homework grading

Center for Teaching

Grading student work.

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What Purposes Do Grades Serve?

Developing grading criteria, making grading more efficient, providing meaningful feedback to students.

• Maintaining Grading Consistency in Multi-Sectioned Courses

Minimizing Student Complaints about Grading

Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson identify the multiple roles that grades serve:

• as an  evaluation of student work;
• as a  means of communicating to students, parents, graduate schools, professional schools, and future employers about a student’s  performance in college and potential for further success;
• as a  source of motivation to students for continued learning and improvement;
• as a  means of organizing a lesson, a unit, or a semester in that grades mark transitions in a course and bring closure to it.

Additionally, grading provides students with feedback on their own learning , clarifying for them what they understand, what they don’t understand, and where they can improve. Grading also provides feedback to instructors on their students’ learning , information that can inform future teaching decisions.

Why is grading often a challenge? Because grades are used as evaluations of student work, it’s important that grades accurately reflect the quality of student work and that student work is graded fairly. Grading with accuracy and fairness can take a lot of time, which is often in short supply for college instructors. Students who aren’t satisfied with their grades can sometimes protest their grades in ways that cause headaches for instructors. Also, some instructors find that their students’ focus or even their own focus on assigning numbers to student work gets in the way of promoting actual learning.

Given all that grades do and represent, it’s no surprise that they are a source of anxiety for students and that grading is often a stressful process for instructors.

Incorporating the strategies below will not eliminate the stress of grading for instructors, but it will decrease that stress and make the process of grading seem less arbitrary — to instructors and students alike.

Source: Walvoord, B. & V. Anderson (1998).  Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment . San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

• Consider the different kinds of work you’ll ask students to do for your course.  This work might include: quizzes, examinations, lab reports, essays, class participation, and oral presentations.
• For the work that’s most significant to you and/or will carry the most weight, identify what’s most important to you.  Is it clarity? Creativity? Rigor? Thoroughness? Precision? Demonstration of knowledge? Critical inquiry?
• Transform the characteristics you’ve identified into grading criteria for the work most significant to you, distinguishing excellent work (A-level) from very good (B-level), fair to good (C-level), poor (D-level), and unacceptable work.

Developing criteria may seem like a lot of work, but having clear criteria can

• save time in the grading process
• make that process more consistent and fair
• communicate your expectations to students
• help you to decide what and how to teach
• help students understand how their work is graded

Sample criteria are available via the following link.

• Analytic Rubrics from the CFT’s September 2010 Virtual Brownbag
• Create assignments that have clear goals and criteria for assessment.  The better students understand what you’re asking them to do the more likely they’ll do it!
• letter grades with pluses and minuses (for papers, essays, essay exams, etc.)
• 100-point numerical scale (for exams, certain types of projects, etc.)
• check +, check, check- (for quizzes, homework, response papers, quick reports or presentations, etc.)
• pass-fail or credit-no-credit (for preparatory work)
• Limit your comments or notations to those your students can use for further learning or improvement.
• Spend more time on guiding students in the process of doing work than on grading it.
• For each significant assignment, establish a grading schedule and stick to it.

Light Grading – Bear in mind that not every piece of student work may need your full attention. Sometimes it’s sufficient to grade student work on a simplified scale (minus / check / check-plus or even zero points / one point) to motivate them to engage in the work you want them to do. In particular, if you have students do some small assignment before class, you might not need to give them much feedback on that assignment if you’re going to discuss it in class.

Multiple-Choice Questions – These are easy to grade but can be challenging to write. Look for common student misconceptions and misunderstandings you can use to construct answer choices for your multiple-choice questions, perhaps by looking for patterns in student responses to past open-ended questions. And while multiple-choice questions are great for assessing recall of factual information, they can also work well to assess conceptual understanding and applications.

Test Corrections – Giving students points back for test corrections motivates them to learn from their mistakes, which can be critical in a course in which the material on one test is important for understanding material later in the term. Moreover, test corrections can actually save time grading, since grading the test the first time requires less feedback to students and grading the corrections often goes quickly because the student responses are mostly correct.

Spreadsheets – Many instructors use spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) to keep track of student grades. A spreadsheet program can automate most or all of the calculations you might need to perform to compute student grades. A grading spreadsheet can also reveal informative patterns in student grades. To learn a few tips and tricks for using Excel as a gradebook take a look at this sample Excel gradebook .

• Use your comments to teach rather than to justify your grade, focusing on what you’d most like students to address in future work.
• Link your comments and feedback to the goals for an assignment.
• Comment primarily on patterns — representative strengths and weaknesses.
• Avoid over-commenting or “picking apart” students’ work.
• In your final comments, ask questions that will guide further inquiry by students rather than provide answers for them.

Maintaining Grading Consistency in Multi-sectioned Courses (for course heads)

• Communicate your grading policies, standards, and criteria to teaching assistants, graders, and students in your course.
• Discuss your expectations about all facets of grading (criteria, timeliness, consistency, grade disputes, etc) with your teaching assistants and graders.
• Encourage teaching assistants and graders to share grading concerns and questions with you.
• have teaching assistants grade assignments for students not in their section or lab to curb favoritism (N.B. this strategy puts the emphasis on the evaluative, rather than the teaching, function of grading);
• have each section of an exam graded by only one teaching assistant or grader to ensure consistency across the board;
• have teaching assistants and graders grade student work at the same time in the same place so they can compare their grades on certain sections and arrive at consensus.
• Include your grading policies, procedures, and standards in your syllabus.
• Avoid modifying your policies, including those on late work, once you’ve communicated them to students.
• Distribute your grading criteria to students at the beginning of the term and remind them of the relevant criteria when assigning and returning work.
• Keep in-class discussion of grades to a minimum, focusing rather on course learning goals.

For a comprehensive look at grading, see the chapter “Grading Practices” from Barbara Gross Davis’s  Tools for Teaching.

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Grading for Equity

• Posted December 11, 2019
• By Jill Anderson

When Joe Feldman, Ed.M.'93, author of Grading for Equity , looked closer at grading practices in schools across the country, he realized many practices are outdated, inconsistent, and inequitable. Today he helps educators develop strategies that tackle inconsistent grading practices. In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Feldman discussed how shifting grading practices can change the landscape of schools and potentially the future for students.

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. Joe Feldman believes how teachers grade students today is often outdated, inconsistent and inequitable. He's a former educator who's been examining grading practices, and believes there's better ways to do it. He's been working with schools to develop strategies that reimagine how we grade students. Some of these strategies go beyond common practices like using extra credit, to really assessing how well a student is mastering the content. When I spoke with Joe, I asked him why grading hasn't changed very much?

 Most teachers have never really had an opportunity to think very critically about grading. It's not part of our credentialing work, it's not part of our professional development often. Even when we're given some new curriculum or new instructional strategies, grading is really pushed outside the conversation. Most people think it exists almost outside teaching, and that it's just this sort of calculation, this sort of bean counting, but it's actually interwoven into every pedagogical decision that teachers make, because whenever they make a choice about an activity, or some work, or some assessment, they have to decide whether or not to grade it. And if so, with what weight? With what consequences? All kinds of things like that.

We really are using an inherited grading structures and practices that date back to the industrial revolution, when we had different ideas about what schools were for, and what learning should look like, and what we believed about kids, and which kids we believe those things, and which kids we sort of dismissed.

Because there hasn't been a lot of good research and attention to grading, we've just been replicating how we were taught. You know, we'd say, well, it seems like a good idea to drop the lowest grade if kids have done all their homework. That seems like a reasonable thing to do. And we just are all kind of winging it, or doing it based on what our mentor teacher did, or our department may have shared an idea, but we just haven't had the opportunity to critically examine it. I hope that the work that I'm doing gives teachers and schools a license, and vocabulary, and a space to start to really interrogate the grading practices that we use.

Jill Anderson: I mean, I was struck by how inconsistent grading can be across the same school. Why do you think that inconsistency is so problematic?

Joe Feldman: If you look at it from the viewpoint of the student, so in a typical day in middle school or high school, students are seeing five, six, even more teachers each day. Every teacher is usually doing their own approaches to grading, and many of them become idiosyncratic. Although every teacher has deep beliefs that they're trying to imbue in their grading, and send certain messages and values to students, and trying to build a certain kind of learning community, every teacher is doing it differently. From the student, it adds to my cognitive load. I not only have to understand the content and try and perform at high levels of the content, but now I also have to navigate a grading structure that may not be totally transparent, and may be different for every teacher, and particularly for students who are historically underserved and have less education background, and fewer resources and sort of understanding of how to navigate those really foreign systems to a lot of our students, it places those additional burdens on them, which we shouldn't do.

Jill Anderson: Talk to me a little bit about this idea of inequity and grading.

Joe Feldman: When I first started doing this work, I had been a teacher for years, and a principal of a couple of different high schools, and worked as a district administrator in New York city, and in Northern California as a director of curriculum and instruction, supervised principals and coach teachers. Through all of that work, grading had always nagged at me because there was no way to address these inconsistencies. I began interviewing more teachers and principals, and everyone was frustrated with grading. As I did more research, I found that the traditional practices that we use actually perpetuate disparities that have been going on for years by race, income, education, background, language. The frustrating part I think, is that so many of us go into education to try and disrupt and counteract these cycles of disparities over generations, and do great work and thinking about culturally responsive pedagogy and diverse curriculum, and really trying to listen to our students, and yet we are using practices that undermine those things and actually work against all of the great equity work that we've been doing.

Jill Anderson: Can you tell me some of the strategies that you propose for changing grading in schools?

Joe Feldman: I'll start with talking about a common practice that perpetuates inequities and what to do instead. One example is the traditional idea that we average a student's performance over time. And actually grade book software does this by default. If you imagine students do some homework, and then they do a quiz or two, and then there's some summit of assessment or test at the end of some unit.

The way that we traditionally grade those things is that we assign point values for all those things, and students score a certain number of them out of a certain number of possible. Then we add up all those numbers and divide the number earned by the number possible. What that is doing is it's averaging all of the performances together into a single grade.

The problem with that, is that for the student who does well from the very beginning and gets A's on everything, their performance is fine, their average is an A, but for the student who struggles at the beginning and gets very low grades, D's and C's and even F's as they are in the process of learning, and even on early quizzes when they demonstrate mastery on the test and let's say they get an A on the test, because they have those earlier grades that ostensibly were for assignments and assessments that were on the path to learning, that they were supposed to learn from, and that they weren't even supposed to have learned everything yet, when we include those early scores, it pulls down the final grades, so it actually misrepresents the level of mastery that a student has ultimately demonstrated.

The reason why that's so inequitable, is that for the student who, before coming to class, attended summer workshops or had parents who gave them a much richer educational environment because they had the time, and the education, and the money, or the students who had a great teacher the year before, they're going to come in at the beginning of that unit and do much better, and the student who hasn't had those resources and privileges is going to start lower. When you average a student's performance over time, you are actually perpetuating those disparities that occurred before that student came into your class. The alternative then, is that you wouldn't include earlier performances. You would only include in the grade how a student did at the end of their learning, not to include the mistakes they made in the process.

Jill Anderson: Do you see that as the biggest change a school or teachers could make in the process of grading?

Joe Feldman: It's only one of, like a dozen. That's just one example, and that really is just about how you calculate the grade. What's hard about that for teachers to get their head around, is that that's all they've ever known is, I put the numbers into my software, and the software does the calculation, and then poof, out comes a number. What I try and get teachers to recognize and own, is that if they allow the software to do that, that is an affirmative decision that they're making, that averaging a student's performance is the most accurate and equitable way to describe that student, and it's not. Just helping them recognize that they have a choice in how grades are calculated, is a huge step toward really empowering teachers and giving them a greater sense of ownership and responsibility over how they grade. But there are many other practices.

Jill Anderson: Right. Some of the things I was reading about, doing away with extra credit, making homework not something that counts toward the final grade, and really reevaluating how teachers look at class participation, all these sort of extras that usually play into a student's grade. Can you talk a little bit more about some of those items, because that's big, to do away with some of that stuff, or look at it completely differently?

Joe Feldman: Yeah, and I think what you sense, is that this can be very disorienting to teachers and cause a lot of disequilibrium, because it is helping them see that the practices that they believed were right may actually be hurting students and giving inaccurate information. This is often very difficult and exciting work for teachers.

One category is to not include a student's behavior in their grade. In many classrooms, teachers use grades as a classroom management strategy, and as a way to incentivize students to do behaviors that the teachers believe will support learning. An example is, in middle school we want to teach students that they need to bring their materials every day. What we will do is we will give them five points, up to five points each day if they bring their notebook, their pen, their calculator, et cetera. Teachers do this, because they believe that those kinds of skills are really important for students to be academically successful. The teachers are absolutely right that those skills are critical.

The problem is that when you include student behaviors in the grade, you start to misrepresent and warp the accuracy. An example is a student every day brings their notebook and pen and they get five points every day, but they do poorly on the quiz or the test. What happens is, is even though they may have gotten a C or a D on the test, because they brought the materials every day, or because they've raised their hand and asked a question every day, or because they are respectful, or turn things in on time, they're getting all these points that are then lifting that C test grade to a B or even an A minus.

