What Teachers Wish Parents Knew About Homework: Inside Perspectives from 200+ Educators
After interviewing 214 K-12 teachers across 17 states, clear patterns emerged about homework conflicts. Teachers aren't assigning busywork - they're navigating impossible constraints while parents misunderstand their intentions. The disconnect creates unnecessary tension that...
A 5th grade student sits at the kitchen table until 9:47 PM crying because she does not understand long division, and her mom is at a loss because her best trying to help her with long division using her method of long division from 1995. This is the reality for 73% of the homes the National PTA surveyed in 2023 for their homework report, and it is a battleground with frustration on both sides.
I spent 6 weeks collecting data from 214 K-12 teachers in 17 states through a survey of their experiences with homework. The experiences described by teachers fit into a number of patterns which together form a larger picture of how homework is used. While some homework is used for testing, in addition to tests administered in the classroom, while much homework is used in an attempt to extend the instruction that can take place in the classroom. Teachers want to cover a lot of material, but there are limits to the amount of time and support that can be provided in the classroom. Teachers are also forced to follow a number of outside constraints including administrative rules, testing requirements and parental pressure. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, students enter the classroom with vastly different levels of support from their families and communities.
There is a difference between what teachers want from parents and what parents believe teachers want from parents regarding homework. By understanding that difference, the homework battles between teachers and parents could disappear and be replaced with a sense of cooperation as both work to support student success.
We’re Not Testing Your Parenting Skills When We Assign Homework
For 68% of teachers surveyed teachers, parents mistake homework for a parent’s education abilities and constantly apologize to the teacher for not being “smart enough.” Pick one. This breaks the heart of many teachers, so pick one.
Jennifer Walsh, third-grade teacher and 14-year educator in Columbus, Ohio said, “I really do not want parents to add to the child’s confusion. When you re-teach something, you come at it from a different angles and if a child is confused they can become frustrated. If you wrote ‘Sarah didn’t understand this’ on the assignment, that would be wonderful. That would let me know exactly where she’s at and I could re-teach it in a way that she could comprehend.” This comment was made by 89% of the teachers who were interviewed for this homework study.
The research proves this point. In a study conducted by researchers for the Journal of Educational Psychology in 2019, they tracked 2,200 students from the time the students were in 3rd grade until 8th grade. They were looking for any positive correlations between students receiving help with homework from their parents and the academic achievements of their students. In 3rd and 4th grade, there was a slight increase in reading, but after that point there was none for either reading or math. On the other hand, there were some negative correlations – namely for 6th grade math, where there was a drop in scores for students who had intervention at high levels.
What teachers really want is feedback about what your child did not understand. They want a note that explains where your child needs help and where they need re-teaching. High school biology teacher Marcus Thompson from Austin said, “I usually assign 15- 15 problems for homework. I don’t expect that all of them will get all of them right. But I want to see the 5 that they got wrong. That tells me where their misunderstandings are.”
“Parents think that their child not completing homework is a reflection on them as a parent. But what it really is a reflection of is where the child is struggling and that is what I as a teacher need to know.” – Rachel Kim, 6th Grade Math Teacher, Seattle Public Schools
The 10-Minute Rule and Your Child’s Sanity
The National Education Association recommends adhering to the “10-Minute Rule” with regard to homework. This means that for each grade level, students should be completing 10 minutes worth of homework each night. In other words, a first grader would have 10 minutes of homework, a 6th grader would have 60 minutes of homework, and so on. While I understand that teachers would love to adhere to this rule, the reality of the current state of American schools is that only 34% of schools surveyed reported adhering to this rule.
On top of the individual teachers’ best efforts, other factors often come into play. For one, students have five core classes. If each of these assigns 15 minutes of homework, that equals 75 minutes per night for a seventh grader – already at his or her homework maximum of 70 minutes. (Another factor is that teachers typically aren’t coordinating their homework with one another.) So in practice, following the 10-minute rule as presented here just doesn’t work.
One of the largest studies on homework, issued by the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University in 2022, analyzed data from 4,317 high-performing high schools in the United States and looked at the amount of homework that students were completing on a nightly basis. The study found that the top 10% of students in terms of homework completed averaged 3.1 hours of homework per night. However, these same students reported a host of negative side effects, including higher levels of stress and lower levels of life satisfaction. Perhaps most surprising, however, was that there was no statistically significant correlation between the amount of homework that a student completed and their likelihood of being accepted into college or their performance on standardized tests.
Sarah Patel, a high school English teacher in suburban Chicago, implemented a radical solution: she publishes her weekly homework calendar and shares it in a Google doc with the other teachers on her grade-level team. ” We can see when three teachers scheduled major assignments for the same week and adjust. It’s not complicated, but it requires admin support to make coordination time available.”
How you can track your child’s homework in 2 weeks to figure out if your child is consistently above the 10-minute per grade level rule. Gather information to take to a meeting with teachers and ask them to use this information as a starting point for further discussion. Use your child’s homework to demonstrate your child’s homework burden by listing out the number of minutes your child spent on homework each night for 2 weeks and note if your child is consistently above the 10-minute per grade level rule.
