Ripple Effects can be an important, technology-based component of a multi-level, whole school approach, to help turn around failing schools, and failing students within these schools. Most of the research on program impact of Ripple Effects has been conducted in schools and settings that predominantly serve students with multiple personal and group level risk factors for failure, including English Language Learner status. Students who have used the program independently in those schools have seen some of the largest academic gains, as much as 1.4 mean increase in GPA in the experimental group, versus control, with large changes in behavior as well.
Ripple Effects can be configured to work as a universal positive youth development, character education and social-emotional competency program. However, much more often use of Ripple Effects student software starts in in-school suspension, disciplinary and counseling settings, with kids who are close to reaching the end of the line. It is often a part of IEP and behavioral support plans. It includes a whole range of ways of making learning more accessible to English Language learners (ELL) and students with disabilities (SWD), including hearing impaired students, mobility impaired students, students with attention problems, and those with mild cognitive disorders.
Similarly, Ripple Effects' Staff training program is easily configured for systematic development of personal leadership, classroom management and program implementation skills. Administrators can receive training in how to hold a vision, motivate commitment and engage stakeholders. Teachers can deepen their own social-emotional competence and learn technical skills for classroom management. However, it is also a useful tool for intervening with teachers who have gaps in expertise in sensitive areas like cultural competence. It allows them to examine personal deficits, as students do, with a focus on their strengths, and without blame or shame.
Empower those near the bottom
Ripple Effects applies a social-emotional, skill building, strengths-based model to empower students, teacher and schools to turn things around. That means more than adding “more of what hasn’t worked” to those it hasn’t worked for. It means increasing personal (student and staff) and organizational capacity to address the pressing, personal needs of those who are most affected by the sum total of personal, organizational and societal factors that:
- Create chronic stress that impacts attention, working memory, and higher order thinking, especially problem solving
- Contribute to a fundamental inequity in social-emotional readiness to learn
- Negatively impact teacher-student and peer to peer relationships
- Result in disproportionate discipline rates
- Underlie intolerable academic achievement gaps
All of these characteristic mark “turn around schools.” Each independently magnifies the prospects of failure in school and work. Together, they are a potentially deadly combination. Through Ripple Effects eleven year history, our hiring practices, product development process, and outcome research have all been oriented toward leveling the playing field for those with diminished prospects for success. Both student and teacher software target a wide spectrum of individual risk factors, and provide cognitive-behavioral, affective and social-skill training to help address them. |