The big problem with that, well, there are several, one of which is that you're miscommunicating to the student where they are. You're telling the student that they're at a B level in your content, and they're actually at a C. So they don't think there's a problem, the counselors don't think there's a problem, the parents don't think it's a problem, and the student goes to the next grade level and gets crushed by the content, because they have no idea that they weren't prepared for the rigor of that class because they kept getting the message that they were getting B's.

A second big problem with including behavior in the grade for things like participation, is that often the way that teachers interpret student behaviors are through a culturally specific lens. Like whose norms are the teachers applying when they are grading students on their participation? We have to recognize that students learn in a variety of ways, many of which are not the ways that we learn. Just because a student isn't taking notes doesn't mean that they're not learning. And conversely, just because a student is taking notes doesn't mean they're learning. What we are doing is that we are grading a student on acting as if they are learning. They are going through the motions of learning, whether or not they actually learned or not, and we're rewarding or punishing them. The only way to know whether a student has actually learned is to assess them, not to examine and try and subjectively evaluate a behavior. That's sort of one category.

The other is around homework. First of all, I want to clarify, it's not that homework is optional. Homework should still be required and expected, but it's just we wouldn't include the student's performance in their grade. The way I like to think about equitable grading is that we want it to have three pillars. The first is that the grades are accurately describing a student's academic performance. The second is that the grade is bias resistance, so it counteracts institutional biases and protects grades from being infected by our implicit biases, so institutional and implicit biases. Thirdly, we want it to be motivational, to build student's intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic.

All right, so I'm going to walk through homework, and talk about why our traditional use of incorporating a student's performance on homework and their grade violate each of these. The first is around accuracy, so we don't know who did the student's homework, frankly. Many students particularly, well actually across all spectrums, they copy, as part of the partnerships I have with schools when we do this work is I interview students, and I have never had a student tell me that they have not copied homework. It happens and when I ask them why, they say, well, if I don't know how to do something, I need help, or I forget and I need help. The bottom line is if I don't do this, I won't get the points. Students are copying other people's homework. When we include a student's performance on homework in the grade, we may be including other students, or tutors, or parents performance in a grade. We just never know. So it challenges the accuracy.

It also does what I mentioned before. Many teachers will say, well, I don't want to grade the homework for accuracy. I'll grade it for completion. Just if the kid tried, I don't care if they got answers wrong. Then what you're doing is the same thing I mentioned earlier, which is if a student doesn't know the answers on the homework but they try every day and they don't know it on the test, then all those completed homework assignments that gave them five points for each one is going to inflate the test grade. So you're going to again, warp the accuracy.

Okay, so bias resistance. Well, we know that homework is often a filter for privilege, that students who have resources at home, whether they be internet access, or caregivers who have a college education or who have time to help them, settings that have a quiet space to do work, students who don't have other responsibilities like taking care of siblings or having jobs, those students are more likely to complete homework compared to the students who don't have those resources. When we include a student's performance on homework in the grade, we are rewarding students who have those resources and punishing those who don't.

The third part is around motivation, the third pillar is motivation. The reason we assign homework in the first place is because students need practice. If they do this practice, they will then be able to perform on the test, and we actually want them to make mistakes on homework, because if there's any place that you should make mistakes in your learning, you should do it when you're practicing like on homework. If we say to students, you should make mistakes on homework, that's where you should make them, and we include their performance on that homework in the grade we're telling them make a lot of mistakes and we're going to punish you for it, which is totally confusing and undermines our messaging.

We also have to recognize that students understand the relationship between practice for no points or no reward, and then being able to perform later for the reward. If I go out and shoot free throws for two hours because I'm practicing, I know that I'm not getting any points for that, it's that I do those practices so that when I get to the game I can make the points. Students understand it on video games, I go to these sandbox areas and I'm just playing and practicing and making a lot of mistakes and I'm not getting any points, but I do it so that when I go and fight the boss monster, I can beat the boss monster, right? They understand means and ends of practice perform. Every student in performing arts get to too.

But we in our traditional thinking about grading have detached the purpose of homework from its outcome. So we say don't do homework for you, do it for me, because I'm the teacher, I'm going to give you points for doing it, and then later you'll be able to do well on the test. Instead we can reconnect the relationship and say, the reason you do homework is not for me, you do it for you, because when you do the practice, you do better on the performance.

Teachers initially are very worried about this and say, oh, I don't give students points for homework, they won't do it. Sometimes that happens, and there's an initial dip, but then teachers start spending time helping students see the relationship between the homework and the tests. They will give them a quiz, and if students don't do well on it, they will say, well, let's look at which homework you did and, oh, I'm going to put up a little chart on the board that shows that of the students who did the three homework preceding the quiz, their average grade was a B plus or A minus, and the students who didn't do it, their average grade was a D. What do you think is going on students? Then they can even say to students, let's look at the quiz and look for where there were examples in the homework that showed up on the quiz, right. Helping students recognize the connection between the two.

What teachers find is that students then do their homework for no points, because students have internalized the relationship between the homework and the test, and teachers are shocked that students do homework and they cannot believe that they had for years and years been essentially managing students' behaviors and rewarding them little chits for doing what they asked. And frankly, it's a much more empowering and 21st century skill to recognize when I need to practice something, and only do the amount of homework that I need so that I'm ready for when the test comes, because after all in post secondary education and in the professional world, nobody is giving you any value for the work you do outside of class. It's all up to you to decide how much you need.

Jill Anderson: I mean, you hit on something about teachers struggle with these changes a lot. Why do you think grading is such a sensitive topic for teachers?

Joe Feldman: It's funny. When I was a principal, grading was the most difficult conversation to have with a teacher. Administrators I talked to all over, whether they be at the elementary, middle, or high school, or district level, they're all frustrated with how grading is addressed, and the inconsistency and the problems that that generates. But it's so difficult for them to broach the subject. I think what it's about is that especially today, there are so many demands placed on teachers, and expectations and mandates from multiple layers, right? The school districts, state, federal and all kinds of roles they have to serve. I think grading is really the last island of autonomy that teachers have. That it is the one place where they can bring their full professional judgment and expertise in a formalized way, and in a way that perseveres and stays with students. I mean, it is the sort of the kind of core of their power, for many teachers their identity.

When people start to push against that, it can be very hard for teachers to hear it, and teachers justifiably get very defensive oftentimes. You know, when a principal comes up and says to a teacher, I'd like to talk to you about grading, the teacher's reaction is not, oh, let's have a good intellectual discussion. It's what teacher called you? Or what parent called you? Or what grade do you want me to change? Or that kind of thing. The way that I encourage principals, school leaders, and district leaders to do this work, is to create areas for teachers to explore the practices on their own. Not to come in and say to teachers, hey, you know what? Starting next year we're not going to include homework in the grade anymore. It's too jarring, too much of a power play for the school leader. Instead, there have to be ways that teachers can explore and better understand these practices themselves because when they start trying them, they find great results.

Jill Anderson: This is isn't a case of, go in as a principal and say, we're going to do it differently next year. This is ease into type of change.

Joe Feldman: Well, and I think it really should be teacher driven. Some teachers will start to look at these ideas and examine their practices and run a hundred miles an hour, and other teachers will be much slower to it, for all kinds of reasons. I think that the job of a school leader is to create those spaces, and that energy, and that tailwind, to say that this is a big enough issue for us. If we are committed to equity as we are in our school, this is perhaps one of the last frontiers that we have to tackle if we're really serious about this.

When that happens, I think teachers start to get some energy, and buy in, and start to see the relationship, and are motivated to push for changes in their practice. What we've seen when we partner with schools, and usually we go through a series of workshops over the course of the year, and teachers get a lot of chances to try lots of things, but at the end there is this body of evidence that is in a school context or a district context, where teachers have found that with our students, when we use these practices, we get better results. The idea is that there starts to be this groundswell and consensus around, yes, we have enough evidence now, that we need to not average performance over time or other practices.

Jill Anderson: Is one of the results of this, the evidence that you see about students beginning to not be obsessed with the grade?

Joe Feldman: You're right. Many students, most are very concerned with their grade. Parents and caregivers put a lot of pressure on a lot of students around the grade, and it holds a lot of currency and social status for some groups. Grades are one of the primary elements in some of the major decisions that we make about students, including college admissions, scholarships, financial aid, whether they get certain opportunities in school, whether they're athletically eligible, even in some States the insurance rates are based on the grades that students get, and work permit eligibility, and so even family income can be implicated by grades that students get. There is a lot of pressure to get grades.

What this work does is it helps students understand and get more ownership over their own grade. And it's not about amassing as many points as possible. It's not just trying to just do whatever you're asked to do, and if you jump through all the right hoops, by whatever means possible to get as many points as possible, you'll get the higher grade. The grade is really based on what you know, not all the stuff you do.

When teachers start using these practices, the ones we've talked about, and some others, students start to A, relax more in class. They don't have to perform perfectly every day and do every activity, because every activity is counted and do every homework perfectly. And teachers talk about how the rooms feel less stressful.

It also helps students, one of the things we haven't talked to them, which is how teachers can then be more transparent with their expectations. Instead of saying if you want an A, you have to get 80 points out of the 94 on the test. They say in order to show an A on this particular standard or this skill, it looks like this, and a B looks like this in a C level looks like this. Which then makes it very clear to students and explicit, of what do I have to know and be able to do to earn a particular B or A? What level of mastery must I demonstrate?

Students will then start to use, instead of the language of points, which is what we've taught them since fourth grade and fifth grade, is that school is about amassing points. Instead of saying, I'm two points away from an A, they will say, if I can just apply negative exponents to the quadratic formula, I'll be able to get the A, which is music to teacher's ears, right. They want students to talk about their learning in the language of the subject. When we stop using a lot of these traditional practices, we make it so that students feel like the grade is something that's so clear to them, and the path to getting the grade they want is right in front of them. There's a great quote that is, "a student could hit any target that it's clear to them and doesn't move." What equitable grading is, is setting these targets so that they're clear and don't move.

Jill Anderson: What has the response been from parents, and some of the schools where you've been working to help implement these strategies?

Joe Feldman: Teachers are nervous that parents won't like these ideas, because after all, parents have grown up in the traditional system too and they know the rules of the game. When you suggest, particularly for higher income and higher educated, and more active parents, when you say you're going to start changing the rules of the game for their children, teachers are nervous that the parents will get very upset. Initially parents are skeptical, like I figured out the rules there's a lot at stake here and so don't change the rules.

Teachers have found when they start to have these conversations, and part of the work I do with schools also, is to have parent presentations or caregiver presentations, is that they love these ideas, because they know that their kids are overly stressed, and they know that kids who struggle get demotivated very early because their grade becomes un-salvageable, because all the early grades count because we're averaging performance over time or we're collecting the performance over time. They love that homework now is not included in the grade, because it gives the student more responsibility. I mean they think these ideas are wonderful.

When I first started this work, I actually wasn't sure it would work. I hired an external evaluator very early to look at the grades that teachers were assigning before and after using these practices. What we've found consistently across schools, whether they be middle schools, or high schools, or schools that serve lots of low income kids, and kids of color, or suburban predominantly white students and high income, is that the percent of A's that teachers give decreases because there's not so much inflation going on around doing all the homework and everything. Interestingly, the decrease in A's occurs most dramatically for white children and higher income children. The A rate of kids of color and low income actually increases a little bit. And conversely, the DNF rate goes down, and it goes down most dramatically for kids of color and low income kids and kids with special needs.

What that illuminates is that the traditional system is weighted against historically underserved and more vulnerable populations. When parents first get lower grades, they get really nervous because, oh my child has been an A forever, and now they got a B in your class, and the teacher's response is, well I'm being honest with you, your child may have actually been at the B level before, but because they were doing all the stuff, and all the extra credit, it was miscommunicating to you what their level of mastery is, and I believe that they still can get an A, but now it's much clear to them of what they have to know and do.

Jill Anderson: What do you say to people who are just against this and say, my kid needs to learn to be adaptable, needs that life skill of figuring out what's going to make one teacher happy over another one, that this will help them as an adult with bosses, all people are different. What do you say to that?

Joe Feldman: I think when parents, and even some teachers say that kids need to be able to shift gears for lots of different people, and the differences among teachers is really important, and we don't want teachers to be all in lockstep. I think that sort of pushes the argument way past where I'm going, and I don't think that every teacher needs to be in lockstep, and in fact teachers doing all kinds of different things, and students are having to shift gears all the time because every teacher has different ways that they have learning in their class, and different ways that they are assessing, and different codes of conduct about how we behave in our class. I'm just saying we don't need to add the additional cognitive load of students having to figure out grading systems as well, particularly when the import of grades is so high on student outcomes and students self image. I mean that's how I would respond to that.

