<strong>Harford</strong> <strong>County</strong> Public Schools – State Discretionary Grant – HSA FY10 A 12
<strong>Harford</strong> <strong>County</strong> Public Schools – State Discretionary Grant – HSA FY10 Brief background on Ripple Effects Ripple Effects' evidence-based software for students and staff helps educators address the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of students with disabilities, in the least restrictive environment. Ripple Effects for Kids and Ripple Effects for Teens make hundreds of specific topics and evidence-based practices easily accessible though a media-rich, multi-modal learning system, and use diverse peer voices, images, and stories to communicate the content. Educators can use it to provide tiered intervention, to help all children develop the social skills that make collaborative classrooms work effectively, to provide targeted intervention to address group level risks for particular students, and to individualize treatment for students with specific challenges. Ripple Effects enables one-on-one and self-directed problem-solving, and helps educators more easily deliver personalized, effective behavioral training, in a format that engages students with special needs. 11 studies conducted over the past decade that included special needs students, show that the software boosts grades, strengthens school engagement, and reduces in and out of school suspensions. It has also been shown to strengthen student empathy and problem-solving abilities. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the program strengthens relationships between students and adults, prompts disclosure of underlying problems, and engages and ―opens up‖ struggling or hard to reach learners. Ripple Effects for Staff provides individualized professional development for all educators in best practices for positive behavioral supports, managing diverse learners, and strengthening staff social-emotional competencies. All three applications integrate assessment, and provide data management tools to track learner progress completing the integrated assessments. Hundreds of school districts use Ripple Effects in a range of settings. Los Angeles Unified uses it to help students with disabilities succeed in the least restrictive environment, providing individualized interventions to address behavior problems and provide supports. It is also integrated into the district’s discipline policy. Other districts use Ripple Effects to help address overrepresentation of minorities in special education, and to provide early intervening services. While not fully accessible to all students with disabilities, it is accessible to students with some disabilities. Rich images and sound to text equivalents make Ripple Effects 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. The tutorials on social skills have been used successfully with students who have mild to moderate communicative disorders. 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 students with disabilities. A 13