The Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act (IDEA) addresses inequity related to physical, cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral disorders and disabilities, and the disproportionate identification of minority students as having these disorders. This year, the amount of money available for IDEA spending approximately doubles, due to the Stimulus funds that have been added as part of the economic recover act (ARRA). The language of the bill calls out the need for “state-of-the-art assistive technology and training.” Traditionally this has been interpreted as assistance for physical disabilities and disorders, such as sight readers for visually impaired students, narration for hearing impaired students, special key boards for students with nerve and muscle diseases. However, that interpretation excludes the largest single class of students who are qualified under IDEA legislation: the more than 80% of students who have emotional and behavioral disorders, which too often result in their being removed from the regular classroom.

The Department of Education is encouraging LEAs to provide IDEA qualified students “positive behavioral support,” in the least restrictive environment, and to provide “early intervening services” when students of color are disproportionately assigned to Special Needs or Disciplinary environments.

Ripple Effects targets  the 80% + who have emotional and behavioral disorders.

Social-emotional readiness to learn is increasingly recognized as a fundamental equity issue. Socio-economic issues combine with personal risk factors, including some biochemical conditions, to make some students less ready, less able and less willing to learn.  Ripple Effects provides vital, individualized, technology-based assistance for the more than 80% of IDEA qualified students, who have emotional and behavioral deficits and disorders.  Several hundred schools and districts across the country use Ripple Effects to address these students’ needs. Often they use Ripple Effects student training to remediate specific social and emotional deficits as specified in IEP plans. The tutorials on social skills have been used successfully with students who have mild to moderate communicative disorders, such as Asperger’s spectrum disorders.

Least restrictive environment

IDEA funding provides schools and districts an enhanced capacity to deliver full and equal educational opportunities for school success, in the least restrictive environment possible, to students with a broad range of disorders and disabilities.  By law, most of these students spend a substantial amount of their time in regular classrooms, because that is the “least restrictive environment” for them. Not only Special Education teachers, but all school personnel who work with children, are called upon to provide Positive Behavioral Support to students who have been identified as having social and emotional disorders. The burden on classroom teachers to respond to these students’ intensive needs for behavioral management is a heavy one.  Special Education teachers are professionally trained to provide positive support to students with emotional and behavioral disorders.  Regular classroom teachers are not. The net result is very large amounts of instruction time being lost to inexpert efforts to handle behavioral problems.  Ripple Effects’ two-part, professional development program, substantially lightens the load.

Addresses discipline issues and behavioral RTI

Districts that have disproportionate referrals of students of color to Special Education and to disciplinary settings can use 15% of IDEA funding (as legally allowed) to provide early intervening services/RTI to students who have not been diagnosed with specific disorders, but who have personal or group level risk factors, including behavior problems, that make them disproportionately likely to be identified as having special needs.  Ripple Effects can help establish the infrastructure for Coordinated Early Intervening Services/Response-to-Intervention approaches for reading as well as behavior.  

One time professional development investment yields long term dividends

The U.S. Department of Education has specifically suggested that schools and districts use their stimulus funds for one time purchase of intensive, district-wide, professional development for both special education and regular education teachers, which enable them to scale-up evidence-based, school wide strategies for positive behavioral support.  With Ripple Effects for Staff professional development program, all the expertise is in the box, and a one-time purchase does not need to be sustained with follow up subscriptions to access the content. It provides embedded coaching in best practices for behavior management in the classroom. The student software extends regular education teachers’ capacity to provide expert, individually targeted interventions for disruptive behavior, when and where it occurs, without taking precious instructional time away from other students.

Perfect supplement to PBIS programs

The rapid expansion of PBIS programs around the country has provided valuable training for teachers in identifying the reasons for students’ misbehavior. Because it requires the rapid development of nuanced expertise, and is not often available exactly when teachers need it, it has been less effective as a scalable means to deliver an effective behavioral intervention, once the need has been identified. Ripple Effects can help fill this gap in service.  It is an ideal supplement that can leverage and extend the value added by PBIS. 

Accessible to students with other disabilities

Ripple Effects also provides enhanced access to students who have more easily recognized mobility, language processing, hearing and attention disorders. Sound to text narration makes the software fully accessible to students with hearing impairment, who can focus on the text and pictures, and to dyslexic students, who don’t need to actively decode in order to understand and analyze the main themes. The organizational structure of more than 5000 micro tutorials, none longer than 90 seconds, makes the program accessible to students with short attention span, regardless of cause. Students with mobility related disabilities have physical accessibility to the program wherever they have computer access. Specific tutorials on physical, cognitive, attention and emotional disorders directly help affected students to develop problem solving skills, as well as resilience and assertiveness, and help other students to develop increased empathy toward SWD. 

Capacity to collect and use data to improve teaching and learning

Ripple Effects’ built in data management system provides LEAs with the capacity to collect dosage data in School interoperability format (SIF)  and then correlate it with other district data on outcomes and other variables.