Schools across the country encourage parents to help their children with homework.
Parents are listening. Helping withomeworks one of the most common things thatarents say they doo support their children's learning.
Many experts have found that helping with homework cultivatesositive learning behaviors,einforceslass material andignalso children that their education is important. The federalepartment of Educationays that parents play an important role in their children's learning when they help with homework.
Yet parents often hear through the media that helping with homework may not be worth it. After seeing headlines such as "Why It's So Important You Never Help Your Kids With Their Homework" and "Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework," moms, dads and other caregivers can be left wondering whether they should even bother.
I'm a professorf education policy. Together with sociologistngran Li, I set out to make sense of this conflicting guidance.
Cause or consequence?
The basis for claims that parental help with homework can be bad for students comes fromesearchxaminingational surveys. These studies find that frequent homework help from parentss associated with lower test scores.
But this findingoes not necessarily meanthat moms and dads do harm when they help with homework. When children are struggling in school, parents may step in to help more often. That is, frequent homework help from parents might not be the cause of problems, but rather, coincide with them.
To find out, we studied data from an important nationally representative survey administered by theederal government—thearly Childhood Longitudinal Study. We found thatow-achieving childrenere far more likely to receive frequent homework from parents.
And importantly, after we factored in children's achievement levels, help with homework from parents was no longer associated with lower test scores.
Other considerations
While this finding was insightful, we figured that the effect of homework help from parents ontudent achievementight also be influenced by many other characteristics.
So we used atatistical techniquehat would account for many overlapping factors, such as how well parents and their children get along, the number of siblings, and behavior at school.
Our results also indicated that children with low test scores benefited the most when their parents frequently helped with homework.
In other words, calls for all parents to stop helping with homework could end up hurting some children.
In addition,ne common concerns that only affluent and highly educated parents have the time and resources to help their children with homework regularly. We find little evidence to support this presumption.n national surveys, low-income and minority families report helping their children with homework frequently. And this was also true in our study.
Quality counts
It is important to point out that our study looked at the frequency of homework help from parents. However, evidence suggests that theuality of homework helplso matters. Parentsan make a differencethrough warm encouragement and a positive outlook and by communicating high expectations to children.
The effectiveness of homework help also seems to increase when parents fosterndependent learning behaviors. When helping with homework, parents should avoid trying to control the process and should also resist the temptation toomplete assignments for their kids. Instead, they should let their children figure out answers on their own while offering helpful hints and positive feedback as needed.
Although parents should always consider their child's individual learning needs,esearchers sayhat parents should gradually reduce homework help as their children grow older, probably phasing out direct assistance with homework by the time theirhildreneach high school. Parents can also seek advice from teachers and other school staff on how to make homework supportngaging and attunedo their child's learning needs.
Blanket statements about whether homework help is simply good or bad can be misleading. Under the right circumstances,arentsan help their kids learn more when they help with homework.