Bee Exclusive: Tutoring Perk Ends for Kids of Legislators: Education Program, Utilizing a Hidden Link, Was Provided Free.
By Jim Sanders, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Nov. 20–A little-known political perk has offered free online tutoring in mathematics, science, English and social studies to the children of legislators and their staffs for the past two years.
A hidden link on the California State Library Web site has provided access to the service, which will be discontinued Wednesday, largely because the secret has leaked and soaring usage by students with no connection to the Legislature is forcing the tutoring firm to pay the site’s ever-larger tab.
“All of a sudden we’re paying for kids who we can tell — (by Web addresses) — don’t even live in the state,” said Jennifer Kohn of New York-based tutor.com, a private vendor that offers the service, “Live Homework Help,” in 43 states.
Relatively stable usage of several hundred students per month skyrocketed to nearly 2,000 in October, prompting the vendor to disconnect the legislators’ site.
Online homework help was relatively rare in September 2005 when the vendor created the hidden link for lawmakers with the consent of State Librarian Susan Hildreth. At the time, only about one of every five city or county library systems in California offered the program to patrons.
But the service has become more accessible, and many legislators now can obtain it through their local library — without a Capitol Web page.
Live Homework Help is available in about 40 percent of local library systems, including many of the state’s largest cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento.
Roughly 20 million of California’s 37 million residents may use it, provided they have a library card with a password that ensures its users live locally.
Tutors don’t work for free, though students pay nothing for the help. Libraries typically pay a blanket fee based on the size of their service area, Hildreth said.
For lawmakers and their staffers, tutor.com has absorbed the cost, which is not required to be reported as a political donation because state law provides an exemption for gifts of information.
Ted Costa of People’s Advocate, a political watchdog group, said growing public availability of online tutoring does not mean it was proper for the state to retain a hidden link for lawmakers and their staffs.
“No way,” Costa said. “There’s a message there that you’re special, that you’re different from the rest of the people.”
Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said that creating a Web page intended only for legislators and their staff apparently is not illegal but raises questions of favoritism for giving a single vendor an exclusive connection to the Capitol.
“If they gave every vendor that chance, it would be OK, but why give only one vendor the opportunity to use the state’s resources?” he asked.
Kohn said the initial concept of a Capitol-only site was to provide a showcase to legislators for a brief trial period.
“It was just up there and wasn’t really being tracked, to be honest,” she said. “Not that many people were using it, so it didn’t really register on (any) radar screen. … So they just left it up.”
The hidden link was launched without fanfare, and “we just told the Legislature and their staff about this service,” Hildreth said.
No passwords were necessary to use it, however, so outsiders easily could request tutoring if they knew to type a single code word onto the State Library’s Web address.
Word eventually spread.
Nobody knows what touched off the recent flood of users, but a Google search of the words “California” and “Live Homework Help” disclosed the Capitol site Monday, and at least two legislators have published the address in their community bulletins.
Hildreth said she approved the hidden link because tutor.com was the primary vendor of online homework help, the Web page would cost the state nothing, and it would acquaint legislators with a valuable program.
“I saw it as a great opportunity to help educate some of our policymakers and their staff regarding a wonderful service that we still are trying to deploy to every student in California,” she said.
Hildreth said she and tutor.com also were aware that online tutoring might need state funding eventually. The service typically receives a federal subsidy for its first three years, declining in amount each year, after which participating libraries must pick up the entire tab.
Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, proposed unsuccessful legislation this year to commit $3 million in state funds annually to expand online tutoring to libraries statewide.
Galgiani said she was not lobbied by tutor.com but felt, after talking to librarians, that online homework assistance would appeal to kids familiar with cellular phones and text messaging.
Live Homework Help does not ask users to identify themselves, so no records detail who requested the 4,853 tutoring sessions from the Capitol’s hidden link in fiscal 2006-07 — or how many were repeat customers.
Nearly a dozen Capitol offices were contacted by The Bee, but staffers said they knew of nobody who had requested a 20-minute tutoring session.
Live Homework Help has a network of more than 2,200 tutors, including certified teachers, college professors and college students. The program targets fourth-grade through 12th-grade homework, including Advanced Placement courses.
“I think it’s an excellent, excellent program,” said Gary Shaffer, director of marketing for the Sacramento Public Library system.
Former Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, said he suspects the hidden link was meant to lay the groundwork for millions in future funding.
A brief demonstration would have been fine, but providing the hidden link for so long “strikes me more as just an attempt to influence the process and provide a special little perk,” he said.
Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, said it is not surprising that librarians offering a new service to children statewide would want lawmakers to “know about it and see if it works.”
Creating a hidden link on a state Web site, however, sends the wrong message, he said.
“I just think that we, as legislators, have to be very careful not to appear to be using our roles to an advantage that the general public doesn’t have,” he said.
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