how much homework do first graders get

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What’s the Right Amount of Homework?

Decades of research show that homework has some benefits, especially for students in middle and high school—but there are risks to assigning too much.

Many teachers and parents believe that homework helps students build study skills and review concepts learned in class. Others see homework as disruptive and unnecessary, leading to burnout and turning kids off to school. Decades of research show that the issue is more nuanced and complex than most people think: Homework is beneficial, but only to a degree. Students in high school gain the most, while younger kids benefit much less.

The National PTA and the National Education Association support the “ 10-minute homework guideline ”—a nightly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. But many teachers and parents are quick to point out that what matters is the quality of the homework assigned and how well it meets students’ needs, not the amount of time spent on it.

The guideline doesn’t account for students who may need to spend more—or less—time on assignments. In class, teachers can make adjustments to support struggling students, but at home, an assignment that takes one student 30 minutes to complete may take another twice as much time—often for reasons beyond their control. And homework can widen the achievement gap, putting students from low-income households and students with learning disabilities at a disadvantage.

However, the 10-minute guideline is useful in setting a limit: When kids spend too much time on homework, there are real consequences to consider.

Small Benefits for Elementary Students

As young children begin school, the focus should be on cultivating a love of learning, and assigning too much homework can undermine that goal. And young students often don’t have the study skills to benefit fully from homework, so it may be a poor use of time (Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). A more effective activity may be nightly reading, especially if parents are involved. The benefits of reading are clear: If students aren’t proficient readers by the end of third grade, they’re less likely to succeed academically and graduate from high school (Fiester, 2013 ).

For second-grade teacher Jacqueline Fiorentino, the minor benefits of homework did not outweigh the potential drawback of turning young children against school at an early age, so she experimented with dropping mandatory homework. “Something surprising happened: They started doing more work at home,” Fiorentino writes . “This inspiring group of 8-year-olds used their newfound free time to explore subjects and topics of interest to them.” She encouraged her students to read at home and offered optional homework to extend classroom lessons and help them review material.

Moderate Benefits for Middle School Students

As students mature and develop the study skills necessary to delve deeply into a topic—and to retain what they learn—they also benefit more from homework. Nightly assignments can help prepare them for scholarly work, and research shows that homework can have moderate benefits for middle school students (Cooper et al., 2006 ). Recent research also shows that online math homework, which can be designed to adapt to students’ levels of understanding, can significantly boost test scores (Roschelle et al., 2016 ).

There are risks to assigning too much, however: A 2015 study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90 to 100 minutes of daily homework, their math and science test scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015 ). Crossing that upper limit can drain student motivation and focus. The researchers recommend that “homework should present a certain level of challenge or difficulty, without being so challenging that it discourages effort.” Teachers should avoid low-effort, repetitive assignments, and assign homework “with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning.”

In other words, it’s the quality of homework that matters, not the quantity. Brian Sztabnik, a veteran middle and high school English teacher, suggests that teachers take a step back and ask themselves these five questions :

• How long will it take to complete?
• Have all learners been considered?
• Will an assignment encourage future success?
• Will an assignment place material in a context the classroom cannot?
• Does an assignment offer support when a teacher is not there?

More Benefits for High School Students, but Risks as Well

By the time they reach high school, students should be well on their way to becoming independent learners, so homework does provide a boost to learning at this age, as long as it isn’t overwhelming (Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up valuable time to rest and spend time with family and friends. A 2013 study found that high school students can experience serious mental and physical health problems, from higher stress levels to sleep deprivation, when assigned too much homework (Galloway, Conner, & Pope, 2013 ).

Homework in high school should always relate to the lesson and be doable without any assistance, and feedback should be clear and explicit.

Teachers should also keep in mind that not all students have equal opportunities to finish their homework at home, so incomplete homework may not be a true reflection of their learning—it may be more a result of issues they face outside of school. They may be hindered by issues such as lack of a quiet space at home, resources such as a computer or broadband connectivity, or parental support (OECD, 2014 ). In such cases, giving low homework scores may be unfair.

Since the quantities of time discussed here are totals, teachers in middle and high school should be aware of how much homework other teachers are assigning. It may seem reasonable to assign 30 minutes of daily homework, but across six subjects, that’s three hours—far above a reasonable amount even for a high school senior. Psychologist Maurice Elias sees this as a common mistake: Individual teachers create homework policies that in aggregate can overwhelm students. He suggests that teachers work together to develop a school-wide homework policy and make it a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year.

Parents Play a Key Role

Homework can be a powerful tool to help parents become more involved in their child’s learning (Walker et al., 2004 ). It can provide insights into a child’s strengths and interests, and can also encourage conversations about a child’s life at school. If a parent has positive attitudes toward homework, their children are more likely to share those same values, promoting academic success.

But it’s also possible for parents to be overbearing, putting too much emphasis on test scores or grades, which can be disruptive for children (Madjar, Shklar, & Moshe, 2015 ). Parents should avoid being overly intrusive or controlling—students report feeling less motivated to learn when they don’t have enough space and autonomy to do their homework (Orkin, May, & Wolf, 2017 ; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008 ; Silinskas & Kikas, 2017 ). So while homework can encourage parents to be more involved with their kids, it’s important to not make it a source of conflict.

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An Age-By-Age Guide to Helping Kids Manage Homework

Do you ever wonder whether homework is gauging the child’s ability to complete assignments or the parent’s? On one end of the spectrum, a parent might never mention homework and assume it gets done independently; on the other end are the parents who micromanage to be sure every worksheet is absolutely perfect.

Being too laissez faire about homework might deny a child the support they need to develop executive functioning skills, but being too involved could stifle their independence. So how much parent participation in homework is actually appropriate throughout a child’s education?

Basic homework tips

According to Scholastic , you should follow these rules of thumb to support your child during homework (without going overboard):

Stay nearby and available for questions without getting right in the middle of homework.

Avoid the urge to correct mistakes unless your child asks for help.

Instead of nagging, set up a homework routine with a dedicated time and place.

Teach time management for a larger project by helping them break it into chunks.

Child psychologist Dr. Emily W. King recently wrote about rethinking homework in her newsletter. King explains at what ages kids are typically able to do homework independently, but she writes that each child’s ability to concentrate at the end of the day and use executive functioning skills for completing tasks is very individual. I talked to her for more information on how much parental involvement in homework completion is needed, according to a child’s age and grade level.

Kindergarten to second grade

Whether children even need homework this early is a hot debate. Little ones are still developing fine motor skills and their ability to sit still and pay attention at this age.

“If a child is given homework before their brain and body are able to sit and focus independently, then we are relying on the parent or other caregivers to sit with the child to help them focus,” King said. “ Think about when the child is able to sit and focus on non-academic tasks like dinner, art, or music lessons. This will help you tease out executive functioning skills from academic understanding.”

Elementary-age children need time for unstructured play and structured play like music, arts, and sports. They need outside time, free time, and quiet time, King said. For children who are not ready for independent work, nightly reading with another family member is enough “homework,” she said.

Third to fifth grades

Many children will be able to do homework independently in grades 3-5. Even then, their ability to focus and follow through may vary from day to day.

“Most children are ready for practicing independent work between third and fifth grade, but maybe not yet in the after-school hours when they are tired and want to rest or play. We need to begin exposing children to organization and structure independently in late elementary school to prepare them for more independence in middle school,” King said.

Neurodivergent kids may need more parental support for several years before they work independently.

“Neurodivergent children, many of whom have executive functioning weaknesses, are not ready to work independently in elementary school. Children without executive functioning weaknesses (e.g., the ability to remain seated and attend to a task independently) are able to do this somewhere between third and fifth grade, but it’s very possible they can work independently at school but be too tired to do it later in the afternoon,” King said. “We need to follow the child’s skills and give them practice to work independently when they seem ready. Of course, if a child wants to do extra work after school due to an interest, go for it.”

For students who are not ready to work independently in middle school, it is better to reduce the amount of homework they are expected to complete so they can practice independence and feel successful.

Middle school

In sixth grade and later, kids are really developing executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, paying attention, initiating, shifting focus, and execution. They will still need your encouragement to keep track of assignments, plan their time, and stick to a homework routine.

“Middle school students need lots of organization support and putting systems in place to help them keep track of assignments, due dates, and materials,” King said.

High school

By this point, congratulations: You can probably be pretty hands-off with homework. Remain open and available if your teen needs help negotiating a problem, but executing plans should be up to them now.

“In high school, parents are working to put themselves out of a job and begin stepping back as children take the lead on homework. Parents of high schoolers are ‘homework consultants,’” King said. “We are there to help solve problems, talk through what to say in an email to a teacher, but we are not writing the emails or talking to the teachers for our kids.”

What if homework is not working for them (or you)

There are a number of reasons a child might not be managing homework at the same level as their peers, including academic anxiety and learning disabilities.

If your child is showing emotional distress at homework time, it might be a sign that they have run out of gas from the structure, socialization, and stimulation they have already been through at school that day. One way to support kids is to teach them how to have a healthy balance of work and play time.

“When we ask students to keep working after school when their tank is on empty, we likely damage their love of learning and fill them with dread for tomorrow,” King wrote in her newsletter.

King said in her experience as a child psychologist, the amount of homework support a child needs is determined by their individual abilities and skills more than their age or grade level.

“All of these steps vary for a neurodivergent child and we are not following these guidelines by age or grade but rather by their level of skills development to become more independent,” she said. “In order to independently complete homework, a child must be able to have attended to the directions in class, brought the materials home, remember to get the materials out at home, remember to begin the task, understand the task, remain seated and attention long enough to complete the task, be able to complete the task, return the work to their backpack, and return the work to the teacher. If any of these skills are weak or the child is not able to do these independently, there will be a breakdown in the system of homework. You can see why young students and neurodivergent students would struggle with this process.”

