Many students assigning their homework to AI

The old and new homework debate

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SEVENTH-GRADERS Rylee Tucker, left, and Phelps Mauricio savor snow cones at their Inglewood school.

(JULIANA YAMADA Los Angeles Times)

Lewis & Clark College in Oregon.

“It’s always been important to think about how to create assignments that are meaningful and deepen learning, and the increasing use of AI makes this more true than ever,” Galloway said.

Many educators remain resolutely old-school on homework, with views similar to those of Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the California-based Pacific Research Institute.

“Imagine receiving math instruction for just an hour a day,” Izumi said. “Can all math learning stick in a student’s brain in that hour? Without homework, many students will not develop the knowledge base necessary for academic success.”

In Izumi’s view, students aren't getting enough homework. “Besides skills and knowledge, homework teaches students discipline, organization, time management, responsibility and accountability.”

There is research supporting this view. Multiple studies have found that students who did their homework were more likely to manage tasks and time well.

But Izumi also has raised the alarm that pervasive AI use could counteract the benefits of homework by enabling cut-and-paste laziness.

Aaliyah said such concerns are legitimate.

“A lot of my classmates, in math... they don't really care about how they do it. They just want to get it done,” she said. “So then when they get tested on it” — without access to AI — “they won't really know what to do.”

Emilio Torres, Aaliyah’s classmate, said such an experience “might wake them up for like one lesson, but they easily relapse on AI and do it again, and the cycle just repeats itself.”

He uses AI selectively. He will, for example, ask AI to create study questions for him to research.