100 years of summer learning loss

I came across an article discussing the problem of summer learning loss in which there was the following line:

"Summer learning loss has been documented for more than 100 years. It's a very real issue and researchers today say kids can lose anywhere between one and three months of learning during the summer months alone."

This seems to have become the basis for summer enrichment programs (which I have no problem with if they are the voluntary decision of the parents and the child) and summer homework assignments (which seem highly intrusive into the life of the family). Yet I question how a "phenomenon" becomes an "issue," or at least an issue for the home rather than an issue for the school. After all, haven't we witnessed huge amounts of creativity and innovation over those 100 years? Haven't we had people who successfully built our airplanes, developed our internet, fixed our roofs, and serviced our cars? Haven't people been successful despite the fact that, as children, they experienced summer learning loss, and despite the fact that they were allowed a break during the summer to simply play?

I don't question the desire of educators to look at this phenomenon and develop their best techniques for making sure that children continue to learn when they return to school. But they should do it on their own time. There is ample time in the school day for children to learn. Just figure out, as education professionals, the best ways to get kids back on track.

My own belief is that relationship is the fundamental building block of education, and that some summer learning loss is due to the adjustment to new teachers. Some of my most enduring academic lessons stemmed from being inspired by the particular teachers I had. I was a math major in college and in graduate school before switching fields and studying psychology. But I still refer to Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn." I just happened to take an elective in college on Romantic Poetry to satisfy my school's requirement for courses outside my major. The teacher was inspiring and brilliant, and I never forgot what I learned.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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A Roadmap to Success
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Homework free education in the Phillipines

This is an interesting article reporting on the success of a new teaching model in a school system that lacks resources. They seem to be capitalizing on the resources they have, the relationship between the teacher and the students, rather than depending on the resources they don't have, physcial resources such as books, notebooks, and other teaching materials, or continuing the education in an environment they don't control, the home.


Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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Iceland, ADHD, and Homework

There was a recent study conducted in Iceland indicating that early treatment of children with ADHD improves educational success. Right now, medication for ADHD is in vogue. Should we begin medicating our children at an earlier stage? I don’t have the answers, but I do recommend looking carefully at a study conducted on Icelandic children and asking the question: Does this apply to children here in the United States?

According to the book by Baker and LeTendre, National Differences, Global Similarities: World and the Future of Schooling. LeTendre, Stanford. University Press, 2005, students in countries such as Japan, Denmark, and the Czech Republic, which give low amounts of homework have students who earn higher test scores than countries with high levels of homework, such as Greece, Thailand, and Iran. The United States is among the countries that gives a lot of homework. Unfortunately, although I have seen this reference quoted in many places, I don’t have the original study and was unable to find a country by country listing of homework policies in which I could see where Iceland rates (If one of my readers has that information, please pass that on). But I think it is important, before we draw conclusions about early treatment of ADHD here in the United States, that we consider that factor, and also consider whether there are differences in how we treat children with ADHD here and there, specifically, are Icelandic children getting an afternoon dose of medication?

The fact is that children with ADHD appear different in class on medication than they do off medication. Then, they go home. There, they need time to unwind, to expend energies that have been controlled throughout the day. If they come home to high amounts of homework, they will have to do it either medicated or unmedicated. If we medicate them, we disrupt appetite and sleep, and are likely to take away the respite and relief they need after a hard day at school, one that may be harder for them than for an average child. If we don’t medicate them, we set up a situation where the teacher has an idea about what the child can do at home that is totally unrealistic given that the teacher observed the child in a medicated state and is making assumptions about the child’s capability when unmedicated. Even with the medication, the assumptions may still be unrealistic because that child, despite a good day at school, simply cannot go on and keep working into the afternoon and night.

So, researchers, practitioners, parents, and teachers: Beware. This study may have its value. It could also do considerable damage if we don’t look at it for its broader implications and how such treatment interacts with the homework policies and expectations of the culture in which the study was done, and the culture in which the interventions will be made.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Homework, 504 plans and the PTA

Now that the National PTA convention has come to a close, we need to consider “what next” in the effort for homework reform. The PTA has agreed to review the guidelines at its governance meeting in August. That’s a good step. But regardless of what the National PTA eventually does, parents who are concerned about homework policy will still be concerned.

