Running head: CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

A Critique of Families and Schools Together: an Experimental Analysis of a ParentMediated Multi-Family Group Program for American Indian Children and Families and
Schools Together: an Experimental Study of Multi-Family Support Groups for Children
at Risk
Melissa Martin
University of Calgary

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

Families and Schools Together: an Experimental Analysis of a Parent-Mediated

Multi-family Group Program for American Indian Children
Kratochwill, McDonald, Levin, Young Bear-Tibbetts, and Demaray (2004)
completed a three-year, randomized intervention study with three American Indian
Nations in Wisconsin in collaboration with the College of Menominee Nation. The goals
of this study were to increase academic performance among American Indian children
ages 4 to 9 years old and to reduce classroom problem behaviors. Fifty pairs of these
children and their families were universally recruited to participate and were randomly
assigned to complete the Families and Schools Together (FAST) Program or to have their
child serve as non-FAST controls (Kratochwill et al., 2004). Teachers were also
recruited to help in the study where they along with research observers and testers were
blind towards the participants condition status.
Literature Review
Kratochwill et al. (2004) provided a thorough description of the FAST program as
an activity-based collaborative program that helps to build layers of protective factors
around at-risk children, including intensive parental involvement to promote childrens
resiliency towards adversity and reduce long-term negative outcomes. They identified
how each activity in the FAST Program is based on research from Bronfenbrenners
(1979) social ecology model of the child along with its interactions with family stress,
family systems, social support, behavioral parenting techniques, as well as stress,
isolation, and poverty. However, Kratochwill et al. (2004) did not elaborate on how this
research influenced the development of the specific activities within FAST. More in
depth background research of the fundamentals of the intervention program would have
been beneficial for the introduction of this research article. The authors also included the
philosophy of the FAST Program, which incorporated the belief that all parents love their
children and that parenting processes can be interrupted by circumstances beyond

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

parental control (i.e. stress and isolation). The authors successfully explained how the
activities of the FAST Program help to achieve these goals through positive social
support, hosting a family meal, offering one-on-one play time, and respite.
Kratochwill et al. (2004) also identified how the curriculum of the multi-family
meetings in FAST is derived from family therapy principles, techniques from child
psychiatry, and group work theory. No specific research was given to support this
statement. They recognized the reasoning for involving schools in the FAST Program as
being due to the fact that schools rarely invite families to act as a partner in helping their
child succeed in the classroom. Kratochwill et al. (2004) reviewed the research on the
relationship between family factors and student achievement and determined that there
were five critical factors: (a) positive parental expectations, (b) structure in the home
(which supports learning), (c) positive affective environment in the home, (d) effective
discipline, and (e) parent involvement at home and with the school (p. 362). They also
referenced six types of parental involvement activities that schools can work to achieve
(i.e. communicating, parenting, learning at home, volunteering, decision making, and
collaboration with the community) (Kratochwill et al, 2004). Half of these levels are
directly addressed in FAST: parenting, communicating, and collaborating with the
community (Kratochwill et al., 2004, p. 362).
In regards to introducing the FAST Program to the three American Indian Nations
in this study, they provided some statistics about the sample population, where over 50%
of such children across the United States will drop out of school and that they have the
highest dropout rates of any students of color (Kratochwill et al., 2004). Learning gaps
between skill and academic performance begin in elementary school where
approximately 33% are classified as learning disabled, 19% as mentally retarded, and
20% to 25% experience significant emotional disorders (SED) (Kratochwill et al., 2004).
No research or statistics were presented specifically in regards to the three American