If you and your child have trouble meeting homework expectations, talk to their teacher about what could be contributing to the problem and how to modify expectations for them.

“Get curious about your child’s skill level at that time of day,” King said. “Are they able to work independently at school but not at home? Are they not able to work independently any time of day? Are they struggling with this concept at school, too? When are they successful?”

How Much Homework Is Enough? Depends Who You Ask

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Editor’s note: This is an adapted excerpt from You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education ( Viking)—the latest book by author and speaker Sir Ken Robinson (co-authored with Lou Aronica), published in March. For years, Robinson has been known for his radical work on rekindling creativity and passion in schools, including three bestselling books (also with Aronica) on the topic. His TED Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” holds the record for the most-viewed TED talk of all time, with more than 50 million views. While Robinson’s latest book is geared toward parents, it also offers educators a window into the kinds of education concerns parents have for their children, including on the quality and quantity of homework.

The amount of homework young people are given varies a lot from school to school and from grade to grade. In some schools and grades, children have no homework at all. In others, they may have 18 hours or more of homework every week. In the United States, the accepted guideline, which is supported by both the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association, is the 10-minute rule: Children should have no more than 10 minutes of homework each day for each grade reached. In 1st grade, children should have 10 minutes of daily homework; in 2nd grade, 20 minutes; and so on to the 12th grade, when on average they should have 120 minutes of homework each day, which is about 10 hours a week. It doesn’t always work out that way.

In 2013, the University of Phoenix College of Education commissioned a survey of how much homework teachers typically give their students. From kindergarten to 5th grade, it was just under three hours per week; from 6th to 8th grade, it was 3.2 hours; and from 9th to 12th grade, it was 3.5 hours.

There are two points to note. First, these are the amounts given by individual teachers. To estimate the total time children are expected to spend on homework, you need to multiply these hours by the number of teachers they work with. High school students who work with five teachers in different curriculum areas may find themselves with 17.5 hours or more of homework a week, which is the equivalent of a part-time job. The other factor is that these are teachers’ estimates of the time that homework should take. The time that individual children spend on it will be more or less than that, according to their abilities and interests. One child may casually dash off a piece of homework in half the time that another will spend laboring through in a cold sweat.

Do students have more homework these days than previous generations? Given all the variables, it’s difficult to say. Some studies suggest they do. In 2007, a study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that, on average, high school students spent around seven hours a week on homework. A similar study in 1994 put the average at less than five hours a week. Mind you, I [Robinson] was in high school in England in the 1960s and spent a lot more time than that—though maybe that was to do with my own ability. One way of judging this is to look at how much homework your own children are given and compare it to what you had at the same age.

Many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all.

There’s also much debate about the value of homework. Supporters argue that it benefits children, teachers, and parents in several ways:

• Children learn to deepen their understanding of specific content, to cover content at their own pace, to become more independent learners, to develop problem-solving and time-management skills, and to relate what they learn in school to outside activities.
• Teachers can see how well their students understand the lessons; evaluate students’ individual progress, strengths, and weaknesses; and cover more content in class.
• Parents can engage practically in their children’s education, see firsthand what their children are being taught in school, and understand more clearly how they’re getting on—what they find easy and what they struggle with in school.

Want to know more about Sir Ken Robinson? Check out our Q&A with him.

Q&A With Sir Ken Robinson

Ashley Norris is assistant dean at the University of Phoenix College of Education. Commenting on her university’s survey, she says, “Homework helps build confidence, responsibility, and problem-solving skills that can set students up for success in high school, college, and in the workplace.”

That may be so, but many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all. Families have busy lives, and it can be hard for parents to find time to help with homework alongside everything else they have to cope with. Norris is convinced it’s worth the effort, especially, she says, because in many schools, the nature of homework is changing. One influence is the growing popularity of the so-called flipped classroom.

In the stereotypical classroom, the teacher spends time in class presenting material to the students. Their homework consists of assignments based on that material. In the flipped classroom, the teacher provides the students with presentational materials—videos, slides, lecture notes—which the students review at home and then bring questions and ideas to school where they work on them collaboratively with the teacher and other students. As Norris notes, in this approach, homework extends the boundaries of the classroom and reframes how time in school can be used more productively, allowing students to “collaborate on learning, learn from each other, maybe critique [each other’s work], and share those experiences.”

Even so, many parents and educators are increasingly concerned that homework, in whatever form it takes, is a bridge too far in the pressured lives of children and their families. It takes away from essential time for their children to relax and unwind after school, to play, to be young, and to be together as a family. On top of that, the benefits of homework are often asserted, but they’re not consistent, and they’re certainly not guaranteed.

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Homework: A New User's Guide

Cory Turner

If you made it past the headline, you're likely a student, concerned parent, teacher or, like me, a nerd nostalgist who enjoys basking in the distant glow of Homework Triumphs Past (second-grade report on Custer's Last Stand, nailed it!).

Whoever you are, you're surely hoping for some clarity in the loud, perennial debate over whether U.S. students are justifiably exhausted and nervous from too much homework — even though some international comparisons suggest they're sitting comfortably at the average.

Well, here goes. I've mapped out six, research-based polestars that should help guide you to some reasonable conclusions about homework.

How much homework do U.S. students get?

The best answer comes from something called the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP . In 2012, students in three different age groups — 9, 13 and 17 — were asked, "How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?" The vast majority of 9-year-olds (79 percent) and 13-year-olds (65 percent) and still a majority of 17-year-olds (53 percent) all reported doing an hour or less of homework the day before.

Another study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that high school students who reported doing homework outside of school did, on average, about seven hours a week.

If you're hungry for more data on this — and some perspective — check out this exhaustive report put together last year by researcher Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution.

An hour or less a day? But we hear so many horror stories! Why?

The fact is, some students do have a ton of homework. In high school we see a kind of student divergence — between those who choose or find themselves tracked into less-rigorous coursework and those who enroll in honors classes or multiple Advanced Placement courses. And the latter students are getting a lot of homework. In that 2012 NAEP survey, 13 percent of 17-year-olds reported doing more than two hours of homework the previous night. That's not a lot of students, but they're clearly doing a lot of work.

Source: Met Life Survey of the American Teacher, The Homework Experience, 2007. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

That also tracks with a famous survey from 2007 — from MetLife — that asked parents what they think of their kids' homework load. Sixty percent said it was just right. Twenty-five percent said their kids are getting too little. Just 15 percent of parents said their kids have too much homework.

Research also suggests that the students doing the most work have something else in common: income. "I think that the debate over homework in some ways is a social class issue," says Janine Bempechat, professor of human development at Wheelock College. "There's no question that in affluent communities, children are really over-taxed, over-burdened with homework."

But the vast majority of students do not seem to have inordinate workloads. And the ones who do are generally volunteering for the tough stuff. That doesn't make it easier, but it does make it a choice.

Do we know how much homework students in other countries are doing?

Sort of. Caveats abound here. Education systems and perceptions of what is and isn't homework can vary remarkably overseas. So any comparison is, to a degree, apples-to-oranges (or, at least, apples-to-pears). A 2012 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development pegged the U.S. homework load for 15-year-olds at around six hours per week. That's just above the study's average. It found that students in Hong Kong are also doing about six hours a week. Much of Europe checks in between four and five hours a week. In Japan, it's four hours. And Korea's near the bottom, at three hours.

Source: OECD, PISA 2012 Database, Table IV.3.48. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

How much homework is too much?

Better yet, how much is just right? Harris Cooper at Duke University has done some of the best work on homework. He and his team reviewed dozens of studies, from 1987 to 2003, looking for consensus on what works and what doesn't. A common rule of thumb, he says, is what's called the 10-minute rule. Take the child's grade and multiply by 10. So first-graders should have roughly 10 minutes of homework a night, 40 minutes for fourth-graders, on up to two hours for seniors in high school. A lot of of schools use this. Even the National PTA officially endorses it.

Homework clearly improves student performance, right?

Not necessarily. It depends on the age of the child. Looking over the research, there's little to no evidence that homework improves student achievement in elementary school. Then again, the many experts I spoke with all said the same thing: The point of homework in those primary grades isn't entirely academic. It's about teaching things like time-management and self-direction.

But, by high school the evidence shifts. Harris Cooper's massive review found, in middle and high school, a positive correlation between homework and student achievement on unit tests. It seems to help. But more is not always better. Cooper points out that, depending on the subject and the age of the student, there is a law of diminishing returns. Again, he recommends the 10-minute rule.

What kinds of homework seem to be most effective?

This is where things get really interesting. Because homework should be about learning, right? To understand what kinds of homework best help kids learn, we really need to talk about memory and the brain.

Let's start with something called the spacing effect . Say a child has to do a vocabulary worksheet. The next week, it's a new worksheet with different words and so on. Well, research shows that the brain is better at remembering when we repeat with consistency, not when we study in long, isolated chunks of time. Do a little bit of vocabulary each night, repeating the same words night after night.

Similarly, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Henry "Roddy" Roediger III , recommends that teachers give students plenty of little quizzes, which he says strengthen the brain's ability to remember. Don't fret. They can be low-stakes or no-stakes, says Roediger: It's the steady recall and repetition that matter. He also recommends, as homework, that students try testing themselves instead of simply re-reading the text or class notes.

There's also something known as interleaving . This is big in the debate over math homework. Many of us — myself included — learned math by focusing on one concept at a time, doing a worksheet to practice that concept, then moving on.

Well, there's evidence that students learn more when homework requires them to choose among multiple strategies — new and old — when solving problems. In other words, kids learn when they have to draw not just from what they learned in class that day but that week, that month, that year.

One last note: Experts agree that homework should generally be about reinforcing what students learned in class (this is especially true in math). Sometimes it can — and should — be used to introduce new material, but here's where so many horror stories begin.

