The solution
In 1998 St. Louis Park High's freshman counselor, Angela Jerabek, was discouraged: for five years running about half of ninth graders failed at least one course. Researchers call the first-year drop 'ninth-grade shock', and one F raises dropout risk. Her principal challenged her to design a fix.
Her answer, BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks), is built on meetings. Weekly, the teachers who share a group of students sit with support staff such as the social worker and counselor over a shared Google doc. They cover data on attendance, behavior and grades, the big picture of the student's life, and a personal plan such as tutoring, a call home or mediation. Strengths are named on purpose.
A second weekly Risk Review covers students in the toughest situations, and a classroom component called iTime builds relationships. Most teachers see a student 45 minutes a day, so no one has the full picture alone.
What it achieved
Change nothing about students, teachers or curriculum, just add structured weekly meetings where adults pool what they know about each student.
Why it worked
No adult sees a student's full day, so patterns are missed.
Cross-referencing attendance, lateness and home context turns hunches into plans.
Naming strengths builds the relationships that make students work harder.
It needs no new curriculum, technology or staff replacement.
What can be applied
A school can fix a problem by connecting the information it already has across the adults who each see only part of a student.
Aftermath
NPR reported in 2018 that freshman failure at St. Louis Park halved from 50% to 25% in year one and stayed there. In randomized trials BARR cut failure rates about 40% in big-city schools and 29% in small rural ones, and was the only one of 172 federal innovation grant projects to win all three grant levels. It had reached 80 schools in 13 states and DC. It costs money for adjusted teacher schedules and may be hard where support staff are scarce.
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