story is wrong.” So reports the 2003 Brown Center Report on American Education. There are two forces at work— media reports and reality. A 2004 nationwide study by the University of Michigan says that homework time is up 51% since 1981. But, the Brown Center says that is because weekly studies increased from 1 hour 53 minutes to 2 hours 16 minutes in 1997—23 minutes more per week, an increase of 3-5 minutes per day (counting weekends).
Amazingly, 50% of American kids don’t have any homework. Even in high school, 75.8% of the kids spent more than 5 hours a week socializing, while only 33.4% spent that much time studying. So, if there is not as much homework as people fear, why do so many kids and parents complain of hours of homework? “Low achieving students…do more homework because they are struggling to catch up. The homework is not causing their learning problems.” Basic limitations on a student’s ability to learn or read often surface as excessive homework. Rather than looking to schools or statistics for answers, let’s overcome these limitations and empower our students to learn and read faster and easier. Better brain power beats extra homework every time.
Notes:Loveless, Tom. Part II: Do Students Have Too Much Homework? The Brown Center Report on American Education. October 2003. Volume 1, Number 4.
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