Are students suffering from too much homework?

It is a common struggle for students to have more homework than they have time to complete it.  To them, homework is another priority to add to the list of social gatherings, prior plans, and procrastinating.

48.3% of the student body responded in a recent poll saying that they spend about two to three hours on homework outside of the classroom everyday.

Students need to continuously practice what they’re learning, but some students deem the amount of problems given on their homework is too much. Is 40 math problems necessary or can a student perform just as well with 15?

The Los Angeles Times also held a poll where the average amount of homework high school students do is 3.5 hours. In another poll, 23.3% of the students at Westside said that they spend more than 3.5 hours on their schoolwork.

“It’s a lot,” freshman Kate Shafer said when asked about the homework load, “During softball [season] it’s hard to keep up with it.”

Teachers try to limit the amount of work given out because they are aware that students have other activities going on outside of the classroom. The only thing is, teachers don’t always get through the lesson during the mod, therefore leaving students to learn the the rest of the curriculum on their own time and finish the homework.

“I want my homework to be impactful but I also don’t want it to be something that’s a big time suck,” Spanish teacher Amanda Freitag said, “It’s not necessarily the amount but it’s the consistency in which [students] do it [their homework].”

If students come together with teachers to take stress off of the homework load while still efficiently learning new content, homework might not be as overwhelming.