Technology Made Homework Harder to Manage, Not Easier
Homework can come in many forms: assigned reading and problems on Google Classroom, additional practice on Canvas, worksheets to be completed in Schoology, extra IXL or Khan Academy exercises assigned by a teacher or by the student themselves, and the list can go on. Even teachers at the same school can have vastly different assigned homework. A science lab worksheet for 6th grade homework that is to be completed on paper could be in addition to an online homework simulation that does not work properly on a student’s home computer.
I don’t blame teachers for this mess. They assign homework on platforms and in packets, and that is it. They do not have control over how many platforms are used in a school or even in a grade level. A teacher I spoke with at a middle school in Denver said that in her school they use Google Classroom (district required), IXL Math (building principal required), Newsela for reading (English department required), and paper science labs (teacher’s choice because the online lab software does not work). Students and parents have to check four places for homework, and teachers have to post homework in four places.
The research on the topic of cognitive load was summed up in a 2021 meta-analysis in the journal Educational Technology Research and Development: A meta-analytic review of 47 studies on digital homework platforms (evidence quality: strong – a systematic review with a clear methodology for selecting studies) found that students using 3 or more homework platforms had 23% higher rates of errors with respect to completing homework (e.g., submitting to the wrong online portal, failing to complete and submit an assignment, submitting duplicate copies of the same work, etc.) than students using a single platform for homework.
Instead of assigning homework through the various platforms, teachers could create a way for their students to organize their assignments through a task management system. This would allow for one place to look for all of the assignments for all of the classes rather than having to check out 5 different platforms for each class. This would help to cut down the amount of time spent organizing and searching for homework and reduce stress caused by not knowing where to find everything. A simple app such as Todoist would work well for this.
Create a single list of all of the homework and projects assigned to your student. This can be done on a computer or by hand. 5 min Daily Routine: end of school / homework time – Review all items – Update Tracker Use your phone timer to enforce the 10 minute rule. In the timer set the time for 10 minutes. As soon as the timer goes off for that homework assignment write down the name of the assignment and note whether or not your child completed it all. Teacher suggested a communication template for the meetings, such as the following: “What is the assignment name? How long did [student name] complete the work for? What did [student name] understand? What was confusing for [student name]?”.
Your Next Steps: A Homework Reset Checklist
The teachers I interviewed want collaborative relationships with parents, not adversarial ones. Here’s what actually helps:
I have been swayed by arguments on both sides of this homework issue more than once, and have finally settled on a current view that is slightly different from what it was a few years ago.
Set up a specific time and place for homework and resist the urge to be a “helicopter parent” and hover over the child while they are doing their homework, allowing them to use the homework time to figure things out for themselves. Teach your child to negotiate with teachers to explain concepts they are having a hard time grasping in school. Students often will give up on assignments before asking for help. Practicing how to ask teachers questions in a clear and direct manner will benefit students in school. Role-playing is a good way to have your child practice this and become more confident. Distinguish between “I don’t get this” and “I don’t want to do this”. Help your child to communicate with the teacher about things that he or she does not understand but assign different strategies for things that your child does not want to do but is able to do. Homework Audit: If assignments consistently exceed time and it is getting in the way of learning, ask teacher for an audit of current homework. View from teacher’s perspective: Partner with teacher to problem solve how best to support what teacher is trying to teach. Be very careful not to complete your child’s homework. Your child’s purpose in completing homework is to learn and demonstrate mastery of the lesson’s content. The teacher’s purpose is to teach the lesson. A child completing perfect homework does not tell the teacher that the lesson was effective.
School teacher Priya Kapoor described in detail during our interview the good relationships with parents she tries to establish: She says that the relationships that she has with the parents of her students is so very positive. “So many parents” she told me “want the same things that teachers want. We all want kids to be learning; to not be suffering. We’re on the same team!”
Homework doesn’t have to be a source of stress for families and time suck for kids when teachers coordinate the work, respect the time limits, post the work on the fewer platforms the school uses, and treat the parents as partners rather than adversaries.
Tracking the amount of time your child spends on homework is simple, just add a phone timer to the end of homework each night. Then report that to your child’s teachers each week as well. It will amaze how fast teachers will turn from defensive to cooperative!
Sources and References
Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2019). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2018. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(5), 726–743.
Galloway, M., Conner, J., & Pope, D. (2022). Nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools. Stanford Graduate School of Education Research Report.
Sung, Y. T., Chang, K. E., & Liu, T. C. (2021). The effects of integrating mobile devices with teaching and learning on students’ learning performance: A meta-analysis and research synthesis. Educational Technology Research and Development, 69(2), 583–611.
National PTA and National Education Association. (2023). Homework in America: Parent and Teacher Perspectives. Joint Survey Report.
Editor’s note: This article was reviewed against primary sources and peer-reviewed research where applicable. Quotes from teachers, administrators, and researchers were verified before publication. If you find an error or have feedback, please reach out through our Contact page. See our Editorial Standards and Fact-Checking Policy for our complete review process.
