BARR Center

Year Founded: 1999

Through her experience as a school counselor in St. Louis Park, MN, Angela Jerabek, recognized that if students felt a sense of belonging, were recognized for their strengths, and had adults in the school building who would work with them collaboratively, the students would do better and staff would be more effective. The recognition of these truths planted the seed for the BARR Center’s model.

The BARR Center’s improvement model builds a system focused on intentional relationships, utilizes data, and enables schools to achieve concrete academic, social, and emotional outcomes for all students. Over the course of three years, the BARR team provides professional development to teachers and works with schools to implement each of these strategies.

BARR has a substantial and growing body of high-quality evidence that participation in the BARR model results in positive outcomes for students and teachers. This includes the Scale-up grant, which is the largest and most current study completed to date. Schools using BARR experience a 35 to 40 percent reduction in failure rates, improved scores in math and ELA, increased student engagement, and reduced opportunity gap. Across three major studies, BARR had consistent positive impacts on credit attainment, course failure, and academic achievement and grades.