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

Indian Nations that were sampled. This oversight was most likely due to the
acknowledgement that few studies involving major research institutions collaborating
with tribal colleges have been conducted (Kratochwill et al., 2004). However, some
specific background information on the communities would have been beneficial to gain
further understanding of their specific circumstances and difficulties.
Methodology
Kratochwill et al. (2004) openly and universally recruited 100 families with
children in grades K-2 at a school event. Home visits were conducted to those families
who responded to fliers from the school event and the parents provided written consent
for their children to participate. Teachers of these children also received an in-service
about the intervention program and volunteered to participate by completing the Child
Behavior Checklist (CBCL) on the children in their classes which was used to help create
matched pairs of students within seven different FAST cycles (weekly meetings of multifamily groups over eight weeks) implemented sequentially over a 3-year period
(Kratochwill et al., 2004).
The matching characteristics on the rating scale included school, grade level,
gender, tribal heritage, and teacher ratings on the internalizing and externalizing behavior
scales of the CBCL. The use of a standardized scale like the CBCL helps ensure that
results are reliable. Even though there is a risk of bias by utilizing input from specific
teachers as a basis for matching up pairs of candidates, the authors stated that to the best
of the researchers ability, all teachers, observers, and testers were kept blind
concerning participants condition status in regards to participating in the FAST program
or being non-FAST controls (Kratochwill et al., 2004). There were also no initial
statistical differences between the FAST and control participants within and across the
cycles of the study. In general, higher base rates of academic and social problems were
found among all of the youth in the targeted schools for this study. Therefore all of them

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

were eligible to participate in the FAST Program, which helped maintain the reliability of
this research study. Teachers and parents received adequate information about the nature
of their participation in this study and they all gave their written permission to ensure that
the ethic principles of informed consent were met.
Kratochwill et al. (2004) disclosed that 60% of the FAST Program was adapted to
meet the specific cultural needs of the three American Indian Nations and included a
figure in the article that provided a thorough explanation of these modifications. Faculty
from the College of Menominee Nation participated in every step of the research
planning and helped adapt the program to each American Indian population, which was
beneficial for ensuring that ethical principles were followed and that their cultural beliefs
and practices were respected. One of the core components of the FAST Program that
cannot be changed is that there must be cultural representation among the workers.
Therefore, tribal members were trained to help to carry out the program. However, the
integrity of the FAST Program may be at risk since not all of the course components were
being carried out in the same standardized manner as in other studies with FAST.
Kratochwill et al. (2004) stated that 40% of the core elements of the program were
implemented in a standardized fashion and that the 60% - 40% division represents the
flexibility for adapting a research-based program to fit the local sites needs, which is
recommended in the FAST Trainer Manual.
Certified FAST trainers conducted training sessions within each of the three
school settings over the course of the three-year project. These trainers also directly
observed three of the eight sessions within each cycle to ensure that the program was
being facilitated in the standardized guidelines that were outlined in the training sessions.
Further measures of program integrity were taken by these FAST trainers through the use
of FAST process evaluation forms and the Practice Profile, a program implementation

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

scale that assesses the integrity of treatment throughout the FAST Program operations
(Kratochwill et al., 2004).
Instrumentation was based on four domains: (a) pretest participants and provide
information on sample characteristics, (b) assess the FAST intervention process and its
integrity, (c) assess social and academic outcomes (i.e. the independent variables), and (d)
measure social validation (Kratochwill et al., 2004, p. 365). The children and parents
were not screened for eligibility for participation in the research, which may cause
concern as to whether or not all of the participants met the necessary criteria for this
study. The authors emphasized that several standardized measures, including the CBCL
and the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), served a dual purpose of providing
descriptive information and pretest data for the participants. Other standardized
assessments were used to measure the other variables of this research study to ensure the
reliability and validity of the FAST program such as the Ecobehavioral Assessment
System (EBASS), Curriculum-based Measurement (CBM), and Teacher Report Form
(TRF). There were also 9- and 12-month follow-up assessments to measure the longterm effectiveness of the program, which is beneficial for a longitudinal study.
Results
There were some attrition issues due to the requirement that FAST families
needed to attend six or more of the eight weekly meetings in order to graduate from the
program. Across cycles, the number of FAST graduates was 40, or 80%, with individual
cycle graduation rates ranging from 50% to 100% (Kratochwill et al., 2004, p. 371). The
authors declared that cycle graduation rates were not statistically related to selected
outcome measures although they failed to explain their reasoning behind this statement.
In order to provide a more conservative assessment of the program impact and
generalizability, the FAST and control students within a pair were yolked so that if one
pair members data was not available, then the data from the other pair member was not

