Homework has lengthy been a subject of debate, however in 2025 it’s dealing with an existential disaster: Has synthetic intelligence and its immediate solutions made it pointless and even counterproductive?
Analysis launched this month means that AI has change into absolutely embedded in how college students reply to homework and different assignments.
The share of highschool college students who report utilizing generative AI for schoolwork is rising, growing from an already excessive 79% to 84% between January and Might of this yr, in response to surveys carried out by Faculty Board, the nonprofit that manages a lot of the nation’s standardized exams, together with the SAT.
Which means growing numbers of scholars are assigning their very own homework to AI — even when it places studying at peril. AI can resolve a math downside and in addition present the work step-by-step. It may well summarize and analyze a studying passage. It may well write a complete essay, in methods more and more tough to identify.
Inglewood highschool English instructor Alyssa Bolden discovered from one among her college students that AI may customise an essay by incorporating the scholar’s notes from Bolden’s lectures in addition to her distinctive analysis rubric.
AI has given her an overwhelming cause to contemplate homework pointless.
“They’re not doing it,” she stated of scholars and homework. “They’re not doing it.”
Alyssa Bolden, an English instructor at Metropolis Honors Worldwide Preparatory Excessive Faculty in Inglewood, has college students write essays in school by hand to restrict their use of AI. She doesn’t assign homework.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Occasions)
Different academics, nevertheless, proceed to assign homework, which introduces a brand new pressure within the studying relationship, stated Tenth-grader Aaliyah Herron, 15, who’s one among Bolden’s college students at Metropolis Honors Worldwide Preparatory Excessive Faculty. In different lessons, she finds herself having to show her innocence given the standard of her work.
She avoids AI to remove any risk that she could possibly be accused of utilizing it improperly: “My essays will get marked as AI for no cause — regardless that I haven’t used AI for any single paper in my life.”
Essentially, AI complicates a preexisting downside: Usually, instructors have put too little thought into homework, stated Mollie Galloway, affiliate professor on the Graduate Faculty of Schooling and Counseling at Lewis & Clark Faculty in Oregon.
“It’s at all times been necessary to consider how one can create assignments which are significant and deepen studying, and the growing use of AI makes this extra true than ever,” Galloway stated.
The outdated and new homework debate
Many educators stay resolutely old-school on homework, with views just like these of Lance Izumi, senior director of the Heart for Schooling on the California-based Pacific Analysis Institute.
“Think about receiving math instruction for simply an hour a day,” Izumi stated. “Can all math studying stick in a scholar’s mind in that hour? With out homework, many college students won’t develop the information base crucial for educational success.”
In Izumi’s view, college students aren’t getting sufficient homework. “Apart from abilities and information, homework teaches college students self-discipline, group, time administration, accountability, and accountability.”
College students line up at La Tijera Academy of Excellence in Inglewood.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Occasions)
There’s analysis supporting this view. A number of research have discovered that college students who did their homework had been extra prone to handle duties and time properly.
However Izumi additionally has raised the alarm that pervasive AI use may counteract the advantages of homework by enabling cut-and-paste laziness.
Aaliyah stated such issues are respectable.
“Quite a lot of my classmates, in math … they don’t actually care about how they do it. They simply wish to get it executed,” she stated. “So then once they get examined on it” — with out entry to AI — “they received’t actually know what to do.”
Emilio Torres, Aaliyah’s classmate, stated such an expertise “may wake them up for like one lesson, however they simply relapse on AI and do it once more, and the cycle simply repeats itself.”
He makes use of AI selectively. He’ll, for instance, ask AI to create research questions for him to analysis.
“AI is unquestionably a useful software to do sure issues,” stated Emilio, who’s 15. “I self-discipline myself to not depend on it.”
A part of the pre-AI debate centered on the quantity of homework — with many educators deciding on 10 minutes a day multiplied by grade degree. So, for instance, a scholar in twelfth grade may count on to obtain 120 minutes per day of homework.
Extra is just not essentially higher, in response to Problem Success, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate Faculty of Schooling.
“Center college college students that recurrently accomplished two hours of homework didn’t carry out higher at school than those who averaged just one hour,” it concluded in a 2020 overview of analysis.