Tom Loveless, a former teacher, offers this advice: "I don't think teachers should ever send brand-new material that puts the parent in the position of a teacher. That's a disaster. My own personal philosophy was: Homework is best if it's material that requires more practice but they've already received initial instruction."

Or, in the words of the National PTA: "Homework that cannot be done without help is not good homework."

ARTS & CULTURE

Do kids have too much homework.

Across the United States, parents, teachers and administrators alike are rethinking their approach to after-school assignments

LynNell Hancock

Homework horror stories are as timeworn as school bullies and cafeteria mystery meat. But as high-stakes testing pressures have mounted over the past decade—and global rankings for America’s schools have declined—homework has come under new scrutiny.

Diane Lowrie says she fled an Ocean County, New Jersey, school district three years ago when she realized her first grader’s homework load was nearly crushing him. Reading logs, repetitive math worksheets, and regular social studies reports turned their living room into an anguished battleground. “Tears were shed, every night,” says Lowrie, 47, an environmental educator, who tried to convince school district administrators that the work was not only numbing, but harmful. “Iain started to hate school, to hate learning, and he was only 6 years old,” she told me in a recent interview.

A 2003 Brookings Institution study suggests that Iain’s experience may be typical of a few children in pressure-cooker schools, but it’s not a widespread problem. Still, a 2004 University of Michigan survey of 2,900 six- to seventeen-year-old children found that time spent each week on homework had increased from 2 hours 38 minutes to 3 hours 58 minutes since 1981. And in his 2001 and 2006 reviews of academic studies of homework outcomes, Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, found little correlation between the amount of homework and academic achievement in elementary school (though higher in middle school and high school). Cooper supports the influential ten-minute homework rule, which recommends adding ten daily minutes of homework per grade beginning in first grade, up to a maximum of two hours. Some districts have added no homework on weekends to the formula.

The question of how much homework is enough is widely debated and was a focus of the 2009 documentary Race to Nowhere , a galvanizing cri de coeur about the struggles of kids in high-performing schools. “I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to go in the backyard and just run around,” a teenage girl laments in the film. “I’ve gone through bouts of depression” from too much homework, another confesses. A bewildered-looking third girl says: “I would spend six hours a night on my homework.”

The results of international tests give the homework skeptics ammunition. David Baker and Gerald LeTendre, professors of education at Penn State, found that in countries with the most successful school systems, like Japan, teachers give small amounts homework, while teachers in those with the lowest scores, such as Greece and Iran, give a lot. (Of course the quality of the assignment and the teacher’s use of it also matter.) The United States falls somewhere in the middle—average amounts of homework and average test results. Finnish teachers tend to give minimal amounts of homework throughout all the grades; the New York Times reported Finnish high-school kids averaged only one-half hour a night.

Sara Bennett, a Brooklyn criminal attorney and mother of two, began a second career as an anti-homework activist when her first-grade son brought home homework only a parent could complete. The 2006 book she co-wrote, The Case Against Homework , is credited with propelling a nationwide parent movement calling for time limits on homework.

Last year, the affluent village of Ridgewood, New Jersey, was shaken by two young suicides, causing school officials to look for ways they could ease kids’ anxieties. Anthony Orsini, principal of Ridgewood’s Benjamin Franklin Middle School, eliminated homework for elective courses and set up an online system that lets families know how long many homework assignments should take. “We have a high-powered district,” says Orsini. “The pressures are palpable on these students to succeed. My community is not ready to eliminate homework altogether.”

The trend, instead, is to lessen the quantity while improving the quality of homework by using it to complement classroom work, says Cathy Vatterott, a professor of education at University of Missouri at St. Louis and author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs (2009). Cynthia Schneider, principal of World Journalism Preparatory school in Queens for 570 sixth through twelfth graders, plans to encourage all students to read for pleasure every night, then write a thoughtful response. There are also initiatives to “decriminalize” not finishing homework assignments.

As for Diane Lowrie, who left Ocean County because of too much homework, she says Iain, now 10 and heading for fifth grade in Roosevelt, New Jersey, is less stressed out. He recently spent 40 hours working on a book report and diorama about the Battle of Yorktown. “But,” says his mother, “it was his idea and he enjoyed it.”

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Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

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You know the drill. It’s 10:15 p.m., and the cardboard-and-toothpick Golden Gate Bridge is collapsing. The pages of polynomials have been abandoned. The paper on the Battle of Waterloo seems to have frozen in time with Napoleon lingering eternally over his breakfast at Le Caillou. Then come the tears and tantrums — while we parents wonder, Does the gain merit all this pain? Is this just too much homework?

However the drama unfolds night after night, year after year, most parents hold on to the hope that homework (after soccer games, dinner, flute practice, and, oh yes, that childhood pastime of yore known as playing) advances their children academically.

But what does homework really do for kids? Is the forest’s worth of book reports and math and spelling sheets the average American student completes in their 12 years of primary schooling making a difference? Or is it just busywork?

Homework haterz

Whether or not homework helps, or even hurts, depends on who you ask. If you ask my 12-year-old son, Sam, he’ll say, “Homework doesn’t help anything. It makes kids stressed-out and tired and makes them hate school more.”

Nothing more than common kid bellyaching?

Maybe, but in the fractious field of homework studies, it’s worth noting that Sam’s sentiments nicely synopsize one side of the ivory tower debate. Books like The End of Homework , The Homework Myth , and The Case Against Homework the film Race to Nowhere , and the anguished parent essay “ My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me ” make the case that homework, by taking away precious family time and putting kids under unneeded pressure, is an ineffective way to help children become better learners and thinkers.

One Canadian couple took their homework apostasy all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. After arguing that there was no evidence that it improved academic performance, they won a ruling that exempted their two children from all homework.

So what’s the real relationship between homework and academic achievement?

How much is too much?

To answer this question, researchers have been doing their homework on homework, conducting and examining hundreds of studies. Chris Drew Ph.D., founder and editor at The Helpful Professor recently compiled multiple statistics revealing the folly of today’s after-school busy work. Does any of the data he listed below ring true for you?

• 45 percent of parents think homework is too easy for their child, primarily because it is geared to the lowest standard under the Common Core State Standards .

• 74 percent of students say homework is a source of stress , defined as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems.

• Students in high-performing high schools spend an average of 3.1 hours a night on homework , even though 1 to 2 hours is the optimal duration, according to a peer-reviewed study .

Not included in the list above is the fact many kids have to abandon activities they love — like sports and clubs — because homework deprives them of the needed time to enjoy themselves with other pursuits.

Conversely, The Helpful Professor does list a few pros of homework, noting it teaches discipline and time management, and helps parents know what’s being taught in the class.

The oft-bandied rule on homework quantity — 10 minutes a night per grade (starting from between 10 to 20 minutes in first grade) — is listed on the National Education Association’s website and the National Parent Teacher Association’s website , but few schools follow this rule.

Do you think your child is doing excessive homework? Harris Cooper Ph.D., author of a meta-study on homework , recommends talking with the teacher. “Often there is a miscommunication about the goals of homework assignments,” he says. “What appears to be problematic for kids, why they are doing an assignment, can be cleared up with a conversation.” Also, Cooper suggests taking a careful look at how your child is doing the assignments. It may seem like they’re taking two hours, but maybe your child is wandering off frequently to get a snack or getting distracted.

Less is often more

If your child is dutifully doing their work but still burning the midnight oil, it’s worth intervening to make sure your child gets enough sleep. A 2012 study of 535 high school students found that proper sleep may be far more essential to brain and body development.

For elementary school-age children, Cooper’s research at Duke University shows there is no measurable academic advantage to homework. For middle-schoolers, Cooper found there is a direct correlation between homework and achievement if assignments last between one to two hours per night. After two hours, however, achievement doesn’t improve. For high schoolers, Cooper’s research suggests that two hours per night is optimal. If teens have more than two hours of homework a night, their academic success flatlines. But less is not better. The average high school student doing homework outperformed 69 percent of the students in a class with no homework.

Many schools are starting to act on this research. A Florida superintendent abolished homework in her 42,000 student district, replacing it with 20 minutes of nightly reading. She attributed her decision to “ solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students .”

More family time

A 2020 survey by Crayola Experience reports 82 percent of children complain they don’t have enough quality time with their parents. Homework deserves much of the blame. “Kids should have a chance to just be kids and do things they enjoy, particularly after spending six hours a day in school,” says Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth . “It’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.”

By far, the best replacement for homework — for both parents and children — is bonding, relaxing time together.

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How Much Homework Do American Kids Do?

Various factors, from the race of the student to the number of years a teacher has been in the classroom, affect a child's homework load.

In his Atlantic essay , Karl Taro Greenfeld laments his 13-year-old daughter's heavy homework load. As an eighth grader at a New York middle school, Greenfeld’s daughter averaged about three hours of homework per night and adopted mantras like “memorization, not rationalization” to help her get it all done. Tales of the homework-burdened American student have become common, but are these stories the exception or the rule?

A 2007 Metlife study found that 45 percent of students in grades three to 12 spend more than an hour a night doing homework, including the six percent of students who report spending more than three hours a night on their homework. In the 2002-2003 school year, a study out of the University of Michigan found that American students ages six through 17 spent three hours and 38 minutes per week doing homework.

A range of factors plays into how much homework each individual student gets:

Older students do more homework than their younger counterparts.

This one is fairly obvious: The National Education Association recommends that homework time increase by ten minutes per year in school. (e.g., A third grader would have 30 minutes of homework, while a seventh grader would have 70 minutes).

Studies have found that schools tend to roughly follow these guidelines: The University of Michigan found that students ages six to eight spend 29 minutes doing homework per night while 15- to 17-year-old students spend 50 minutes doing homework. The Metlife study also found that 50 percent of students in grades seven to 12 spent more than an hour a night on homework, while 37 percent of students in grades three to six spent an hour or more on their homework per night. The National Center for Educational Statistics found that high school students who do homework outside of school average 6.8 hours of homework per week.

