There are many reasons why there should be no homework in America. For one,(as being a Freshman in high school), all homework does for me is make me stressed and more worried about finishing homework instead of preparing for that big final that will determine where I'm headed in life. Homework doesn't just affect students, it also affects teachers. If homework was eliminated, teachers would be able to spend more time doing more important things like dealing with their personal life, doing their hobbies, and even preparing more helpful lessons for students instead of grading those papers. Let's take a look at a country that has no homework: Finland. Finland's graduation rate is a staggering 93% while America's 75%(http://neomam.com/blog/there-is-no-homework-in-finland/). Students in Finland are more happy, more educated, and have more time to be kids and enjoy themselves. In Finland, 2 in 3 students attend college. The test scores in Finland outrank any other countries. According to a 2012 PISA polling(http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248329823/u-s-high-school-students-slide-in-math-reading-science), the United States is below the OECD average and has a very low performance improvement rate. Finland is above the OECD average. In New York, before a student even reaches high school, they would have already taken 10 standardized tests. While in Finland, the only standardized test a student takes is when they are already 16. Another great thing about Finland is the teachers. Teachers in Finland are required to have at least a Masters degree while in America, only a Bachelors(https://www.teach.org/certification?gclid=Cj0KEQiA89u1BRDz8enExq7rvN0BEiQAaFCHmxI4CUVa_6q4GDdG23oHxPGbbQJ53jhuu5X0WOFgSI4aApKx8P8HAQ). This means only 10% of graduates are accepted to be teachers. The 10% of teachers are much more motivated, even as much as lawyers and doctors are. An average U.S. 5th grader has around 50min. of homework a day, while in Finland, students rarely start getting homework in their teens. In Finland there is a 1:12 ratio of teachers to students allowing more teacher to student interaction while in New York, the ratio is 1:24. Homework is only a tool for memorization for a student that they can use for a test, but what happens after the test? That's right, the student "dumps" it out of their mind because they no longer need it. However, in a country like Finland, students are needed to pay more attention in class because they need the knowledge to seep in their brains and retain it rather than just memorize it and throw it away later. Overall, homework is a useless tool used in the schools of America and should be eliminated for those reasons.