Teacher given HW does more harm than good

1st Assertion: Puts pressure on kids and lowers test grades 1st Reasoning: When kids have to do their homework, they get pressured from their parents to do well on it so because their parents want them to get good grades for the upcoming quiz or test. This pressure will lower their test grades significantly. 1st Evidence: Studies have shown that homework can actually lower test scores. California school districts have already taken steps towards banning homework. Some schools who have, including some schools in Texas have seen 25% increases in their test scores. Not only this, but studies have shown that extracurricular such as musical activities can drastically raise test scores. A recent study, published in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has "little to no impact" on students" test scores. "What the research shows is that, in countries where they spend more time on homework, the achievement results are lower," Dr Walker, from Sydney University's Education Faculty told the Telegraph. Harris Cooper, of Duke University, found that students in middle school who do more than 60-90 min. a night perform worse on standardized tests than those who do 20-30 min. a night. One study from the Stanford School of Medicine indicates that the number of children, ages 7-17, treated for depression more than doubled between 1995 and 2001 due to schoolwork. When it comes to kids and homework, more isn't necessarily better, according to a new study out of the University of Virginia. 'When Is Homework Worth the Time' looks at student achievements in comparison to time spent on homework. Researchers said the findings were surprising. "The more time students spend on homework, it's not clear that they are getting better grades or better test scores," said Robert Tai, an associate professor with the Curry School of Education at UVA. Tai and two co-authors looked at transcripts and data for more than 18,000 tenth grade students nationwide. Their findings show more homework assignments didn't translate into better grades. "What we are concerned with is that homework is just being assigned rather than being used to integrate what's going on in the classroom," said Tai. 2nd Assertion: Homework causes stress and depression. 2nd Reasoning: Homework is pushing so many kids into the worlds of stress and depression and that is bad to our society. These children are the future of our world and by putting them into stress and depressions, we are ruining our own future. 2nd Evidence: A study by a group of Australian researchers found the average scores of relating to students" academic performances against the amount of homework dished out at the end of the school day, showed clearly that when more time was spent on homework students were getting lower scores. The research clearly suggested that placing too much homework can cause lower grades and even lead pupils to begin suffering from depression. Homework can cause depression? Yes, if a pupil is inundated with too much homework their life balance is thrown out of all proportion. All children and adults too, should adopt an 8-8-8 circadian rhythm to life where eight hours work, eight hours play and eight hours rest (sleep) plays an important factor to how we all roll. A typical school day might begin at 9am and complete by 3.15pm, so piling on three hours of nightly homework means schoolchildren must endure seven hours at school (including traveling time) and three hours of homework, thus robbing the child of two hours downtime. Often to make matters worse, teachers will give pupils homework that is both time-consuming and will undoubtedly keep them busy while being totally non-productive. Some examples include History teachers asking pupils to hand write (word for word) pages 113 to 139 of a text book on The French Revolution. Such remedial homework will do nothing to improve pupil"s scores in exams or up their grades. There is certainly no advocacy for the abolishing of homework here; simply that the amount and quality of a child extra curricular work after school be re-examined. Good quality homework practices have been adopted in Finland where schoolchildren were given just 30 minutes per night to spend on homework and none at weekends. The kids were stress free and scored highly in their grades. Many parents are even beginning to advocate time limits on the amount of homework minutes dished out each night. Stress, depression and lower grades are the last thing any parent wants for their child. 3rd Assertion: Homework causes kids to drop out. 3rd Reasoning: When teachers assign homework, not all kids will be able to finish their homework on time which causes students to drop out. 3rd Evidence: Etta Kralovec of the Education Faculty of Maine conducted a study for the Maine Department of Education and interviewed 50 students who dropped out in school and the main reason for it was homework. An example is the country of Finland. This country gives no homework to its students, yet 95% of all students graduate from high school, as of 2013. In the US, we do give homework, yet our high school graduation rates our 75%. That means that 1 out of 4 student are dropping out of high school. This proves that homework has a direct correlation to drop out rates. This proves that homework does more harm than good. 4th Assertion: Takes time away from extra-curricular activities and family 4th Reasoning: Giving homework makes students spend hours completing it, leading to less time spent on extracurricular activities and family. This leads to depression. Also, with less extracurricular activities on a students college application could lead to them not getting accepted, which could ruin a students dreams and lead to them being accepted to a second-rate college. This could lead to a bad job and a bad economy over time. It reduces the amount of time that children could be spending with their families. Family time is especially important to a growing child and without it social problems can crop up and a family unit can be compromised by a lack of time being spent together. 4th Evidence: The American Educational Research Association released this statement: "Whenever homework crowds out social experience, outdoor recreation, and creative activities, and whenever it usurps time that should be devoted to sleep, it is not meeting the basic needs of children and adolescents." It is the rare school that respects the value of those activities"to the point of making sure that its policies are informed by that respect. 5th Assertion: Too much homework can encourage cheating and copying off another student"s work because they weren"t able to finish their own homework by themselves. 5th Reasoning: They will be rewarded for cheating and they will continue to keep cheating which will develop bad habits for them and they won"t learn anything that could be valuable later on in life. 5th Evidence: The pressure to complete homework can also lead to students cheating by copying from other students or obtaining help other than tutoring, such as getting their parents to complete it for them. Students who "perceive that achievement is defined by schools and teachers in terms of grades and performance, worry about school, and believe they can get rewards for doing well in class such as getting out of homework" are more likely to cheat, and to "avoid using deep level cognitive processing strategies such as trying different ways to solve a problem." The American Psychological Association"