It's no longer shocking to hear of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorders and others simply facing a big test -- taking ADHD medicine to boost their performance in school.

But new studies point to a problem: There's little evidence that the drugs actually improve academic outcomes.

Children with ADHD not taking stimulants did far worse than kids taking medication in tasks that involved remembering scenes from a story they both heard and saw illustrated.

Kids taking medication did just as well as control children without ADHD, according to the study published in April in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

For the first year of the study, the 8 and 9-year old children who received medication and a combination treatment saw greater improvements in ADHD symptoms than the other two groups.

But the effects largely don't seem to translate into the classroom, especially in the long run.

In one major, U. S. government-funded study known as the MTA that looked at the long term effects of ADHD treatment, 579 children with the condition were randomized to one of three different kinds of treatment or a control group for 14 months.

But any benefit of the drug on symptoms dissipated by Year Three.

Kids taking medicine also exhibited some improvement in educational outcomes in that first year

But those who take medication and study at the last minute don't do any better.

Other studies have shown that kids who take ADHD medication and study early for an exam tend to do just as well, if not better, than kids without ADHD.

Together, these findings suggest that medication alone isn't enough to improve academic performance.

The medicine may help with focus, but it doesn't help with deciding what to focus on, experts say.

Rather, it needs to be coupled with skills training, such as learning how to organize or prioritize. Thank you.