The Impact of Homework on Student Achievement: Evidence from 57 countries

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of homework on student achievement using data from 57 countries that participated in PISA 2006. For that, we use a within-student identification strategy that allows us to account for most confounding influences at the country, school and student level. We find that homework has a positive and highly statistically significant effect on student test scores. The heterogeneity analysis provides evidence of an uneven distribution of the homework effect among different subsamples. Specifically, we can conclude that there is a larger homework effect for boys than for girls, for private schools than for public schools, and for developing countries than for their developed counterparts.