No. 5/2011: Homework assignment and student achievement in OECD countries

Abstract

By using data from 16 OECD countries who participated in TIMSS 2007, this paper analyzes the effect of assigning homework on student achievement. The identification rests on within-student variation in homework across subjects in a sample of students who have the same teacher in both mathematics and science. Unobserved teacher and student characteristics are conditioned out of the model by applying a difference-in-difference approach. We find a modest, but statistically significant effect of homework..