There has been a lot of hubbub around homework these days. How much homework should my kid have? Does my kid have too much? How come they don’t have enough? Here is the bottom line – there has been no research that shows any academic benefit to homework in the elementary years. There is no correlation between homework in the elementary years and future success for a kid. In fact, there is not even a correlation for homework in the elementary years and things like teaching the kid responsibility, or teaching them how to be… take care of themselves and be responsible for their own things. There’s no correlation between anything with the elementary homework and the future. So what you want to do as a parent is encourage free reading. You want to encourage kids to pick what they want to read, love reading, enjoy it and read regularly. There is a connection between free reading and doing better academically in future years. What do you do if your school has a lot of homework and your kid is in first grade or second grade? You don’t want to see your kid coming home with more than about 10 minutes per grade level if at all. And if that’s happening, you have to be an advocate. You have to go and talk to the teacher and talk to the school and let them know that this is not working out at home.