Two years ago, Sofia Johnson was on the campaign trail with her mom Pilar Schiavo, who was running for her current seat in the California State Assembly. 

When discussing what a lawmaker has the power to do in the state, then 9-year-old Sofia asked one of the most important questions to any school-aged kid.

“I went to my mom, and I was like ‘hey, can you get rid of homework’ and she was like ‘no, we can’t get rid of homework,’” Sofia said.

While Schiavo can’t get rid of homework, she is doing what she can to help ease the burden put on students by introducing a bill to reform schools’ current homework policy.

The Healthy Homework Act would require school districts to consider the impacts homework has on students’ well-being by promoting evidence-based policies instead of just overloading students with busy work.

“They have to also consider impact [on] mental health, impact on physical health, impact on equity and for students with learning disabilities,” Schavo said. “We think that all of these things need to be considered when we’re coming up with homework policies.”

The lawmaker adds the current homework requirements have caused an unnecessary amount of stress for children, as she has seen in her own home.

“[Sofia’s] doing homework all night until it’s time for bed. She’s eating dinner while she’s doing homework instead of our family having time together and having family dinner,” Schiavo noted.

Dr. Denise Pope is a senior lecturer at Stanford University’s School of Education. The mother of three and former teacher researches the impacts of homework and has found how much stress the workload has put on students.

“It’s often in the top three [of stresses for students], if not the first one. We know that stress is connected to mental health,” Pope said.

Other research shows that homework is not very effective in helping students learn the material, especially in today’s world.

“When it’s busy work and you’re not engaged in it — you’re going to copy, you’re going to cheat,” Pope said.

Her research also found that 57% of 15,000 California high school students that were surveyed reported that homework prevented them from getting enough sleep and 45% cited homework as a major source of stress. 

It’s for those reasons teachers like Valencia High School English teacher Casey Cuny have already started to change how they assign homework. Cuny says he’s almost eliminated homework from his lesson plans entirely.

“I’ve seen no drop-off in performance, I’ve seen no drop-off on SAT scores or AP scores. I really just see more engagement and happier kids,” Cuny shared.

Cuny won the 2024 California ‘Teacher of the Year’ award and recently traveled to Sacramento to support the Healthy Homework Act. He says the measure will allow educators to “rethink homework and a way to rethink what is meaningful.”

As for Sofia, she says easing up on homework will allow her to explore other meaningful interests.

“I’d like to spend more time learning languages because it’s a weird hobby of mine — I like studying countries and languages,” Sofia said.

The Healthy Homework Act passed out of the Assembly Education Committee and currently faces no opposition.

If signed into law, it will go into effect in 2027.