An Equitable Solution to the Homework Dilemma

The debate over the purpose and efficacy of homework has plagued educators since the advent of compulsory education in the United States over a hundred years ago. As Brian Gill and Steven Schlossman note in "Parents and the Politics of Homework: Some Historical Perspectives," most teachers at the turn of the 20th century employed the method of "drill, memorization, and recitation"—a pedagogical approach that sparked backlash from progressive reformers like Joseph Mayer Rice, who wrote in an 1897 article "The Futility of the Spelling Grind" that "requiring children to spend long hours at home memorizing spelling lists did not make them better spellers."

While Rice's criticism of homework was based on its ineffectiveness in producing desired results, Edward Bok, the editor of the Ladies Home Journal, argued in a 1902 essay "Dedicated to the American Parent" that homework produced negative health effects in children, causing them to have "repeated headaches" and become "nervously exhausted" with "their little brains hopelessly hurt" from the stress of overstudy. As one parent lamented, "The lessons our boy brought home gave him absolutely no time to play. Even then, he went to school nearly every day with a part of his lessons unfinished." This ambition to push students academically was also criticized by a child who claimed that her sister actually died from the mental strain of excess homework: "My parents did not see that there was a limit to a young girl's nerves and health. And the life of my beloved sister was the price."

Fast forward to the 21st century and Alfie Kohn argues much the same in his essay "The Case Against Homework," published in Family Circle in 2012, stating that his "findings can be summarized in seven words: Homework is all pain and no gain." Kohn claims that there is no statistical evidence that homework improves academic performance and "not a single study has ever supported the folk wisdom that homework teaches good work habits or develops positive character traits such as self-discipline, responsibility or independence." Instead of assigning homework, Kohn writes that we should instead "restore sanity and joy to our children's lives" and provide them ample time "to grow socially, physically, emotionally, and artistically—not just academically."

Furthering the anti-homework crusade in the last decade is the question of educational equity, with many believing that homework provides an unfair advantage to students from privileged backgrounds who are more likely to have free time and quiet spaces to complete assignments outside of school. In response to the disruption of the Covid pandemic in 2020, many school districts implemented strategies to confront the structural inequities that they believed exacerbated the achievement gap between different groups of students. Among the strategies was to eliminate homework or make it optional, to no longer grade work done outside of class, and to remove deadlines and/or penalties for late work.

When the school board in Arlington, Virginia, proposed such changes to the district's homework policy in December 2021, teachers from Wakefield High School responded in an open letter to the school board and county superintendent that this new policy would "impact student learning and socio-emotional development and growth in a negative way." The teachers argued that devaluing homework would "result in the decline of high expectations and rigor in the classroom" since students would no longer be "held accountable for completing their work in a timely manner and meeting deadlines that were reasonably established by their teachers."

In response to this controversy, Jay Caspian Kang wrote a 2022 op-ed in The New York Times, "The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong," suggesting that the devaluation of homework is "reframing the purpose of schooling itself." Kang asks whether schools are meant to be places where "a select group of children can distinguish themselves from their peers through diligence, talent and the pursuit of upward mobility," or whether schools are places where "everyone should have equal access to learning and opportunity, whatever that might mean." Most importantly, he questions whether "these two ideals" need to be "mutually exclusive" and perpetually in conflict with one another.

To support his claim, Kang cites a 2022 study by Jessica McCrory Calarco, Ilana Horn, and Grace Chen, "'You Need to Be More Responsible': The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers' Accounts of Homework Inequalities," which argues that "despite awareness of structural inequalities in their students' lives," teachers often fall victim to the "myth of meritocracy" and believe that when students fail to complete homework, it is the result of "insufficient responsibility, effort, and motivation" of students and parents alike. The authors claim that this belief "justified homework practices that reinforced inequalities." One of their recommendations is for teachers to avoid "rewarding or punishing students for the homework they produce" or, even better, to eliminate homework altogether since "[n]o-homework policies have greater potential for alleviating the kinds of unequal practices we observed in the schools in our study."

For English teachers, the obvious problem with eliminating homework is that it becomes nearly impossible to read full-length novels or plays without resorting to the time-consuming and mind-numbing practice of reading aloud in class, time that could be better spent analyzing texts that students have already read on their own. To ensure that instruction remains engaging and efficient, students should spend class time sharing their initial impressions and interpretations of a text with their classmates, a skill that also prepares them for what they will be expected to do in college: namely, read and analyze texts independently.

Instead of eliminating homework, we should address concerns about equity by limiting what we assign outside of class and being flexible in the time we give students to complete those assignments. When I first began teaching, I assigned nightly reading, which was the norm for the vast majority of my English colleagues. About halfway through my 30-year career, however, I realized that these nightly assignments put an unfair burden on students who were actively engaged in extracurricular activities or had other after-school commitments, such as work or family obligations. As a result, I switched to weekly reading assignments, giving students the flexibility to create their own schedule. Many continued to read nightly for 30-45 minutes while others waited until the weekend and then read for multiple hours in a single sitting.