Race plays a role in how much homework students do.

Asian students spend 3.5 more hours on average doing homework per week than their white peers. However, only 59 percent of Asian students’ parents check that homework is done, while 75.6 percent of Hispanic students’ parents and 83.1 percent of black students’ parents check.

Teachers with less experience assign more homework.

The Metlife study found that 14 percent of teachers with zero to five years of teaching experience assigned more than an hour of homework per night, while only six percent of teachers with 21 or more years of teaching experience assigned over an hour of homework.

Math classes have homework the most frequently.

The Metlife study found that 70 percent of students in grades three to 12 had at least one homework assignment in math. Sixty-two percent had at least one homework assignment in a language arts class (English, reading, spelling, or creative writing courses) and 42 percent had at least one in a science class.

Regardless of how much homework kids are actually doing every night, most parents and teachers are happy with the way things are: 60 percent of parents think that their children have the “right amount of homework,” and 73 percent of teachers think their school assigns the right amount of homework.

Students, however, are not necessarily on board: 38 percent of students in grades seven through 12 and 28 percent of students in grades three through six report being “very often/often” stressed out by their homework.

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Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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• Ask the Professor

What is the appropriate age for children to start getting homework?

Debbie leekeenan, director of the eliot-pearson children’s school and a lecturer in the department of child development, fills us in.

“In recent times, there seems to be more homework, especially for our youngest students,” says Debbie LeeKeenan. Photo: iStock

Homework is such an established part of education, it’s hard to believe it’s not all beneficial. But recent studies have found almost no correlation between homework and long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school.

Yet in recent times, there seems to be more homework, especially for our youngest students. That seems to have led to a backlash. Often-cited negative effects include children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities and downtime and a loss of interest in learning. Many parents lament that homework is a constant source of tension at home.

What is the purpose of homework? The best homework assignments are meaningful and authentic and are connected to classroom learning. Homework can be used to teach time management and organization, to broaden experiences and to reinforce classroom skills. Parents are not expected to play the role of the teacher or introduce new skills.

Homework can certainly benefit students. It may encourage:

Practice and review —such as reading 15 minutes each night, studying spelling words or number facts

Pre-learning —a way to introduce a new topic; for example, if the class will be studying ants, having students write questions they have about ants

Processing —if learning about moon phases in class, students would observe the moon for several nights and draw what they see and identify the phases

Checking for understanding —keeping a journal about science experiments done in class, for instance

How much homework is too much? The idea that “less is more” rules here. According to the National Education Association, guidelines are no more than 10 minutes per grade level per night (that’s 10 minutes total for a first-grader, 30 minutes for a third-grader). Some students do their homework on their own, and some parents help their children. Many teachers now give homework once a week that is due the following week to allow more flexibility and accommodate a range of student and family schedules.

Successful homework experiences have strong home-school partnerships, where the purpose of homework is clearly defined by the teacher and communicated with the student and family. When in doubt, ask!

Do you have a question for Ask the Professor? Send it to Tufts Journal editor Taylor McNeil .

Posted September 01, 2010

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Are Young Kids Doing Too Much Homework?

Kindergartners and first-graders are bringing home 30 minutes of assignments a night. there are a few problems with that..

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When I toured a public elementary school last spring, one question in particular seemed to make the principal squirm. Do the kindergartners get homework, I asked? Yes, he replied, explaining that it can help to solidify concepts—but he quickly conceded that some parents weren’t at all happy about it.

The debate over elementary school homework is not new, but the tirades against it just keep coming. This fall, the Atlantic published a story titled “When Homework Is Useless”; you might have also seen the Texas second-grade teacher’s no-homework policy that went viral on Facebook around the same time. “Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performances,” the teacher wrote to class parents.

OK, but I had questions. If the issue really is this black-and-white, why do elementary school teachers still assign homework? How much homework are elementary kids getting, how much is too much, and how is “too much” even determined? What should parents do if they want to put an end to it?

What I discovered, after lots of digging, is a more complex issue than you’d expect. Young students are indeed getting more homework than they used to. But what’s not clear is exactly how this heavier workload is affecting their well-being. Homework has only been evaluated through the myopic lens of how it influences academic performance (spoiler: in elementary school, it doesn’t seem to). And while researchers have all sorts of ideas about how it might affect kids more generally, these possibilities haven’t been tested rigorously. The upshot, then, is that we really don’t know what homework in elementary school is doing to our kids—but there’s reason to think it can do more harm than good, particularly among disadvantaged students.

First, let’s take a close look at the science on how homework affects school performance. By far the most comprehensive analysis was published in 2006 by Duke University neuroscientist and social psychologist Harris Cooper, author of The Battle Over Homework , and his colleagues. Combing through previous studies, they compared whether homework itself, as well as the amount of homework kids did, correlates with academic achievement (grades as well as scores on standardized tests), finding that for elementary school kids, there is no significant relationship between the two. In other words, elementary kids who do homework fare no better in school than kids who do not. (Their analysis did, however, find that homework in middle school and high school correlates with higher achievement but that there is a threshold in middle school: Achievement does not continue to increase when kids do more than an hour of homework each night.)

Cooper doesn’t interpret the elementary school findings to mean that homework at this age is useless. For one thing, he says, we can’t make causal conclusions based on correlational studies, because things like homework and achievement can easily be influenced by other variables, such as student characteristics. If a kid is really struggling in school, he might spend twice as long on his homework compared with other students yet get worse grades. No one would interpret this to mean that the increased time he is spending on homework is causing him to get worse grades, because both outcomes are driven by whatever is giving him academic trouble. Likewise, a really motivated student may be more likely to finish all of his homework and get higher grades, but we wouldn’t say the homework caused him to get better grades if his motivation was the main driver. Correlations can give us hints about causal relationships (or in this case, a lack of causal relationship), but they don’t prove them.

(It’s worth mentioning that Cooper’s analysis also included a few small interventional studies that tracked outcomes between kids who had been randomly assigned to receive homework each night and those who had not; these studies did suggest that homework provides benefits, but these studies, Cooper and his colleagues noted, “were all flawed in some way that compromised their ability to draw strong causal inference.”)

There are, of course, many other ways that homework could affect a young child—in both good ways and bad. Cooper points out that regular, brief homework assignments might help young kids learn better time management and self-regulation skills, which could help them down the line. Regular homework also lets parents see what their kids are working on and how well they’re doing, which could tip them off to academic problems or disabilities. “For a 6-year-old to bring home 10 minutes of homework is almost nothing, but it does get them to sit down and think about it, talk to Mom and Dad, and so on,” Cooper says.

On the other hand, homework can also be a source of stress and family tension. For kids from low-income families, especially, homework can be tough because kids may not have a quiet place to work, high-speed internet (or computers for that matter), or parents who are available or knowledgeable enough to help. A 2015 study surveyed parents in Providence, Rhode Island, and found that the less comfortable parents were with their kids’ homework material, the more stress the homework caused at home. “I’ve talked to parents—a lot of parents, actually—who feel very burdened by the fact that kids have to do homework at night, and the parents feel responsible for getting it done, and that starts to dominate the home life,” says Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early-childhood education specialist at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the author of Taking Back Childhood .

Homework could also take kids away from other enriching activities like music, sports, free play, or family time. “It’s sort of an opportunity cost issue,” says Etta Kralovec, a teacher educator at the University of Arizona South and the co-author of The End of Homework . “I’m a fifth-grader, and I either can go play with my friend or hang out with my grandmother—or I can go home and do a worksheet for math. Those are the kinds of choices that kids have to make.” One eighth-grader told me that when he was in sixth grade, he had so much homework he couldn’t participate in the sports or music classes he wanted to. Cooper points out, however, that homework could also take the place of television or video games, which might be a good thing (but is yet another complicated topic ).

Then there’s the argument that as elementary school has become more rigorous in recent years—a result, many say, of No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top Fund , both of which made schools much more accountable for low test scores—the last thing overworked, exhausted young students need is more work when they get home. “We’re seeing rates of school phobia and unhappiness and angst about school among young children at higher rates than ever before,” says Carol Burris, a former high school principal who is now the executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education. “I think that giving them a break after 3 o’clock in the afternoon is an awfully good idea.”

But the crux of the problem is that, while all of these points are potentially legitimate, no one has studied how homework affects children’s well-being in general—all we’ve got are those achievement findings, which don’t tell us much of anything for elementary school. How likely is it that regular homework will help first-graders manage their time? Will it do so to a degree that offsets the added family stress or the loss of much-loved soccer practice? Is 20 minutes of homework OK, but 30 minutes too much? This research hasn’t been done, so we don’t know.

The other big question—also tough to answer—is how much homework elementary school kids are actually getting. There are some highly publicized estimates of average homework time derived from a standardized test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is given annually to most American students. It includes the following question for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old test takers: “How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?” Compared over time, the answers suggest that 9-year-olds have more homework today than they used to, but not by a ton. Yet many researchers question the validity of these answers, because, they say, students aren’t typically given much homework the night before a standardized test anyway. And the data from this questionnaire—along with the data from a 2007 MetLife survey of third- to 12 th -graders that is also frequently quoted as evidence that homework levels remain flat—don’t tell us what’s happening with young elementary school kids.

But in the 2015 study in Providence I mentioned earlier, researchers did attempt to answer this question. They had 1,173 parents fill out a homework-related survey at pediatricians’ offices and found that the homework burden in early grades is quite high: Kindergarten and first-grade students do about three times as much homework as is recommended by the “10-minute rule.” What’s the 10-minute rule, you ask? It’s a standard, adopted by most public schools around the country (more on this later), recommending that students spend roughly 10 times their grade level in minutes on homework each night—so first-graders should be spending 10 minutes on homework and fifth-graders 50. (By this rule, kindergarteners shouldn’t be getting any homework.) Considering these numbers in combination with their findings on how homework can increase family stress, the researchers concluded, “the disproportionate homework load for K–3 found in our study calls into question whether primary school children are being exposed to a positive learning experience or to a scenario that may promote negative attitudes toward learning.”

