alfie kohn homework myth

Audio/Video
Lecture Topics
Special Issues
Standards & Testing
Follow on Twitter

Rethinking Homework

Buy new: $10.78 $10.78 FREE delivery: Thursday, March 9 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used: $7.95

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Other sellers on amazon.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required . Learn more

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web .

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Follow the Author

The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing Paperback – August 14, 2007

Kindle $9.99 Read with Our Free App

Enhance your purchase

Check out reading-themed apparel and accessories in the new Amazon Books merch shop

Frequently bought together

The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"

Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Product details

About the author

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He is the author of twelve books and hundreds of articles. Kohn has been described by Time Magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades and test scores.” He has appeared twice on “Oprah,” as well as on “The Today Show,” NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” and on many other TV and radio programs. He spends much of his time speaking at education conferences, as well as to parent groups, school faculties, and researchers. Kohn lives (actually) in the Boston area – and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

This article was published more than 10 years ago

Homework: An unnecessary evil? … Surprising findings from new research

Alfie Kohn writes about what a new homework study really says — and what it doesn’t say. He is the author of 12 books about education and human behavior, including “The Schools Our Children Deserve,” “The Homework Myth,” and “Feel-Bad Education… And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling.” He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.

By Alfie Kohn

A brand-new study on the academic effects of homework offers not only some intriguing results but also a lesson on how to read a study — and a reminder of the importance of doing just that: reading studies (carefully) rather than relying on summaries by journalists or even by the researchers themselves.

Let’s start by reviewing what we know from earlier investigations.[1] First, no research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school. In fact, there isn’t even a positive correlation between, on the one hand, having younger children do some homework (vs. none), or more (vs. less), and, on the other hand, any measure of achievement. If we’re making 12-year-olds, much less five-year-olds, do homework, it’s either because we’re misinformed about what the evidence says or because we think kids ought to have to do homework despite what the evidence says.

Second, even at the high school level, the research supporting homework hasn’t been particularly persuasive. There does seem to be a correlation between homework and standardized test scores, but (a) it isn’t strong, meaning that homework doesn’t explain much of the variance in scores, (b) one prominent researcher, Timothy Keith, who did find a solid correlation, returned to the topic a decade later to enter more variables into the equation simultaneously, only to discover that the improved study showed that homework had no effect after all[2], and (c) at best we’re only talking about a correlation — things that go together — without having proved that doing more homework causes test scores to go up. (Take 10 seconds to see if you can come up with other variables that might be driving both of these things.)

Third, when homework is related to test scores, the connection tends to be strongest — or, actually, least tenuous — with math. If homework turns out to be unnecessary for students to succeed in that subject, it’s probably unnecessary everywhere.

Along comes a new study, then, that focuses on the neighborhood where you’d be most likely to find a positive effect if one was there to be found: math and science homework in high school. Like most recent studies, this one by Adam Maltese and his colleagues[3] doesn’t provide rich descriptive analyses of what students and teachers are doing. Rather, it offers an aerial view, the kind preferred by economists, relying on two large datasets (from the National Education Longitudinal Study [NELS] and the Education Longitudinal Study [ELS]). Thousands of students are asked one question — How much time do you spend on homework? — and statistical tests are then performed to discover if there’s a relationship between that number and how they fared in their classes and on standardized tests.

It’s easy to miss one interesting result in this study that appears in a one-sentence aside. When kids in these two similar datasets were asked how much time they spent on math homework each day, those in the NELS study said 37 minutes, whereas those in the ELS study said 60 minutes. There’s no good reason for such a striking discrepancy, nor do the authors offer any explanation. They just move right along — even though those estimates raise troubling questions about the whole project, and about all homework studies that are based on self-report. Which number is more accurate? Or are both of them way off? There’s no way of knowing. And because all the conclusions are tied to that number, all the conclusions may be completely invalid.[4]

But let’s pretend that we really do know how much homework students do. Did doing it make any difference? The Maltese et al. study looked at the effect on test scores and on grades. They emphasized the latter, but let’s get the former out of the way first.

