With the school year getting under way, we have some good news for all parents: When your children come home each night from school complaining about how they have so much homework, don't listen to them. They're lying.

OK, maybe they're not lying, per se, but recent research has gone a long way to debunk the long-held notion that American schoolchildren are chronically overworked. Remember the piece in Time magazine entitled "The Homework Ate My Family"? Or People magazine's article, "Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third Grader?" Don't believe them.

Scholars at the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy have proven that, if anything, American schoolchildren need more homework. ... Sorry, kids.

Among the findings: Students spend only 19 to 27 minutes per night studying, on average. Students spend more time each day playing, eating, tending to personal care, playing sports, shopping, visiting and performing household duties than they do on homework. And they spend six times as much time watching television. Only a third of high school seniors spend an hour or more on homework each day (compared with other nations in this category, the U.S. is tied for last place).

Of course, kids will be - and always have been - kids, so this new research shouldn't give any cause for moral crusading against distracted, unfocused youth. There's some good news in these findings. While it is true that students spend a pathetic amount of time on homework, part of the reason may be that today's students are presented with greater equality of access to opportunities in the arts, technology, athletics and community service. There is reason to believe that while our children may be getting less studious, they are becoming more and more steeped in activities and hobbies than ever before. Twenty years ago, students couldn't converse with a teenager from China at the touch of a keyboard. Twenty years ago, few girls had both access to and interest in their junior high soccer team. While these may not be construed as homework specifically, they certainly count in an individual's overall education.

Although this research may come as a surprise, it's actually not news at all: Historically, excessive homework has never been a problem in America. The only significant increase in work levels in the past 50 years occurred after Sputnik in 1957, when competition with the Soviet Union triggered a corresponding academic achievement movement.

Homework could, and should, be improved, however. Educators, in order to make homework more of a priority among their students, need to reassess the design and implementation of homework, making it more interactive and productive, instead of simply making it review and practice.

Homework should be about quality, not quantity. Although the Brookings research highlights the small amount of time American students spend on homework, the focus shouldn't really be on time at all. Ultimately, the objective should not be having students spend more time on homework. Instead, we should be shooting for homework that creates better-educated students, regardless of time spent. Becaue 68 percent of fourth-graders failing basic reading proficiency and roughly 83 percent of our high school seniors not proficient in math and science, the implications could be dire for both our children and our country.

Of course, most teachers believe that President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act isn't helping the situation. The act, signed in January 2002, represents the federal government's largest involvement ever in education and calls for 100 percent proficiency in reading, math and science in 12 years - no small feat. How, then, are schools to reach such lofty goals without more of that dreaded thing: homework? In school, there is only so much that can be done before the buses show up to whisk everybody home. With these new standards (and therefore more work to be done), it seems that households will become even more of an extension of school than they already are, and that's not an entirely desirable situation (just ask parents who find themselves acting as the teachers of new material at home, rather than facilitators).

Politicians, teachers and parents need to work together in order to assure that we are educating our children as best as we can. That may or may not mean more homework. In the meantime, parents, don't let Johnny and Susie fool you: They don't "have a ton to do tonight."

5 September 2005 The Examiner

http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/09/04/opinion/editorial/31edit05homework.txt