Students Succeed with Smarter Schedules, Effective Homework

This is the second article in a series reviewing the book Overloaded and Underprepared by Denise Pope, Maureen Brown and Sarah Miles.

In his New York Times bestseller, When, author Daniel Pink makes a case that we too often pay attention to WHAT we are doing and HOW we are doing it at the expense of considering WHEN we are attempting the task.

This oversight, in Pink’s estimation, leads to a lack of productivity and, in some cases dire safety concerns. Paying attention to time - how we segment it and how we synchronize our days with biologically encoded rhythms - is more than time management; it is a fundamental component of well-being. (Pink, 2018)

The authors of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids seem to agree. As Denise Pope, Maureen Brown and Sarah Miles recount their research and share best practices, they unpack the their prescription for school reform, which they abbreviate as SPACE, starting with S: Students’ Schedules and Use of Time.

For the authors, there are two key considerations: “A Saner Schedule” and “The Homework Dilemma.”

A Saner Schedule

When it comes to the school day and year, Pope et al. identify three problems for middle and high school students that don’t seem to get much attention:

1. The excessive subdivision of the day with limited transition times that inhibit a student’s ability to engage the material fully.
2. Starting the school day before teenage brains are ready to learn.
3. Neglecting the value of a break in the middle of the school year.

School Day

One Challenge Success school hired substitute teachers for a day so that faculty members could shadow students through their entire school day. They even carried backpacks! The teachers were overwhelmed by the pace and the variety of the day. (Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash)

The authors cite two studies that discuss how long it takes the brain to transition from one subject to the other. With five minute (or shorter) passing times between classes, switching from poetry to algebra to history can be a challenge in a fifty-minute period, especially when you factor in time to settle down and pack up. (Pope et al., 2015)

The authors suggest schools consider implementing a block schedule or a modified block schedule. Both divide the day into fewer, longer periods and allow the teachers and students to delve deeper into the subject matter and to experiment with innovative teaching and learning methods.

The schedule also provides the flexibility to treat different academic disciplines differently, allowing some classes to meet more frequently in shorter periods and others to meet less frequently in longer periods.

The research is mixed as to whether or not switching to block scheduling can improve academic outcomes as traditionally measured. The authors attribute this ambiguity to a lack of control in the studies for method of implementation. Providing teachers with the training they need in order to optimize the new daily schedule is crucial to realizing the survey-verified benefits of what otherwise is just a change in pattern.

Start Time

Daniel Pink introduces many of his readers, including me, to the term “chronobiology,” a reference to a body of science that backs up what many of us believe or know intuitively: Different people function better at different times of the day. (Photo by Quentin Dr on Unsplash)

Some of us are “owls” who burn the midnight oil; some of us are “larks” eager to be “healthy, wealthy and wise.” Others of us are what Pink calls “Third Birds,” who split the difference between the two. (Pink, 2018)

Most germane to this conversation, however, is the way this biology changes in the human body over time. When it comes to students, those of us who are parents know that young children are, by-and-large, larks and then some sort of switch flips in the teenage years. This intuition appears to be backed up by Pink’s reading of the research:

“…young people begin undergoing the most profound change in chronobiology of their lifetimes around puberty. They fall asleep later in the evening and, left to their own biological imperatives, wake up later in the morning – a period of peak owliness that stretches into their twenties.” (Pink, 2018)

Yet schools and colleges persist in starting the adolescent school day, in many cases, before 8 am. Imposing adult work patterns on teenage sleep and cognitive cycles has led to 80% of students not getting the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep according to a 2010 study by Eaton et al., cited by Pope and her co-authors. It is no wonder that paying attention and staying awake during school and while doing homework are a problem for students. (Pope et al., 2015)

Even the doctors are chiming in. According to Pink, in 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics called for school start times no earlier than 8:30 am. Pope et al. suggest that 9 am is not only better for learning but safer when you consider sleepy teenage drivers on the road during peak commute times.

Pink echoes the safety implications of later start times and adds to the list of benefits several studies that demonstrate improved performance from middle school through college. The effects range from improvements in attendance and tardiness to gains in grades and standardized test scores. In one multi-state study, high school graduation rates increased by 11% just two years after implementing a later start time. (Pink, 2018)

Semester Break

I started this series with an observation about kids launching into summer like uncoiled springs. In this installment, we are examining some ways in which we coil that spring throughout the year. Easing that pressure requires paying attention to more than just summer break. In Overloaded and Underprepared, Pope, Brown and Miles focus on what should be a break between semesters.

