Branching Minds and Aperture Education Launch Partnership to Support Students’ SEL in K-12 Districts Through MTSS

Branching Minds and Aperture Education are partnering to provide teachers with powerful and reliable data to inform instruction and drive decisions

New York and Fort Mill, S.C. (February 16, 2021) - Branching Minds, the digital platform and national expert on Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI), and Aperture Education, provider of the highly respected, research-backed comprehensive SEL assessment suite the DESSA, are excited to announce a new partnership.

Aperture Education has a long track record of helping teachers assess students’ social-emotional competencies, monitor progress, measure outcomes, and strengthen the social-emotional competence of students in grades K-12, in a strengths-based format. Grounded in resilience theory and directly aligned to the CASEL framework, Aperture Education’s assessment, the DESSA, is a standardized user-friendly, practical social-emotional learning assessment that meets the highest professional standards.

Branching Minds, as a leading MTSS/RTI solution, has an impressive history of providing teachers with ways to leverage assessment data in order to identify the best interventions to use, guiding teachers through the process of creating effective academic, behavioral, and social-emotional intervention plans, and supporting collaborative problem-solving, documentation and reporting at every level of MTSS/RTI. Thanks to partnerships like this, Branching Minds has been able to evolve into a solution that connects the dots for teachers across academics, behavior, and SEL, enabling them to holistically support all of their students.

Today, in addition to integrating the Aperture SEL assessment and reporting technology , Branching Minds also provides teachers the ability to administer the SECA assessment to understand students’ perceptions of their own SEL competence, track major and minor behavior incidents, generate behavior incident reports at the individual, school and district level, create behavior support plans - including a suite of behavior progress monitoring measures and hundreds of free, evidence-based behavior and SEL interventions and accommodations. The Branching Minds Behavior/SEL support library is organized by the CASEL framework and includes supports for attendance, relationship skills, responsible decision-making, self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness, from sources such as HARMONY SEL, another Branching Minds partner.

This new partnership provides districts and schools with a comprehensive RTI/MTSS solution. District and school leaders will finally be able to provide their teachers a way to collaboratively problem-solve and support all students’ academic, behavior and SEL needs, with an easy to use, comprehensive, intervention management system—that drives strong student outcomes in equitable ways.

"Partnering with Branching Minds on a holistic system to support student social-emotional growth is an exciting endeavor. We're passionate about providing educators with reliable data so they can make informed decisions for their students. And with Branching Minds, we'll be able to combine the power of the DESSA SEL assessments with the convenience of delivery within the Branching Minds system, which educators already use and trust - a win-win for schools and kids!" -- Jessica Adamson, CEO of Aperture Education

"We couldn’t be more excited to provide our district partners with an opportunity to accurately and proactively identify students who need social emotional support, as well as a means to more deeply understand their needs, and monitor their progress. We always say, ‘we are data agnostic, but data opinionated’ -- the DESSA is the kind of data we want all of our districts to be able to leverage. It perfectly complements the rest of our SEL support and bringing it all together will make it so much easier for teachers to help their students holistically." -- Maya Gat, CEO and founder of Branching Minds

About Branching Minds
Branching Minds is a highly respected K-12 services and technology company that leverages the learning sciences and technology to help districts effectively personalize learning through enhancements to their MTSS/RTI practice. Having worked with thousands of schools and hundreds of districts across the country, we bring deep expertise in learning sciences, data management and analysis, software design, coaching, and collaboration. Combined with our extensive toolkit of resources, PD, and technology, we provide a system-level solution. We are more than a service or a software provider, we are partners who will deliver sustainable results for educators, and a path to success for every learner. To learn more, visit http://www.branchingminds.com

About Aperture
Aperture Education empowers over 3,000 schools and out-of-school-time programs across North America to measure, strengthen, and support social and emotional competence in K-12 youth and educators. This system enables education leaders can make strategic, data-based decisions about SEL within their organizations. The Aperture system includes the DESSA suite of strength-based assessments, CASEL-informed intervention strategies, and robust reporting, all in one easy-to-use digital platform. Aperture has supported over one million students in their social and emotional growth and continues to develop innovative solutions to bring the whole child into focus. To learn more, visit http://www.ApertureEd.com.

For more information, go to: http://www.branchingminds.com/dessa-sel

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