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

included in the analysis (Kratochwill et al., 2004). This method seemed problematic to
the longitudinal research in this study but the authors regarded this as being the best
option for producing the least amount of bias when interpreting the results. Also, student
level analyses that were conducted were deemed to be less appropriate, which is
important to recognize since they may lead to biased results. They were reported
primarily as descriptive supplementary information.
Statistically significant results were only detected among two measures in the
immediate posttest changes when comparing the FAST and non-FAST (control) students.
The CBCL for teachers showed greater improvement among the FAST students for
aggressive behaviors and the CBCL for parents indicated improvement in somatic
symptoms for FAST children. On the 9- to 12-month follow-up, the only significant
differences among FAST and control students were the teacher-reported SSRS noted a
statistically greater improvement among FAST students in academic competence while
the CBCL for parents demonstrated improvement in withdrawal among FAST students.
The other measurement differences were not significant. It is important to note that those
teachers who completed these posttest forms months were blind to the assignment of the
students within the research study to help prevent biased results. Also, only follow-up
means were given in the results due to the fact that pretest and follow-up ratings were
generally associated with different teachers, which may be problematic to accuracy of the
teacher-reported results (Kratochwill et al., 2004).
Conclusion
Overall, Kratochwill et al. (2004) achieved only modest success with their goals
of trying to adapt the FAST Program to the American Indian students and their families,
increasing academic success among the student participants, and reducing the problem
behaviors that have been associated with school dropout. Additional research, based on
larger samples and precisely defined and measured mediating variables is warranted to

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

attempt to replicate these findings and understand the potentially contributing causal
factors (Kratochwill et al., 2004, p. 380). The nature of this study had never been
attempted before and it has provided positive implications for future research within this
target population. Longitudinal research to determine the subsequent drop out rates of
these children once they reach high school would be beneficial to try and determine longterm effects of the FAST Program throughout their remaining years in school.
The FAST Programs flexibility towards individual cultural representation was
beneficial for the research program to achieve an average of 80% graduation rates,
indicating that the participants acceptance of the program and cultural adaptation
techniques used in this program were successful. School staff members also observed a
dramatic improvement in parental involvement with their children over the course of the
program (Kratochwill et al., 2004). These results provided further support of the FAST
Program being recognized as an appropriate evidence-based intervention that can be
successfully utilized among different cultural populations.
Families and Schools Together: an Experimental Study of Multi-Family Support
Groups for Children at Risk
Kratochwill, McDonald, Levin, Scalia, and Coover (2009) evaluated a multifamily support group with children from kindergarten to third-grade at eight urban
schools in a midwestern university community. Half of the participants were universally
invited to participate in the FAST Program while the other half were children identified
by their teachers as having behavioral problems and being at risk for referral to special
education services. Children were initially paired according to five matching variables
that included teacher assessment of behavioral problems and then randomly assigned to a
control where they received ongoing school services or the FAST Program with their
families (Kratochwill et al., 2009). Parents and teachers completed pre-, post-, and 1-

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

year follow-up assessments. Data was collected and analyzed for 67 pairs of children in
FAST and control groups.
Literature Review
Kratochwill et al. (2009) provided a more comprehensive literature review about
the FAST Program than Kratochwill et al. (2004). The literature review also reflected on
Bronfenbrenners (1979) social ecology model and how it provided the foundational
background of the FAST Program. The authors also provided research on the importance
of offering prevention and early intervention programs to children to help decrease the
risk of needing specialized programming for SED later on in their schooling. To
demonstrate the effectiveness and adaptability of FAST, Kratochwill et al. (2009)
provided evaluations on three previous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of FAST,
which included the 2004 article that was previously reviewed. These RCT studies
assessed how the FAST Program could be implemented within different cultural and
socioeconomic communities in the United States, although they offered limited success in
regards to attrition rates, behavioral outcomes, and academic improvement (Kratochwill
et al., 2009).
Kratochwill et al. (2009) recognized that there was little review of education
specific variables (i.e. engaged learning time) to help promote academic achievement and
equity in school settings. The authors indicated that identification of these specific
variables was needed in order to understand how they could help influence a childs
academic progress. There has also been limited explanation of how increased parental
involvement from the FAST Program can help children improve in their performance in
school. The authors stated that they would like to address this research gap although they
do not give a clear explanation throughout this article as to how they will attempt it.
Methodology
The research design for this study was a RCT where teachers, parents, and their