That’s just one study, conducted in one city, so it’s hard to generalize from it; clearly, we need more data. But another national online survey suggests that homework time for the younger grades has been increasing over the past three years. Annual teacher surveys conducted by the University of Phoenix reported that in 2013, only 2 percent of elementary teachers assigned more than 10 hours of homework per week. This figure quadrupled to 8 percent in 2015. On the bright side, though, several elementary schools in recent months announced that they have stopped assigning homework entirely.

Let’s now revisit that 10-minute rule. It is a recommendation backed by the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association that teachers have been using for a long time—but it is not based on any research. When teachers saw Cooper’s analysis of the homework data and noticed that the amounts of homework that correlated with the highest achievements in middle school and high school were similar to their rule, they used it as evidence that their rule was appropriate. But here’s the thing: While the 10-minute rule implies that 10 minutes of homework a night per grade is appropriate even starting in elementary school , Cooper’s data do not support this conclusion.

In a nutshell, then, we don’t have evidence that homework is beneficial for young kids, yet studies suggest that they are doing more homework than even the pro-homework organizations recommend, and the amounts they’re getting also seem to be increasing. So, if you’re a parent of a first-grader who’s getting 30 minutes of homework a night, what should you do?

“The first thing you should do is talk to the teacher and let the teacher know how long it’s taking the child to do homework,” Burris says. It’s best not to be confrontational—sometimes the teacher really has no idea that it’s taking so long and will make adjustments. Laura Bowman, the Virginia chapter leader at Parents Across America, a nonprofit organization for parents who want to strengthen public schools, explains: “I always feel that the initial conversation with the teacher is so important, and at that point a lot of teachers will say, ‘I did not realize how long it was taking, and if it’s going to take your child more than 10 minutes, then just do it for 10 minutes.’ ” Also, in early grades, homework should be really easy. “The assignments should be short, they should be simple, and they should lead to success,” Cooper says. “We want these kids to have a successful experience doing schoolwork on their own in another environment.”

If the teacher isn’t responsive, try the principal next, Burris suggests. Connect with other parents first to see if their kids are having similar experiences. “Go up the chain of command—if you have to go to a school board meeting, then you do, and you bring a few other parents with you, because there’s strength in numbers,” Bowman says. “The parent voice is a powerful one, and we all have to do what’s in the best interest of our own children.” Parents Across America has a handy toolkit for parents who want to organize other parents around a particular issue.

If you still can’t make headway, you can also tell the teacher that your child simply won’t be doing homework, or won’t be doing more than a certain amount. I know several parents who have done this without suffering any consequences other than a little side-eye from the teacher at school events. If this kind of confrontation makes you squeamish, get a letter from a pediatrician or psychologist that says it for you.

Bottom line is this: You’re the best judge of how homework is affecting your child. If you’ve got a second-grader who whizzes through his worksheets, then stick with the status quo, no harm done. But if your first-grader is struggling for an hour each night, or the homework is taking him away from other activities you feel are more important, take the above steps to remedy the problem. You want your kid’s earliest education experiences to be as positive as they can be; what happens in elementary school will forever shape his relationship with the classroom and his motivation to learn. We, as parents, have more power than we realize, and we should not feel ashamed to wield it for the sake of our children.

How Much Homework?

Giving students an excessive amount of homework in the early grades can turn them away from learning. It also robs young children of a chance to do other activities after doing six or more hours of academic work in the classroom. It is only when children reach sixth grade that the amount of homework that they do is directly related to how well they achieve in school. Before then, the effect of homework on achievement is almost nonexistent.

Rather than discussing with individual teachers how much homework your children should have, a better approach would be to work through the parent-teacher organization to have the school establish a homework policy. Otherwise, there may be little consistency between how much homework Ms. A and Mr. B assign in third grade. This leads to some students being overburdened by assignments while others rarely do any homework. Also, as students get older and learn different subjects taught by different teachers, it's extremely important to have a school policy that spells out which days of the week individual teachers have to make homework assignments and how much daily homework is appropriate.

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Students spend three times longer on homework than average, survey reveals

Sonya Kulkarni and Pallavi Gorantla | Jan 9, 2022

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The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association have suggested that a healthy number of hours that students should be spending can be determined by the “10-minute rule.” This means that each grade level should have a maximum homework time incrementing by 10 minutes depending on their grade level (for instance, ninth-graders would have 90 minutes of homework, 10th-graders should have 100 minutes, and so on).

As ‘finals week’ rapidly approaches, students not only devote effort to attaining their desired exam scores but make a last attempt to keep or change the grade they have for semester one by making up homework assignments.

High schoolers reported doing an average of 2.7 hours of homework per weeknight, according to a study by the Washington Post from 2018 to 2020 of over 50,000 individuals. A survey of approximately 200 Bellaire High School students revealed that some students spend over three times this number.

The demographics of this survey included 34 freshmen, 43 sophomores, 54 juniors and 54 seniors on average.

When asked how many hours students spent on homework in a day on average, answers ranged from zero to more than nine with an average of about four hours. In contrast, polled students said that about one hour of homework would constitute a healthy number of hours.

Junior Claire Zhang said she feels academically pressured in her AP schedule, but not necessarily by the classes.

“The class environment in AP classes can feel pressuring because everyone is always working hard and it makes it difficult to keep up sometimes.” Zhang said.

A total of 93 students reported that the minimum grade they would be satisfied with receiving in a class would be an A. This was followed by 81 students, who responded that a B would be the minimum acceptable grade. 19 students responded with a C and four responded with a D.

“I am happy with the classes I take, but sometimes it can be very stressful to try to keep up,” freshman Allyson Nguyen said. “I feel academically pressured to keep an A in my classes.”

Up to 152 students said that grades are extremely important to them, while 32 said they generally are more apathetic about their academic performance.

Last year, nine valedictorians graduated from Bellaire. They each achieved a grade point average of 5.0. HISD has never seen this amount of valedictorians in one school, and as of now there are 14 valedictorians.

“I feel that it does degrade the title of valedictorian because as long as a student knows how to plan their schedule accordingly and make good grades in the classes, then anyone can be valedictorian,” Zhang said.

Bellaire offers classes like physical education and health in the summer. These summer classes allow students to skip the 4.0 class and not put it on their transcript. Some electives also have a 5.0 grade point average like debate.

Close to 200 students were polled about Bellaire having multiple valedictorians. They primarily answered that they were in favor of Bellaire having multiple valedictorians, which has recently attracted significant acclaim .

Senior Katherine Chen is one of the 14 valedictorians graduating this year and said that she views the class of 2022 as having an extraordinary amount of extremely hardworking individuals.

“I think it was expected since freshman year since most of us knew about the others and were just focused on doing our personal best,” Chen said.

Chen said that each valedictorian achieved the honor on their own and deserves it.

“I’m honestly very happy for the other valedictorians and happy that Bellaire is such a good school,” Chen said. “I don’t feel any less special with 13 other valedictorians.”

Nguyen said that having multiple valedictorians shows just how competitive the school is.

“It’s impressive, yet scary to think about competing against my classmates,” Nguyen said.

Offering 30 AP classes and boasting a significant number of merit-based scholars Bellaire can be considered a competitive school.

“I feel academically challenged but not pressured,” Chen said. “Every class I take helps push me beyond my comfort zone but is not too much to handle.”

Students have the opportunity to have off-periods if they’ve met all their credits and are able to maintain a high level of academic performance. But for freshmen like Nguyen, off periods are considered a privilege. Nguyen said she usually has an hour to five hours worth of work everyday.

“Depending on the day, there can be a lot of work, especially with extra curriculars,” Nguyen said. “Although, I am a freshman, so I feel like it’s not as bad in comparison to higher grades.”

According to the survey of Bellaire students, when asked to evaluate their agreement with the statement “students who get better grades tend to be smarter overall than students who get worse grades,” responders largely disagreed.

Zhang said that for students on the cusp of applying to college, it can sometimes be hard to ignore the mental pressure to attain good grades.

“As a junior, it’s really easy to get extremely anxious about your GPA,” Zhang said. “It’s also a very common but toxic practice to determine your self-worth through your grades but I think that we just need to remember that our mental health should also come first. Sometimes, it’s just not the right day for everyone and one test doesn’t determine our smartness.”

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Anonymous • Jul 16, 2024 at 3:27 pm

didnt realy help

Anonymous • Nov 21, 2023 at 10:32 am

It’s not really helping me understand how much.

josh • May 9, 2023 at 9:58 am

Kassie • May 6, 2022 at 12:29 pm

Im using this for an English report. This is great because on of my sources needed to be from another student. Homework drives me insane. Im glad this is very updated too!!

Kaylee Swaim • Jan 25, 2023 at 9:21 pm

I am also using this for an English report. I have to do an argumentative essay about banning homework in schools and this helps sooo much!

Izzy McAvaney • Mar 15, 2023 at 6:43 pm

I am ALSO using this for an English report on cutting down school days, homework drives me insane!!

E. Elliott • Apr 25, 2022 at 6:42 pm

I’m from Louisiana and am actually using this for an English Essay thanks for the information it was very informative.

Nabila Wilson • Jan 10, 2022 at 6:56 pm

Interesting with the polls! I didn’t realize about 14 valedictorians, that’s crazy.

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First Grade Homework For the Entire Year

susanjones June 17, 2016 4 Comments

This post may contain affiliate ads at no cost to you. See my disclosures for more information.

I have one template per month and then change the date and wording each week!

