A RUBRIC FOR SUCCESS
BrainFutures is the first national organization to bring together notable experts across neuroscience, education, industry, healthcare, and government to develop a rubric for assessing school-based brain fitness interventions. Our aim is to give educational decision-makers access to both objective, scientifically validated analysis of interventions that meet quality standards for children and educators, and clear recommendations to ensure investments are cost effective.
Working with an advisory board of esteemed experts, we culled and reviewed school-based brain fitness interventions that specifically address executive function (EF). The team developed a rubric to classify the most promising EF interventions based on criteria chosen to meet academic and scientific rigor, and to distill a class of programs that would have higher chances of procuring funding under Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) guidelines.
We also interviewed education leaders at the state and local levels to identify which factors they consider when deciding to adopt a classroom-based program. While programs that pull students out of class for brain fitness training exist, and some of our promising programs can be implemented in a 1:1 setting, any featured program from our executive function school-based program report needed to be a classroom-based opportunity. This is because such programs can benefit children with EF deficits the most without stigmatizing them, since all students in a class participate in the intervention together.
For our report, we evaluated over 40 programs using the below criteria:
1Diamond A. (2012). Activities and Programs That Improve Children’s Executive Functions. Current directions in psychological science, 21(5), 335–341. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412453722