Was there a correlation between the amount of homework that high school students reported doing and their scores on standardized math and science tests? Yes, and it was statistically significant but “very modest”: Even assuming the existence of a causal relationship, which is by no means clear, one or two hours’ worth of homework every day buys you two or three points on a test. Is that really worth the frustration, exhaustion, family conflict, loss of time for other activities, and potential diminution of interest in learning? And how meaningful a measure were those tests in the first place, since, as the authors concede, they’re timed measures of mostly mechanical skills? (Thus, a headline that reads “Study finds homework boosts achievement” can be translated as “A relentless regimen of after-school drill-and-skill can raise scores a wee bit on tests of rote learning.”)

But it was grades, not tests, that Maltese and his colleagues really cared about. They were proud of having looked at transcript data in order to figure out “the exact grade a student received in each class [that he or she] completed” so they could compare that to how much homework the student did. Previous research has looked only at students’ overall grade-point averages.

And the result of this fine-tuned investigation? There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.”

This result clearly caught the researchers off-guard. Frankly, it surprised me, too. When you measure “achievement” in terms of grades, you expect to see a positive result — not because homework is academically beneficial but because the same teacher who gives the assignments evaluates the students who complete them, and the final grade is often based at least partly on whether, and to what extent, students did the homework. Even if homework were a complete waste of time, how could it not be positively related to course grades?

And yet it wasn’t. Again. Even in high school. Even in math. The study zeroed in on specific course grades, which represents a methodological improvement, and the moral may be: The better the research, the less likely one is to find any benefits from homework. (That’s not a surprising proposition for a careful reader of reports in this field. We got a hint of that from Timothy Keith’s reanalysis and also from the fact that longer homework studies tend to find less of an effect.[5])

Maltese and his colleagues did their best to reframe these results to minimize the stunning implications.[6] Like others in this field, they seem to have approached the topic already convinced that homework is necessary and potentially beneficial, so the only question we should ask is How — not whether — to assign it. But if you read the results rather than just the authors’ spin on them — which you really need to do with the work of others working in this field as well[7] — you’ll find that there’s not much to prop up the belief that students must be made to work a second shift after they get home from school. The assumption that teachers are just assigning homework badly, that we’d start to see meaningful results if only it were improved, is harder and harder to justify with each study that’s published.

If experience is any guide, however, many people will respond to these results by repeating platitudes about the importance of practice[8], or by complaining that anyone who doesn’t think kids need homework is coddling them and failing to prepare them for the “real world” (read: the pointless tasks they’ll be forced to do after they leave school). Those open to evidence, however, have been presented this fall with yet another finding that fails to find any meaningful benefit even when the study is set up to give homework every benefit of the doubt.

1. It’s important to remember that some people object to homework for reasons that aren’t related to the dispute about whether research might show that homework provides academic benefits. They argue that (a) six hours a day of academics are enough, and kids should have the chance after school to explore other interests and develop in other ways — or be able simply to relax in the same way that most adults like to relax after work; and (b) the decision about what kids do during family time should be made by families, not schools. Let’s put these arguments aside for now, even though they ought to be (but rarely are) included in any discussion of the topic.

2. Valerie A. Cool and Timothy Z. Keith, “Testing a Model of School Learning: Direct and Indirect Effects on Academic Achievement,” Contemporary Educational Psychology 16 (1991): 28-44.

3. Adam V. Maltese, Robert H. Tai, and Xitao Fan, “When Is Homework Worth the Time? Evaluating the Association Between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math,” The High School Journal , October/November 2012: 52-72. Abstract at http://ow.ly/fxhOV.

4. Other research has found little or no correlation between how much homework students report doing and how much homework their parents say they do. When you use the parents’ estimates, the correlation between homework and achievement disappears. See Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, and Erika A. Patall, “Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?: A Synthesis of Research, 1987-2003,” Review of Educational Research 76 (2006): 1-62.