Behind the weekly newsletter I send home different homework pages based on all sorts of factors. I like having options!!!! I made at least one page for each topic I teach throughout the year. Also, I have never been a fan of longgggg homework. I find that it is too overwhelming and I think students just need *quick* reinforcing practice each night so that played a big role in the way I set up my homework. You can see a little more about the homework pages below.

Again, I like having options and I know most teachers do too! Based on the skills I’m teaching that week, a student’s ability level, parent involvement, I will send home what I believe to be a reasonable HW packet for the week. You can do the same for your students!

^^ Again, it’s all up to YOU!^^

Maybe you don’t send home homework because in your community it doesn’t get sent back. Well, these quick check-ins can easily be made into morning work that only takes minutes to complete while students practice their skills.

If you think this type of first grade homework might be for you or you want to try and switch it up this year, go ahead and take a closer look at some of the pages in my unit by clicking the unit below and downloading the preview!

Let me know what you think!

Here are some closeups of a few pages (more to be seen in the preview!):

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Welcome to Susan Jones Teaching. When it comes to the primary grades, learning *All Things* in the K-2 world has been my passion for many years! I just finished my M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction and love sharing all the latest and greatest strategies I learn with you through this blog and my YouTube channel! I hope you'll enjoy learning along with me :)

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Too much homework? Study shows elementary kids get 3 times more than they should

Parents, you aren’t imagining it: Your kids may be struggling with too much homework. Just in time for back-to-school season, a new study has revealed that elementary school students get three times more homework than is recommended for children their age.

The study, published in The American Journal of Family Therapy , explored issues of homework and family stress by surveying nearly 1,200 parents. What came to light is this: Children in kindergarten, first grade and second grade may be hitting the books too hard in their after-school hours.

Education leaders with both the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association recommend a “10-minute rule” that increases gradually as students age: no homework for kindergartners, 10 minutes for first-graders, 20 minutes for second-graders, 30 minutes for third-graders and on up to the 12th grade, when students could handle about 120 minutes of homework a night. However, the study showed that kindergartners are spending an average of 25 minutes on homework, and the homework load for first- and second-graders is just shy of 30 minutes.

The study’s authors noted that 25 minutes of homework for kindergartners “may be both taxing for the parents and overwhelming for the children.” They also wrote that “it was unsettling to find that in our study population, first and second grade children had three times the homework load recommended by the NEA.”

RELATED: Homework overload gets an 'F' from experts

Denise Pope, a Stanford University education professor and author of the new book “Overloaded and Underprepared,” told TODAY.com that there's negligible evidence of a correlation between homework and achievement.

“The only type of homework that's proven to be beneficial to elementary school students is free reading, and the fact that the kids can choose what they are reading makes the difference,” Pope said.

Pope cited psychologist Harris Cooper, who found that the correlation between academic success and homework broke off at two hours at the high school level and at an hour and half at the middle school level, which is how the “10-minute rule” started to gain traction in the education community. Pope said that when children have too much homework, they end up spending all their time on homework and extracurricular activities — and that's not necessarily healthy.

RELATED: 'Too much': Dad tries to do daughter's homework for a week

"Kids are not going to give up their extracurriculars, but then they are stuck with all this homework, so the things that get left out are actually really important things like chores, family time and sleep," she said.

Whit Honea, a dad and author of “The Parents' Phrase Book,” said he definitely relates to the homework struggle and what gets sacrificed as a result.

"As a parent, when you've spent eight hours at work and they've spent six hours at school, the last thing you want to do is be fighting with them for two hours about a meaningless piece of paper," Honea told TODAY.com. "Instead that time should be spent with the family."

He added, "It's a small window of time, and I don't want to think back on these years with my kids as a dark time because of all the tears with homework battles."

RELATED: Why one dad hates homework as much as his kid does

Parents who participated in the study survey also reported increased levels of stress at home — another detail that struck a chord with Honea.

"Homework stress is comparable with money stress in adults," he said.

So how does Honea combat the stress? He tries to help his kids when he can.

RELATED: The end of homework? Why some schools are banning homework

"If I'm able to shave 40 minutes of the time off their homework by helping them — not doing it for them — then that becomes beneficial because that's 40 minutes we can do something together," Honea said.

While the study found that students in the lower grades of elementary school may be spending too much time on homework, that trend shifts as students age. The study showed many 12th graders devote fewer than 55 minutes a night to homework.

How much homework do your children get? How much is too much? Weigh in on the TODAY Parents Facebook page , or let us know what you think in our poll !

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The Guide to 1st Grade: Reading and Writing

Review reading and writing curricula for first grade, learn what to expect, and discover the books and activities you can use to support learning..

It feels like you were just buying your child’s first picture books, and already, it’s time for them to start 1st grade. But let’s be honest: Kids aren’t the only ones who get nervous about a new school year! That’s why we’ve created this 1st Grade Guide to make the leap easier than ever. Here, you’ll find all of the resources you need for your child to succeed in reading and writing, so you can spend less time researching and more time learning with your little one — and, naturally, planning that cute first-day-of-school snapshot.

First grade is packed with important and exciting transitions as children leave behind much of the play of preschool and kindergarten, and begin to develop more academic skills.

Your child will also go through a significant transition to more extensive learning. As your child adjusts, they may get tired at the end of the day or have trouble focusing as the day progresses — that’s normal! Just check with your child’s teacher on their progress, and work together to develop strategies if they're having trouble adjusting, especially at the beginning of the year.

Most importantly, prime your child for success by continuing the learning process at home with enriching books and activities that support what they're learning in class. When your first grader spends time learning new skills with you, it not only makes that time more valuable to them, but also helps them reach the milestones expected at this age. Here is everything you need to know about the exciting year of 1st grade, and the materials that will help your child thrive.

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First Grade Reading Skills

Building reading skills is an essential part of a first grader’s learning process and academic success down the road. Even when students are not specifically learning “reading,” they are constantly using this skill to learn other subjects—which is why it’s crucial for your child’s success in all subjects. As first graders develop their reading comprehension, they will talk more about certain topics and gain a deeper understanding of what they read. 

To build their reading skills, your first grader:

• Recognizes the features of a sentence (for example: first words, capitalization, and ending punctuation).
• Recognizes the spelling and sound of two letters that represent one sound, such as  th , ch , wh  (these are also known as digraphs).
• Learns to read regularly spelled one-syllable words.
• Understands how an “e” at the end of a word changes a vowel within the word.
• Breaks up longer words into syllables in order to read them.
• Reads grade-level words that have “irregular” spellings.
• Knows the difference between and reads fiction texts and non-fiction texts with purpose and an understanding of the plot and important ideas and characters.
• Talks about and answers questions about the text they read.
• Reads texts aloud at an appropriate speed and with expression.
• Compares different characters, events, or texts.
• Understands the purpose of and uses common features in a book, such as headings, tables of contents, and glossaries.
• Begins to read grade-appropriate poetry and identifies words and phrases that relate to emotions and the senses.

First Grade Reading Activities

Put on a Show : Read a favorite story or poem out loud as though it’s a play, using different voices for the character and the narrator to help your child practice pacing and expression. Your child can also read a dramatic book (like Giraffes Can't Dance ) to you!

Become Poets : Read small and simple poems together and talk about the feelings they convey. Next, try writing your own poems together about objects, people you know, or anything else you like!

Create Your Own Dictionary : As your child learns to read new words and understand the meaning of those words, keep track of them in your own personal dictionary. Your child can write them down, draw a picture to illustrate the word or its definition, or write a sentence using the word.

1st Grade Writing Skills

Once your child has mastered writing letters and begins to improve their spelling skills, they can begin to write longer pieces in a variety of genres. First grade is that magical time in which your child progresses from simply writing words to becoming a “writer,” and their spelling skills will improve in the meantime. Students also begin to use technology in 1st grade, specifically for writing and research. You can help by using the Internet and other technology at home with your child in an appropriate and supervised manner.

As with reading, your child will use writing throughout the day in a variety of subjects. For example, students may write about a math problem, explaining how they solved it, or write about a topic they learned in science or social studies. All of this work makes them a better writer—and learner—overall.

To build their writing skills, your first grader:

• Writes a variety of texts including, opinion pieces, narratives, and explanatory/informational pieces.
• Writes with structure, including an introductory sentence, supporting or accurate details, and some sense of closure.
• Begins to use digital tools, including computers, to practice and “publish” writing.
• Gathers information as a class, with the aid of a teacher, to answer a question or create a shared research or writing project.

First Grade Writing Activities

Write Your Own Stories : After your child experiences an important moment or event, ask them to write about it and illustrate it as though it is a story — and if they'd like, they can then share it with your family and friends!

Answer a Question : When your child asks a question, research the answer together using books, dictionaries, or computers (under your supervision). Then, work together to craft an informative poster or collage with the question and the answer, using both text and pictures to show what you learned.

Make a Family Magazine or Book : Task your first grader with illustrating a book using drawings and text to describe different family members or friends. Each person can have their very own page!

Shop the best resources for first grade below! You can find all books and activities at The Scholastic Store . 

Explore other grade guides: 

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What Kinds of Homework Seem to be Most Effective?

Please try again

If you made it past the headline, you're likely a student, concerned parent, teacher or, like me, a nerd nostalgist who enjoys basking in the distant glow of Homework Triumphs Past (second-grade report on Custer's Last Stand, nailed it!).

Whoever you are, you're surely hoping for some clarity in the loud, perennial debate over whether U.S. students are justifiably exhausted and nervous from too much homework — even though some international comparisons suggest they're sitting comfortably at the average.

Well, here goes. I've mapped out six, research-based polestars that should help guide you to some reasonable conclusions about homework.

How much homework do U.S. students get?

The best answer comes from something called the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP . In 2012, students in three different age groups — 9, 13 and 17 — were asked, "How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?" The vast majority of 9-year-olds (79 percent) and 13-year-olds (65 percent) and still a majority of 17-year-olds (53 percent) all reported doing an hour or less of homework the day before.

