Suhail drives a cab seven days a week. He works the night shift, so his wife, Ms. Shahida, has to take care of their children's needs, which often involve help with their homework. For Ms. Shahida, who struggles with English and hopes to enroll in an English language class, helping her first and second graders can be hard.

"I get frustrated with this problem of home work, "says Suhail, while speaking to Sada E Pakistan. He added that his wife couldn't pass the driving test for a learners permit because of her English level. "It's the same case with homework; she can not read it if it is written in English – helping the children is something else," Suhail said.

Many parents in the Pakistani-American community find themselves helpless when it comes to helping their children with homework. For one, in most cases the parents' first language is Urdu not English. Second, many parents were schooled in different education systems in another part of the world making homework assignments seem foreign even for those parents who speak English well.

The Department of Education (DOE) offers assistance to both students and parents having difficulty with homework. DOE officials have tried to involve parents in their children's learning process in addition to urging parents to network with other parents.

A survey conducted by MetLife, Inc. in 2007, "The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: The homework experience," which polled teachers, students and parents, found that almost everyone believed in the value of homework. Homework was viewed as an essential part of student learning. Minority parents, in particular, had high expectations for the impact of homework, and were more likely than non-minority parents to believe that homework would help students in school as well as in the future.

[Is this a different survey from the one above? If so, what is it called? (It is the same survey! JC) In this Survey of Parents, a nationally representative sample of 501 parents of children in grades K through 12 was interviewed. Interviews were conducted online.

Parents of children in elementary and secondary school believed in the relationship between homework and classroom learning. Nine out of 10 parents, 89 percent, agreed that doing homework helped students learn more in school. However, the racial/ethnic background of parents was a factor in their perceptions on this issue. Ninety-seven percent of Black and Hispanic parents believed that homework increased a student's capacity to learn, while only 85 percent of white parents agreed.

According to documents on the DOE's website, during the 2007-2008 school year, 205,353 students were eligible for Supplemental Educational Services (SES), and 80,350 students in 274 schools received after-school or home tutoring services, free of charge,

At PS 217 in Ditmas Park, a neighborhood in Brooklyn where a majority of the students are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and South Asian descent, more than half of the 1,300 students utilized the free after-school and home tutoring services that were available. The school was also designated "in need of improvement," making it eligible for supplemental educational services like academic intervention.

Students who qualify can receive assistance in reading, language arts and mathematics free-of-charge, before or after school, on the weekends, or online. These programs are being offered to students in their homes, their schools, and in various community centers, but for limited time.

Asghar Chishti, whose three children go to PS 217, said free tutoring at home is good. Chishti wishes the services would last longer.

"My kids get 40 hours of free tutoring at home, but it's not enough," he said. "I shall have to hire a private tutor, as I did before, when the limited time offer [is] over."

Some parents still feel left out.

Agha Saleh, whose two children attend PS 84 in Astoria, said free tutoring and after-school programs do not help immigrant parents.

"Although with the passage of time kids get used to doing homework themselves, sometimes they need help and at that point, we find ourselves helpless," Saleh said.

Dial-a-teacher, one service that is being offered, allows children to have their homework questions answered over the phone, four days a week, from Monday to Thursday, between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Shazia Ahmad, whose children are in first and third grades in PS 207 in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, found the hours that the service is available to be insufficient.

"Dial-a-teacher service is not available on Friday, that means four days in month one can not benefit from this service," Shazia said, adding that Urdu-speaking immigrant parents had no use for this service because it does not provide help by anyone who can speak and understand Urdu.

While the DOE is a big promoter of homework, some are still questioning its usefulness. Harris Cooper, a homework researcher at Duke University, found there was little evidence that homework at the elementary school level had an impact on school achievement, and only modest benefits for junior high school students. However, Cooper found that homework at the high school level did have a great impact on achievement.

Despite these mixed results, many teachers and administrators believe that assigning homework offers other benefits besides high achievement. Homework teaches children to take responsibility for tasks and to work independently, advocates say. It teaches them to plan and organize tasks, manage their time, and to make choices and solve problems – all skills that serve children well in school and throughout their life as adults.

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, a staff attorney at Advocates for Children, a pro immigrant students' rights project, recalled his conversation with the principal of a Manhattan community school, which had done an informal survey on homework support during parent teacher conferences. The school devised a homework plan based on parents' needs where children could do the homework for the classes in which their parents had little experience, at school, during homeroom, or in an after-school program. With subjects that their parents could help them with, students did that work at home.

"Schools can find creative ways to address the homework issue depending on what is going on in their community," Benjamin-Gomez said.

In the Pakistani community, where reading homework is the most common problem, Benjamin-Gomez suggested that local schools create a homework guide for parents translated into Urdu. Parents could also set up meetings with their child's teachers, and ask for an interpreter in advance, so as to discuss the reading problems and come up with a plan together, he said.

Benjamin-Gomez reminded parents that they have the right to interpreters and translated materials from their children's schools, and that they should request these materials that might help them with their child's education.

"Be careful about parent involvement. Consider the time and resources parents have before requiring their involvement," said Mr. Cooper, adding that working parents may have little time for a direct homework role. Parents with little education may have an especially hard time mentoring their children, he said. Students who are doing well in school may get the most benefit from doing homework by themselves."

This article was written as part of an education reporting fellowship granted by New York Community Media Alliance.