It seems to me that there are two types of parents and two types of approaches. There are parents whose children are doing well or reasonably well in school but who want to put the brakes on this constant, and unproductive, intrusion into their homes. There are parents whose children are not getting the work done, are facing low or failing grades, who are in large amounts of conflict with their children, and the result is only hours of heartache leading to nothing other than an inevitable downhill decline.

For those in the first category, I encourage you to contact your local PTAs and statewide PTA organizations to voice your support of these guidelines. For those in the second category, I suggest that you look at the 504 law to find ways to implement homework reform for your child, regardless of what the school district does.

On October 4, I will be presenting, in conjunction with a local education lawyer, a workshop on the homework trap, and how to use my model as the basis for a 504 plan. I hope to make this presentation available to parents throughout the country, and to partner with other education lawyers in advocating for this model. Right now, most educators are unaware of my model. For that matter, most educators are unaware of any models. Review the education websites, blogs, and discussion forums and you will find a dearth of information about homework. Look at the curriculum for a school of education and you will not find a course on the topic of homework. Typically, a 504 plan offers the child “more time,” perhaps meaningful when taking a test, but not “less work,” absolutely needed when it comes to homework accommodations.

If you are a parent in the latter position, I invite you to contact me and, if you have a lawyer or education advocate helping you out, that you connect me with that person. One thing that will help you get the help you need is to get the notion of homework reform embedded in the thinking of those who are putting together 504 plans. Educators cannot incorporate a concept into their plans if they don’t know what it is, and that may be loath to accept a change just because one parent says this is what the child needs. But for every child who gets a rational homework accommodation, that becomes one more case to enter the thinking of the educators the next time a bright, capable, but homework-trapped child, comes up for discussion.

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Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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A Model for 504 plans

I wrote this article a few months ago. It was first published on the Washington Post's Education blog on April 6, 2012. The summer is a good time, free from the immediate daily pressures of homework, for parents to think about what they want for their children in the coming year. For many, it will be necessary to seek a 504 plan based on the child's problems with working memory (auditory processing or attention) or processing speed (in reading or handwriting). This article highlights the fundmental principles of The Homework Trap.

The Homework Trap and What to Do About It

There are many parents whose major concern is not public policy but what will happen at home tonight. They are not Tiger Moms, but ordinary parents who simply want the best for their children. These parents start out with the full intention of supporting the teachers and their children’s schools. Yet, something goes wrong along the way as they and their children fall into a homework trap.

The problem starts in elementary school. The notes come home, and the parents get “the call.” They meet with the teacher and make plans to make sure everyone is on the same page. Before long, the cast of characters grows. By middle school, there are several teachers, the disciplinarian and the nurse, all fretting over what these children do not do. Their parents feel pressured to oversee their work, as they also feel criticized as if they’ve done something wrong. These parents would do anything to help their children, yet nothing they do reaps results. Soon, they realize that the efforts they are making are actually doing more harm than good.

The key misconception about homework-trapped children is what I call the “myth of motivation.” These children are viewed as lazy and unmotivated, as if they are different from the other children who would rather play than do their homework. There are reasons why these children don’t do their work, and it’s not because they lack motivation.
Rather, they have “under the radar” learning problems. Minor difference in learning capabilities can have major implications on the work that’s sent home, much more than it has on the work done in class.

The most important issue is the child’s work pace. No one would question that a slow running child truly wants to win the race, yet we somehow believe that homework trapped children lack the desire to get their work done.

We know that people don’t spend large amounts of time engaging in tasks they do not do well. Yet, homework-trapped children are made to struggle for hours on end to get everything done. These children would be far better off if they were asked to work for a fixed amount of time (perhaps 10 minutes per night per grade) than to fall into an abyss of working all night to get every worksheet done.

