Yet Another Study Finds This Program Is Successful For Ninth-Graders – I’m Not Really Sure Why Most Schools Don’t Implement It

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I’ve previously published several posts highlighting the success a program called Building Assets And Reducing Risks (BARR) has had with ninth-graders.

In one of those posts, I shared an excerpt from Education Week that summarized the program, which had a number of similarities to how my former school operated:

…incoming freshmen are grouped into cohorts of about 30 students who take the same reading, math, and science classes together. They also receive a 30-minute lesson each week on social-emotional skills, taught on a rotating basis in a core class. Teachers meet every week for a check-in on every student in their cohort, evaluating weekly progress on both academic and social-emotional goals.

Now, yet another study has found that the program has a major positive impact on ninth-graders.  It’s actually from 2022,  but has recently been reviewed by The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy and found to be credible.

I am a firm believer in Dylan Wiliam’s comment, “Everything works somewhere; nothing works everywhere.”  Nevertheless, this kind of support for ninth-graders has consistently been found to be successful.  I’m not sure why more schools, even if they don’t want to work directly with the BARR program, at least try adopt its characteristics.