I want to talk about why we do not do homework help at our company. Going forward, as of today, August 20, 2026, we will no longer offer homework help. Let me give you the reasons, some thoughts for educators, some thoughts for parents, and where we go from here.
First, do your homework on homework
The idea of homework is not as old as people think, and the context in which it came about is a little questionable. I would encourage you to go back and do the research yourself: why does homework exist, what is the point of it, and how effective is it actually?
I want to be fair here. There are countries where they do not assign homework and the students are doing great. There are countries where they do assign homework and the students are also doing great. I get it. So let’s talk about America for a second.
I am focused on K–12 here. I am not talking about university and beyond, though I would argue the model has its own problems there because of fragmentation — when I am taking five classes and my teachers never talk to one another, and now I am working all day into the night. That is not a healthy lifestyle, and it leads to other problems. But let’s set that aside and stay with K–12.
A lot of homework in America is busywork
That is the plain truth of it. It is busywork. And it costs teachers time away from their own families to create and grade. Then the next year the child ends up doing something similar anyway, or they go to college and take a remediation course and do the same thing again.
Let me be very clear about something, because this is where people misunderstand me. I am not talking about practice. Practice is important. It is essential. But I practice based on what I need to learn, at the pace of my mastery — not at the pace someone else tells me I should be practicing.
If I want to do quantum mechanics, if I want to do advanced physics, I should not have to sit in a room and be told I am only allowed to touch certain topics tomorrow. Why? Especially in an age of knowledge abundance.
So why do we not do homework help?
Number one: homework is a waste of time most of the time.
Number two: it is busywork that disrupts people’s lives — the students, the parents, and the teachers. It is a lose-lose-lose.
But Amos, how is my child going to master what they are learning?
Let’s look at the data. Look at how American students are actually doing academically in fourth grade, in eighth grade, in college — where some college students cannot add fractions. That is interesting, isn’t it?
So maybe the one-size-fits-all model is not working. I tell you to do fifty problems even though you already know how to do them. Or I tell you to do fifty problems you do not know how to do, so now you are losing sleep trying to figure it out on your own. Neither one of those is teaching.
A word for teachers, and I say this in love
If you assign a student something to do and they are not able to do it themselves, confidently — then what was the classroom time for?
If a child sat in your class, left your class still confused, and now has to go do homework, that is not right. I say that in love, but that is not right.
Here is why. Maybe that child should not be in that class in the first place. That is one possibility. Or we can argue that they should be in the class and they need a tutor. But why, though? If the child is in school from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then we hand them homework on top of it — when are they going to get a life? When are they going to figure out what they want to do with their lives?
And now you have got me talking about the question of vision in education. Do you know how many students graduate with no idea what to do with their lives? Could it be because we took so much of their time with busywork?
The part nobody counts
Let me go further, because I also do a lot of research on the issue of social media and the flood of information young people are living in.
Imagine you go to school. You want to make friends. You want to be part of a community. But you have to pay attention, follow the line, do this, do this, do this — and then we give you homework afterward. Or you get a short recess and then homework. And then, finally, you go home, and now you have to do your homework.
What is that going to make some students do? After all of that, they just want to go somewhere and zone out. Waste their minds, so to speak. And we call that laziness.
But could that “laziness” also be a product of the education system they found themselves in, where they never got to go be with friends and build community?
This is not a call to say classroom time should be all about making friends. My question is simply this: could our systems be pushing children to a point where they are exhausted and tired? I think it is worth considering.
This is not a call to lower the bar
If you know me, you know that. I think we need to teach Calculus 1, 2, and 3 to every child in America. I really believe that, in K–12, with my whole heart. I believe children should be doing differential equations and linear algebra in K–12.
But Amos, how is all that possible?
It takes a completely different way of thinking, and that is exactly what the Counting to Calculus framework was built on: a model where children keep going at the pace of their mastery. And no summer break. That is another thing that makes our model different — you take breaks here and there, but you learn year-round.
So no, I am not trying to lower the bar. Some people argue my bar is too high. What I am saying is that the tools are available to help students reach a high bar — and that busywork, repetitive work, work with fractions that they already did last year and are now being assigned again, may be ruining the learning process for our STEM students.
Again: this is not to say there is no need for practice. There is a great need for practice. But practice at the pace of the mastery of the person practicing.
But Amos, how do we get the whole class to—
That right there is where we make the mistake. The goal has to also be about the child. The individual. That is my heart’s cry. How do we make sure children are reaching their full potential and flourishing?
What we do instead
Homework is not the way. Here is what is:
- Place children in the appropriate class. If a student cannot do the work confidently on their own, placement is the first thing to examine, not the last.
- Let them learn at the pace of their mastery. Move when they have mastered it, not when the calendar says so.
- Teach them the importance of practice — and let them practice what they actually need, not what was assigned to all thirty of them.
- Teach them time management and how to study. These are skills. They have to be taught, not assumed.
- Equip parents with the tools to support their children instead of becoming their night-shift tutors.
- Make resources available to every child who needs them. If a student needs more examples or more videos, that should exist and be reachable.
- Learn year-round. Not heavy doses in a short amount of time, which destroys a child’s appetite for the subject. This is especially true in math.
It is not fair to send a child home who might not get there until 6 p.m., who is hungry, who is trying to figure out what to do with their day, and then have them thinking about homework.
Teachers, we need to change this. I do not know who exactly we need to talk to, but this is not working. We are burning people out for no reason. Let’s pay attention to what actually helps children flourish, and not to what makes them ask, why am I even here? What is the point?
And then there is AI
I will end with this, because I have not even mentioned it yet.
In the world we live in now, children have tools in their pockets that can do their homework for them. I am not saying they should use those tools that way. I am telling you honestly what is happening: the child who does not care can simply have the tool do the homework, while the child who actually wants to learn well is up late at night struggling through it alone.
If for no other reason than that, we need a press conference. We need an emergency meeting. Homework needs to go.
Where we go from here
We need to use classroom time to the max. We need to inspire students to practice — and teach them how to study and how to manage their time so they can make the most of it. That practice should be aimed at what they actually need help with, not simply at what was assigned, but because they see it is necessary to get to the next level.
That takes some maturity, yes. But why should we lower the bar? The time is to raise it high. These children are capable of far more than we are asking of them.
Let’s help them aim for the moon.
I know this may sound controversial to some. I hope it was helpful.
Take care, and have a blessed day.
Amos Tarfa leads the Learning Institute for Excellence and created the Counting to Calculus program, a mastery-paced, year-round framework for K–12 mathematics.