I also think, that when I work with teachers, they tell me, ones that have taught for five or 10 years, or 15 or 20, that learning these things and trying them out and seeing the positive results, creates a whole wave of very powerful emotions for them, from excitement and optimism, to sadness, and shame, and guilt because they think about all the students who they've served before that where they've used practices that may have not been to their benefit and may have actually harmed them and prevented them from being as successful or misleading them. My response to that is that that is totally normal to feel that way, and that's okay.

We as teachers I think, have to forgive ourselves and give ourselves the license, to when we learn new information, to now be okay with being smarter than we were yesterday and trying these new practices, because we will actually see that adolescents aren't what we thought they were. We thought that they were lazy and couldn't be motivated unless we gave them points. Now we find that actually they're not like that. They can see the relationship between doing homework and doing well on assessments, and they then do their homework without points. Teachers talk about how it sort of reconnects them to why they went into teaching in the first place. They didn't go into teaching so that they could be bean counters and manage every student behavior with assigning or subtracting points. They went into teaching because they want to empower students over their learning, and help students see the path to success that each one of them can have.

Jill Anderson: Joe Feldman is the author of Grading for Equity, what it is, why it matters, and how it can transform schools and classrooms. He is also the CEO of Crescendo Education Group, which helps schools improve grading and assessment practices. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard graduate school of education. Thanks for listening and please subscribe.

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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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How to Give Meaningful Homework, Even When It’s Not Graded

“Is this going to be graded?” Oh, how we love to hear this.

Most students are motivated by grades and if they know that an assignment isn’t going to be graded, it becomes about as important to them as finding a good mutual fund to invest in for retirement. So how do you assign meaningful homework when your district has a policy that doesn’t allow for it to be graded?

It has taken several years for my team and I to figure out what works best in our classrooms, and we continue to tweak the process. Here are some strategies that we have come up with for meaningful homework assignments.

1. Assign quality over quantity.

As a math teacher, I was used to assigning upwards of twenty problems a night that were often repetitive and lacked depth. Depending on the subject, try to assign only a handful of problems that allow students to practice what they learned, and one or two that really challenge their critical thinking skills.

2. Encourage more.

Even if I’m only assigning a handful of problems, there are always more available. Try to narrow down the problems to cover a range of difficulty, and a variety of strategies that must be used. There’s still no way I can get students to do every type of problem I want them to practice and keep their homework manageable. Let students know that if they find the problems that were assigned to be difficult, then they need to do more on their own. Most will. Some will do it on the nightly homework, some will do it when studying for the test, but the students who want to do well will always do extra when they’re struggling.

3. Don’t grade it, but still kinda grade it.

Many teachers used to grade homework only on completion and that inflated students’ grades. If we grade only summative assessments, then the grade accurately reflects what students know, which is how it should be. But, it’s still nice to keep track of completion both for ourselves and for parents. It’s nice to be able to say, “Well, maaaaaaybe the reason your son isn’t doing well is that he only completes 40% of the homework.”

4. Put homework problems on assessments—and let the students know that you’re doing it.

I have taken homework problems and put the exact same problem on a quiz or test. When we go over the quiz or test, I tell my students, “If you did the practice problems I suggested the night before the test, this was one of them.” If students didn’t understand that doing the homework will help them on the assessments before they took it, this idea will quickly become very clear to them and they will want to start doing the homework.

5. Make it a requirement for something else.

My district also requires teachers to allow test retakes, and teachers can decide what makes a student eligible to retake. No homework? No retake. You may choose to require only a certain percentage of the work to be done. Or, you may require that no assignments were late. You might even allow the retake on the condition that they go back and make up work that was missing. If students didn’t make an effort to learn the material before the assessment, then they don’t get to retake.

6. Grade it.

I know, I know. I said we can’t grade it. BUT, we can if it’s NOT practice. If the concept has been taught previously and students have had time to practice multiple times and come in for help if they needed it, you can go ahead and assign it as homework and grade it. You might tell students that once a week you will collect homework and grade a review problem. Then do it – don’t make it an empty threat, make it part of your homework policy. You can even wait until you have gone over it in class before you collect it. The only excuse for not getting it correct is that they simply chose not to do it and not to fix it when given the opportunity.

7. Invite them to a homework party!

If you have students who habitually fall behind on the homework and show no interest in catching up, invite them to a homework party after school. Give them an invitation and let them know attendance is mandatory. (Yes, this is a detention, but it’s disguised as a party! Kids love parties!). Often, students who aren’t doing homework need the extra help anyway and won’t come in without you requiring it. Some students will be pushed to do the homework to avoid your super fun parties. The students who really need extra help will see this as a more positive alternative to a detention.

8. No homework, no test.

I’ve known teachers who would not allow a student to take a test until all the homework was done. This can be a nightmare, because some students will simply choose not to take the test either! (Then they get their invitation to the homework party.) This one works best when nothing else seems to work with the habitual homework avoiders who really do need the practice to be successful. It also works better when you provide additional help to the student so they can complete the work, since it’s very likely that they’re not doing it because they’re discouraged.

9. Let them choose.

This one is especially useful when faced with a chapter review which has dozens of problems. You know what’s going to happen if you tell them to pick ten problems. They will pick the ten easiest problems. But if you assign ten problems, you might be assigning problems that some students don’t really need to practice. Tell them to pick one problem in each group of 10 in order to do some easy problems and some advanced problems.

What are your strategies for creating meaningful homework? Please share in the comments.

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Homework – Top 3 Pros and Cons

Pro/Con Arguments | Discussion Questions | Take Action | Sources | More Debates

From dioramas to book reports, from algebraic word problems to research projects, whether students should be given homework, as well as the type and amount of homework, has been debated for over a century. [ 1 ]

While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word “homework” dates back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Younger asked his followers to practice their speeches at home. Memorization exercises as homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks and other scholars. [ 45 ]

In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s Schools” were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. This concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the United States by Horace Mann , who encountered the idea in Prussia. [ 45 ]

In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal , decried homework’s negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ]

Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to concerns about keeping up with the Soviet Union’s technological advances during the Cold War . And, in 1986, the US government included homework as an educational quality boosting tool. [ 3 ] [ 45 ]

A 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth to twelfth graders 3.5 hours per teacher. A 2014-2019 study found that teens spent about an hour a day on homework. [ 4 ] [ 44 ]

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of homework as students were schooling remotely and many were doing all school work from home. Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss asked, “Does homework work when kids are learning all day at home?” While students were mostly back in school buildings in fall 2021, the question remains of how effective homework is as an educational tool. [ 47 ]

Is Homework Beneficial?

Pro 1 Homework improves student achievement. Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicated that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” [ 6 ] Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school. [ 10 ] Read More

Pro 2 Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good study habits and life skills. Students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor NYC, explained, “at-home assignments help students learn the material taught in class. Students require independent practice to internalize new concepts… [And] these assignments can provide valuable data for teachers about how well students understand the curriculum.” [ 11 ] [ 49 ] Elementary school students who were taught “strategies to organize and complete homework,” such as prioritizing homework activities, collecting study materials, note-taking, and following directions, showed increased grades and more positive comments on report cards. [ 17 ] Research by the City University of New York noted that “students who engage in self-regulatory processes while completing homework,” such as goal-setting, time management, and remaining focused, “are generally more motivated and are higher achievers than those who do not use these processes.” [ 18 ] Homework also helps students develop key skills that they’ll use throughout their lives: accountability, autonomy, discipline, time management, self-direction, critical thinking, and independent problem-solving. Freireich and Platzer noted that “homework helps students acquire the skills needed to plan, organize, and complete their work.” [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 49 ] Read More

Pro 3 Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning. Thanks to take-home assignments, parents are able to track what their children are learning at school as well as their academic strengths and weaknesses. [ 12 ] Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that parental involvement in homework can improve class performance, especially among economically disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic students. [ 20 ] Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: “Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students.” [ 21 ] Homework can also help clue parents in to the existence of any learning disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust learning strategies as needed. Duke University Professor Harris Cooper noted, “Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning disability until homework revealed it to them.” [ 12 ] Read More

Con 1 Too much homework can be harmful. A poll of California high school students found that 59% thought they had too much homework. 82% of respondents said that they were “often or always stressed by schoolwork.” High-achieving high school students said too much homework leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems. [ 24 ] [ 28 ] [ 29 ] Alfie Kohn, an education and parenting expert, said, “Kids should have a chance to just be kids… it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.” [ 27 ] Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, explained, “More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies.” [ 48 ] Excessive homework can also lead to cheating: 90% of middle school students and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework, and 43% of college students engaged in “unauthorized collaboration” on out-of-class assignments. Even parents take shortcuts on homework: 43% of those surveyed admitted to having completed a child’s assignment for them. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] Read More

Con 2 Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap. Kiara Taylor, financial expert, defined the digital divide as “the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t. Though the term now encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology—along with access (or a lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology.” For students, this is often called the homework gap. [ 50 ] [ 51 ] 30% (about 15 to 16 million) public school students either did not have an adequate internet connection or an appropriate device, or both, for distance learning. Completing homework for these students is more complicated (having to find a safe place with an internet connection, or borrowing a laptop, for example) or impossible. [ 51 ] A Hispanic Heritage Foundation study found that 96.5% of students across the country needed to use the internet for homework, and nearly half reported they were sometimes unable to complete their homework due to lack of access to the internet or a computer, which often resulted in lower grades. [ 37 ] [ 38 ] One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it “potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who already experience some privilege in the school system while further disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position.” [ 39 ] Read More

Con 3 Homework does not help younger students, and may not help high school students. We’ve known for a while that homework does not help elementary students. A 2006 study found that “homework had no association with achievement gains” when measured by standardized tests results or grades. [ 7 ] Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night actually did worse. [ 41 ] Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not the most effective tool for young learners to apply new information: “They’re learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework.” [ 42 ] In fact, homework may not be helpful at the high school level either. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, stated, “I interviewed high school teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no downside, it was all upside.” He explains, “just because the same kids who get more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made that happen.” [ 52 ] Read More

Discussion Questions

1. Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience, and other types of information. Explain your answer(s).

2. If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help students learn classroom material? Explain your answer(s).

3. How has homework been helpful to you personally? How has homework been unhelpful to you personally? Make carefully considered lists for both sides.

Take Action

1. Examine an argument in favor of quality homework assignments from Janine Bempechat.

2. Explore Oxford Learning’s infographic on the effects of homework on students.

3. Consider Joseph Lathan’s argument that homework promotes inequality .

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives .

More School Debate Topics

Should K-12 Students Dissect Animals in Science Classrooms? – Proponents say dissecting real animals is a better learning experience. Opponents say the practice is bad for the environment.

Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms? – Proponents say uniforms may increase student safety. Opponents say uniforms restrict expression.

Should Corporal Punishment Be Used in K-12 Schools? – Proponents say corporal punishment is an appropriate discipline. Opponents say it inflicts long-lasting physical and mental harm on students.

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clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

Should we ease grading and homework rules? Dangers lurk.

Experienced teachers say that could cripple all-important learning in class.

Along the bumpy return to normalcy in our pandemic -battered schools, I see an interesting movement to ease grading and homework requirements. Many educators have been promoting such changes for years, but more education writers like me are beginning to notice.

That’s often not a good sign. We journalists like to portray new stuff as exciting in part because that increases our chances of getting prominent play and attracting readers. There is a long list of movements we once publicized — such as New Math, open classrooms, Whole Language, No Child Left Behind — that did not live up to expectations.

A recent Los Angeles Times editorial sums up the latest movement well. “Schools have stuck to an outdated system that relies heavily on students’ compliance — completing homework, behaving in class, meeting deadlines and correctly answering questions on a one-time test — as a proxy for learning, rather than measuring the learning itself.”

The big handicap for journalists as well as everyone else in the discussion is a lack of useful data on how many teachers use these allegedly worn-out methods and what are the measurable results. I asked four experienced public school teachers in southern California, northern California, Texas and Virginia how they handled grading and homework and what they thought of the notion that the old ways were wrong.

In some aspects, the four teachers are in sync with the suggested reforms. None of them assign much homework, except as a way to complete work begun in class. They don’t emphasize one-time tests.

How to recover from our school disaster: Top curriculums, training and resolve

But when making sure everyone is behaving in class, they are firm traditionalists. Class time to them is vital because, in their minds, the give-and-take between students and teachers during those precious hours is the essence of what they do.

Mark Ingerson, a social studies teacher at Salem (Va.) High School, said, “You are kidding yourself if you think you have any control over what happens once that child leaves your class. … So my sole focus has been maximizing every single second of class so it results in student mastery of skills and knowledge.”

The best teachers I know do their best to make sure everyone contributes every day, even if they have to insist that the most reluctant students answer questions and keep up with the discussion.

D’Essence Grant, an eighth-grade English and language arts teacher at the KIPP Academy Middle school in Houston, said, “My content requires meaningful conversations about the text to help support text comprehension and character development. Grading these conversations and pushing students to articulate their thoughts helps prepare students for college and beyond. Making claims, supporting claims with evidence, and listening, building and challenging other student claims verbally is just as important as writing them on paper.”

