Mike Smith:
Steve, how did you determine whether homeschool instruction was effective for ADHD children?
Dr. Steven Duvall:
Well, first of all, Mike, we closely monitored the behaviors of homeschool students during instructional periods. And to provide a standard for comparison, we also observed the behavior of public school students with ADHD after matching them by race, family income, grades, sex, IQ, and academic functioning level. Most importantly, we measured the amount of time that each student was actively engaged in the curriculum. And by that, we mean the amount of time that students spent reading, writing, and talking about the subject matter. Now this was important because the more a student is academically engaged, the more they’ll learn. But another thing we monitored closely was student-teacher ratios because typically, the lower the student-teacher ratio, the higher the academic engagement.
And Mike, we found that homeschool students with ADHD were academically engaged at least twice as often as a public school student, and this occurred at least in part because the student-teacher ratios were 10 times lower in homeschools.
Mike:
Steve, that’s great news for homeschoolers. Listeners, join us next time as we continue our discussion of homeschooling and ADHD. I’m Mike Smith.
