Homework for Elementary Students Despite what most people think, the struggle of hours spent on homework does not just affect middle and high school students. Children in kindergarten through fourth grades are suffering the homework burdens also. Education trends, such as homework for young students, are cyclical, meaning the homework load has not always been so heavy. In the 1950s, the number of after school assignments increased because Americans were worried about keeping up with the Russians academically after the launch of Sputnik. A 1980s report named “A Nation at Risk” stated that American students were falling behind the global academic standard, and therefore educators assigned even more homework to children of lower grade levels (Spencer). Now, parents across the United States are pushing for elementary schools to ban homework, but not …show more content…
Another study shows kindergarten and first graders having an average of twenty-five to thirty minutes of homework each night (Dell’Antonia). The cause of this large load is simple. Many students have classes with multiple different teachers throughout their day, and when each of those teachers assigns what he thinks is the right amount of work for his own class, the child ends up with so much work that he cannot zip up his backpack. That much work bores children and results in cheating or copying answers from peers. Coordinating homework assignments within certain departments and teachers of the same class would result in a lessened homework load. Students all having similar assignments also allows for students to work in groups, making homework a fun and helpful tool for children to look forward to. Otherwise, students complete multiple assignments just for the sake of finishing it, and their GPAs suffer (“Making