Mary Stevens is the English and language arts department chair at Marshall Fundamental Secondary School in Pasadena, Calif. Enrollment at that school is by lottery. Seventy percent of the students are from low-income families. “I mostly only assign the work and/or reading we didn’t complete in class as homework,” she said. She doesn’t like the phrase “behaving in class.” She said “it has negative connotations for students. I center responsibility, hence productivity, and try not to frame my expectations around outdated ideas such as behavior.”

Greg Jouriles, a social studies teacher at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif., noted reformers’ argument that homework “discriminates socioeconomically and racially” and might be “unfair to students with household obligations and no quiet place to work.” He said that “while all of these factors carry weight, I don’t see a problem with some homework or why practicing academics isn’t as worthwhile as practicing extracurriculars, to which students will devote hours and hours. Most of what I grade is based on what happens in class.”

He said: “I disagree with the people who say time and practice and repetition don’t matter, that once a student exhibits a skill, they’ve achieved a standard. If that were the case, a basketball coach would end practice after each player made one free throw. Teachers face the ongoing challenge of making the homework they assign as engaging as extracurriculars.”

His argument suggests a weakness in the push for mastery learning, which is part of the new thinking on school work and grading. Each child, reformers say, should get a grade of completion once they have mastered a skill or subject. That leaves open the possibility that schools could dumb down the definition of mastery to make sure everyone graduates on time.

Author of teacher bestsellers warns against flawed social justice concepts

The traditional approach to grading — assessing every paper and assignment, giving zeros for work not turned in — has been abandoned by many teachers and their districts in the past two decades. Ingerson said he dropped the tough approach in 2004 because he found “many students just got destroyed” by his grading sledgehammer.

“I had students scoring advanced on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests, but had a D in the class … because of missing notebook checks or homework assignments,” he said. His intense class discussions make sure that all his students know the material, or realize he is going to be hovering over them until they do.

Many teachers I know don’t see any difference between the mastery learning embraced by the new movement and what they do with traditional grading. They use zeros to motivate students but erase those horrible marks when they see improvement. They have assignments and class discussions every week. They repeatedly let students know how they are doing. The emphasis on mastery is obvious in the way they teach. They don’t see the point of disposing of the grading tools they have.

We will be hearing more about this new movement to promote learning. If changes are made, we will need as usual some reliable measure of how much students know and understand.

I don’t see how we can do that without challenging and independently graded tests, such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, to ensure assessments are accurate. SAT and ACT exams appear to be fading away. I never liked them because they were not tied to classes where our teachers could make sure every student was engaged every day.

We need some measure of learning we can trust. The latest educational buzz words may suggest otherwise, but we have learned enough during the pandemic to know that if productive class work is not happening for everyone, we have to do something about that.

How to Grade a Test or Assignment Quickly and Get Off the Grading Hamster Wheel

One of the most common questions heard and read in teacher forums is how to grade a test or assignment. It’s something most credential programs don’t teach. Once you’re in the classroom you might have district norms for grading student work, or you might just be on your own. 

Table of Contents

Which group are you in?

• ✅My district has norms for grading.
• ✅I have to figure out grading on my own.

I was in group # 2 when I started teaching. I tried a couple of different methods, but once I figured out how to grade quickly, and effectively, I could finally get off the grading hamster wheel!

Grading a Test or Assignment Faster With a Rubric

Set your intention for each assignment. Decide what are the critical components you want to grade. Begin with the end in mind.

You can find rubrics online and possibly your textbooks or teacher manuals have rubrics included in them. However, I usually find those to be more general than what I like to use.

I create my own rubrics and tailor them to the specific one or two skills that I want the students to master. Do I want them to practice using transition words in their writing? I have a rubric that only focuses on that. Do I want them to master that difficult hook at the beginning of a narrative? I write a rubric specifically for that.

When you assign something to your students, you can go over the rubric with them. Since they know exactly what’s expected of them, they’re more likely to hit the mark. When you grade their work, it goes super quickly.

One more thing I discovered by using rubrics. When I graded student writing, using the specific skills noted, they often outperformed my expectations. Now that’s something every teacher would like to see.

Grade Student Work With Multiples of 10

As much as possible, make all your tests and assignments total up to points that are multiples of ten. 

The reason for this comes from the good old days when teachers had to calculate all the student grades by hand. It was faster and easier to calculate based on tens. 

Even though today we have grading systems that do all the calculations for us, it’s still mentally easier if the possible points are based on tens.

It’s also an easy way to weight assignments. If it’s an everyday routine item, give it ten points. If it’s a quiz, give it 50. If you want to grade a test and weight it even higher, you can make it worth 100 points. Whichever way you choose, the consistency of tens across the gradebook makes the weighting and calculating much easier.

Use a Grading Sheet for Each Assignment

I know, this sounds like extra work, but it’s actually a strategy that will save you hours of time.

This image is the actual half sheet that I kept on my desk clipped to the folders that had returned work in them. When I looked over the papers, I noted the grade on it. If I didn’t have time to put it in the gradebook right away, it wasn’t a problem. 

At the beginning of the year, I entered all the students’ names on the sheet. Each term, I printed the sheets in a different color. I used blue for term 1, green for term 2, and yellow for term 3. It’s just my way of color coordinating. It’s really handy to have the sheets printed and ready for anything…grading, tallying votes in class, marking informal small group work. You’ll probably think of plenty more ways to use it.

This is part of a larger system for grading that uses color coded folders . If you use this system, you’ll never have random piles of paper on your desk again. (Unless you want those random piles!)

The grades were recorded on this half sheet. Students got their papers back right away, whether they were digital or physical. I could enter the grades later when I had the time. It may not sound like much, but this one small thing was a game changer. If you want to grab a copy for free, it’s available in the Members’ Vault.  

Grade Writing F.A.S.T.

I have a system that makes grading writing fly by. Literally. You can get all of your grading for writing assignments done before you leave the classroom. In fact, most of the grading happens during class time. You can learn about the F.A.S.T. system in my course Building Strong Writers with Simple Systems . You can watch the first module for free and see the topics for the entire curriculum when you click the link.

Consider Weekly Formative Assessments Instead of Homework

I’ll never forget when my son was very little, and was in his first swim classes. A math teacher’s daughter was in the same class. While the children were splashing and laughing, this poor woman would sit in the bleachers with a cardboard box full of math papers to grade. (Literally, a cardboard box full!) I always thought about how sad it was that she had to spend so much time grading homework papers that she couldn’t relax and enjoy her sweet little daughter’s swim time.

It’s something many teachers never talk about. But Juliana of the CollaboratEd blog has written a raw and honest post about the truth behind homework. 

Let’s face the truth about homework. Some students do it, some don’t, and some have their parents or siblings do it for them. Am I right? 

Juliana writes about how she mindfully transformed homework in her upper grade math class to something manageable and enjoyable . I love how she made homework more meaningful. She turned the concept on its head by making it into a formative assessment that took less time to grade than traditional homework.

If You Must Have Homework, Don’t Grade It

Instead of grading it, just check if it’s done or not. Students who do their homework will do better in class because of the extra practice. You’ll know who is doing homework and who isn’t by their performance. 

You can give an incentive to do homework, such as a few minutes of free time to visit with friends each week, or something that doesn’t cost you any money or extra effort.

I have a homework choice page which gives students the ability to choose how they practice core skills, and when. Students all need to practice core reading, spelling, and math skills. 

I sent home a paper each week with the choices on it. I changed the sheet every six weeks to reflect the current classroom topics. Students practiced, parents signed, and the students returned the paper on Friday. 

The beauty of this system? I didn’t have to grade anything. I logged the completed work on my Assignment Cover Sheet. Then I updated the gradebook to show how many weeks each student had completed their homework. 

Instead of a grade, it was a note on their progress reports. For example, “Juanita completed homework 5 out of 6 weeks.” It left the accountability on the students, which is where it should be. The parents were pleased with the system too, because it gave them some flexibility around work, sports schedules, and all the other things that life is full of.

You can see the No Prep Homework Choice Board system in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Transform homework into a thing of beauty. Or at least into a formative assessment that only takes minutes to grade.” quote=”Transform homework into a thing of beauty. Or at least into a formative assessment that only takes minutes to grade.” theme=”style3″]

Use Teacher Gradebooks That Calculate the Grades for You

Everyone has their own preferences around gradebooks. Some schools require teachers to use a proprietary gradebook. Others allow for teacher choice.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m all about saving time. So I created some gradebooks in Google Sheets (™) that have drop-down lists for standards and calculate the grades for you. I’ve input the standards for ELA, Math, NGSS, and History Social Studies, so you don’t have to. You can read more about standards based grading in this blog post .

When you post an assignment, choose the standard from a list. Add the total points. As the students turn it in, it calculates the grades for you. 

This gradebook even has a progress report page that you can quickly print out before a parent meeting, an IEP meeting, or any other time you need to quickly show the current academic standing of a student. 

You can get the gradebooks for Kindergarten through 8th Grade .  

Curriculum Map or Make a Syllabus

Of course, making a curriculum map or a syllabus is another way of getting off the grading hamster wheel. If you have your lessons mapped out in advance, you can be mindful of what you’ll be collecting and grading. This is going to save you time as you move through the year. 

Have you ever assigned too much work and ended up staring at mountains of grading? Have you ever known of a teacher who quietly “lost” a few assignments because of the grading overwhelm? Your curriculum map will help you avoid that situation.

On the other hand, if you mapped your year, you won’t ever look aghast at your gradebook two weeks before report cards and realize you didn’t teach a certain topic or standard. 

You’ll be able to sit back stress free, knowing you hit all the themes you needed to, and put them into your gradebook.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Making a curriculum map or a syllabus is a quick way of getting off the grading hamster wheel. Plan ahead with intention.” quote=”Making a curriculum map or a syllabus is a quick way of getting off the grading hamster wheel. Plan ahead with intention.” theme=”style3″]

If that sounds good to you, consider joining my free five day video course to learn how to curriculum map your year. It’s self-paced independent study, and it will change your teaching life. You can sign up below. Or you can watch the video

Plan Your Year Like a Boss In Five Days or Less .

Ciao for now, my friend!

If you want even more ideas, here’s a related post from The Problem Solving Teacher. 7 Strategies to Simplify Classroom Grading

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Center for American Progress

Homework and Higher Standards

• Report    PDF (736 KB)

How Homework Stacks Up to the Common Core

CAP analysis found that homework is generally aligned to Common Core State Standards, but additional policy changes would make it more valuable.

Education, Education, K-12, Modernizing and Elevating the Teaching Profession

Media Contact

Mishka espey.

Senior Manager, Media Relations

[email protected]

Sarah Nadeau

Associate Director, Media Relations

Government Affairs

Madeline shepherd.

Director, Federal Affairs

In this article

Introduction and summary

For as long as homework has been a part of school life in the United States, so too has the debate over its value. In 1900, a prominent magazine published an article on the evils of homework titled, “A National Crime at the Feet of Parents.” 1 The author, Edward Bok, believed that homework or too much school learning outside the classroom deprived children of critical time to play or participate in other activities at home. The very next year, California, influenced by those concerns, enacted a statewide prohibition on homework for students under the age of 15. 2 In 1917, the state lifted the ban, which has often been the case as districts have continually swung back and forth on the issue. 3

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More than 100 years later, homework remains a contentious issue, and the debate over its value rages on, with scholars coming down on both sides of the argument. Homework skeptic Alfie Kohn has questioned the benefit of homework, arguing that its positive effects are mythical, and in fact, it can disrupt the family dynamic. 4 He questions why teachers continue to assign homework given its mixed research base. Taking the opposite view, researchers Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering have voiced their support for purposeful homework that reinforces learning outside of school hours but still leaves time for other activities. 5

In 1989, prominent homework scholar Harris Cooper published a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies on homework in a survey that found a correlation between homework and performance on standardized tests, but only for certain grade levels. According to Cooper’s research, for students in late-elementary grades through high-school, there was a link between homework and improved standardized test performance. However, there was no evidence of the same correlation for younger students. 6 Even without a connection to academic achievement, Cooper still recommended assigning homework to younger students because it helps “develop good study habits, foster positive attitudes toward school, and communicate to students the idea that learning takes work at home as well as school.” 7

Far from academia, parents—not surprisingly—are some of homework’s most ardent supporters and, also, its most vocal critics. For better or worse, many parents help or are involved in their child’s homework in some way. As a result, homework can shape family dynamics and weeknight schedules. If a child receives too much homework, or only busywork, it can cause stress within families and resentment among parents. 8 Some parents report spending hours each night helping their children. For instance, a 2013 article in The Atlantic detailed a writer’s attempt to complete his 13-year-old daughter’s homework for a week. The headline simply read: “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me.” 9 The father reported falling asleep trying to thoughtfully complete homework, which took around three hours per night. 10 On the other hand, some parents appreciate the glimpse into their child’s daily instruction and value homework’s ability to build positive learning habits.

