No, I'm not being facetious. If you read The Homework Myth you'll find out that homework in grade school is a net neutral from a learning perspective. The benefit is that you get more practice. The downfall is that without supervision it is as easy to practice the wrong thing as the right thing, and practicing the wrong thing sets you back.
Studies have shown that, in practice, the net effect is that homework causes academic performance to become more strongly correlated with the parent's socioeconomic status, but overall across the whole population there is no net change in learning outcomes. Plus assigning homework is a source of stress for families that causes students to dislike school. The strength of these effects is roughly linear in the amount of homework assigned, all of the way down to no homework at all. (Instead students have to do in class exercises, under the supervision of teachers. Which they have to do anyways.)
The reason for that is that homework causes enforcing correct practice to be the job of the parents, and so how well the parents understand the material determines whether homework benefits or hurts. While my family educationally benefits from the trend (me and my wife can assist correct practice), reduced stress and inequality makes no homework seem fair to me.
And hence the problem underscored by this article. With homework, when we teach students different techniques, we need to think both about how easily the students will learn them, and how well the parents will understand them. Without homework the parents lose that responsibility, and we're free to just focus on what works for the kids.