Studies show that students spend upwards of 5 to 7 hours on “screens” per day, with about 3 of these hours spent watching television. Reports show that US students are overwhelmed and stressed over homework responsibilities, plagued down by extra-curricular activities and screen time. These same students earned high grades in school, demonstrating that grades and learning often have little correlation.ĭespite these shortcomings, many US schools have seemingly adopted a pedagogy in favor of less instruction and less practice, arguing that positive student mental health is achieved through no homework, lax standards, and “feel-good” grade inflation. After completing Algebra I in local public schools, many students can correctly answer fewer than 10% of the questions on our Pre-Algebra exam.

I frequently observe high school students, consistently testing in the top 5% in all subjects, struggle to identify nouns and verbs or to write anything above a rudimentary simple sentence without a multitude of glaring grammatical and structural errors.

Universities are adding lower level English courses, with some simply lowering the requirements for pre-existing courses, and others adding numerous for-credit and no-credit remedial courses. Introductory college courses, typically called “College Math” are on par with “old age” pre-algebra and algebra standards. A current 12th grade textbook, for any subject, is comparable to an 8th grade textbook of the late 20th century. The Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) places the United States 38th out of 71 nations in math and science, behind emerging nations such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Argentina.ĭespite seemingly re-assuring national assessments, US schools are falling farther and farther behind its own historical standards. Today, international students often find themselves struggling when they return to their homelands, shocked at the lack of education they received in the US despite the promises we made. There was once a time at which the US stood atop of education on a global scale with justified pride, reigning in international students with ease and sending them back prepared to outrank their native-educated peers.

Schools without homework