5. To put it the other way around, studies finding the biggest effect are those that capture less of what goes on in the real world by virtue of being so brief. View a small, unrepresentative slice of a child’s life and it may appear that homework makes a contribution to achievement; keep watching, and that contribution is eventually revealed to be illusory. See data provided — but not interpreted this way — by Cooper, The Battle Over Homework, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2001).

6. Even the title of their article reflects this: They ask “When Is Homework Worth the Time?” rather than “ Is Homework Worth the Time?” This bias might seem a bit surprising in the case of the study’s second author, Robert H. Tai. He had contributed earlier to another study whose results similarly ended up raising questions about the value of homework. Students enrolled in college physics courses were surveyed to determine whether any features of their high school physics courses were now of use to them. At first a very small relationship was found between the amount of homework that students had had in high school and how well they were currently faring. But once the researchers controlled for other variables, such as the type of classes they had taken, that relationship disappeared, just as it had for Keith (see note 2). The researchers then studied a much larger population of students in college science classes – and found the same thing: Homework simply didn’t help. See Philip M. Sadler and Robert H. Tai, “Success in Introductory College Physics: The Role of High School Preparation,” Science Education 85 [2001]: 111-36.

7. See chapter 4 (“’Studies Show…’ — Or Do They?”) of my book The Homework Myth (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2006), an adaptation of which appears as “Abusing Research: The Study of Homework and Other Examples,” Phi Delta Kappan , September 2006 [www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/research.htm].

8. On the alleged value of practice, see The Homework Myth , pp. 106-18, also available at http://bit.ly/9dXqCj.

Goodreads Celebrates Women's History Month

The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2006

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

Get this book in print

What people are saying - Write a review

The homework myth: why our kids get too much of a bad thing.

Some of the most fundamental expectations of children, parents, and educators are that children need homework, that they should get homework, and that the more they get, the better. According to Kohn ... Read full review

tis no cazoo it nooooooo not help soooooo Itttee ddoesssses helpsed.

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases, about the author (2007), bibliographic information.

The Homework Myth

How to fix schools so kids really learn

Is It Enough for Students to Be "Engaged"?

Alfie Kohn on October 10, 2022

It's good when kids are absorbed by something they're doing. It's better—and more likely to be intellectually beneficial—when what they're doing is driven by their curiosity.

Sport and Competition

The case for cooperative games.

Alfie Kohn on February 14, 2022

We've been raised to assume that playing a game means struggling to defeat other people. But activities without winners or losers actually reveal how much fun competition isn't

Schooling Is Never Values-Free or Apolitical

Alfie Kohn on November 5, 2021

Why is it "political" to teach the history of racism in this country but apolitical to ignore it? Or do conservatives actually fear kids' being taught to think for themselves?

What Makes a True Skeptic?

Alfie Kohn on September 27, 2021

When conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and climate science deniers claim to be brave truth-tellers and skeptics, how do we distinguish that from genuine skepticism?

The Progressive Teacher's Role in the Classroom

Alfie Kohn on May 3, 2021

What's harder than either traditional or hands-off teaching? Artfully complicating students' thinking. And being in control of putting kids in control.

Lessons About Education: Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini-Wheats

Alfie Kohn on March 8, 2021

A meditation on why sugarcoating is best avoided, both literally (in cereals) and figuratively (in education and parenting).

The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful?

Alfie Kohn on December 21, 2020

Why do so many teachers privilege test scores (falsely endowing them with "objectivity") over their own, more meaningful knowledge of how kids are faring?

Self-Esteem

Fame is the name of the game.

Alfie Kohn on October 16, 2020

The pervasive (and poignant) desire to be known by millions of strangers—or to bask in the reflected glory of famous people—is an intriguing psychological puzzle.

All of Us Are Smarter Than Any of Us

Alfie Kohn on September 23, 2020

There's a substantial cost to students, and perhaps especially to working-class students, of our extreme ideology of individualism.

Out of Control

Alfie Kohn on May 21, 2020

Having some control over what happens to us is a basic human need. Selfish individualism is not.

Autism and Behaviorism

Alfie Kohn on January 29, 2020

Part 3 of 3: A new review of 50 years of research finds little support for ABA. The evidence actually supports treating autistic kids as human beings, not bundles of behaviors.

