I'm a social work graduate student at Bridgewater State University. I'm writing about the benefits of homework and why the right amount of homework is an essential part of children’s development.

Homework improves student achievement and allows for independent learning of classroom and life skills. Studies have shown that students who do more homework tend to have higher GPAs and a higher probability of attending college. In addition, it provides caretakers the opportunity to take a more active role in the child’s academics.

The issue, though, is that the concept of homework has changed throughout the years. Schools now require students to complete an excessive amount of homework. Children spend around six and a half hours in school a day, away from parents. Removing homework would not be conducive because students would lose the benefits of higher GPAs and college attendance rates and parents would not be able to monitor their child’s academic ability.

A study from the University of Phoenix reported that “kindergarten to fifth graders have an average of 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eight graders have 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth to twelfth graders have 3.5 hours per teacher, meaning a high school student with five teachers could have 17.5 hours of homework per week.” Students then experience high stress levels and homework loses all its benefits and becomes harmful.

Therefore, I propose for schools to maintain homework as part of a child’s academic curriculum, but establish a cap to how much homework a child is required to do. In regulating this, we can harness the positive effects of homework while avoiding the negative aspects of too much homework. This will also help to balance the experience children have in schools across the nation.

Laura Sevilla

Fall River