Ripple Effects is an innovative approach to school improvement on four levels:
 

• It is innovative in that it impacts academic achievement by addressing the non-academic factors, risk and protective, that research has shown are more highly correlated with school success than academic intelligence.

• It is innovative in that it uses this personally relevant material as the content base for developing listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, aligned with Language Arts content standards in many states.  

• It is innovative in that it uses technology to address nuanced areas of social and emotional experience that are outside the range of expertise of most teachers, and can be matched to emerging standards for doing so.
   
• It is innovative (and multi-award winning) in how it uses technology: combining the engagement of a multi-modal learning platform, the breadth and depth of an evidence-based, content system with more than 100,000 elements; the power of an expert system that matches student selected, personal need with the most relevant set of best practices to address it; and a data management system that tracks students progress, generates dosage reports, and enables data driven decision making without bureaucratic headaches.