RURAL LOUISIANA — The LaSalle Parish school district in rural Louisiana eliminated homework for all of its students at the start of the new semester in January 2026. None of the district's 2,500 students from elementary through high school are required to complete schoolwork at home, though parents can request optional, ungraded practice problems.

Superintendent Jonathan Garrett said homework assignments were among the biggest sources of complaints from parents and students, and that the decision was driven by concerns that much of the homework assigned, especially in math, is repetitive, time-consuming and has not adapted to challenges posed by artificial intelligence. "When there was a negative feeling about school, it usually stemmed from what kids are bringing home, the frustrations they feel completing that, and that parents and guardians feel trying to help them complete it," Garrett said.

He framed the change as a matter of focusing on the school day. "The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control, and that's what happens during the school day. There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system," he said.

The announcement post became the district's most-liked Facebook post of the year, receiving hundreds of shares, many from parents in neighboring parishes. Federal data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students has steadily declined over the past decade. Between 1996 and 2015, surveys from the Nation's Report Card showed that between 4 and 6 percent of fourth graders reported receiving no math homework the previous night. By 2024, more than 25 percent of fourth graders reported receiving no math homework the previous night.

A survey of teachers by the EdWeek Research Center found that 40 percent reported that homework assignments had decreased over the past two years, and among those, 29 percent attributed the decrease to students' use of AI reducing the value of homework. A survey by Pew Research Center found that over half of teens reported using chatbots to help with schoolwork, and one in ten said they used virtual assistants to complete all or most of their schoolwork.

Research on the effects of homework has been mixed. A longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the time spent on math homework performed better in math one year later. A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. elementary students led by a Duke University researcher found that increased homework had no measurable effect on standardized test scores, though it found small positive gains in class grades when considering both test scores and homework completion rates. The 1998 study also found that more homework was associated with negative attitudes toward school among younger children.

"The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don't want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home," said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher.

Jim Malliard, a full-time caregiver and education writer, said his two children in Franklin, Pennsylvania experienced bullying and trauma at school that made them avoid homework. "It became a fight because the kids had so much school-based anxiety from trauma and bullying at school that they didn't want to deal with school when they got home," Malliard said. He said he did not believe his children were overburdened by homework, but also did not believe they benefited from it. He eventually enrolled his children in a virtual charter school, where they completed the remainder of their K-12 education.

"The teachers would tell us homework only takes 15 minutes a night — sure, if a kid sits there and does it right away and is attentive and wants to do it. It was getting to be an hour for us," he said.