Boosting Student Achievement by Building Developmental Assests:

New studies suggest that developmental assets play a significant role in students’ academic achievement, just as much as other demographic factors and school reform strategies. Developmental assets are described as positive factors in young people, families, communities, schools and other settings that have been found to be important in promoting youth developmet. New research reveals that: the higher students’ current asset levels, the higher their current GPA. In addition, the more assets students reported in 1998, the higher their GPA three years later; Students’ asset levels are twice as important in pre- dicting achievement as demographic factors such as gender, family composition, socioeconomic status, or race/ethnicity; Students whose levels of developmental assets re- mained stable or increased had significantly higher GPAs three years later than students who declined in their assets. And the more their assets increased, the more their GPAs increased; Students from all racial/ethnic backgrounds with high levels of assets (31–40) are about five to 12 times as likely as those with few assets (0–10) to be successful in school; and low-income students who experience more developmental assets appear to be much more likely to do well in school than low-income students who do not experience many developmental assets.