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May 20, 2005

So it's really just a bunch of whining?

Lately we've heard the refrain that those darn schools are just assigning too much homework. One high-minded student in Wisconsin recently took his school to court over summer assignments saying, "Nobody really likes to do homework, especially during the summer." Another high school eliminated homework altogether since the kids weren't doing it anyway.

But wait, hold up ... seems a new study from the Indiana University at Bloomington found that, in general, American high school students do too little homework. More than half spend less than three hours a week on take-home reading or other school assignments. (The Brookings Institution found pretty much the same thing in its own study two years ago.) The result: Students are under-prepared for the academic requirements of college. The Indiana University researchers concluded that students have an unrealistic sense of the work required at a postsecondary level. After following a class of ninth-graders for five years, the study found that while 82 percent of them said they were going to college, only 27 percent of them actually made it through their sophomore year of college. This finding is supported by a recent look at the study habits of college students. So educators, stick to your guns, and kids, do your homework would ya?

Posted May 20, 2005 12:00 AM