The child, who is forced to keep on working without boundaries, will predictably learn how to avoid. Excessive homework pressures teach children to lie, forget, argue, and procrastinate. This eventually brings in the child study team, not to deal with learning problems, but because the child’s behavior has been bad. With that, the child may get sent to a different class or an alternative school where, voila, homework is no longer required. It’s an odd turn of events that these homework trapped children, who could have succeeded with some homework relief, only get that relief after they’ve acted out.

Because of this, I offer three very simple adjustments that are crucial for homework-trapped children, and which, frankly, I think should be policy for all. They are:

1. Time-bound homework. Just like school starts and stops by the clock, define homework as a fixed period of time. See what the child can do in a reasonable amount of time and work with that child on using the time well.

2. Reduced penalties. Zeros factored in 25 percent of the grade is too harsh of a penalty to alter behavior. Lesser consequences will prove more effective in both mobilizing the child and allowing the parent to approach the issue calmly.

3. Respect lines of authority. Teachers are in charge of their classrooms. Parents should tread lightly when it comes to telling them what to do. Parents are the people in charge of their homes; teachers should not tell parents how to organize their homes. Ultimately, when decisions are to be made about behaviors in the home (i.e. homework), the parent needs to be the one with the final say.

I am aware of the controversy over how much homework children should get. It’s an important debate but not the one I’m concerned with today. I’ll leave that to teachers, the experts in education, to figure out what makes the most sense. But in developing their models, it is critical for teachers to understand that homework assignments are using borrowed ground. Homework requires the tacit permission of the parents to allow it in their homes. While most parents will support the school in what it asks, they also need the power to withdraw that permission, if needed, without consequence to their child’s education.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
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Mind-boggling

I find this absolutely mind-boggling to the point that I decided to post this item today rather than wait until tomorrow for my daily blog post. Education Week has a roundtable discussion on school schedules. I found the article through ASCD's daily brief, entitled, "Teacher panelists explore the concept of time in education." No one mentioned homework. How is that we can put professional energies into looking at time, a valuable commodity when considering education, and completely overlook the time children spend doing their homework?




Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework TrapWhat is The Homework Trap?
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Homework and working memory

There was a recent article in Education Week questioning the effectiveness of programs geared toward helping children improve their working memory. Working memory and processing speed are the two major "under-the-radar" learning problems I address in my book The Homework Trap. It is important to develop teaching models using the working memory children have, not the working memory we think they should have. Certainly, we are there to help and teach children and if there are methods to help them improve areas of weakness, that's fine. But we shouldn't punish them or fail them for characteristics they do not individually have. That's exactly what happens with homework trapped children when we demand they do things at home, outside the sight and control of their teachers, and factor the results in heavily and negatively into their grades.


Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework TrapWhat is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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To fail or not to fail: That is the question

In Education Week, a teacher poses the question whether or not to fail a student who understands the material but who has not done the work. I'm a psychologist, not an educator, and I see this issue as a lifespan problem, not one that is isolated to one particular class. The question is one that is central to my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers. The purpose of education is to prepare for the future, and I see many people through different stages of life, and into adulthood, suffer from the homework system. In this videotape, I shed light on what happens to children who are under constant homework pressure, not just in school, but in later life as well.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework TrapWhat is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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What does meaningful mean?

The Basking Ridge School District passed a policy requiring homework that is "meaningful in nature." I appreciate the effort, but what does meaningful mean? Are we to assume that teachers were already giving homework they did not think was meaningful and are grateful for being corrected? In this video, I look  more deeply into the issues behind this question.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework TrapWhat is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

More on Summer Learning Loss

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post today about summer learning loss. I have been following the discussion, both here and on teacher blogs and have some concern that this notion will get misconstrued to mean more homework assignments for children during the summer.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework TrapWhat is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

The Homework Trap and the National PTA Petition

With the national PTA’s convention coming up this Thursday, and with their agreement to receive the Race to Nowhere homework petition on Wednesday, I consider this a good time to highlight how my model, The Homework Trap, fits in with the petition. First, I offer my compliments to Vicki Abeles and the Race to Nowhere team, along with my colleagues, Etta Kralovec, Sara Bennett, and Alfie Kohn for their contributions to this effort. I also support the petition for both its rational proposals and the fact that it defines for the PTA a role in the homework debate.