When students in the past read Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, for instance, I would assign a scene or two per night. With the new schedule, however, I asked students to read all of Act I (pp. 23-75) for the following week. On Mondays, we began class with an AP-style reading quiz that covered the entirety of the previous week's assignment:

We then used the remaining class periods during the week to cover as many of the following literary elements as possible from Act I:

• Thematic seeds in the opening stage directions

• Walter Lee's characterization

• The symbolic significance of Mama's plant

• The contrasting dreams of Walter Lee, Beneatha, and Mama

• Hansberry's style in Walter Lee's plea to Mama

• Big Walter's role as literary foil for Walter Lee

Assigning weekly reading not only gives students flexibility in completing the work, but also creates consistency for teachers when mapping out their unit plans and yearly schedule. Without having to worry about the inevitable disruptions that occur during a typical school week, teachers can now determine how many weeks they will need to complete a text based on their weekly reading assignments.

Another way that teachers can maintain rigor while simultaneously easing the burden on students is by making the first draft of every writing assignment an in-class essay. Since my classes use the three types of essays found on the AP Literature Exam, we practice writing these drafts in class to not only simulate the test-taking experience, but also to give students an immediate rough draft from which they can begin the revision process.

Before we begin any novel or play, we first read a poem that is related in theme to the major work. With Hansberry's play, we compare and contrast two poems, creating an AP Poetry Analysis prompt that asks students to consider the nature of dreams in both Langston Hughes' "Harlem"—which is alluded to in Hansberry's title—and William Butler Yeats' "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven":

In the middle of the novel or play, we select an important passage that Edith Wharton might describe as an "illuminating incident" or "magic casement" that reveals the author's overall theme or what the AP calls "the meaning of the work as a whole." For Hansberry's play we create an AP Passage Analysis prompt for the scene when Mama tells her family that she has used the insurance money from Big Walter's death to buy a house in Clybourne Park, an all-white neighborhood in Chicago:

After finishing the novel or play, students write the third and final essay of the unit that asks them to analyze the work in its entirety. We choose an actual AP Literary Argument prompt from a previous AP Exam that lists the work we are reading as one of its suggested titles. For Hansberry's play, we use the prompt from the 2018 AP Exam, which asks students to consider how "a literal or figurative gift" can also be "a burden or a handicap" for one of the characters:

After students write the first draft of their essay, they receive peer feedback and then begin the revision process by typing up their drafts and scheduling an individual writing conference with their teacher. Ultimately, students have to submit a typed revision of their best essay by the end of the quarter. They can revise as many essays over the course of the quarter as they would like, and they can schedule as many writing conferences as possible before the final draft is due. In this way, students are again given flexibility on when they would like to work on their revisions and when they would like to receive additional feedback from their teacher. The final deadline remains firm, however, to ensure that students are held accountable for completing their revisions by the end of the quarter.

>> For a full description of our writing program, please read our July 2022 Newsletter:

"Managing the Paper Load"

Similarly, at the beginning of every unit, we introduce a final project, which we call the Authentic Assessment, that should apply the lessons learned from the literature to some real-world situation. For Hansberry's play, we ask students to imagine a program in their local community that offers $2,000 scholarships—similar to the ones offered by the 5Point Adventure Film Festival in Aspen, Colorado—to give students “a chance to explore their personal boundaries while living their own adventure.” The Dream Project asks students to consider what they would do with a $2,000 gift and how their decision not only reveals their interests and values, but also reflects their commitment “to learn, to have a positive impact on their community, and to embrace an incredible adventure":

Again, there is a hard deadline at the end of the unit when the projects are due, but the long-term nature of the assignment gives students the flexibility to find a convenient time to work on their projects independently. Notice how the homework we assign is never due the next class period, nor could it ever be described as "busywork" that serves no clear purpose. Instead, the assignments involve reading, writing, and working on projects that require the type of critical thinking that is best done independently and according to one's own timeframe, conditions that cannot be easily replicated in a crowded classroom filled with one's peers.

The bottom line is that homework still plays a crucial role in developing responsible, empowered, independent learners. In "Duke Study: Homework Helps Students Succeed in School, As Long As There Isn't Too Much," researcher Harris Cooper argues that his 2006 meta-analysis of over 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 reveals that "homework does have a positive effect on student achievement," especially for secondary school students in Grades 7-12. He concludes that "homework is a critical part of the learning process," but warns that "too much homework can be counter-productive for students at all levels."

The challenge for teachers is to find that balance where homework remains essential and thought-provoking but does not overburden or exacerbate inequities between students. Instead of eliminating or devaluing homework, we should place an even higher value on it by reserving it for only the most important activities. When students ask, "What is the homework?", my answer has always been the same: "Read, write, and work on your final projects." Everything else can—and should—be done in class.