A comprehensive program to reduce the risks of transition to high school has been successful in a scale-up study. 

The year-long randomized controlled trial of the Building Assets-Reducing Risks (BARR) program, conducted through an i3 development grant, showed that high school students who participated in the program demonstrated improved academic achievement when compared to peers who did not receive the program. In addition, when all students received the program in the subsequent two years, the prior achievement gap between Hispanic and non-Hispanic students was eliminated by the end of the second year, and remained so through the end of the third year.

The BARR program was designed to ease the transition from middle to high school through the use of eight strategies. These include dividing students into cohorts to allow teachers to know them better, regularly scheduled teacher-cohort meetings addressing student progress, risk-review meetings, classes for students addressing life skills and challenges, and increased family involvement.

A total of 555 ninth graders in a large California suburban high school were randomly assigned to BARR or non-BARR conditions, matched by gender and ethnicity. Students in each group were divided into groups of more-proficient and less-proficient for analyses. At the end of year one, all BARR students had more course credits, higher GPAs, and higher standardized test scores in reading and math than control students. Subgroup analysis showed that students judged as less proficient at baseline in the BARR group earned significantly more credits and scored higher on standardized testing than comparable control students.

BARR also reduced failure rate. At the end of year one, the failure rate was 21% for BARR students and 32% for non-BARR students. In years two and three, all ninth graders received BARR. By the end of year three, the failure rate was 18.5%, a 42% decrease from the year before BARR was introduced. By the end of year three, failure rates for the Hispanic subgroup had decreased from 41% in the year-one non-BARR condition to 21%.

Johns Hopkins University 

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