Blueprints Promising Programs
| Behavioral Monitoring and Reinforcement Program (BMRP) |
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Program
Overview:
The Behavioral Monitoring and Reinforcement Program
(BMRP), formerly known as Preventive Intervention,
is a school-based intervention helps prevent juvenile
delinquency, substance use, and school failure for
high-risk adolescents. It targets juvenile cynicism
about the world and the accompanying lack of self-efficacy
to deal with problems. BMRP provides a school environment
that allows students to realize that their actions
can bring about desired consequences, and it reinforces
this belief by eliciting participation from teachers,
parents, and individuals.
Program Targets:
The program can be used in both low-income, urban,
and racially-mixed and middle-class, suburban junior
high schools. Students are eligible for inclusion
if they demonstrate low academic motivation, family
problems, or frequent or serious school discipline
referrals.
Program Content:
The two year intervention begins when participants
are in seventh grade and includes monitoring student
actions, rewarding appropriate behavior, and increasing
communication between teachers, students, and parents.
Program staff check school records for participants=
daily attendance, tardiness, and official disciplinary
actions, and they contact parents by letter, phone,
and occasional home visits to inform them of their
children=s progress. Teachers submit weekly reports
assessing students= punctuality, preparedness, and
behavior in the classroom, and students are rewarded
for good evaluations. Each week, 3-5 students meet
with a staff member to discuss their recent behaviors,
learn the relationship between actions and their consequences,
and role-play prosocial alternatives to problem behaviors;
they are also rewarded for refraining from disruptive
behavior during these meetings.
Program Outcomes:
Evaluations of BMRP have demonstrated short-
and long-term positive effects.
- At the end of the program, program students showed
higher grades and better attendance when compared
to control students.
- Results from a one-year follow-up study showed
that intervention students, compared to control
students, had less self-reported delinquency; drug
abuse (including hallucinogens, stimulants, glue,
tranquilizers, and barbiturates); school-based problems
(suspension, absenteeism, tardiness, academic failure);
and unemployment (20% and 45%, respectively).
- A five-year follow-up study found that intervention
students had fewer county court records than control
students.
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