Though instructor opinions on homework are wide-ranging, many researchers thought they had been starting to achieve some extra conclusions, together with that homework seems to don’t have any measurable educational profit for elementary college college students, some benefits for center schoolers and extra measurable results in highschool.
College students look ahead to a celebration of excessive check scores at La Tijera Academy of Excellence.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Occasions)
How one instructor is revamping homework
Fourth-grade Sherman Oaks instructor Libby Rosenbaum tries to use the analysis findings — and her college students are, thus far, too younger to be tremendously affected by AI.
“Homework mustn’t have an effect on a scholar’s educational content material grade,” Rosenbaum stated. “Grades must be primarily based on mastery of requirements. Homework isn’t a normal.
“Giving a category full of youngsters a 20-problem math project isn’t productive,” she stated. “The children who battle with the idea possible received’t abruptly perceive it at dwelling, and it may well unnecessarily put a pressure on the connection between father or mother and youngster. The children who do perceive it don’t want 20 issues.”
As a substitute, she units out a weekly menu of largely nonacademic decisions, in 15-20 minute blocks: high quality time with a liked one, time spent organizing one thing at dwelling or instructing another person a talent. The duties are assigned on Monday and due Friday.
“This homework process gives the advantages of homework: time administration, work ethic and accountability, with the additional benefit of boosting entire youngster well-roundedness and day without work screens,” Rosenbaum stated. “We work a rigorous day through the college day. They want sports activities, relaxation, social time, household time, and different life experiences exterior of the college day.
“The one exceptions to this coverage are when college students select to not work productively through the college day and have to take dwelling work to complete,” she added, “or want extra overview on their spelling phrases. Studying is at all times required, but it surely must be included right into a bedtime routine.”
Center college historical past instructor Pilar Cuevas speaks to college students in her class at La Tijera Academy of Excellence. Cuevas has her college students handwrite notes and different assignments in a format that makes it harder for them to make use of AI on homework assignments.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Occasions)
Getting homework proper
Aryn Kennedy, whose daughter attends Armstrong Center Faculty within the San Fernando Valley, recollects that “so many nights we spent an hour finishing tedious, poorly designed math worksheets” on matters her daughter already understood.
However she additionally sees some positives.
“Doing math issues at dwelling helps reinforce the teachings from college since they don’t have time to work by each iteration in school. Studying lengthy texts at dwelling can be useful to permit extra class time for dialogue.”
Center college historical past instructor Pilar Cuevas, at Inglewood’s La Tijera Academy of Excellence, depends considerably on homework and blocks AI on school-issued computer systems. The homework questions and solutions have to be written by hand — making the usage of AI tougher. Her school colleagues depend on an identical system, which she credit partly for a current rise in check scores.
Seventh-graders Rylee Tucker, 12, and Phelps Mauricio, 12, eat snow cones collectively throughout a celebration of excessive check scores at La Tijera Academy of Excellence.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Occasions)
Some consultants have famous that homework has the unfavorable potential to widen the gaps between college students from completely different financial and household assist backgrounds — and that’s why Inglewood teacher Bolden first moved away from homework.
Household assets and assist, scholar attitudes and beliefs about their very own educational talents are “related to homework completion,” wrote training professor Joyce L. Epstein, in an evaluation of homework analysis.
Epstein, who relies on the Johns Hopkins Faculty of Schooling, stated in an e mail that the design of homework stays key.
In center and highschool, “some college students cease doing homework that’s not attention-grabbing to them, or too laborious, too straightforward, and many others.,” she stated.
And that was earlier than AI made homework avoidance simpler.
Homework must be significant, on condition that it may well improve scholar stress and may get in the best way of constructive interactions with relations and friends, useful extracurricular actions and even sleep, consultants stated.
Epstein cited findings that about 80% of scholars, academics and fogeys stated that homework is necessary or essential for growing studying and success at school. However the identical survey reported that as much as one-third of scholars, academics and fogeys rated the standard of some homework assignments as truthful, poor, uninteresting or simply busy work.
“More and more, educators and researchers agree that college students don’t want extra homework, however do want higher homework,” Epstein stated. “With extra attention-grabbing, inventive assignments, extra college students will full their homework.”
