MONTGOMERY, ALA. — Feagin Johnson Jr. quickly came to his 11th-grade daughter’s aid when she needed help with homework from the first pages of her thick Algebra II textbook, but his fast response came with a warning.
“I told her I’m glad I helped you on page one because on page 101 you’ll be on your own,” the assistant state superintendent of education said with a laugh.
He said that through sixth grade a parent can “pretty much help them with anything, but when they get up to secondary and there’s biology, chemistry, physics, Algebra I, Algebra II — oh boy.” But parents in Alabama and a growing number of other states no longer need fear homework helplessness. Thanks to the spread of online tutoring services that are now increasingly free, courtesy of government and private funds, stumped students can reach out to resourceful tutors across the U.S. and in some cases around the world.
The number of libraries offering free online tutoring has snowballed as libraries look to make long-lasting connections with their communities, said Jan Sanders, who directs the Pasadena library system in California.
“We want to provide that link, that opportunity for people and a learning environment to come together in a friendly, equitable way,” said Sanders, who is former president of the Public Library Association. “This is one way for that to happen. It’s not the final answer, it’s not the only thing we do. But it’s an auxiliary service that’s proving to be helpful.”
Eighth-grader Samuel Mutch turned to the homework help site the library system in Casper, Wyo., provides through New York-based when he needed help on a geography research paper on tsunamis last school year and the 13-year-old “got the best scores ever,” his mother said.
“He got the highest score in the class, which he’s never gotten on a writing assignment,” Kate Mutch said. “I did make him tell his teacher he used the homework help because I didn’t want her to think somebody else had done it!” Alabama’s free online tutoring program was recently expanded to all students, who can log on to , the site offered through the Alabama Public Library Service.
Users typically gain access to the sites by typing in their ZIP codes, then putting down their grade levels and the subjects they need help with. They are then connected to a tutor — the wait time varies depending on how many users are logged on — and spend an average of about 20-25 minutes per session.
Most companies have tutors available online 2-4/7 but they vary in the hours they are available to individual states and students.
Lynn Giese, president-elect of the National Tutoring Association, said use of tutoring in general has grown with the entry of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 and that online tutoring, by extension, has increased as well.
Giese said more research is needed on the effectiveness of online tutoring and whether it is helping students score higher on overall exams and not just the individual assignments they seek help with.
Proponents cite students’ ease with computers and instant messaging technology as reasons they feel comfortable when young people seek help online. But others have concerns.
“There’s not really a clearinghouse for quality and effectiveness of various tutoring models,” said Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology. “That’s not unusual for an industry in its infancy, but that places a larger burden on educators and on parents to ensure that the activity going on online is appropriate and that it’s worth the time and fiscal investments.” He said other drawbacks include the lack of a connection that students get with a live, face-to-face tutor, but parents can help minimize that by being more involved and sometimes sitting in the tutoring sessions.
“In the same way that you wouldn’t drop your kid off for lessons with a tennis pro or piano teacher but not ever talk with them about it or how it’s going, I think the same thing ought to happen when going into an online environment,” he said.
Traditional one-on-one tutoring is “the best way to teach” but unfortunately it’s not cost effective for schools, said Mike Zenanko, who is publications director of the Association for the Tutoring Profession, a certification and trade group that began in 2003.
“If you meet with a student one-on-one, you can be sure you’re meeting all their needs and it’s great,” said Zenanko, who also directs the Instructional Services Unit at Jacksonville State University. “But we mass-educate our people and that’s the way it is.” Alabama library director Rebecca Mitchell said the service is free for users but costs $500,000 a year, with $300,000 coming from state funds and the rest covered by a federal grant.
Considering there have been more than 200,000 online sessions so far and the average cost of traditional tutoring is $35 per hour, Mitchell figures the program has kept about $7 million in Alabamians’ pocketbooks.
“There are not many parents who can keep shelling out money when (their children) need that extra boost, that extra assistance, and this is a fantastic program,” she said.
Susan Patrick, a spokeswoman with the North American Council for Online Learning, said national data isn’t kept for online tutoring specifically. But she said that form of tutoring has played a big role in the 30 percent growth that online learning has seen in K-12 over the past decade.
Mutch, the Wyoming mother, said her son is not the only one who has benefited from the online help. The Casper librarian said she and her colleagues were recently stumped trying to figure out the percentage of something and turned to their computers.
“We finally said ‘You know what? This is crazy, let’s just go on homework help,”‘ Mutch said laughing. “And he didn’t give us the answer, but he walked us through and we all felt like we were back in 6th grade. So yeah, they’ll help anybody!”
