Empowering Adolescents to Transform Schools: Lessons from a Behavioral Targeting

A large-scale program that enlisted students in disadvantaged middle schools to teach younger peers reduced disciplinary problems and improved academic achievement, according to new research led by a Cornell University economist.

Key to the program’s success: buy-in from challenging adolescents who crave status and don’t want to be lectured – an approach informed by the science of adolescent behavior and brain development.

The program already has been scaled up in Turkey, where the two-year study collected data from roughly 18,000 students in 65 schools, starting in 2020-21. And the researchers are in discussions with educators from several countries, including in U.S. schools, interested in applying the relatively low-cost intervention to a variety of contexts.

Learn more