Direct instruction tutoring program shows improvements in academic achievement for children in out-of-home care

Children in foster care are at increased risk of poor educational outcomes compared to their non-maltreated peers. A randomized control trial was conducted across nine child welfare organizations in Ontario to determine whether primary school age foster children’s post-test reading and math scores would improve as a result of an individualized direct-instruction tutoring intervention delivered by foster parents.

Flynn et al. (2012) evaluated the Teach Your Children Well (TYCW) tutoring program, with a total of 77 children placed in foster care, who were randomly assigned to the tutoring group (n=42) and the wait-list control group (n=35). Workers and supervisors nominated child-foster parent pairs, aged six to 13 in grades two to seven, as candidates for the study believed to

be likely to benefit from tutoring from one foster parent. Children identified as being either a “very strong student”, a “very weak student” or “very behaviourally disturbed” were excluded from the study.

Academic achievement was measured at pre-test and post-test using the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT4), which measures word reading, sentence comprehension, spelling and math computation and yields a reading composite score. The foster parents in the intervention group were also required to report the number of lessons completed during the intervention year in reading, the number of weeks spent on reading and math tutoring, the average amount of time spent weekly on different components of the tutoring program, and their use of the tutoring supports made available to them during the school year. Analysis was undertaken using ANCOVA, controlling for differences in pre-test scores, to determine whether the tutoring program contributed to improvements in academic achievement scores. Results indicated improvements in some areas of academic achievement for the tutoring group. Tutoring had a substantively important effect on reading composite scores that was significant at the level of a trend. In addition, a statistically significant relationship was found for both sentence comprehension and math computation. No significant effects were found for the tutoring program on either word reading or spelling.

Similarly, Harper & Schmidt (2012) conducted a separate randomized study of the same tutoring program, but replaced individual tutoring with small group instruction led by university student volunteers. The sample primarily consisted of Aboriginal children and used multi-level modeling to analyze the effects of the tutoring program on academic achievement scores. Unlike the results found by Flynn et al. (2012), the TWC tutoring program had a significant effect on word reading and spelling, but no significant effects were found on sentence comprehension and math computation. The inconsistencies in findings may be accounted for by a number of factors including the tutoring format used (individual vs. group) and differences in the implementation of the reading and math components of the program.

Overall, the findings of both studies indicate that the TYCW tutoring program may be an effective intervention to improve academic achievement for children in foster care. The small sample size in both studies limits the ability to generalize findings; however, the positive improvements in academic achievement scores offer important considerations for the use of both foster parents and students to help improve education outcomes for children in foster care.