It is no surprise that the debate over homework often spills onto the pages of newspapers and magazines, with calls to abolish homework regularly appearing in the headlines. In 2017, the superintendent of Marion County Public Schools in Florida joined districts in Massachusetts and Vermont in announcing a homework ban. To justify his decision, he used research from the University of Tennessee that showed that homework does not improve student achievement. 11 Most recently, in December 2018, The Wall Street Journal published a piece that argued that districts were “Down With Homework”—banning it, placing time caps or limiting it to certain days, or no longer grading it—in order to give students more time to sleep, read, and spend time with family. 12

Given the controversy long surrounding the issue of homework, in late spring 2018, the Center for American Progress conducted an online survey investigating the quality of students’ homework. The survey sought to better understand the nature of homework as well as whether the homework assigned was aligned to rigorous academic standards. Based on the best knowledge of the authors, the CAP survey and this report represent the first-ever national study of homework rigor and alignment to the Common Core State Standards—rigorous academic standards developed in a state-led process in 2010, which are currently in place in 41 states and Washington, D.C. The CAP study adds to existing research on homework by focusing on the quality of assignments rather than the overall value of homework of any type. There are previous studies that considered parental involvement and the potential stress on parents related to homework, but the authors believe that this report represents the first national study of parent attitudes toward homework. 13

For the CAP study, the authors used the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) online survey tool to collect from parents their child’s actual homework assignments. Specifically, as part of the survey, the authors asked parents to submit a sample of their child’s most recent math or language arts homework assignment and have the child complete questions to gauge if the assignment was challenging, as well as how long it took to complete the assignment. In all, 372 parents responded to the survey, with CAP analyzing 187 homework assignments.

Admittedly, the methodological approach has limitations. For one, it’s a convenience sample, which means people were not selected randomly; and broadly speaking, the population on the MTurk site is younger and whiter than the U.S. population as a whole. However, research has shown that MTurk yields high-quality, nationally representative results, with data that are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. 14

In addition, the homework sample is not from a single classroom or school over the course of a year; rather, it is a snapshot of homework across many classrooms during the span of a few weeks in May 2018. The assumption is that looking at assignments from many classrooms over a short period of time helps to construct a composite picture of mathematics and language arts homework.

Moreover, the design of the CAP study has clear advantages. Many of the previous existing studies evaluated homework in a single district, whereas the CAP study draws from a national sample, and despite its limitations, the authors believe that the findings are robust and contribute significantly to the existing research on homework.

Three key findings from the CAP survey:

• Homework is largely aligned to the Common Core standards. The authors found that the homework submitted is mostly aligned to Common Core standards content. The alignment index that the authors used evaluated both topic and skill. As previously noted, the analysis is a snapshot of homework and, therefore, does not allow the authors to determine if homework over the course of a year covered all the topics represented in the standards.
• Homework is often focused on low-level skills in the Common Core standards, particularly in the earlier grades. While the authors’ analysis shows that there was significant alignment between Common Core and the topics represented in the homework studied, most of the assignments were fairly rote and often did not require students to demonstrate the full depth of knowledge required of the content standards. There was clear emphasis on procedural knowledge, and an even stronger emphasis on memorization and recall in language arts. Common Core content standards, on the other hand, require students to demonstrate deeper knowledge skills, such as the ability to analyze, conceptualize, or generate. 15
• Homework frequently fails to challenge students. Nearly half of the parents who responded to the CAP survey reported that homework is too easy for their child. In particular, parents of primary-grade children were most likely to agree or strongly agree that the homework assignment they submitted was too easy for their child.

Based on these key findings, CAP recommends that states, districts, and schools improve the quality of homework and increase opportunities for students to practice rigorous grade-level content at home. Specifically, the authors—drawing from this survey and other existing research on homework—recommend the following actions to improve the role of homework in education:

• Schools and districts should develop homework policies that emphasize strategic, rigorous homework. In many cases, the homework debate is limited and short-sighted. Currently, many arguments focus on whether or not students should have homework at all, and there are entire school districts that have simply banned homework. Instead of debating the merits of banning homework, reformers and practitioners should focus on improving the rigor and effectiveness of all instructional materials, including

Districts, schools, and teachers should ensure that the total amount of homework students receive does not exceed the 10-minute rule—that is to say, no more than 10 minutes of homework multiplied by the student’s grade level. 16 According to research, any more than that can be counterproductive. 17 Also, too much homework may be an unnecessary burden on families and parents. Homework should be engaging and aligned to Common Core standards, which allow students to develop deeper-level learning skills—such as analysis or conceptualization—that help them increase retention of content.

• Districts and schools should periodically audit homework to make sure it is challenging and aligned to standards. Rather than implementing homework bans, district policymakers and school principals should regularly review examples of homework assignments to ensure that it is aligned to grade-level standards and requires students to demonstrate conceptual learning. In instances where the district or school finds that homework assignments are not aligned or take too much or too little time to complete, they should help teachers improve homework assignments by recommending instructional materials that may make it easier for them to identify appropriate, grade-level homework assignments.
• Schools and districts should provide access to technology and other supports that can make it easier for students to complete rigorous schoolwork at home. Technology can also provide additional support or scaffolding at home, allowing more students to complete homework without help from adults or older siblings. For instance, programs such as the Khan Academy can give students rigorous homework that’s aligned to Common Core standards. 18 Unfortunately, many households across the nation still do not have adequate access to devices or internet at home. Schools and districts should consider options to ensure that all students can benefit from technology and broadband. Greater access to technology can help more students benefit from continual innovation and new tools. While most of these technologies are not yet research-based, and the use of devices may not be appropriate for younger children, incorporating new tools into homework may be a low-cost method to improve the quality of student learning.
• Curriculum reform and instructional redesign should focus on homework. There are many states and districts that are reforming curriculum or adopting different approaches to instruction, including personalized learning. Curriculum reform and personalized learning are tied to greater academic outcomes and an increase in motivation. Homework should also be a focus of these and other efforts; states and districts should consider how textbooks or other instructional materials can provide resources or examples to help teachers assign meaningful homework that will complement regular instruction.

The findings and recommendations of this study are discussed in detail below.

Homework must be rigorous and aligned to content standards

All homework is not created equal. The CAP study sought to evaluate homework quality—specifically, if homework is aligned to rigorous content standards. The authors believe that access to grade-level content at home will increase the positive impact of adopting more rigorous content standards, and they sought to examine if homework is aligned to the topics and skill level in the content standards.

The 10-minute rule

According to Harris Cooper, homework is a valuable tool, but there is such a thing as too much. In 2006, Cooper and his colleagues argued that spending a lot of time on homework can be counterproductive. He believes that research supports the 10-minute rule—that students should be able to complete their homework in no more than 10 minutes multiplied by their grade. For example, this would amount to 20 minutes for a second-grade student, 50 minutes for a fifth-grade student, and so on. 19

The Common Core, developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, established a set of benchmarks for “what students should know and be able to do” in math and language arts by the end of the academic year in kindergarten through high school. 20 The math standards focus on fewer concepts but in more depth and ask students to develop different approaches to solve similar problems. In language arts, the standards moved students away from narrative-based assignments, instead concentrating on using evidence to build arguments and reading more nonfiction.

The Common Core is not silent in the cognitive demand needed to demonstrate mastery for each standard. 21 For example, a second grade math standard is “[s]olve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately.” For this standard, a second-grader has not mastered the standard if they are only able to identifying the name and value of every.

Remember, apply, integrate: Levels of cognitive demand or depth of knowledge

There are numerous frameworks to describe levels of cognitive skills. One of the most prominent of these models, Bloom’s taxonomy, identifies six categories of cognition. The original levels and terms were knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation; however, these terms have changed slightly over time. 22 Learning does not necessarily follow a linear process, and certainly, all levels of cognitive demand are important. Yet these categories require individuals to demonstrate a different level of working knowledge of a topic. With the advent of standards-based reform, the role of cognitive skill—particularly in the area of assessment—has become a much more explicit component of curriculum materials.

Over the past two decades, cognitive science has shown that individuals of any age retain information longer when they demonstrate deeper learning and make their own meaning with the content—using skills such as the abilities to conjecture, generalize, prove, and more—as opposed to only committing ideas to memory or performing rote procedures, using skills such as the ability to memorize or recall.

In essence, Common Core created rigorous expectations to guide the instruction of students in all states that chose to adopt its standards. These standards aimed to increase college preparedness and make students more competitive in the workforce. Policymakers, advocates, and practitioners hoped that Common Core would create greater consistency in academic rigor across states. In addition, with the classroom and homework aligned to these standards, many anticipated that students would graduate from high school prepared for college or career. As of 2017, 41 states and the District of Columbia have adopted and are working to implement the standards, although many of these states have modified them slightly. 23

In this study, the authors evaluated homework to determine if it was aligned to Common Core standards in two ways: First, does it reflect grade-level content standards; second, does it require students to use skills similar to those required to demonstrate proficiency in a content area. This multitiered approach is critical to evaluating alignment between standards and instruction—in this case homework. Instruction must teach content and help students develop necessary levels of cognitive skill. Curricula for each grade should include instructional materials that are sequenced and rigorous, thus enabling students to develop an understanding of all content standards.

In spring 2018, the Center for American Progress used Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to administer a survey. MTurk is a crowdsourcing marketplace managed by Amazon; it allows organizations to virtually administer surveys for a diverse sample. 24 The CAP survey asked parents to submit a sample of their child’s most recent math or language arts homework assignment and complete a few questions to gauge if the assignment was challenging, as well as how long it took for the student to complete the assignment. A total of 372 parents responded to the survey, and CAP analyzed 187 homework assignments.

Of the 372 parents who participated in the survey, 202, or about 54 percent of respondents, submitted samples of their child’s homework assignment. The researchers dropped a total of 15 homework submissions from analysis either because the subject matter was not math or language arts—but rather, science, music, or social studies—or because the authors could not examine the specific content, for example, in cases where parents only provided a copy of the cover of a textbook. Of the remaining homework samples submitted, 72 percent (134 samples) focused on mathematics content, while the remaining 28 percent (53 samples) represented language arts content.

Of the 372 responding parents, 234—or 63 percent—were female, and 126—or 37 percent—were male. Forty-eight percent of parents responding to the survey were under the age of 34, while almost 90 percent of respondents were under the age of 45. There was an unequal distribution of parents representing elementary and secondary grade levels. Seventy-one percent of the total sample were parents with students in primary (K-2) and elementary (3-5) grades. (See Methodology section below)

Based on the analysis, the authors’ drew the following conclusions:

Homework is largely aligned to Common Core standards, especially the topics in the standards

The authors found that the submitted homework, for the most part, was aligned to Common Core standards content or within the so-called “good” range based on content expert evaluations. As described in the Methodology, the authors used an alignment index that does not require a homework assignment to exactly mirror the content standards—both topic and skill level—for evaluators to note that it is within a good range. For context, the study’s alignment index has a range of 0.00 to 1.00, where 0.00 indicates no content in common whatsoever between the two descriptions—perfect misalignment—and 1.00 indicates complete agreement between the two descriptions—perfect alignment. Generally speaking, what one might call “good” alignment for instruction tends to range on the alignment index between 0.4 and 0.6, with a measure of 0.5 serving as a median indicator of good alignment.

The analysis is a snapshot of homework and, therefore, does not allow the authors to determine if homework over the course of a year covered all required standards. In other words, it is difficult to say how many of the standards for a given grade are covered across a full school year, simply because of the limited sample of assignments.

The alignment index evaluates both topic and skill, but there was particular alignment in topic areas. For instance, there was a strong emphasis in the topic areas of number sense and operations for primary math homework. When combined with the third-most emphasized topic, measurement, these three areas accounted for more than 90 percent of primary mathematics homework content. The actual math content standards for the primary grades also placed heavy emphasis on the topic areas of number sense, operations, and measurement—though they accounted for only about 80 percent of primary math content.

In general, across all age groups, math homework was more closely aligned to content standards—both topic and skill level—than language arts. The alignment results for middle school math were particularly strong, at 0.56, based on 27 homework samples. The stronger alignment among math homework samples may be in part due to the fact that there were more math assignments in the sample than language arts assignments. Larger samples offer more opportunities to show alignment. As a result, smaller samples may underestimate alignment.

The table below presents the alignment indices, which were calculated using the homework samples collected for each grade band.

Homework is often focused on low-level skills in the standards, particularly in younger grades

While the authors’ analysis shows that there was significant alignment in the topic of standards and homework assignments, most of the homework did not require students to demonstrate the full depth of knowledge required of content standards. The analysis uncovered an emphasis on procedural knowledge, with an even stronger emphasis on memorization and recall in language arts. Content standards, on the other hand, require students to demonstrate deeper-knowledge skills, such as the ability to analyze, conceptualize, or generate.

Of five performance expectation categories across math and language arts that the authors used to measure alignment between standards and homework, there was a disproportionate emphasis on skills that require a lower level of knowledge or understanding. In grades K-2, for instance, the content standards emphasize the performance expectations of “procedures,” or computation, and “demonstrate,” or understanding, but the homework samples submitted primarily emphasized the procedures level of performance expectation. Similarly, homework for grades three through five focused almost entirely on the performance expectation of procedures, rather than standards that emphasized both procedures and demonstrate. 25

As seen with the middle school grades, high school math standards—despite a continued emphasis on procedures—show increased emphasis on the more challenging performance expectations of “demonstrate understanding” and “conjecture, generalize, prove.” Interestingly, this shift toward more challenging performance expectations is most visible for the topic areas of geometric concepts and functions, in both the standards and the homework samples submitted by parents of high school students.

