Mother of elementary kids, looking at middle schools right now (NYC). Seems to be trend for middle schools to have a minimum of 2 hours of homework a night and UP (2-4 hours every night not uncommon-- public and private). Not my memory of middle school, of course, and my mind rebels at this. Do parents of college-bound students think that this is really necessary to do well in high school and eventually attend a good or great college? Will I be doing my child a diservice by seeking out a middle school that bucks this trend and minimizes homework (if I can even find one!) My gut says he will be fine with less MS homework (I was, became a doctor, ivy educated, yada yada), but I know i may be really really out of touch with “today’s” world. Please school me.
That seems like way too much homework for MS. With after school activities, how do the students get enough sleep? I would say that my boys had, on average, 1.5 hours per night for MS. Maybe more some nights at end of term if they had a project (but usually that was because they had procrastinated and not budgeted time well). I think that was plenty to be a review of the work covered without being “busy work.”
I have 2 that have gone through private middle school in nyc and my youngest is in 3rd grade at a nyc Private. They never had 4 hrs of homework in middle school. I’d say it was around a couple hours per night more or less. The key is that they are giving them the tools to manage their time. It certainly takes work by parents to stay on top of it but it’s a skill that has made future studies easier.
Too much. My daughter was in one of the top MS in the state and didn’t spend that much time on homework. My niece is a freshman at a competitive NYC high school and didn’t do that much homework in her MS either.
My D’s elementary and middle school didn’t believe in much homework. My D rarely had homework in middle school. It didn’t stop her from excelling in high school, which involved lots of homework (though not a crazy amount).
In LA the “top” academic privates usually have 2-4 for middle and 4-6 for high school – it’s crazy. We have schools out here that do not emphasize homework as much – Waldorf, and a few others – and their kids do fine. In high school if your kid is in an AP class the homework can at times be overwhelming, since there is so much material to get thru. I wish the pendulum would swing to a more manageable and sane place.
What schools are assigning 3-4 hrs of homework per night in MS? I have a feeling whoever is giving you this info may be stretching the truth or it may be that sometimes trying to get a middle schooler through 2 hrs of homework can FEEL like it takes 4 hrs! Lol
It’s better than having the students spending that time on social media.
I think my kids had about an hour in 6th grade and up to 2 in 8th when they were on the track taking Algebra 1 and high school Biology. Mind you my older son rarely did any homework at home because he often finished it at school while multi-tasking, meanwhile other parents in the same class were complaining there was too much homework. One teacher joked that if half the parents said there was too much and the other half thought there was too little, she figured she’d gotten it about write. More important that the quantity of the homework is the quality. If it’s a lot of busy work, not so good. If they are writing essays, or writing research papers, I’m less worried.
My daughter begged me to transfer out of her private middle school. She came to me crying saying that the workload was to brutal for a 13 year old, but I told her to deal! It has paid off in the long run! She is thankful, because her intense workload prepared her for an elite high school and she has recently been admitted to Princeton University! The workload of our kids is intense, but it shapes them to be hardworking and intelligent.
My daughter had between 2-4 hours a night in 7th and 8th grade at her private school. It did prepare her for high school but it was brutal. She was an athlete at the time and didn’t start homework until 8:30 each night.
Is the school telling you they are assigning 2-4 hours/night, or is it taking the children 2-4 hours/night. I found that my son’s homework takes waaaay less time if I am the one holding his phone and he must work on the dining room table. He was staying up way too late when we were allowing him to complete it in the privacy of his own room.
In our school system…homework averaged 10 minutes times the grad a student was in. So for 6th grade…60 minutes over night on AVERAGE. For 8th grade 80…80 minutes per night…on average.
I have to say…my kids when in MS and HS never had study hall periods in school…so they did have upward of 2 hours of homework per night…at least.
To the parents asking if the 2-4 hours of homework a night is accurate versus exaggeration, referring to kids who are slow or not focused versus the quicker kids, etc… I will just say that I have talked pretty carefully to many parents of kids who are generally strong students, and this is pretty much the way it is. 2 hours/night minimum for the quicker kids, and then depending on what is going on, it can easily be 3 hours or more. This is definitely true at the top/most elite private middle schools in the city. But also the case at the charter middle schools and good public middle schools. I’m attaching a link here from an atlantic article where the journalist tried to follow his kids’ homework for one week at a selective public middle school here in the city. But I see parent’s above with kids in LA, etc, who are echoing similar things. Suffice to say, I’m not debating if my info is correct- it is. I’m more interested in knowing if people think this is necessary to prepare for high school caliber work/ college admissions. I remember doing 9 APs in high school (National merit finalist, etc), and didn’t have the 2+ hours/night of homework in middle school- so my mind balks at this for my child. Just wanting to hear what other family’s high-caliber kids have done! thank you!
