The effects of daily homework assignments on the acquisition of basic skills by students with learning disabilities

Examined in this two-study investigation was the effectiveness of supplemental homework assignments on the acquisition of basic skills by students with diagnosed learning disabilities (LD). In Experiment 1, an adapted alternating treatments design was used to investigate the efficacy of unstructured homework assignments with 6 elementary school-aged students having basic math problems. Although the impact of the homework assignments differed across students, three factors maximized the effectiveness of the homework assignments: rate of homework completion, percentage correct on the homework assignments, and the rate of acquisition of the content being presented. Experiment 2, designed to formally test the effectiveness of homework assignments structured specifically to address these identified factors, confirmed that homework can be employed to increase the effectiveness of direct instruction sequences with students diagnosed as LD.