The unique teaching model, piloted in Minneapolis, focuses on students' strengths and teachers' relationship with the classroom.
The Building Assets, Reducing Risks program, known as BARR, was started by a Minneapolis school counselor in 1999, and remained in relative obscurity for a decade. Since 2010, its creator, Angela Jerabek, has sought research support to test the BARR program in other schools. The BARR mantra—"Same Students. Same Teachers. Better Results"—has led Jerabek to aggressively seek out schools in different regions, with different demographics, to test her theory. So far, it holds up.
BARR targets students during a make-or-break year: ninth grade. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research has found that students who earn at least five credits in ninth grade (enough to go on to tenth grade) and get no more than a one-semester failing grade in a core course are 3.5 times more likely to graduate on time.
BARR has eight broad strategies, and, on their own, they sound like plain old, good schooling: Focus on the whole student; prioritize social and emotional learning; provide professional development for teachers, counselors, and administrators; create teams of students; give teachers time to talk about the students on their respective teams; engage families; engage administrators; and meet to discuss the highest-risk students.
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