My kids went to a very academically challenging middle school, part of one of the top academic private schools in this area. Maybe once in a while, in 8th grade, in connection with completing a long-term project, they might have had four hours of homework to do. Never in 6th grade, and nothing close on a regular basis. Two hours, though . . . after 6th grade, that was probably pretty common, but not the minimum.
There are lots of things about homework length that are child specific – how fast a child reads or handles math problems, how much time the child is willing to spend focusing on homework and not multitasking, etc. I suspect that if schools are telling you “2-4 hours of homework per night” in middle school, what they are really saying is:
– We are very academic and care about homework
– Expect meaningful homework all the time
– Don’t call us all upset because some night it takes your child 4 hours to complete a task s/he should have been working on for two weeks
I’m not getting many people to believe that 2-4hours of homework is accurate for middle schoolers, huh? In that case, I may have answered my own question:)
My youngest is a 7th grader who has to manage her time well to get her homework done because she is heavily involved in a sport. But, fortunately, there is usually not too much homework. Think about it this way: School is the kid’s job. If you spent 7-8 hours at your job, plus commuting time, should you really need to be working another 2-4 hours when you get home? (What the heck are they doing at school all day if kids can’t get the work done in 7 hours?) IMO, kids need time to unwind, socialize, or do other activities like music or sports after school. Loading up kids with too much academic work at a young age takes the joy out of life, and is unhealthy, imo.
My oldest two kids (now in their late 20s) were homeschooled through high school. They were mostly unschooled. TBH, they spent only a couple hours a day on schoolwork–keeping up with math and reading novels. They had hobbies, sports, music, jobs, etc. that they were able to dedicate their time to. My next three kids (now in college/recent graduates) went to a very competitive public high school where they were all overloaded with homework, APs, etc. They did very well, but were overwhelmed/stressed much of the time–as is my current often sleep-deprived 10th grader. (In the end, there was no difference between the SAT/ACT scores/college admission/scholarship results of the relaxed unschoolers and the stressed AP scholars in our family.)
If you have the means and resources you should investigate schools with alternative pedagogical techniques. My D attended and S23 currently attends a charter with language immersion. They also have the same homework philosophy as @thumper1 's school - 10 minutes per night per grade level. That would be for the average child so my S23 usually has much less as he does it at school. My D attended a high school with a Project-based curriculum - no APs/IB and the homework amount wasn’t that outrageous and ramped up as she progressed with Senior year being the most with all her classes and her Capstone Project. I loved the project-based curriculum over the traditional curriculum - emphasis on divergent thinking as opposed to convergent thinking associated with AP classes. it doesn’t seem to be a hindrance at her school as far as college admissions go.
I wasn’t being snarky it’s just that my DS and DD attended/attend academically rigorous private schools in nyc and 4 hrs of hw in middle school was not my experience. I’m sure that there are kids who got straight As and won all types of awards, and had tutors who may have been studying for 4 hrs but that wasn’t/isn’t the norm in my experience with their schools.
Motherof3dragons: First, great screen name. My middle schoolers don’t get nearly that much. Older one maybe 1-1.5 hours tops. School is extremely well rated public. My kids do extracurriculars since highest level classes don’t exist. Bothhave tested high honors johns hopkins ( no prep), one Davidson, perfect scores across 2 areas ( ssat) and placed silver and gold second rounds of various national math testing. Again all without prep. Hw for them is mainly busy work. Has to be done but doesn’t extend their knowledge( though the writing assignments probably do). They don’t procrastinate or use mobile, text etc when doing work. We had a nephew who took 4 hours for high school homework. He was texting all the time. We have a no diversion rule. I think many kids aren’t doing honework the entire time. Don’t know what we’ll do as a family when high school rolls around. Seems to be a lot of AP classes load on the HW. I think my kids will lean toward honors classes with some SummerAPs. Personally, I’m not a fan of homework. Teachers have them for 8 hours they should be able to teach themand give them time to finish their work. My older one often lopes off most homework in a study period. I wasn’t that focused. To answer your other point, things have changed. A lot. It is much harder to run the gauntlet into the best colleges now. And when I think of my peers at an Ivy league, few of us would gave nade it today. Most were not as cookie cutter re: grades and stats. Many were pretty unique and driven intellectually but grades weren’t the main basis of evaluation.