Alfie Kohn on January 28, 2020

ABA can objectify and dehumanize autistic children, with mindless compliance the price for acceptance. Is it any wonder it's widely despised by the children to whom it's done?

Alfie Kohn on January 27, 2020

Part 1 of 3: Research has long shown that rewards inevitably backfire. That includes "positive reinforcement" to manipulate children with special needs.

What the Presidential Candidates Should Say About Education

Alfie Kohn on October 18, 2019

There's a big difference between being politically progressive (when talking about education policy) and also being educationally progressive.

Personality

Gener(aliz)ations

Alfie Kohn on July 16, 2019

Let's quit the Millennial bashing and, while we're at it, stop the simplistic summaries of Baby Boomers, Gen X'ers, and other huge groups that only have age in common.

The Trouble(s) with College

Alfie Kohn on May 23, 2019

The low points of higher ed: How the system for deciding who's accepted makes our society more inequitable, and how the teaching isn't always so hot for those who do get in.

Child Development

Deconstructing "Scaffolding"

Alfie Kohn on March 7, 2019

Educators often use a metaphor from the construction industry to describe giving students temporary help. But a closer look suggests the idea is more controversial than it seems.

The Why Axis

Alfie Kohn on November 26, 2018

Progressive teaching is hard to do well. But describing its rationale to skeptical outsiders is also important.

When Oprah Calls, You Don't Say No

Alfie Kohn on August 24, 2018

In 1996, Oprah Winfrey did an experiment in which some kids were rewarded for evaluating puzzles, and she invited me to explain the results. Here's what happened.

The Overselling of Gratitude

Alfie Kohn on July 11, 2018

Should we really adopt a "count your blessings" stance across the board, or is it more authentic to see (and react to) circumstances as they are?

Knowing what you value will help you build the most meaningful life possible.

(Stanford users can avoid this Captcha by logging in.)

SearchWorks catalog

The homework myth : why our kids get too much of a bad thing

Available online, at the library.

Education Library (at SAL1&2)

The Education Library is closed for construction. Request items for pickup at another library.

More options

Description

Creators/contributors, contents/summary, bibliographic information, browse related items.

IMAGES

The Homework Myth
#pypchat Book Club "The Homework Myth" by Alfie Kohn: #pypchat, #twitter, book club, discussion
The Homework Myth
Pin on Book Trailers and Author Videos
The Homework Myth
The Benefits Of Homework

VIDEO

Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn Theory
How we motivate ourselves to learn a language
Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn

COMMENTS

The Homework Myth
But what if they don't? In The Homework Myth, Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual defenses of homework – that it promotes higher achievement, “
Rethinking Homework
2. The positive effects of homework are largely mythical. In preparation for a book on the topic, I've spent a lot of time sifting through the research
the homework myth
But what if they don't? In The Homework Myth, Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual defenses of homework – that it promotes higher achievement, “
The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
But what if they don't? In The Homework Myth, nationally known educator and parenting expert Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual defenses of homework--
Homework: An unnecessary evil? … Surprising findings from new
Alfie Kohn writes about what a new homework study really says — and what it doesn't say. He is the author of 12 books about education and
The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The author of fourteen books and scores of articles, he lectures at education
The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
But what if they don't? In The Homework Myth, nationally known educator and parenting expert Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual
The homework myth: Why our kids get too much of a bad thing
Citation. Kohn, A. (2006). The homework myth: Why our kids get too much of a bad thing. Da Capo Press.
The Homework Myth
Alfie Kohn writes about behavior and education. His books include Feel-Bad Education, The Homework Myth, and What Does It Mean To Be Well
The homework myth : why our kids get too much of a bad thing
But do they? In "The Homework Myth", Alfie Kohn, one of America's leading educators and parenting experts, systematically examines the usual defences of
Don't Give Homework! with Alfie Kohn
Episode 76: The Bedley Bros interview Alfie Kohn about his philosophy that homework is a bad idea. http://www.alfiekohn.org Mr. Kohn is a