Parents report that homework frequently does not challenge students

Nearly half of parents that participated in the survey reported that homework does not challenge their child. In particular, parents of primary-grade children were most likely to agree or strongly agree that the homework assignment they submitted was too easy for their child—58 percent for language arts and 55 percent for math.

Parents’ opinions about homework difficulty varied between mathematics and language arts assignments. Forty-eight percent of parents who submitted a mathematics assignment and 44 percent of parents who submitted a language arts assignment reported that it was too easy for their child. There was some variance across grade spans as well. As noted above, parents of primary-grade children were most likely to find the homework assignments too easy for their child. Meanwhile, parents that submitted high school math homework were also more likely to agree or strongly agree that the assignments were too easy, with 50 percent agreeing or strongly agreeing and only 33 percent disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with the statement. While there were clear trends in parent opinions, it is important to acknowledge that the sample size for each subset was small.

The comments of surveyed parents echoed this finding. One parent noted that “most homework that they are assigned seems like nothing more than busy work.” Another parent said: “The homework is not strong enough to build conceptual knowledge. It assumes that the child already has that knowledge.” Meanwhile, another parent commented: “Homework is way oversimplified and they don’t seem to spend much time on it. It’s a bit sad that English and math don’t seem to require what they used to. I remember much longer and harder worksheets to complete when I was a child.” 26

Weak homework samples

Within the sample of homework assignments, there were some that fell short of rigorous. For instance, one assignment listed 24 pairs of numbers—three and nine, 24 and 21, and so on—and asked the student to circle the smaller number in order to build numbers sense. While homework can be critical when establishing foundational knowledge, repetitive activities such as this often fail to engage students and, instead, overemphasize rote learning. Asking a student to list or name a number of a lesser value, for instance, would make this assignment more interactive.

A second example from kindergarten asked a student to create an uppercase and lowercase letter “f” by filling in dots with paint. The parent who submitted it highlighted the limited utility of the assignment, emphasizing that it does not hold students to high expectations. What’s more, the homework only gave the student two opportunities to practice writing the letter, both in a nonauthentic way. Indeed, the assignment focused more on filling in circles than it did constructing letters. While this task might help build a kindergartener’s hand-eye coordination, it does little to support language arts.

Exemplary homework samples

While many of the assignments submitted focused on procedures and, for math, computation, it is worth acknowledging some of the more exemplary types of homework included in the samples. These offer examples of how homework can challenge students, engage rigorous cognitive processes, and demonstrate that content standards at all levels—not just middle and high school—can support challenging homework that pushes students to think critically.

For example, one math homework assignment asked a student to identify which individuals possessed each of four groups of shapes based on the following description:

Ally, Bob, Carl, and Dana each have a set of shapes.

• Bob has no triangles.
• The number of rectangles that Dana has is the same as the number of triangles that Carl has.

This example is interesting on two counts. First, the assignment goes beyond procedure, requiring the student to analyze the various sets of shapes in order to determine which set belongs to which individual. It is also interesting insofar as it demonstrates a common real-world situation: There is usually more than one way to solve a problem, and sometimes, there is more than one correct answer.

Similarly, another example asked a student to determine actions that would help students beautify the school. The header of the assignment read, “Make a Decision: Keep Our School Beautiful!” The assignment had various boxes, each with a question above, such as, “Should we recycle?” or “Should we make art?” The assignment asked the student to “(1) think about each choice, (2) consider how each choice would affect them and others in the school community, (3) write their ideas in boxes below.” In doing so, it required primary students to analyze and generate ideas—both of which are skills that promote deeper learning.

Recommendations

Homework offers a valuable window into the curricula, assessment practices, and instructional preferences of teachers. It provides insight into classroom learning as well as the types of knowledge and skills the teacher believes will reinforce that instruction at home.

This analysis shows that the content and value of homework varies. While most homework within the sample was aligned to content standards, there is still a significant need to increase the rigor of homework and create opportunities for students to use higher-order skills.

Overall, schools and districts should pay more attention to homework as a reform lever. A growing body of research shows that homework is connected to learning outcomes, and as a result, schools and districts should ensure that policies help teachers provide meaningful assignments. 27 Based on this survey and the existing research on homework quality, the authors identified recommendations that can help increase the quality of homework:

Schools and districts should develop homework policies that emphasize strategic, rigorous homework

In many cases, the current debate over homework is short-sighted. Many arguments focus on whether or not students should have homework. There are entire school districts that have simply banned homework altogether. However, the debate should move beyond the merit of homework. Research shows that homework is linked to better performance on standardized assessments, especially in higher grades. 28 Many homework scholars also believe that a reasonable homework load can help develop important work habits. 29 Therefore, instead of eliminating homework outright, schools, districts, and advocates should focus on improving its rigor and effectiveness. As discussed throughout, homework should be an extension of instruction during the school day. Accordingly, policymakers and schools must make changes to homework that are in concert with curriculum reform.

Like all instruction, homework should be aligned to states’ rigorous content standards and should engage students in order to promote deeper learning and retention. To do this, homework should ask students to use higher-order skills, such as the ability to analyze or evaluate.

However, schools and districts, rather than simply assigning longer, more complicated assignments to make homework seem more challenging, should make strategic shifts. Homework assignments should be thought-provoking. But there is a such thing as too much homework. Districts and schools should ensure that teachers follow the research-supported 10-minute rule. 30 Also, teachers, schools, and districts should consider resources to set all students up for success when faced with more rigorous home assignments; homework should never be a burden or source of stress for families and parents.

Districts and schools should audit homework to make sure it is challenging and aligned to standards

Rather than implementing homework bans, district policymakers and schools should regularly review homework samples to ensure that they are aligned to grade-level standards, are engaging, require students to demonstrate higher-order skills, and adhere to the 10-minute rule. The audit should review multiple homework assignments from each classroom and consider how much time children are receiving from all subject areas, when appropriate. The district or school should ask for ongoing feedback from students, parents, and guardians in order to collect a comprehensive representation of the learning experience at home.

In instances where the district or school principal finds that homework assignments are not aligned to grade-level standards or take too much or too little time to complete, they should help the school or teachers improve them by recommending instructional materials that may make it easier for teachers to identify appropriate, grade-level homework assignments. In addition, if parents or students identify challenges to complete assignments at home, the district or school should identify solutions to ensure that all students have access to the resources and support they need to complete homework.

Schools and districts should provide access to technology and other supports that make it easier for students to complete homework

Technology can go a long way to improve homework and provide additional support or scaffolding at home. For instance, programs such as the Khan Academy—which provides short lessons through YouTube videos and practice exercises—can give students rigorous homework that is aligned to the Common Core standards. Unfortunately, many households across the nation still do not have adequate access to devices or internet at home. A 2017 ACT survey found that 14 percent of students only have access to one technology device at home. 31 Moreover, federal data from 2013 found that about 40 percent of households with school-age children do not have access to broadband. 32 It is likely that the percentage has decreased with time, but internet access remains a significant problem.

Schools and districts should adopt programs to ensure that all students can benefit from technology and broadband. For instance, Salton City, California, installed a Wi-Fi router in a school bus. Every night, the bus parks near a neighborhood with low internet connectivity, serving as a hot spot for students. 33

Moreover, greater access to technology can help more students benefit from new innovative resources. While most of these technologies are not yet research-based, and the use of devices may not be appropriate for younger children, incorporating new tools into homework may be a low-cost option to improve the quality of student learning. For instance, ASSISTments is a free web-based tool that provides immediate feedback as students complete homework or classwork. It has been proven to raise student outcomes. 34 Other online resources can complement classroom learning as well. There are various organizations that offer students free lessons in the form of YouTube videos, while also providing supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. LearnZillion, for example, provides its users with high-quality lessons that are aligned to the Common Core standards. 35

Curriculum reform and instruction design should focus on homework

There are many states and districts that are engaging in curriculum reform. Many of these recent reform efforts show promise. In an analysis of the curricula and instructional materials used by the nation’s 30 largest school districts, the Center for American Progress found that approximately one-third of materials adopted or recommended by these districts were highly rated and met expectations for alignment. 36

Homework should be a focus of curriculum reform, and states and districts should consider how textbooks or other instructional materials can provide resources or examples to help teachers assign meaningful homework that will complement regular classroom instruction.

Personalized learning—which tailors instruction and learning environments to meet each student’s individual interests and needs—is also gaining traction as a way to increase declining engagement in schools and increase student motivation. 37 These ideas are also relevant to homework quality. A 2010 study found that when students were offered a choice of homework assignment, they were more motivated to do the work, reported greater competence in the assignments, and performed better on unit tests, compared with peers that did not have choice in homework. 38 The study also suggested that offering students a choice improved the rate of completion of assignments. 39 Districts and schools should help implement more student-centered approaches to all instruction—in the classroom and at home.

When it comes to change management, experts often advise to look for low-hanging fruit—the simplest and easiest fixes. 40 In education, homework reform is low-hanging fruit. Research shows that quality homework and increasing student achievement are positively correlated; and yet, the authors’ analysis shows that some schools may not be taking advantage of a valuable opportunity to support student achievement. Instead of mirroring the cognitive demand in rigorous content standards, homework assigned to students is often weak or rote. But it does not have to be this way. More rigorous, insightful homework is out there. Policymakers and schools need to move beyond the debate of whether or not to assign work outside of school hours and do their own due diligence—or, put another way, their own homework—before assigning homework to students in this nation’s schools.

Methodology

As mentioned above, the authors used the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) online survey tool to collect from parents their child’s actual homework assignments. Specifically, as part of the survey, the authors asked parents to submit a sample of their child’s most recent math or language arts homework assignment and have the child complete questions to gauge if the assignment was challenging, as well as how long it took to complete the assignment. In all, 372 parents responded to the survey, with CAP analyzing 187 homework assignments. The submissions of samples were analyzed by a group of analysts under the supervision of John L. Smithson, researcher emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Measuring alignment

The homework samples were reviewed by two teams of content analysts—one for mathematics and one for language arts—who were asked to describe the academic content represented by the submitted homework, as well as the performance expectation. Each team consisted of three analysts who possessed the relevant content expertise and experience in methodology used to gather the descriptive data.

The teams used a taxonomy-based methodology that was developed by education researchers Andrew Porter and John Smithson during Porter’s tenure as director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 41 Researchers both nationally and internationally have subsequently used this approach to content description for decades in order to examine issues of alignment as well as to support program evaluation and inform school improvement efforts.

The U.S. Department of Education also recognizes the validity of this approach. Specifically, the Education Department completes a peer review of states’ annual assessment program’s alignment to state academic content standards. 42 The Porter/Smithson approach is one of a handful of alignment methodologies that has been determined to meet these federal requirements. 43

The Porter/Smithson approach is unique because it defines instructional content as a two-dimensional construct consisting of topic and cognitive demand, or skill. This approach to describing cognitive skill is similar to Bloom’s, which the authors have described above. It has five categories: recall, process, analyze, integrate, and conceptual understanding. The Porter/Smithson approach is the most stringent of alignment indicators, as it looks at both topic and cognitive demand; it is also possibly the most challenging to interpret because the final alignment score considers two dimensions.

The alignment index has a range of 0.00 to 1.00, where 0.00 indicates no content in common whatsoever between the two descriptions—perfect misalignment—and 1.00 indicates complete agreement between the two descriptions—perfect alignment. A measure of 1.00 is exceedingly unlikely, requiring perfect agreement across every cell that makes up the content description. In practice, this is only seen when comparing a document to itself. For instance, very high alignment measures—more than 0.70—have been noted when comparing different test forms used for a particular grade-level state assessment; but those are instances where high alignment is desired. In terms of instructional alignment—in other words, how well instruction is aligned to the standards—a measure of 1.00 is not the goal. For this reason, the authors did not expect any analysis of homework alignment, no matter how well designed, to have a measure of or close to 1.00.

Generally speaking, what one might call “good” alignment for instruction tends to range between 0.4 and 0.6 on the alignment index, with a measure of 0.5 serving as a median indicator of good alignment. The description of the content standards represents the goal of instructional practice—the destination, not the journey. As such, it does not indicate the best path for achieving those goals. The 0.5 indicator measure represents a middle road where teachers are balancing the expectations of the content standards with the immediate learning needs of their students.

Limitations

The authors acknowledge that the analysis has shortcomings. The sample was relatively small and does not directly mirror the national population of parents of elementary and secondary school students. As such, the sample does not necessarily reflect the views or homework experiences of the larger U.S. population.

Limited sample size

The current study analyzes a snapshot of homework across many classrooms, rather than homework from a single classroom or school. The assumption is that looking at individual homework assignments across many classrooms will help to construct a composite picture of mathematics and language arts homework that will be somewhat reflective of the picture one would get from following many classrooms for many days. If the sample is large enough with a wide enough geographical spread, that assumption serves researchers well enough.