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children were recruited for a 3-year study. Informed consent was obtained from teachers
and parents once approval from the partnering university and the school board was
obtained. Kindergarten to grade two teachers from the eight schools received in-service
training on the research and multi-family group intervention components of the FAST
Program. If they were interested in participating in the study, they were informed of the
nature of the research and provided written consent.
Children and their families were selected within the schools on a mixed
recruitment process through open invitation and from teacher-identified at risk checklists
using the CBCL (Kratochwill et al., 2009). Similar to the 2004 study, home visits were
conducted to provide informed consent where 172 of the 225 families (76%) were
initially successfully recruited. The children were matched in pairs in the same selection
process as the 2004 study where one was randomly enrolled in the control group and the
other was placed in the FAST Program among eight cycles over the three-year period.
The 2009 study provided more detail about the recruitment process than the 2004 article,
which ensured that participants were suitable for this program. After these recruitment
steps were completed, 134 families participated, which consisted of 67 pairs. Therefore,
this study was able to obtain a larger sample size to ensure more accurate results.
Unlike the 2004 study, this sample included different cultural and ethnic groups,
including European Caucasian (40%), African American (35%), Latino (12%), and Asian
(13%) (Kratochwill et al., 2009). This would prove to be more challenging in terms of
ensuring proper cultural representation for each of these groups. The current study did
not provide any details as to how it properly represented the different cultures throughout
the FAST Program implementation, unlike the 2004 study. Also, there was little
information provided in terms of the specific family dynamics of the participants (i.e.
single parent, step-parent, blended family, etc.). The only additional criteria provided
were that the families primarily came from low-income backgrounds.

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The instrumentation used in this study consisted of the same standardized

assessments (CBCL, TRF, and SSRS) as the 2004 study to measure the same variables to
ensure that the results would be reliable and valid. The Family Adaptability and
Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES) was developed to measure two specific aspects of
family functioning: Adaptability and Cohesion, each thought to be related to child
development (Kratochwill et al., 2009, p. 253). The Family Support Scale (FSS) was
also used to measure availability and helpfulness of social support for the family,
including informal support through friends and relatives, as well as formal support
through professional services and social programs. These additional measures were
beneficial to help researchers try and establish a link between the gap of family support
and academics among the students.
The children were matched on the basis of grade, gender, race, age, and teacher
ratings on the internalizing and externalizing behavior subscales of the CBCL and
randomly assigned either to participate in the FAST Program or to serve as non-FAST
controls (Kratochwill et al., 2009, p. 253). It would have been beneficial to provide some
other input from outside observers or even parents to determine if the students selected
were truly at risk of SED.
Results
Across all eight cycles, all 67 students who participated in the FAST program
attended at least one of the eight weekly meetings with their families (Kratochwill et al.,
2009, p. 254). The number of families that attended six or more meetings to meet
graduation requirements was 60, nearly 90% participation rate throughout the program.
These results have improved from the 80% participation rate in 2004. Also, Kratochwill
et al. (2009) reported that the quality of implementation varied within each school in
terms of intensity, enthusiasm, feel, meal presentation, songs that were sung, topics
discussed in the parent groups, activities conducted during free time, as well as other