I have also noted some differences between my proposals and the petition and had promised to highlight them on my blog before Wednesday. Today, I am giving a statement about those differences, in written and video form.

I believe that the key problem with homework goes back, not to teachers, but to teachers of teachers, the schools of education. The sad part about this petition is that it creates a dialogue in PTAs that should have already taken place where teachers are taught. It is not surprising that children face highly disparate homework experiences coming from the 30 to 40 teachers they get during their years in school because teachers are not taught, when they go to school, the theory, research, and practice of homework. Teachers are left to learn about homework from other teachers who have experience and have been giving homework, but have not themselves been educated in how to give homework. This leaves parents, who are the heads of their own homes, compromised in the decisions they make for their children. Parents have high levels of responsibility, to make sure the assignments get done, with low levels of authority, to make decisions about what must be done and what can be waived. In order for parents to be better decision-makers when homework causes problems, they need relief from the penalties their children receive. A child who misses an assignment can get a zero, which counts as a super-F, in a system where homework may factor in up to 25% of the grade. Recently, the school board in Groversville, NY made the very rational decision to limit homework to 10% of the grade and to set a grade floor of 50%. These steps may prove vital in allowing parents to approach homework issues with wisdom and calmness rather than from a sense of panic.

My major recommendations involve time-bound homework, reduced penalties, and recognition that the parents have ultimate authority for matters in their homes. Although the Groversville decision falls short of giving the parents that absolute, final say, it still goes a long way in allowing parents to remain in charge of their homes.

The major difference between my recommendations and the PTA proposal is that I look at the containers rather than the specifics. It is my firm belief that one reason for homework problems is that teachers have an open “line of credit” in creating homework assignments. The school day lasts a specific amount of time, six hours more or less. It is not surprising that schools of education provide courses to teach aspiring teachers how to use that time well. If homework had a container, this would force educators to think carefully about how to use the time, much the way a credit counselor helps a person in debt by cutting the credit cards. It is very likely that, given limits, educators would decide to follow the guidelines put forth in the PTA petition. They might look at the writings of the authors I’ve mentioned, or read Cathy Vatterott’s recent book, Rethinking Homework. However they approach homework policy, they would do it knowing that if they gave more projects, they’d have to give less drills. If they opted for math drills, there might not be time for spelling words. This would stimulate the field to take a more serious and professional look at what it is doing when it makes the decision to give children work to be done at home.

As I said, I support the petition. Frankly, I would still opt for a half hour of silly, meaningless, and unproductive homework that stopped when the half hour was up over seemingly important assignments that occupy the child with no prospect for relief until all the work was all done.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Gloversville, NY takes a positive step toward improving its homework policy

I came across this policy that was recently approved by the school board in Gloversville, NY. It is a good policy and goes well with my recommendations for homework-trapped children:

• Clock based homework times
• Reduced penalties
• Respect for parental authority in the home.

To implement these steps, I have advised parents to set time caps on homework and have the child stop doing homework when the time is up. The question I always get is how one can do that if the penalties keep coming in, to which I respond that even with continued penalties, the homework-trapped child will get more done in a time container than by being engaged in conflict all night long. Still, it is difficult for parents to give up the unproductive, nagging role when they foresee and fear failure for their children. This policy gives parents the freedom to take the rational step of putting caps through time limits on the work that must get done.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework TrapWhat is The Homework Trap?
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Summer learning loss

I just saw this posting, about summer learning loss, in Edutopia and felt compelled to offer the following response, which I thought I would share with my followers:

I think the key regarding summer learning loss, as it is in most areas of life, is to accept the realities as they are. I wouldn't recommend "combating" summer learning loss. Rather, I recommend making plans based on the assumption that there will be some learning loss so you simply pick up where you think the student will be. It is really no different from my position on dealing with parents who seem problematic because they do not support homework the way in which teachers think they should. People are different. Parents take different attitudes about school. Once you accept that reality, you can go on and devise strategies based on what is real, not on the way you wish things would be. The necessary conclusion for that issue is to diminish reliance on homework and reduce penalties for work that may not get done.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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Differences in Homework Criticism

As my followers know, I am strongly in favor of the petition being submitted to the National PTA this coming Wednesday by the Race to Nowhere team. That said, there are some substantial differences between my model for homework reform and what is proposed in the petition. I consider the current resolution extremely important because it includes an extremely rational view for good homework practices and because it brings the PTA into an important role it has not assumed before.

