Comparing Outcomes of an Alternative School Program Offered with and without Intensive Family Involvement / Victor G. Aeby, Bruce A. Thyer and Tracy Carpenter-Aeby.

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an alternative-school program. The research compared 1 year of the program, where there was no parental involvement, with a second year, which included family-based interventions. It was hypothesized that family involvement would generate greater improvement in students' psychosocial functioning, academic performance, and attendance, and would reduce the number of high-school dropouts. Two cohorts of students referred to an alternative-school program for chronically disruptive youth received either the standard program or the standard program with intensive family involvement. Outcome measures included self-esteem, locus of control, depression, grades, attendance, and eventual dropout from school. Although demographically similar to the control group at pretests, the experimental group evidenced statistically significant improvements in locus of control, grade-point averages, attendance, and reduced dropout rate, relative to the control group. However, the overall effects of change within each group for self-esteem, depression, locus of control, grades, and attendance were low for both cohorts, so low as to make it difficult to justify the appreciable resources that went into providing the family psycho-educational services. Nevertheless, the results suggest the importance of family involvement in improving the school performance of chronically disruptive youth. (Includes 54 references.) (RJM)

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