The Ripple Effects approach to School Improvement is innovative, targeted, multi-layered, tested, and affordable. Ripple Effects promotes school improvement by building capacity, in students teachers, parents and administrators, to address non academic barriers to students’ school success through language arts training . In the process, it positively impact school climate, behavior and student academic achievement.

On the Student Side
Ripple Effects uses a software-based, language arts oriented, culturally competent, multimedia delivered, skill training approach to help students: 

1. Achieve social emotional readiness to learn; in particular, to develop:
   • Self-efficacious belief in their capacity to learn
   • Increased, culturally relevant motivation to learn
   • Skills that advance the process of group learning (focusing attention, emotional regulation, and impulse control; listening and speaking skills
   • Skills that advance the process of private, individualized learning (meta cognition, research skills
2. Master specific social-emotional abilities linked to higher reading comprehension scores; in particular, empathy and problem solving
3. Develop positive, personal relations to peers and teachers
4. Access individualized, evidence-based personal guidance to address their unique combination of risk factors and related personal concerns
5. Build personal capacity for success, by leveraging their unique combination of personal strengths and related personal interests

On the educator side
Professional development software enables teachers to:

1. Develop personal leadership through social-emotional competency
2. Tease out cognitive, behavioral and cultural issues that affect student performance
3. Increase their capacity for in-the-moment, individually tailored, constructive, cognitive-behavioral intervention for off-task, disruptive and defiant behavior
4. Recapture lost instruction time due to deficits in classroom management
5. Increase cultural competence; in particular, deconstruct race, ethnicity, class and gender-based expectations, privately, without blame or shame. 

It enables administrators to:

1. Make a one time investment that will bear long term dividends
2. Provide students with evidence-based, positive behavioral support (link pbs), without committing to high, recurring costs
3. Easily meet reporting requirements for funders
4. Provide a constructive alternative to suspension
5. Reduce legal exposure by providing an immediate, evidence-based, skill-building intervention for bullying, sexual harassment and bias activity
6. Provide a private, non-shaming intervention for teachers who have disproportionate discipline referral rates 

It provides parents:

1. A “Personal trainer” with tips for the most leveraged ways to increase their effectiveness
2. Opportunities for employment as physical compliance monitors for the self-contained, self-regulated student training software