Today is not a good day for me to expand on the differences in vision to which I refer, but I will direct the reader to an interview I did with Michael Shaughnessy posted on March 23, 2012 in Education News. This interview highlights some of my fundamental concepts including the distinction between parents and teachers in determining what constitutes good homework.

In a later post, I will explain my position in more depth.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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Consensus over Homework

This coming Wednesday, the Race to Nowhere Team will be submitting a petition advocating healthy homework guidelines to a special pre-convention meeting of the National PTA. The petition has about 15,000 signatures and represents a significant step toward defining homework practices as an important concern for PTAs around the country. I personally signed this petition and have supported it here on my blog before.

As much as I support this movement, we all need to understand that as homework becomes a topic for school boards and PTAs, there will still be hurdles to overcome. Among them is the reality that parents are simply not of like mind. In one study, it was shown that the number of parents seeking more homework is about the same as the number seeking less.

On April 1, 2012, the Los Angeles Daily News published an op-ed I wrote: “Homework hang-ups: Why consensus is so hard to find.” I wrote the article in response to a debate at the Los Angeles Unified School District over whether to limit the weighting of homework to 10% of the grade. Many parents and teachers were up in arms opposing this reasonable effort to cap the ill-effects homework can have. I wrote this piece to throw some light on the reasons why parents differ so much and am republishing the article here.

Homework Hang-ups: Why Consensus is so Hard to Find

As the Los Angeles Unified School District engages in a heated homework debate, the rest of the world is also reconsidering this standard feature of public education.

A group of French parents and teachers is calling for a two-week homework boycott. They've garnered 22,000 visits to their anti-homework blog. In March, parents and the media mounted a successful campaign to force Great Britain's education secretary to back down from what they considered to be excessive homework guidelines.
Los Angeles is at the forefront of this movement to reevaluate homework, and is being watched by homework critics around the world. Interestingly, California was a leader in the anti-homework movement at the beginning of the 20th century when the state Legislature banned homework in 1901.
I don't think anyone will ever arrive at complete agreement on how much weight to give homework. Teachers value their independence. Parents differ in their experiences with homework in their homes.
For some, homework is fine and they don't mind giving their children extra points for what they do at home. For others, homework is a daily nightmare, and one from which they beg for relief.
I'm a psychologist, but I'm also the parent of three grown children. My opinion of homework was influenced by how many children I had. If I had stopped at two, I would have supported the pro-homework camp.

If you don't have a homework problem in your home, you don't see why others complain. Yet, 10 percent to 25 percent of all children have serious homework problems to the point that the system hurts them more than it helps.

I differ from other homework critics, such as Alfie Kohn, in that I take no position on what teachers should do. Educational practice belongs to teachers to work out among themselves as a professional art. Although teachers should understand the valid criticisms that have been made of homework, in the end children will benefit if their teachers are free to use their skills, with limited constraints.
Homework creates an odd situation in which assignments are sent from the school to the home. In effect, an authority outside the home is creating conditions in another person's zone. I don't have a problem with teachers assigning homework. I have a problem with an excessive expectations supported by severe consequences that it must be done.

Now honestly, most parents will support the teachers as long as everything is going reasonably well. With my oldest two children, I was fully on board. But sometimes, things just don't work out, and when that happens, the parent needs to be in charge.

Parents, whose children face heavy penalties for work that is not done, lose their freedom to analyze the issue and make decisions in the best interests of their children. That is a truly devastating state of affairs, for the child, the parent, and the family. Children need to know, above all, that their parents are the ones who are in charge.

