Pope said she considers the advice that the viral note offered to parents -to eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get a child to bed early - to be 'spot on.' She added that there is 'really good research' to correlate these four variables with student success. In high school, there is a strong correlation between students who do 2 hours of homework a night and higher levels of academic achievement, but again, this improvement fades when students exceed the 2-hour threshold, Pope told Live Science. For example, a student could get help from a parent, tutor, sibling or classmate to complete the work. (Image credit: Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley )Īnother variable that can complicate the results of homework studies is that it's hard to know who is actually doing the assignment when it's taken home, Pope said. Some researchers use standardized test scores to measure achievement, while others use students' grade-point averages, she said. In middle school, the evidence shows a slight correlation between doing homework and academic achievement, but further improvement fades after a middle-school student has spent 60 to 90 minutes a night doing homework, said Pope, who is also the co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization that works with schools and families to develop research-based strategies that engage kids and keep them healthy.īut it's tricky to draw conclusions from homework studies, because these studies use such varied ways of measuring a student's academic performance, Pope said. Some elementary school teachers assign free reading as homework, but kids and parents do not always perceive these assignments as true homework that must be completed, she explained.

Research has shown that free reading, or allowing students to read whatever books they want, does improve their academic performance, Pope said. It's accurate to suggest that studies have found no correlation between homework in elementary school and a student's academic performance, but there is one important exception worth mentioning, said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

Homework for science