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Carole Ames of Michigan State University points out that it isn’t “quantitative changes in behavior” – such as requiring students to spend more hours in front of books or worksheets – that help children learn better.  Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and then respond to the learning activities and situation.”  In turn, these attitudes and responses emerge from the way teachers think about learning and, as a result, how they organize their classrooms.  Assigning homework is unlikely to have a positive effect on  any of these variables.  We might say that education is less about how much the teacher covers than about what students can be helped to discover – and more time won’t help to bring about that shift.

Finally, any theoretical benefit of practice homework must be weighed against the effect it has on students’ interest in learning.  If slogging through worksheets dampens one’s desire to read or think, surely that wouldn’t be worth an incremental improvement in skills.