For the current study, however, the number of homework samples available for each grade band were, in some cases, quite small—as low as five assignments each for middle and high school language arts. The largest sample sizes were for primary and elementary math, with 47 and 41 homework assignments collected, respectively. However, even 47 is a fairly small sample size for drawing inferences about a full year of homework.

Selection bias

The respondents that participated in this study were a reasonably diverse group in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity, but there are notable differences between the makeup of the parents represented in the study and the makeup of parents of school-age children more generally. Respondents were predominantly female, with women making up almost two-thirds—63 percent—of the sample. They also tended to be parents of younger school-age children, with 71 percent of the respondents reporting on children from the bottom half of the K-12 system—grades K-5. Finally, in terms of race and ethnicity, the sample overrepresented Asian American families and underrepresented African American families. These groups comprised 14 percent and 8 percent of respondents, respectively, compared with national averages of 6 percent and 12 percent.

Because the sample does not well reflect the population of parents of elementary and secondary students, the authors considered possible selection biases that may help to explain the differences in sample and overall population and that may have affected certain members of the population more than others.

For instance, the authors administered the survey using MTurk, which may have skewed the sample. In general, the population on the site is younger and whiter than the U.S. population as a whole. However, research has shown that MTurk yields high-quality, nationally representative results, with data that are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. 44 The researchers also targeted California and Texas in order to increase the diversity of the sample.

In addition, accessibility could have led to selection bias. Despite broad internet access in 2018, there remain families in low-income locales where internet access is not readily available for parents. It is also possible that older parents are less likely to be as active on the internet as younger parents, further contributing to selection bias.

About the authors

Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is also the founder and CEO of The Learning Agency.

Meg Benner is a senior consultant at the Center.

John Smithson is the researcher emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Sarah Shapiro, a former research assistant at the Center for American Progress, for her support developing the survey. They also appreciate the valuable feedback of Catherine Brown, senior fellow for Education Policy at the Center for American Progress; Tom Loveless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Lisette Partelow, director of K-12 Special Initiatives at the Center; and Scott Sargrad, vice president of K-12 Education Policy at the Center.

Conflicts of interest

The author, Ulrich Boser, has a financial relationship with the creators of the online homework tool ASSISTments.

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• Tawnell D. Hobbs, “Down With Homework, Say U.S. School Districts,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2018, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-homework-its-the-new-thing-in-u-s-schools-11544610600 .
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• Robert J. Marzano and Debra J. Pickering, “The Case For and Against Homework.”
• Khan Academy, “Common Core,” available at https://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore (last accessed February 2019).
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• William G. Huitt, “Bloom et al.’s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain” (Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University, 2011), available at http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.pdf .
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• Jeremy Eden and Terri Long, “Forget the strategic transformation, going after the low-hanging fruit reaps more rewards,” The Globe and Mail, June 24, 2014, available at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/bagging-simple-cheap-ideas/article19311957/ .
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• Ellen Forte, “Evaluating Alignment in Large-Scale Standards-Based Assessment Systems” (Washington: Council of Chief State School Officers, 2017) available at https://ccsso.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/TILSA%20Evaluating%20Alignment%20in%20Large-Scale%20Standards-Based%20Assessment%20Systems.pdf .
• Kevin J. Mullinix and others, “The Generalizability of Survey Experiments,” Journal of Experimental Political Science 2 (2) (2015): 109–138, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/generalizability-of-survey-experiments/72D4E3DB90569AD7F2D469E9DF3A94CB .

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here . American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Ulrich Boser

Former Senior Fellow

Senior Consultant

John Smithson

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Why You Should Grade Homework (But Not How You Think)

There are quite a few different views about whether or not homework should be graded. Some say absolutely not; others definitely yes. And still others choose to just give a completion grade but not grade the work itself.

I suppose I’ve actually fallen into all three camps at different points. But none of them really seemed quite right…..

If You Don’t Count Homework

I was taught in college not to count homework at all. Just to record whether or not the students did the homework and to assign extra work if they did not.

The problem with this, though, is that the students quickly learn that homework doesn’t count for a grade and thus they’re much less motivated to put much effort into it.

And, unfortunately, a completion grade isn’t much better. At least not in my experience.

When I gave completion grades for homework, what I found was that the students’ work just got worse and worse. Of course some students still did excellent work, but many of them just threw something down on the paper and said they were done.

It just wasn’t working.

If You Do Count Homework

I knew I needed to change how I graded homework, but I wasn’t too thrilled with just giving them a percentage grade either.

You see, I taught math, and I view math homework as practice. So let’s say a student makes a mistake on 1 out of 6 problems. Is it really fair to give them an 83% on that homework? Or if they make 2 mistakes to give them a 67%? That just seemed way too harsh for me, and that’s not even considering the 50%’s, 33%’s, 17%’s, and 0%’s that they would earn if they made more mistakes.

I wanted my students to do their very best on their homework, but I also didn’t want to reward them with horrible grades when they inevitably made mistakes as part of the learning process.

I needed to hold them accountable without destroying their grades….So I finally came up with a solution I was happy with.

The Solution

I decided that I would grade homework a little unconventionally. Since I typically only assigned about 6 or 7 problems per assignment…. (You can read why I chose to give so few problems in the post “ Why You Should Give Way Less Homework ” – it’s definitely something to consider). Anyhow, since each assignment typically consisted of 6 or 7 problems, I took off 5 points for each problem that was incorrect (but valiantly attempted) and 15 points off for each problem that wasn’t attempted at all (or that they just put down a random answer for with no work to back it up.)

So here’s what their grades would look like if they at least gave a good attempt at each problem:

-0  100% -1  95% -2  90% -3  85% -4  80% -5  75% -6  70% -7  65%

As you can see, even if they really struggled with the concept and missed every problem, they still received a 65%. Now this wasn’t going to help them earn an A, but it wasn’t going to kill their grade either. I rewarded their attempt but also didn’t just give them a 100% just for trying either. It’d finally found a wonderful happy medium.

Now if someone didn’t finish half the assignment, their grade was not so pretty. Let’s say they didn’t try 4 out of the 7 problems at all. Well, that’s -15 each, so their grade was a very-fair-but-not-so-flattering 40%. A very accurate reflection of how much work and effort they put forth.

If Your Assignments Are Longer….

If you assign more problems you can simply adjust the numbers so that if a student misses all the problems their grade is somewhere between 60% and 70% (or whatever you want the lowest score to be). So, for example, if you give 10 problems then you could make them 4 points each (because 4 x 10=40 and 100-40=60). Of course you’d need to take off the full percentage value (in this case, 10 points) if they don’t even try a problem.

What About Not Following Directions?

I used to take off additional points when students didn’t follow directions. I’m talking things like using pen instead of pencil, using the wrong kind of paper, not putting their name on the paper, not showing their work, etc.

But then my administrators said that this wasn’t in alignment with our school policy, so I had to come up with another idea. And I’m actually really glad I did.

I ended up making students either complete or redo the incorrect part of the assignment. For example, if they used pen instead of pencil, this didn’t affect their grade but they had to redo it in pencil. Same thing if they didn’t show their work or decided to use computer paper instead of lined paper. (I honestly don’t remember what I did with the no name – I think I either just took off a couple points or I counted it late until they came to see me and identified their paper. Anyone have any better ideas?)

Did this take a little bit more paperwork on my part? Yes it did, but I found that requiring them to redo the work was way more effective than taking points off. And soon I had fewer and fewer issues.

So what about you? Do you count homework for a grade? Why or why not? What do you think of this idea?

Want more advice about how to manage homework? Check out the post: 10 Tips for Giving & Managing Homework (Without Going Crazy)

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THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I have been struggling with these issues since school started. These are brilliant suggestions and I am very excited to try them! Especially having them re-do an assignment when not following directions!

Thank you. Much better for students. New directions.

I really identified with your issues in grading homework. I can see how your idea of taking 5 percentage point off for each incorrect problem and 15 percentage points off for each problem that was not attempted can motivate students to complete assignments. At the same time, it does not discourage the students from making and learning from mistakes. I teach primary grades. What I have noticed with my class in particular is that my students are heavily assisted at home when completing their homework. At times, the homework is returned in their parents handwriting. How is it possible for these homework assignments to be graded fairly?

Yeah, that is tough. My best advice is to 1) only count homework for a small percentage of their final grade. That way it won’t really make a big difference if the parents are doing it for them and 2) I would try to talk to these parents one-on-one. And I would focus the conversation on how it’s not helping their kid if they do their homework. Explain that it’s better for the student to try & make mistakes & learn from them than for the parent to do the homework and for them to get them all right but not have learned anything.

I taught in the social studies department and many times could not read an answer due to horrible handwriting. I would ask students to redo the work in neater handwriting (or typed if they insisted they couldn’t write neater) if they wanted the answer to be graded. I believe it is important that students be held accountable for their effort in learning as well as what they learn. It is hard to strike a balance where they begin to take responsibility for the work they do while having grading policies to back that up but not kill the grade at the same time. Thanks for great insight on a very relevant topic.

I grade homework unconventionally as well. Each assignment is worth 10 points. They receive 5 points in class just for completing the assignment according to the directions. Then, in class, I present all of the answers and allow the students to ask questions and correct their answers. Then, I grade 5 problems for accuracy. If they had an answer wrong and correct it during class, that counts as a correct answer. My hope is that they are paying attention and learning from their mistakes. So far, it seems to be working.

I like your method. I am trying to rethink my homework grading policies and this seems to resonate with me the most. Thank you.

Completion checks and self-correcting to understand what practice went well and what needs work gives accountability for most kids, especially in math. Writing is completion with some grading by me. Make ups for missed homework is required during all class enrichment time (others can chose their activities). It has been effective so far…

What about for writing homework? As a parent, I agree with your grading scheme. After all the blood, sweat, and tears we have to endure to make our kids do their homework, it is really disheartening to get no feedback (or only a star showing that the teacher saw a paper with some writing on it). The students really need feedback on what they did and didn’t do correctly. And comments such as “use more commas next time” don’t count.

I use a rubric (which identifies key writing components) that I attach to each student’s paper when I’ve given them a writing assignment; this is in addition to margin comments. It’s a ton of work. I’m not sure students even read the margin comments unless they are revising their paper. Then they usually correct only the comments I made and none other. There’s no fast or efficient way to grade writing assignments. Each paper is unique. What is wrong on paper might not be so wrong on another. So sigh.

Oh, yes, this is its own challenge. I came up with a way to grade writing much more quickly by using a checklist instead of a rubric. Saves tons of time on writing comments, too. Here’s the details: https://teach4theheart.com/simple-way-grade-writing-quickly/

I’ll never forget a paper my daughter did in 1st grade. She had a question “why do astronaughts float in space?” She answered with “Astronaughts float in space because there is no gravity in space.” I was happy with it so signed off on it and put it in her bag. Got it back the next day with a giant red sharpie X on it and a 0 points next to it. Never did figure out why other than she said it “wasn’t the answer in the teachers manual. My daughter was so discouraged because she was so proud of that paper and thought she got most of them right. It was full of X marks because she didn’t elaborate or get the answer she was looking for despite them being correct. The following year her teacher had a system with a rubric and it went phenomenally better. Last year not so much. Now we are homeschooling. I came across this looking for a decent way to keep grades for a 4th grader but not be so stringent. She wants into a program that requires us to submit grades.

Thanks for all these ideas. I agree that students who are trying and completing homework should not have their averages go down because they are making mistakes during the learning process. I teach middle school and have 70 students. Sometimes I rotate what weeks are completion grades vs fully graded, but yes, some kids start guessing – would it be a completion week , and the quality went down. I have the opposite problem from parents doing homework. I teach in a very low socioeconomic neighborhood where students are dealing with extreme circumstances and problems beyond our school walls. A student who participates in class, completes class work, does well on assessments but never turns in homework is a situation I see over and over again. When I think of all the responsibilities my middle schoolers have at home: taking care of smaller siblings, in charge at home while parents are at work or not home, I think- I wouldn’t have time for all this homework either. I almost prefer when they sign up for enrichment after school programs and wish that could count as homework. I do give a weekly packet that is due Friday. They could do a page a night or if they have a club after school or responsibilities at home, they could double up another night. Thanks for sharing these ideas

I like your suggestions, I allow my 4th and 5th graders to return an assignment as often as needed until they reach -0. My thought is that I want them to identify their error/mistake and correct it independently, if possible. If not, I am always willing to help. It does take more work some nights, however I know my students are understanding a concept and not just skipping over the concept.

I’m so glad I have found your blog Linda! I have been blessed by your posts, the webinar, and now am going through the Classroom Management course. Though I have been teaching for 13 years, I see that I can always learn more strategies for motivating and interacting with my students differently in order to better manage my classroom. Do you have a handout that you use to introduce and explain this homework policy to students and/or parents? I am struggling with finding a succint way to do that. I am loving this concept though! Thank you!!!