Another study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that high school students who reported doing homework outside of school did, on average, about seven hours a week.

If you're hungry for more data on this — and some perspective — check out this exhaustive report put together last year by researcher Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution.

An hour or less a day? But we hear so many horror stories! Why?

The fact is, some students do have a ton of homework. In high school we see a kind of student divergence — between those who choose or find themselves tracked into less-rigorous coursework and those who enroll in honors classes or multiple Advanced Placement courses. And the latter students are getting a lot of homework. In that 2012 NAEP survey, 13 percent of 17-year-olds reported doing more than two hours of homework the previous night. That's not a lot of students, but they're clearly doing a lot of work.

That also tracks with a famous survey from 2007 — from MetLife — that asked parents what they think of their kids' homework load. Sixty percent said it was just right. Twenty-five percent said their kids are getting too little. Just 15 percent of parents said their kids have too much homework.

Research also suggests that the students doing the most work have something else in common: income. "I think that the debate over homework in some ways is a social class issue," says Janine Bempechat, professor of human development at Wheelock College. "There's no question that in affluent communities, children are really over-taxed, over-burdened with homework."

But the vast majority of students do not seem to have inordinate workloads. And the ones who do are generally volunteering for the tough stuff. That doesn't make it easier, but it does make it a choice.

Do we know how much homework students in other countries are doing?

Sort of. Caveats abound here. Education systems and perceptions of what is and isn't homework can vary remarkably overseas. So any comparison is, to a degree, apples-to-oranges (or, at least, apples-to-pears). A 2012 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development pegged the U.S. homework load for 15-year-olds at around six hours per week. That's just above the study's average. It found that students in Hong Kong are also doing about six hours a week. Much of Europe checks in between four and five hours a week. In Japan, it's four hours. And Korea's near the bottom, at three hours.

How much homework is too much?

Better yet, how much is just right? Harris Cooper at Duke University has done some of the best work on homework. He and his team reviewed dozens of studies, from 1987 to 2003, looking for consensus on what works and what doesn't. A common rule of thumb, he says, is what's called the 10-minute rule. Take the child's grade and multiply by 10. So first-graders should have roughly 10 minutes of homework a night, 40 minutes for fourth-graders, on up to two hours for seniors in high school. A lot of of schools use this. Even the National PTA officially endorses it.

Homework clearly improves student performance, right?

Not necessarily. It depends on the age of the child. Looking over the research, there's little to no evidence that homework improves student achievement in elementary school. Then again, the many experts I spoke with all said the same thing: The point of homework in those primary grades isn't entirely academic. It's about teaching things like time-management and self-direction.

But, by high school the evidence shifts. Harris Cooper's massive review found, in middle and high school, a positive correlation between homework and student achievement on unit tests. It seems to help. But more is not always better. Cooper points out that, depending on the subject and the age of the student, there is a law of diminishing returns. Again, he recommends the 10-minute rule.

What kinds of homework seem to be most effective?

This is where things get really interesting. Because homework should be about learning, right? To understand what kinds of homework best help kids learn, we really need to talk about memory and the brain.

Let's start with something called the spacing effect . Say a child has to do a vocabulary worksheet. The next week, it's a new worksheet with different words and so on. Well, research shows that the brain is better at remembering when we repeat with consistency, not when we study in long, isolated chunks of time. Do a little bit of vocabulary each night, repeating the same words night after night.

Similarly, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Henry "Roddy" Roediger III , recommends that teachers give students plenty of little quizzes, which he says strengthen the brain's ability to remember. Don't fret. They can be low-stakes or no-stakes, says Roediger: It's the steady recall and repetition that matter. He also recommends, as homework, that students try testing themselves instead of simply re-reading the text or class notes.

There's also something known as interleaving . This is big in the debate over math homework. Many of us — myself included — learned math by focusing on one concept at a time, doing a worksheet to practice that concept, then moving on.

Well, there's evidence that students learn more when homework requires them to choose among multiple strategies — new and old — when solving problems. In other words, kids learn when they have to draw not just from what they learned in class that day but that week, that month, that year.

One last note: Experts agree that homework should generally be about reinforcing what students learned in class (this is especially true in math). Sometimes it can — and should — be used to introduce new material, but here's where so many horror stories begin.

Tom Loveless, a former teacher, offers this advice: "I don't think teachers should ever send brand-new material that puts the parent in the position of a teacher. That's a disaster. My own personal philosophy was: Homework is best if it's material that requires more practice but they've already received initial instruction."

Or, in the words of the National PTA: "Homework that cannot be done without help is not good homework."

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How Kids Should Spend the School Day, According to Experts

How long is a typical school day? How much time should kids spend attending school, doing homework, playing, and sleeping? Here’s what the experts recommend.

Attending Class

Doing homework, socializing with others, being with parents or caregivers, eating meals, being physically active, enjoying nature and the outdoors, using electronics, how to fit it all in.

Today's kids are busier than ever, dividing their time between school, activities , tutoring, and family time. When they're not busy with scheduled activities, kids must make time for homework, sleep , and personal care. And considering how long a typical school day is, it can be difficult to fit everything in.

Is there a way to balance it all and still provide some structure? Sure, making room for the priorities takes a little planning. Of course, flexibility is also important when it comes to time management. See how your child's schedule compares to others regarding key daily activities.

Parents / Sahara Borja

It may seem like your children spend all of their time at school. But while the average school day is just over six and a half hours long, there's a wide variance between the shortest and longest school days, contingent on individual state and district regulations.

The number of school days in a school year varies much less. According to the Pew Research Center, school days in different states range from 160 days in Colorado to 180 days in Hawaii.

This means kids are not in school for about 185 days or more a year, including weekends and breaks. On those days, kids can enjoy nature, spend time with family and friends, and exercise.

How Long Is a Typical School Day?

While state requirements for the amount of time school must be in session vary considerably from state to state, the typical school day for most kids in the United States is between six and seven hours. Depending on their age and where they live, students spend anywhere between three to seven hours a day in school, not counting transportation time or extracurricular activities.

How much time should kids spend on homework each day? A general rule among teachers is 10 minutes per grade level: 30 minutes per day for a third grader, 50 minutes for a fifth grader, and so on.

The time needed for homework really depends on the school's homework policy, the teacher's philosophy, and the type of coursework your child is taking. High school students taking AP courses might spend more time on homework than students in general education courses.

To keep your student on task during the school year, try establishing a schedule or block of time when homework will be completed.

Experts agree that school-age children need to have friends. Friends help children build social skills such as listening, sharing, and problem-solving. Through relationships with other children, children also learn how to handle their emotions.

Research doesn't dictate how much time children need to socialize with friends. What matters most is the quality of the friendships and whether or not the child is generally happy with their social time. Children or teens may have just a few friends or several friends.

Don't stress about spending quality time with your kids. Research from a large-scale longitudinal study on the effects of time with parents compared to child and teen outcomes had some surprising results.

The biggest takeaway is that time spent with a stressed-out and moody parent can decrease positive outcomes, while more time does not show a strong benefit. For this reason, it's important to be mindful of your family's moods.

It's also important not to put too much pressure on yourself when spending time as a family.

The amount of time a child needs to sleep varies according to their age. But every child, no matter their age, needs adequate sleep. Not getting enough sleep has been linked to falling asleep during school or missing school altogether.

What's more, kids who don't get enough sleep struggle to wake up in the mornings and have trouble learning or doing schoolwork. If you are concerned that your child is not getting enough sleep, learn what symptoms to watch for and what steps you can take to improve their sleep habits.

Most experts recommend 20 to 30 minutes to eat a meal and 10 to 15 minutes to eat a small snack. Keep in mind that even children's bodies need 20 minutes after eating before they begin to register feeling full.

Emphasize the importance of family meals to ensure your children have plenty of time to finish their food without feeling rushed and get adequate nutrition. This time gives your kids the nutrition they need and valuable time together as a family.

Moreover, regular family meals promote healthy eating and protect against childhood obesity. Ensure you select healthy options for your family and that electronics are turned off and away from the table.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children should engage in 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day. Regular physical activity promotes health and fitness, lowers body fat, and strengthens bones.

Physical activity—which should consist of aerobic, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening activities—also positively impacts a child's brain health. Studies have shown that exercise improves cognition and memory, enhances academic performance, and reduces symptoms of depression.

Kids exercising daily also sets them up for good health in adulthood. It reduces the likelihood that they will experience heart disease, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes . Plus, being physically active is a great stress reducer.

Many children spend much more time indoors than they did in previous generations. Various studies have linked this increase in indoor time to obesity and other health issues.

How much time outdoors should you aim for? The U.S. National Wildlife Federation suggests at least one hour a day. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also recommends 60 minutes of unstructured, free play (indoors or out) every day.

Getting your children outdoors can help them get in their physical activity and nature time. If you're short on ideas, try hiking on a local nature trail, taking a family bike ride, or tending a small container garden.

Overall, recommendations indicate that electronic media use for entertainment should be limited to about one hour on school days and that screens should be turned off 30-60 minutes before bedtime. Parents should ensure that this entertainment is high-quality and create screen-free zones (like the family dinner table) so children and teens learn to function without their devices.

It can be a challenge to meet all of these recommendations. One way to manage is to combine one or more activities to finish more quickly.

For instance, time outdoors in nature, away from electronic devices, can be combined with exercise and even time with same-age friends. Meanwhile, the time a child or teen needs to be engaged with a parent can be met by eating dinner together.

Establishing a daily plan or school year routine is the key to fitting in everything a child needs. Pre-planning or scheduling can also reduce parent stress, keeping the time you spend with your child positive.

As you plan your child's typical school day, try not to be too rigid. With the exception of sleep, you can be flexible about how your kids spend their time and tailor your routines to meet their specific needs.

