In early 2026, Louisiana's LaSalle Parish school district took an unusual step: it eliminated homework for all 2,500 students, from first grade through high school. Families can request extra practice materials, but nothing is required or graded. This move follows a trend that educators and researchers have tracked for years.

Federal data show that math homework assigned to fourth and eighth-graders has steadily declined for over a decade. Reasons include teachers questioning its effectiveness, families objecting to after-school workload, and researchers noting the complexity of measuring homework’s impact. One student may spend an hour on an assignment that takes another just ten minutes, with no difference in performance.

Artificial intelligence has made the whole equation messier. A Pew Research Center survey found that more than half of American teenagers have already used chatbots to help with schoolwork, and one in ten said they use AI assistants to do most or all of their homework. For many teachers, this has gutted the value of homework as an assessment tool. If a student turns something in, but an AI wrote it, what does the grade actually mean?

That said, there's a real case on the other side. Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has spent years studying the topic, states that math skills require repetition, and it makes little sense to burn class time on drills that students could just as easily do at home. Research backs him up; lower-performing students who spent more time on math homework showed measurable improvement, and the gains held up a year later.

There's no clean answer here, and that's exactly why it's worth paying attention. Any teacher who has ever graded a stack of identical worksheets already knows that more doesn't always mean better.