Homework hotlines target middle-school students
research offers recommendations for setting up successful hotline

Sally doesn’t understand a word problem. She needs help, and mom and dad won’t be home for another hour. So Sally dials the homework hotline offered by her school district, and a tutor guides her through the problem. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have conducted a study to determine whether American students’ experiences with homework hotlines are similar to Sally’s.

"Homework hotlines have been around for a while," said Kelle Reach, a fourth-year doctoral student in child clinical psychology at MU and the leader of the study. "We were led to the project because there hadn’t been a representative picture of homework hotlines. We wanted to know how they work, how they’re set up, staffed and evaluated. We also wanted to know what subjects and grades are targeted."

Under the direction of Harris Cooper, a nationally renowned homework expert, Reach and researchers conducted interviews with directors or other administrative staff of 40 homework hotlines in school districts and communities across the United States.

The researchers discovered almost all homework hotlines, whether administered by school districts, corporations or municipal governments, target middle-school students and focus on mathematics. Mathematics help is consistently offered in services that provide tutoring on several subjects and some hotlines offer mathematics as the only subject. Reach thinks hotlines target middle-school students because they are home alone in the afternoon more than younger children. At this age, Reach said, youth are experiencing some independence but often cannot access tangible resources that are available to older teenagers.

Reach said caller anonymity makes it difficult to measure the hotlines’ impact on academic performance. Hotline staff provided anecdotal evidence that their services benefit callers, but the researchers could not state conclusively that hotlines have a positive effect on academic performance. For example, Reach said the research could not test whether there was a link between calls to the hotline and students’ handing in homework assignments.

Interestingly, the researchers also found that many students call homework hotlines simply to have someone to talk to about non-academic issues. Moreover, some parents use homework hotlines for assistance in helping their children with homework. Reach recommends more homework hotlines studies to determine if and how much the services benefit students academically. The researchers hope to provide their data to groups considering launching a hotline.

2002

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Department of Psychological Sciences

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