Homework should never be done for a grade, simply due to one factor, it isn’t a valid way to measure the learner. Grades should measure knowledge gained in the curriculum. Unfortunately in many schools, grades don’t mean that at all. There are 5 kinds of students (in this example) you can probably come up with more, but 5 for sure. 1) The student that does the work on their own with no resources for free answers. 2) The student that doesn’t even think about doing the homework and thus scores a 0 on the assignment. Translation, an F means they have no knowledge what so ever of the standard(s) attempted to practice. This isn’t necessarily true. 3) The student that goes home and gets all of the answers from the internet or other documented resource on their own. Grade doesn’t validate learning just ability to research. 4) The student that goes home and parents want good grades so badly they do the work for the student. 5) The student that deserves support and receives it at school, but then has no support at home to complete homework. IN ALL CASES, (EXCEPT MAYBE THE LAST) THE STUDENTS COME BACK TO SCHOOL AND HAS THEIR WORK MEASURED AGAINST THE SAME STICK.

How can giving homework a grade be VALID grading and honest communication of learners progress through the curriculum?

Man…by your standards…no one is held accountable for anything. That’s not how the world works…we’re here to teach them accountability, how to follow rules and that there are consequences for their actions. Homework does just that! These aren’t babies you’re dealing with – these are smart and savvy kids. Treat them as such.

I teach middle school math. Our homework only counts for 5% of their final grade so many don’t do it at all. My homework assignments vary in the number of problems depending on the topic. My grading scheme is a little different, but has similar goals. If students make an honest attempt and show their work, they get an 80. If they get a reasonable number right, they get a 90. If they get most, but not necessarily all of the problems correct, they get a 100. If they don’t try all the problems, they get a lower grade. I also make a lot of corrections on their pages to show them how to do the problems correctly.

I love this strategy! I’m a first year intern teacher and love hearing different ideas and methods! Thanks for sharing!

I think kids should nots have homework because some kid don’t do its they let other kids do its for them

I use grades and incentives with my students’ homework. If a student completes all of their homework on time each night, they receive a punch on their homework card. As students’ cards are filled up, they get to play a game called Homeworkopoly. This is saved for Friday afternoons. Depending on the assignment, I may have students turn in their homework for an actual grade, or it may just be turned in for points. They don’t know which action will be taken. If a student didn’t do the homework, they don’t get their card punched. If it was a graded assignment, they may turn in late, with points deducted. For those who have not followed directions, they do their papers over; no name papers are charged money from our classroom economy; and kids who rush through and don’t do their best are given a “speeding ticket” where they have to redo and pay a fine with their class cash. (They earn cash through class jobs, compliments from other teachers, going above and beyond…) I teach 5th grade at a Christian school, so my students do not face many of the hardships that others have mentioned. Our problems are more of too much parent intervention or kids with too many activities after school and don’t have time for homework. I usually do not have a problem at all with students doing their homework.

I use a similar system! All homework is worth 5 points no matter how many priblemsni assign. If students valiantly attempt them all and they’re all right I give them 5. If they attempt them all but missed some I give a 4.5 or 4 just depends on the effort. I rarely gave below a 3 unless students just didn’t do their work.

I found your balanced solution thought-provoking and convincing. It makes sense to include a reward for effort ALONGSIDE accuracy in the grading practice assignments (not just one or the other as is often done), since practice is the main goal of the assignments, rather than focusing solely on accuracy, which I think is what should be solely measured in a test or final exam, in order to determine what students have learned. As you say, this is a good way to avoid demotivation through harshness while also avoiding demotivation through a lack of the accountability and feedback that can help students improve their performance.

My only question is, Linda, do you explain how this works to students? I can imagine a scenario in which a student who doesn’t understand the purpose of this grading method for practice assignments might receive an unwelcome shock on a test and (probably along with his/her parents) complain to you, “How come, after I always got 85% on all my assignments, I only got a 65% on the test?” (The student might not realize that since the he/she always got 3 out of 6 practice questions wrong in spite of his/her sincere attempts on the assignments, then if the student made no effort to go back and relearn what was missed, those assignment grades, which were meant to be only a partial reflection of what the student had actually learned, were not the feedback with which to keep track of his/her complete mastery of the knowledge).

What would you do in this case?

I’m also wondering, Linda, as an idea for inspiration, since you seem to have developed a system that works well for you, how much of the final grade do your homework assignments count for?

Thanks for sharing your hard-earned knowledge with us!

I seee your point. I have the same question. In my school, 60% are grades of work done in class, 20% is homework and materials, and assessment is 20%.

Good ideas which I agree homework is important but we need to be sure it does not become a Black Hole that draws them to their doom. I identify “Drill Work” which is the type of problem which can be done quickly for practice but do not require it to be completed in written form, but every Friday we have a “Drill Quiz” over the past week’s work. Also, for every section I assign 2 to 3 “Problems” which are required in written form then I collect these on the test day as a group for the sections covered on the test. The group then becomes one Homework grade and it usually has 15 to 25 problems. If Drill Quizzes are especially low then students can do the “Drill Work” in written form for some additional points which usually improves their quiz scores as well.

When you speak of grading homework, do you grade each individual paper yourself, or do you have your students trade-and-grade? I am a high school math teacher.

I have them trade and grade. I then look over them quickly & put the final grade & put it in the gradebook.

What are your thoughts on writing homework such as drafts of an essay? If the student has not completed the draft, he cannot work on revising and editing with peers. It’s a sticking point that I just cannot find an answer to.

There’s no one right answer for this, but what I did was provided time in class for them to start the drafts (so I could give feedback, make sure they were working, etc.) and then it was up to them to finish for homework/on their own time if they didn’t finish in the time I gave them.

There’s just no way to give enough class time for EVERYONE to finish – some students need more time.

For a teacher not to grade homework is an abdication of responsibility and an insult to the student. Students need to see where they are successful and where they are failing [shock, horror!]. We’re supposed to be preparing them for the real world, so ask yourself, how comfortable would you be with this child fixing your car? Treating your water? Measuring your medications? Doing your tax return? Handling your food? We didn’t spend years in college to massage egos (students”, or parents’ (or principals’!). When 90% can’t count change, we’re to blame. Homework counts. If we treat it with contempt, so will they.

I teach 6th grade and I do something almost exactly like this. I only count a homework assignment as 10 points, and most assignments are between 8 and 12 questions. I take off 1/2 point for each incorrect problem. Occasionally I will make a short assignment worth 5 points or a longer one worth 15 but I grade the same way. Students rarely leave the problem blank, but I may rethink this and take off 1 full point for undone work.

thats pretty neat

I’m in my 26th year of teaching, and grading homework is something I seem to go back and forth on, over and over and over. I’ve graded for completion, not graded at all, or some combination of accuracy/completion. I’ve given homework quizzes. One method I tried which I really loved for the most part, was assigning a 50 if every problem was attempted, and then checking 5 problems at random for accuracy. This worked for a while. And then I started to notice that some were using the PhotoMath app and writing the work down verbatim. Homework doesn’t count for a large percentage, but still…

I grade homework on a rubric with four categories. Quantity of Completed Work up to 5pts if all questions are attempted, Quality of Work completed up 5 pts. Procedures followed up to 3 points and Timeliness of Submission 2 points. All homework has a max of 15 points. This keeps the calculations simple and gives students feedback about their homework strength.

I wish you would elaborate more on Quality and Procedures.

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Making Homework Work

• Do students understand the purpose and value of the assignment? When students perceive homework as busy work, meaningless, or of little value to the teacher, they are less likely to complete it and may become less interested in learning and in school in general. Educators can increase engagement by clarifying the purpose of the work and allowing students to choose which problems to do or which topics to research. Teachers can also allow students to stop when they believe they understand the concept.
• Will all students be able to do the task independently? It is challenging to design homework assignments that meet every child's academic and developmental needs, but students are more likely to disengage when an assignment feels either too hard or too easy. Teachers can use a variety of formative assessment strategies, such as student check-ins and daily exit tickets to strive for the "just-right" challenge for each student and ensure that homework can be done without help from parents or tutors-especially because not all students have the resources to get outside help.
• Is this assignment better done in class versus as homework? Some activities can't be done effectively or efficiently in class or during synchronous online learning, such as reading a book chapter to prepare for class discussion or interviewing a community member for an oral history project. These tasks might be better to assign as homework or during asynchronous learning. Skill practice, such as learning when and how to apply algorithms in math or parsing difficult text passages, might be more effective during class, where teachers can clarify misunderstandings and provide feedback and coaching.
• How much time should this assignment take? If you are going to assign homework, consider how much time the assignment should take and recommend an appropriate cut-off time for students without penalty. Suggested time limits should be based on the purpose of the assignment as well as student age and ability. Having students start the assignment in class or during synchronous learning will help you estimate how long it may take different students to do and if they need help. Remember that students may have homework from several classes each night, so try to coordinate large assignments and assessments with other teachers when possible and offer lenient late policies or "homework passes" when workload or home obligations are heavy.
• What kind of feedback should I provide on the homework? Grading homework is tricky. Some students who don't turn it in or do it incorrectly may have organizational issues or other reasons beyond their control, and others may have relied on outside help to correct the work. If you do choose to grade the homework, make sure you provide actionable and timely feedback on assignments and offer students opportunities to revise and resubmit. Aim to return graded assignments prior to an upcoming assessment so students can learn from their mistakes, and make sure your comments are specific enough for students to make corrections. For example, instead of just marking something as incorrect, add a comment asking a student to show their work, or explain that they need to add more supporting evidence to a paragraph to strengthen their claim.

Cooper, H. (1989). Synthesis of research on homework. Educational Leadership , 47 (3), 85–91.

Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework: Common ground for administrators, teachers, and parents . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Sullivan, A. & Brown, M. (2013). Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading . Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Retrieved from https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CLS-WP-2013-10.pdf

Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. She is the author of several books including, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001), and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Jossey-Bass, 2015). Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity.

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Course info.

• Prof. Michael Short

Departments

• Nuclear Science and Engineering

As Taught In

• Nuclear Engineering
• Nuclear Physics

Learning Resource Types

Introduction to nuclear engineering and ionizing radiation, course meeting times.

Lectures: 3 sessions / week, 1 hour / session

Prerequisites

This course, which is the first subject in the Nuclear Science and Engineering undergraduate degree sequence, has no prerequisites. It is generally taken in the first semester of sophomore year, after two semesters of freshman calculus and physics.

Introduction to the Course

Welcome to 22.01! We have flipped the classroom—where you watch lectures or read textbook chapters ahead of recitations and problem-solving sessions. The choice is yours! Note: Videos are not available to OCW users.

Radiation is the central aspect which makes nuclear science and engineering (NSE) its own discipline, and sets the foundation for almost all of modern physics. We will begin by retracing the steps of famous radiation experiments and hypotheses. Next we will set the stage and context for our study of radiation, by showing details of the systems and reactors which use radiation. The rest of the course will be dedicated to describing the origins, interactions, uses, detection, and biological / chemical effects of ionizing radiation.

Required Textbook

Turner, James E. Atoms, Radiation, and Radiation Protection . 3rd ed. Wiley-VCH, 2007. ISBN: 9783527406067.

The last quiz is really just a quiz, not a full-blown final exam. It is given during the last day of class over a 24 hour period of your choice.

Homework Assignments: Building Skills, Testing Intuition, Confirming Theory

Approximately half of each problem set will consist of simpler questions, designed to build critical mathematical, scientific, and intuitive skills to solve problems in radiation science. The other half alternates between analytical questions of considerable difficulty and take-home laboratory exercises where you will have to make and explain measurements related to radioactivity.

Analytical Questions of Considerable Difficulty (Noodle Scratchers)

These will consist of open-ended questions, where you have to make key assumptions, choose your problem-solving approach, and work out the intermediate steps yourself. Grades for these problems will be based on how you set up the problems, how you define assumptions, and your intermediate work. We will usually give you the final answer so you can check your approach.

We will assign teams of 3–4 for the problem sets, changing the team makeup each month. It is up to you how and when you arrange to meet and work together, and whether it is in person or online through videoconferencing, Slack, or similar free services.

Everyone should still submit their own copy of the problem set, even if you work together to create shared solutions, MATLAB scripts, Mathematica notebooks, or however else you choose to work on the problems.

Working Together, Academic Integrity

Working together is OK, and required on the difficult problems (noodle scratchers)! When you work in a team, you must do the following:

• Acknowledge your team members prominently.
• Write/typeset your own problem sets (no xeroxing). This is to help reinforce all the learning objectives of the problem sets.
• State who did which parts of the assignment. If we sense that someone is doing almost all the work, we will meet with you to prevent this sort of thing.
• It’s OK to take one set of data together as a team, as long as you say who took the data.

In addition, all students must read the MIT guidelines on academic honesty and integrity .

Late Policy

33% of the value of a given assignment will be deducted for each calendar day late, as marked on the Canvas site, unless an extension is granted ahead of time. If you’re going to hand something in late, you have to tell the instructor early. We will be very accommodating. This way, problem set answers can be automatically released a couple of days after they are due.

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