Too much homework can lower test scores, researchers say

Piling on the homework doesn't help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores.

That's the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students' academic performance.

According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The same correlation is also seen when comparing homework time and test performance at schools within countries. Past studies have also demonstrated this basic trend.

Inundating children with hours of homework each night is detrimental, the research suggests, while an hour or two per week usually doesn't impact test scores one way or the other. However, homework only bolsters students' academic performance during their last three years of grade school. "There is little benefit for most students until senior high school (grades 10-12)," Walker told Life's Little Mysteries.

The research is detailed in his new book, "Reforming Homework: Practices, Learning and Policies" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

The same basic finding holds true across the globe, including in the U.S., according to Gerald LeTendre of Pennsylvania State University. He and his colleagues have found that teachers typically give take-home assignments that are unhelpful busy work. Assigning homework "appeared to be a remedial strategy (a consequence of not covering topics in class, exercises for students struggling, a way to supplement poor quality educational settings), and not an advancement strategy (work designed to accelerate, improve or get students to excel)," LeTendre wrote in an email.

This type of remedial homework tends to produce marginally lower test scores compared with children who are not given the work. Even the helpful, advancing kind of assignments ought to be limited; Harris Cooper, a professor of education at Duke University, has recommended that students be given no more than 10 to 15 minutes of homework per night in second grade, with an increase of no more than 10 to 15 minutes in each successive year.

Most homework's neutral or negative impact on students' academic performance implies there are better ways for them to spend their after school hours than completing worksheets. So, what should they be doing? According to LeTendre, learning to play a musical instrument or participating in clubs and sports all seem beneficial, but there's no one answer that applies to everyone.

"These after-school activities have much more diffuse goals than single subject test scores," he wrote. "When I talk to parents … they want their kids to be well-rounded, creative, happy individuals — not just kids who ace the tests."

Source: huffingtonpost.com/Photo: sodahead.com

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Elementary reading skills 7 linked to financial success at midlife

Research in brief: reading well and being able to do maths at a 

young age could determine a higher wage later in life. 

Photograph: Alamy

It may seem hard to figure, but provocative new research suggests that an individual's math and reading skills in elementary school are key indicators of his/her socioeconomic status (SES) in adulthood.

In fact, the study -conducted by a pair of researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland- showed that math and reading skills at age 7 are the most reliable predictors of SES at age 42.

Study co-author Stuart Ritchie, a doctoral student at the university, told The Huffington Post in an email that he was surprised by the findings.

“A lot of psychologists -including us before we did the study!- would have guessed that, since general intelligence is so important, specific skills like reading and math wouldn't have any extra effects on SES beyond it,” Ritchie wrote. “But we found that these effects do exist- so no matter how smart people were … being better at reading and math at age seven was still significantly linked to SES aged 42.”

Timothy Bates, a professor at the university and the study's co-author, said the study highlights the importance of learned skills.

“There was no flattening off of the return to these skills at either end: So it is of value all the way from remedial intervention to the most gifted levels to raise these skills,” Bates said in an email to The Huffington Post. “Math and reading are two of the most intervention-friendly of topics: Practice improves nearly all children.”

The study followed 17,638 English, Scottish, and Welsh participants, and 920 immigrants, from birth until age 50. Data was collected at several points during the participants' lives, including at ages 7, 11, 16, and 42.

When participants were 7, researchers gauged their family’s socioeconomic background, as well as their reading and math skills. At age 11, researchers measured participants’ IQ, and at age 16, their academic motivation. When participants were 42, researchers measured their educational duration (how long they had attended school) and their SES- how much money they made.

The study, “Enduring Links From Childhood Mathematics and Reading Achievement to Adult Socioeconomic Status,” was published in the May 2013 issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Source: huffingtonpost.com/Rebecca Klein

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