So, here's the policy I recommend that Los Angeles schools adopt:

1. Vest teachers with full authority to assign homework. Let them decide how to factor homework in to the final grade.

2. Develop an in-service training program that ensures that every teacher understands the research on homework, its limitations as an educational tool, and has some awareness of how much harm it can do.

3. Create a preamble to the homework policy that asserts the fact that the parents are fully in charge of their homes. Make it district-wide policy that homework is given with tacit permission from the parents, permission the individual parent can withdraw.

4. Create time-based norms, such as 10 minutes per night per grade. Encourage parents to stop their children from doing more homework once they've reached that established time.

5. Establish a 10 percent option for parents to employ if, in their best judgment, their child will be harmed when homework is given a higher weight.

School districts will get much further establishing a policy that resonates with the natural hierarchies between school and home than it will if it hopes to get all to agree. My approach calls on teachers to adjust their thinking about homework compliance. They can still assign; they just can't coerce. They'll have to persuade, rather than dictate. In the end, most parents will agree with what they seek.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Parents are Different

A reader asked the following question: “What is your opinion of how to manage parents who are absent or uninvolved. A lot of my kids have working parents and/or disinterested parents. Who takes hold of the autonomy then?” I am offering a response, both in writing and on a video clip. I invite readers to join the discussion and to also pose other questions for me to address.

My answer is that you don’t try to manage people. You accept the fact that people are different. Just as you deal with the children as they are, not necessarily how you would like them to be (I’m sure in every teacher’s career there are some years in which the teacher remembers being assigned a particularly “good” class and other years a much more difficult class). You teach the children you are assigned. The same goes for families. Some are involved; some are absent or at least less involved. Some work. Some have an at-home parent. Some are highly interested. Some leave education to you, the teacher, and focus their interests elsewhere. In effect, parents represent the complex reality of human experience and circumstances. Their behaviors cannot be dictated by the teacher, let alone by the 30 to 40 different teachers their child will encounter over a 13 year, public school career.

There’s a concept that is central to Alcoholics Anonymous called the Serenity Prayer, which offers good advice for everyone, not just alcoholics. The prayer essentially calls for serenity in accepting things that are out of our control, courage in dealing with things that are in our control, and wisdom to know the difference. The problem raised in the reader’s question can be understood as struggling with an expectation that one can manage something that it outside one’s control. Once the teacher recognizes that his or her power and authority resides inside, not outside the classroom, there can be more acceptance of the fact that parents are different, and it does not have to interfere with the teaching process.

I’m always struck by the severity of homework penalties. If a child has some difficulty in class, he might get a low grade, but he’ll rarely get a zero or fail for the difficulties he has. Yet with homework, failure is a serious risk, based simply on the mathematics of the system. If homework, which might take under 10 percent of the child’s total home-school education time, is counted up to 25 percent of the grade, and if the child can get a 0, which I call a super-F, for work not done, we’re looking at a grading system that magnifies the effect of homework difficulties far beyond the impact of in-school difficulties. I think we have gravitated to this standard largely because this is what people do when they try to control behaviors that are outside their control. They create harsher and harsher consequences to influence behavior. Yet, the reality is that continued use of penalties in the absence of desired behavioral change, actually increases, rather than deceases, the prospects of noncompliance. If anything, the harsh penalties mobilize the parent into a frenzy, rather than motivate the child to do his homework.

Once we accept that families differ, we can stay focused on what happens in the classroom. This does not mean the teacher cannot assign homework. It just means, you assign it understanding the realities of the situation, accepting that children go home to different environments, and develop teaching methods that do not make you dependent on things that take place outside the class.

What do you think? Please weigh in with a comment. Please propose another topic as well.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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A Roadmap to Success
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Summer Homework

Edutopia is conducting a poll on the issue of assigning summer homework. The choices are yes, maybe, no, and none of the above. I chose none of the above and left a comment on edutopia. I share my thoughts in this video.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
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Teacher and Parent Empowerment

I came across this article on improving school performance through teacher empowerment.