Just as the school day needs breathing room, so does the school year. To provide this breathing room, the authors advocate scheduling semester exams for high school students before the winter break. Many schools schedule exams in January, turning family time into cramming time.

This one fix seems simple but it comes with some implications. Schools and families making the adjustment will have to live with uneven semesters and/or starting back to school earlier in August. 

In addition, for the effect of the break to be shared by teachers, administrators need to enact grade submission policies that allow teachers to turn in grades after they have had a vacation too.

When considering the trade-offs, Pope et al. suggest that families and educators are willing to work through the challenges for the sake of providing a stress-free holiday season. 

The Homework Dilemma

When it comes to homework I was thinking (maybe secretly hoping) that the book would make a case that less homework is better at preparing our students for college and for life. Instead of focusing on the quantity of homework, however, the authors focus on quality. (Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash)

All is not lost for those of us still hoping to recoup some family time in the evenings because quality is related to quantity. We just need to deploy research-supported methods for helping students and teachers work smarter rather than harder.

First, we have to unlearn some common misconceptions about homework. In a review of the literature, Pope et al. found no research to support claims that more homework keeps kids out of trouble or leads to higher test scores.

There is some correlation between time spent on homework and academic achievement, but only to a point. There is no link for elementary school students; a correlation for middle school students drops off after 1 hour per night, and it fades for high school students after 2 hours. (Pope et al., 2015)

Despite what we know about the effects of time spent on homework, the authors’ research found that middle school students spend about 2.5 hours per night, and high school student workloads exceed 3 hours per night.

Toward their goal of ensuring that students are prepared for college and for life without being overloaded, the authors offer six characteristics of effective homework that I've summarized as follows:

• Cooperation: Make sure parents, students and teachers all understand what the purpose of an assignment is and who is supposed to be involved in completing it. Remember most assignments are for the student to complete, not a parent and not a tutor.
• Clarification: Be sure that someone who wasn’t in class (or who was distracted in class) can determine what is required to complete the assignment successfully by reading the directions available at home.
• Choice: Giving students an option to choose among multiple pathways for achieving the same learning objectives leads to higher levels of student engagement.
• Customization: Although it is difficult to do, assign homework that is appropriate to the progress each student is making. It does not help a student who has mastered content to whip through busywork anymore than it helps the struggling student to labor over multiple problems beyond their reach at that time.
• Credibility: Connect assignments to other parts of the student’s life. Interviewing a grandparent or a neighbor or solving a problem they face every day can help students take assignments more seriously.
• Connection: “The most important characteristic, however, is that the homework connects to a big idea or key understanding from the unit.” Don’t keep the connection a secret, though. Students need to understand how their work is meaningful. (Pope et al., 2015)

In general, the authors call for parents, administrators, students and teachers to keep open communication lines about the purpose and effectiveness of homework.

In older grades it becomes more difficult, but increasingly important, for teachers to talk amongst themselves and coordinate assignments and assessments, remembering that each student is constantly balancing multiple subjects each night.

One guideline the authors offer for consideration is the “‘10-minute rule,’ established in 1996 by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association” (Pope et al., 2015):

“…in third through sixth grade, homework should take between 30 to 60 minutes per day to complete. If you extend this rule (homework should last about as long as 10 minutes multiplied by the grade level), middle school students would have no more than 80 minutes and high school students would have no more than 120 minutes per night…” (Pope et al., 2015)

In the end, the authors urge schools to adopt policies that teachers, students and parents will practice. Assignments should be developmentally appropriate and, unless collaboration is part of the directions, should be completed independently by the student in a reasonable amount of time.

Click here for a look at the P in SPACE and learn more about the effects of Project- and Problem- based learning.

With over 25 years of education leadership experience, David Rowe served as the president of Centenary College of Louisiana and of Lake Highland Preparatory School after holding senior level positions in university advancement and strategic planning. He currently advises college leaders as a senior consultant with the Association of Governing Boards and as principal at The Development President.

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