The key is getting appropriate rest, attending school, and doing their homework. Socializing, time with family, physical activity, electronic use, and family meal times can be adapted as the days unfold.

In the U.S., 180 days of school is most common, but length of school day varies by state. Pew Research Center . 2023.

Childhood friendships and psychological difficulties in young adulthood: an 18-year follow-up study .  European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry . 2015.

Amount of time to eat lunch is associated with children's selection and consumption of school meal entrée, fruits, vegetables, and milk .  Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics . 2016.

Youth Physical Activity Guidelines Toolkit. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . 2017.

  The power of outdoor play and play in natural environments .  Childhood Education . 2016.

Connecting Kids and Nature. U.S. National Wildlife Federation . n.d.

Promoting Physical Activity. American Academy of Pediatrics . 2022.

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How much homework does your elementary school (grades 1-5) aged child get each night?

Curious to how long your kids spend on homework per night. My youngest seems to get way more then I've ever seen with my older kids. She's in grade 4. We're spending an average of two hours per night.

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My wife isn't 'just' a stepmom to my son. He sees her as his other mom.

• My wife has been in my son's life since he was 6 years old.
• She has taken on a parental role, stepping in whenever I need extra help.
• Even though she's his stepmom, my son considers her his other mom.

After Vice President Kamala Harris announced she was running for president, one criticism lobbed against her was that she is not a parent because she has never given birth to children. But she is the stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff's two children.

Like Harris, my wife is a stepmother to my son.

I am no longer in a relationship with his father and have been in a new relationship for four years. My wife came into my son's life when he was 6 years old and quickly stepped into a parental role. It was a role she enthusiastically took on.

Although she didn't give birth to my son, my wife is absolutely his second mother.

My son and wife's relationship started friendly

My wife didn't immediately take an authoritative role or force him to treat her like a parent. At first, she was more like a grown-up friend — someone he knew he needed to respect, but someone who would take him on drives to get ice cream or let him pretend to drive her car while I was inside the grocery store.

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I was worried about parenting with another person all the time. As the primary parent, I wasn't used to dividing parenting duties . My wife was aware of that and always deferred to me as the primary parent.

But the bond between my son and my wife was instant. He had never met someone I was dating before, but he liked her immediately.

My wife has taken on more responsibility as a stepmom

Over the last four years, she's taken on more parental responsibility but never tried to act like she was more of a parent than myself or my son's father. She is a bonus mom, someone there to kiss him goodnight , help him with his homework, and love him unconditionally.

During the pandemic, my wife volunteered to take the lead in helping my son with virtual school so I could focus on work. She created a schedule for him, made him lunch, and ensured he kept up with assignments. When the playgrounds opened, she would take him to play, armed with a backpack full of whatever was needed.

I have gone on several overnight trips , leaving the two of them alone together. My son doesn't even call or text me when I'm gone because he's having so much fun hanging out with my wife. I never have to worry about him; I know my wife will make sure he takes a bath and goes to bed on time.

There are days when I will ask her to tag in and do the bedtime routine because I'm working or want a break, and she does it without question. My son knows that if he needs something, he doesn't have to come to me all the time.

Seeing my wife willingly step into a parental role with my son has strengthened our relationship. I knew I loved her almost immediately after we met, but seeing how my son responded to her made me more secure in my decision.

Sometimes, she still refers to him as mine, and I always remind her that she's his mom, too. We do everything as a team: school meetings, performances, birthday parties . Everyone knows us as his two moms, and there's no one else I could imagine doing this with.

My son now sees my wife as the missing piece to our family puzzle. He proudly claims her as his other mom.

"You're my mom too," my son will say when my wife calls herself his stepmom. He made that decision. My wife never wanted to force a close relationship on him, but he pushed for it.

Media has warped the perception of stepmoms

Popular media depictions of stepmoms are largely negative. The common trope is that they're evil.

For example, you have characters like Meredith Blake in the Lindsay Lohan version of "The Parent Trap," the Baroness von Schraeder in " The Sound of Music ," and, of course, the prototype: Cinderella's Evil Stepmother.

These women are always seen as temptresses who come in and seduce the father into marrying them before revealing they intend to get rid of his daughter so that she will be the only woman in his life.

Maybe there are stepmoms out there who fit this description, but by and large, stepmoms are there to be whoever their step kids want them to be.

I know that's exactly the role my wife plays, and my son and I are all the more lucky for it.

• Main content

Youth barometer paints a bleak picture of young Australians in 2024

Anxiety, pessimism and insecurity are common feelings among young people at the moment, with their top three concerns being housing affordability, employment and climate change, according to the 2024 Australian Youth Barometer, which surveyed more than 600 Australians aged 18-24 and interviewed 30 more.

Let’s explore these.

Soaring costs of rental and housing affordability are widely reported and acutely concern young people. Some living circumstances are dire. One 21-year-old teacher in Western Australia told us:

“I’m living in a shed effectively, that also rings testament true to the rental prices. If I couldn’t even afford rent on the salary that I’m on now … I’m working full-time as a high school teacher and I still live in a shed.”

Housing affordability is the tip of a precarious iceberg. Beneath the waterline, we see:

• 98% reporting at least one feeling of anxiety or pessimism.
• 86% experiencing financial difficulties to some extent in the past 12 months, with 26% reporting they did so often or very often.
• Though a slight improvement on previous years, 17% experienced food insecurity at some point in the past 12 months. Lack of money prevented 70% of young Australians from going out to eat with friends or family.
• Only 53% think it’s likely that they’ll achieve financial security in the future.
• 62% think they’ll be financially worse off than their parents.
• Only 40% report they’re often or very often able to save part of their income.

Only half (52%) of young people think it’s likely they’ll have children in the future. Such decision-making is in part shaped by their precarious living conditions.

Turning to employment, more than half (52%) of young people experienced underemployment at some point in the past 12 months. They want more work.

Some note the challenges of finding even basic work, and the divide between what young people are often paid and the financial responsibilities they’re shouldering:

“I also only get paid a minimum wage for a job that I’ve worked really, really hard to get … I get paid $17 an hour simply because I’m not 21 and they don’t legally have to. I’m part-time, I work long hours. … I should be able to get the adult minimum wage when I’m legally an adult, you know. I’ve got adult bills.” – Non-binary person, 18, TAS

Responding to the climate emergency is the third-top issue. Only a third (34%) believe it’s likely that climate change will be combated in the future. So while it’s a major concern requiring immediate action, a majority of young Australians don’t have much faith in current government responses to the unfolding climate crisis.

But many are doing something about it. More than two-thirds (70%) volunteered in organised activities at least once in the past year. The most common volunteering activities were welfare-related care and services (50%), arts and cultural services (49%), and environmental-related activities (49%). One 23-year=-old Queenslander said:

“I’m going to live and I’m going to die, you know, I’m not going to make much difference. [But] I think volunteering [is] where I’m going to make the most difference in my life by helping someone. … I think if I can do something, do some good I guess, I think my life might have meaning, so yes.”

With the next federal election looming, the Australian government needs to pay attention to what young people are telling us. More than a third (39%) think there’s not enough government support for housing. A quarter (26%) believe there’s not enough government support in finance.

But many feel unseen and unheard. As one 19-year-old woman from Queensland told us:

“I feel like it’s a little bit hard to get represented [in politics] in a way when … [we are not] the ones that are more the homeowners and the taxpayers.”

She has a point.

Beyond government, we can also support organisations like The Smith Family, Mission Australia, and Raise Foundation , all of which undertake important work to develop resilience, belonging, and keep young people engaged in education and in participating to shape their worlds.

The Raise Youth Mentoring Program, for example, supported 2400 young people this year alone. But in light of our findings, more volunteers are needed.

As our Youth Reference Group noted in its introduction to this year’s report, while young people are taking action to respond to these challenges, “the onus is on us all to build on, learn from and support these efforts”.

This includes you and me.

Download the 2024 Australian Youth Barometer here .  

• Australian Youth Barometer 2024
• Climate anxiety
• housing affordability
• financial security
• youth and climate change
• Youth anxiety
• Youth employment
• Raise Foundation

Lucas Walsh

Professor, School of Education Culture and Society; Director, Monash Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice

Blake Cutler

Research Assistant, Faculty of Education

Zihong Deng

Research Fellow, School of Education Culture and Society

Thuc Bao Huynh

Research Assistant and PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education

What are young Australians most worried about? Finding affordable housing

It was thought that after the pandemic, young people’s outlook for the future might have improved. But the latest Australian Youth Barometer survey shows it’s actually become worse.

In 2022, 90% of young people had financial troubles, and 27% used ‘buy now, pay later’ services

BNPL is now the second-most common form of consumer credit used by young Australians – except technically it’s not credit.

Not such a super home buyer scheme

The Coalition’s Super Home Buyer Scheme benefits property developers, not the young trying to enter the property market.

‘We get the raw deal out of almost everything’: A quarter of young Australians are pessimistic about having kids

Many young people are bleak about what the future holds – and this is having an impact on their plans to have children.

Taking the temperature of Australian youth amid the pandemic

The 2021 Australian Youth Barometer, a survey of more than 500 young Australians aged 18 to 24, reflects the pressures young Australians have been under during COVID-19.

You may republish this article online or in print under our Creative Commons licence. You may not edit or shorten the text, you must attribute the article to Monash Lens, and you must include the author’s name in your republication.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

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• Cast & crew

A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern. A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern. A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.

• Halina Reijn
• Nicole Kidman
• Harris Dickinson
• Antonio Banderas
• 1 nomination

Top cast 36

• Intern Rose

• Nude cult member

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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2024 Venice Film Festival Guide

• December 20, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Netherlands
• New York City, New York, USA (street scenes)
• Man Up Film
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 54 minutes

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