I posted this comment to the article:

I’m impressed. I’m also not surprised. General principles of organizational theory tell us that people will function best when authority is vested at the lowest possible levels. Teachers who are free to use their judgment do better than those who are following outside dictates that supersede what they think. The principle is identical to what works in the home. I did not see the word homework, at all, in this article. We need to recognize that homework, while not necessarily bad in and of itself, is destructive when the parent lacks the authority to modify or waive the assignments. We should speak up strongly in support of teachers and against the current movement to put them under the gun. We should similarly speak up strongly against homework policies that diminish the authority of parents in their homes.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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Homework, sleep deprivation and anxiety

There's an article on sleep deprivation and anxiety today in the Huffington Post.

I offered the following responses:

Although this study was conducted on adults, it has obvious bearing on the well-being of young people. One of the things I have found in my studies of homework-trapped children is that they appear angry and rebellious, but they are actually quite anxious and afraid. Defiance is a strategy they use to cope with unrelenting pressures from parents and teachers alike. They loss respite at home. They are pushed to do work up until bedtime. They have trouble sleeping, and, in total, this makes it more difficult for them to work. This article adds one more piece, that the sleep deprivation that follows then increases the anxiety, which, in your people who feel under the gun, gets expressed as "bad behavior."



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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Homework and Drugs

In today's New York Times, there is an article entitled, The Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill.  I think we can look at the problem raised here, along with other drug problems, as connected to homework policy. Here is the comment I made in The New York Times, along with a more extensive video, expanding on these points.


When I attended college in the late 1960s, amphetamines were being readily prescribed as diet pills, the way they are now being prescribed for ADHD. Nearly anyone could get them at the student health center. At finals, large numbers of students used those pills to help them stay up and pull all-nighters. I could not have imagined that happening at the high school level. We chose to go to college, and we entered with the knowledge that 16 hours of school was a full time load and that we would be expected to spend hours in the dorm or in the library, with our peers, continuing our work, and that would sometimes call for the all-nighter. Today, children attend school (mandatory education) over thirty hours a week, but are expected to come home and continue working (in a space they occupy with their parents, not their school peers), and manage hours of work. Are we surprised that they resort to pills to help get them through? I should also add that although there are some kids who are motivated and driven to do well and use uppers, there are other kids who are overwhelmed by the demands, are constantly criticized, get turned off to school, and are at greater risk of using other types of drugs.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

On being specific

Today's video was inspired by an article sent to me by a follower of The Homework Trap. The article invited comments about how homework policy should be changed. It got me thinking about the importance of being specific when dealing with the school about what you want for your child. We're all emotional about our children and it is easy to fall into the trap of sharing our emotions without being clear about exactly what we want the school to do. I offer a simple model:

Time bound assignments
Penalty reductions
Parents with full authority over the home

You may have other ideas about what your child needs. Whatever it is, I think it is important to keep those proposals simple and clear.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Homework and ADHD

Children with ADHD require greater reductions in homework than othe children require. And they need these reductions while having full access to the regular classroom. These reduction can be incorporated into a 504 plan. The following video explains why this is required. The concept is also included in my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Homework and Vocational Education

In Tuesday's Washington Post education blog, Mark Harris talks about the differences in attitudes toward vocational education in Norway and in the United States. He highlights how vocational training is valued there as a comparably good option to an academic education, where it is viewed here as an alternative for students who are thought to be less bright. He notes that Norwegian students are supported in the paths they pursue once they finish their basic education.

I believe he is right in what he says. I also believe that there is room or us to consider what happens at the elementary school level and how modern homework policy interferes with the vocational education of many children during those earlier years. By forcing children to continue their schoolwork outside of the classroom and into the home, we are actually forcing those children who are more hands-on by nature to spend excessive amounts of time doing what they don't do well to earn mediocre grades, when, in fact, their spontaneous play would help them develop the skills they actually have.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Homework Zeros

Yesterday, I came across a radio interview and blog post by Joe Bower addressing the problem with giving zeros for schoolwork. I was so impressed by what Mr. Bower said that I felt compelled to address the issue of zeros here on a blog. Mr. Bower is an educator and speaks from the point of an educator. I am a psychologist and want to lend some understanding about what happens to the child (and the parent) under the unrelenting pressure of zeros for work not done. Rather than motivate behavior, zeros teach negative and avoidant behaviors. At the core of the problem are concepts such as what constitutes a good penalty (one that need not be given again) and how one turns around well-ingrained negative behaviors (shaping, i.e. full reward for partial success). I explain these concepts further in the video below.


Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Race to Nowhere Video Contest

The Race to Nowhere is asking everyone with a homework story to post a video on You Tube. They will judge the best videos and are offering prizes for the videos they select along with the ones that have the most likes. My video is below but also on You Tube.  Contest information is available at this link. Here's my video:



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Homework, anxiety, and school performance

I read an interesting blog post today on anxiety and school performance. The author claims that one in eight students suffers from anxiety, that anxiety affects working memory, and that this affects school performance. I believe the author is right and that her ideas coincide well with mine. 

In my work, I talk about under-the-radar learning disabilities and how they affect homework performance. In fact, many homework-trapped children, who appear defiant, are actually anxious. They manage their anxiety through avoidant and rebellious behaviors.

Among the scales on a standard IQ test, working memory (one of the two major under-the-radar learning disorders I refer to) is the one that is most directly affected by anxiety. If a child is anxious, the child cannot focus.  He appears to have ADD. He comes home from school clueless, where he is pressured to do things he cannot do, increasing his anxiety.

The major difference between the writer of this article and me is that this writer appears to focus on treating the anxiety whereas I consider it important to reduce the pressure.  If the child remains under unrelenting pressure, anxiety reduction techniques will not help. First and foremost, we need to know that the child can do what the child is asked to do, and we’ll never get the answer until we limit the time of the homework session and step back to observe what the child does.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Homework and ADD

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk with a family: mom, dad, grandma, and 12 year old boy. The boy was well-mannered and seemed like a normal child. His mother told me that they had had ongoing problems with him at school. He did well in class, but did not get his homework done. His mother was called in by the school starting around third grade. She told the teachers that he had trouble focusing on the work and thought he might have ADD. The teacher scoffed, the demands kept coming in, and homework would go on all night long. In fourth and fifth grade, the same. Then in sixth grade, his teacher decided he had ADD and, based on that opinion, the school did a 180 and was now pushing hard for diagnosis and treatment. In effect, his teacher wanted this boy to take medication. She did not want to revise the requirements. The child did not seem hyperactive to me and his mother made the point that he had ADD, not ADHD. I shared my thoughts that homework time should be capped and that it is an error to conceptualize the problem just as the child not getting his work done. Rather, we should conceptualize the problem as the child is spending too much time on homework. Reduce the required time and the child is more likely to comply and more likely to actually get some work done. If this child is inattentive at school, he was certainly paying attention to what I was saying and eagerly and appropriately joined our conversation. He seemed very willing to work for an hour if he could then be free, and his parents seemed to think that would work for them as well. I don’t know if this child has ADD. I didn’t get the feeling that he did and it is an overly diagnosed condition these days, but, who knows? It would require more information than I had in this fairly casual context to know. But the point is that this was an average seeming family with competent parents, certainly capable of looking at their son and making decisions on his behalf, and if they are battling with him long into the night, not because they choose to but because they feel forced to, they cannot really help and guide their child. I mentioned to the parents that they should make the decision to cap the time. I shared with them the norm in education, an hour per night per grade, which could be used as a standard. I suggested that they make that decision, firmly and not subject to negotiation, and see what the teachers do. In my experience, even if they don’t agree with that decision, many teachers will modify their demands once the parents are clear this is the decision they have made. I also point out, that if their child truly had ADD, that could also be the basis for constructing a 504 plan. I cautioned them that the one problem with a 504 plan is that most schools are not yet aware of the model I promote, so 504 plans often include “more time,” not “less work.” The other issue with ADD, which did not seem appropriate for this particular family since this child’s “ADD” was either non-existent or mild in nature, is that children with true ADD or ADHD, need even lower time caps on homework than ordinary children need. I’ll explain that piece in a future blog post.
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website