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factors. Even though this could potentially lead to less standardization in regards to
program implementation, the authors stated that the core FAST components were in place
for all eight cycles of the program. As previously mentioned in the 2004 article, FAST
was designed to allow adaptability among some of the non-core components of the
program. University research assistants were trained and supervised by the program
developer to directly observe at each school and prove support to the teams and
determine program fidelity. These observers found that all of the eight program cycles
had ideal program integrity, based on the checklist developed and tested in previous
FAST program research (Kratochwill et al., 2009, p. 258).
In the analyses of the data, if a pair consisted of a family who dropped out of the
FAST Program, the pair was yoked, just like the 2004 study (Kratochwill et al, 2009).
Another similarity to the 2004 study was that the student-level analyses were found to be
less scientifically credible. This article attributed it to likely inflated Type I error
probabilities due to violation of independence assumptions (Kratochwill et al., 2009).
Therefore, like the previous study, these results were reported predominantly as auxiliary
descriptive information and the cycle level analyses consisting of weighted averages of
participating pairs within the cycle/school were analyzed (Kratochwill et al., 2009).
In the pretest to immediate post-test comparisons of data, only the Adaptability
variable on the FACES measurement demonstrated significant improvement among the
FAST students in comparison to the control group. In the 9- to 12-month follow-up data,
significant results were reported in the Externalizing Behavior component of the parentreported CBCL and once again on the Adaptability variable of the FACES measurement.
In the 9- to 12-month follow up reports, data was not collected on the last two cycles of
the project, which reduced the number of students associated with the teacher and parent
follow-up measures (Kratochwill et al., 2009). There was no reason given for this
omission of data but it could potentially lead to inaccurate results since not all of the

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sample population was properly represented throughout the entire length of this
longitudinal study.
The teachers who were surveyed at the 1-year follow-up study were not the same
teachers who initially identified the at-risk children for SED. All of these teachers were
blind to the participants experimental condition to try and eliminate bias. Also, just like
the 2004 study, only follow-up means were given and analyzed for the teacher reported
measures (CBCL and SSRS) since the pretest and follow-up ratings were completed by
different teachers, which also helped to limit teacher bias. Overall, in comparison to the
2004 study, Kratochwill et al. (2009) determined that the evidence for greater overall
FAST student improvement than for control students on the parent CBCL could be seen
in the 10 descriptive individual scale mean differences, all of which were negative, which
suggests that they all demonstrated larger problem behavior reductions for FAST
students.
Conclusion
Kratochwill et al. (2009) acknowledged that the overall results of this
investigation were quite mixed. They found the nearly 90% retention rate throughout the
eight cycles of the FAST Program to be a success since previous FAST research revealed
lower averages, including the 80% rate in Kratochwill et al. (2004). FAST consistently
demonstrated a large positive impact on family adaptability throughout all of the posttest
results. There was also significant improvement in the parents ratings of externalizing
behavior over the long-term. However, no statistically significant results were found
among the teacher rating scales, although there were some modest improvements made in
externalizing behaviors, similar to the 2004 study. Kratochwill et al. (2009) recognized
that it would be beneficial expand the assessment to include direct observational
measures of student behavior for future research instead of only relying on rating scales
from teachers and parents, which has been shown to be problematic in reliability in both

CRITIQUE OF FAST PROGRAM RESEARCH ARTICLES

the 2004 and 2009 studies. Also, since family adaptability scored significantly well
throughout this study, family variables that contribute to positive change on the
adaptability dimension could further explain what impact it would have on individual
students (Kratochwill et al., 2009).

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References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature
and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kratochwill, T.R., McDonald, L., Levin, J.R., Young Bear-Tibbets, H., & Demaray, M.K.
(2004). Families and schools together: an experimental analysis of a parentmediated multi-family group program for american indian children. Journal of
School Psychology, 42(5), 359-383. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2004.08.001
Kratochwill, T.R., McDonald, L., Levin, J.R., Scalia, P.A., & Coover, G. (2009).
Families and schools together: an experimental study of multi-family support
groups for children at risk. Journal of School Psychology, 47(4), 245-265. doi:
10.1016/j.jsp.2009.03.001