By Betsy Hill and Roger Stark
Several state departments of education are reconsidering the A–F school grading systems introduced during the No Child Left Behind era. Those systems were created to give parents a straightforward snapshot of a school’s performance so they could make informed choices about where to enroll their children. But a single letter grade raises two important questions: if the A–F approach were truly clear and useful, why do so many students still attend schools labeled D or F? And does one letter actually tell parents more about a school than it does about an individual student?
The A–F system reflects a broader impulse to standardize education—treating schools like manufacturing lines with identical inputs, uniform processes, and predictable outputs. That industrial model assumes efficiency comes from uniformity. Yet learning is not a uniform process. Children vary widely in how they learn, in their prior knowledge, interests, and the skills they bring to the classroom. Forcing diverse learners into a single instructional model has produced disappointing results: only a minority of students consistently demonstrate proficiency at grade level in many states. If business leaders tolerated a 65 percent failure rate in production, they would overhaul the whole system—education deserves the same scrutiny.
A central problem is that education policy and accountability systems too often focus on measurement rather than on the biology and psychology of learning. The science of learning—how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves information—has critical implications for instruction, yet most teacher preparation programs devote little or no time to neuroscience, cognitive development, or the mental processes that account for roughly half of the variance in student outcomes. Without addressing the core mechanisms of learning, efforts to raise achievement face an uphill battle.
Some innovative schools are now addressing that gap by assessing and developing the cognitive and emotional readiness that underpins academic success. These schools use nationally normed, scientifically validated cognitive assessments to chart each student’s strengths and weaknesses in fundamental mental processes. Based on those profiles, educators provide targeted cognitive training designed to strengthen attention, memory, processing speed, visual-spatial reasoning, and executive functions. In many implementations the training is delivered in an engaging, game-based format and can be used both in-person and remotely. Schools measure cognitive gains by reassessing students after training and monitor academic progress with existing formative and summative tests.
A well-constructed cognitive assessment gives teachers deep insights into how each student learns and points to concrete, evidence-based strategies for personalized instruction. Cognitive training aims to develop the mental processes that enable efficient learning, accelerating students’ ability to acquire academic knowledge and skills. Teachers and parents frequently report secondary benefits as well: students show greater perseverance, increased confidence in their ability to learn, a stronger willingness to tackle challenging work, and improved social interactions—traits associated with capable, resilient learners.
Traditional teacher education typically does not include therapeutic techniques for developing attention, working memory, or visual-spatial processing. A teacher cannot simply tell a student how to increase the amount of information they can hold in mind or how to expand their visual span; such changes often require structured practice and individualized support. Nor do classroom schedules usually allow for the kind of one-on-one therapeutic work that trained specialists provide. This is where technology plays a vital role: high-quality, computer-based cognitive training makes it possible to deliver individualized practice at scale.
Not all brain-training programs are equally effective. To produce meaningful and transferable gains, a program should train a comprehensive range of cognitive skills, integrate those skills so they work together (similar to cross-training), and engage students so they persist with the practice. Programs lacking these features tend to yield limited improvements and poor transfer to academic and everyday tasks.
Cognitive skills form the foundation of learning. They are the mental processes we use to take in, organize, understand, store, and retrieve information, and to make decisions and act. These include various types of attention, auditory and visual processing, short-term and long-term memory, and executive functions such as working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Each cognitive skill contributes to a student’s overall learning capacity, and the interaction among skills matters as much as any one skill in isolation. Every learner has a mix of strengths and weaknesses across this profile.
Knowing that a student struggles in math or reads slowly is a starting point, but it does not reveal root causes. Math difficulties might stem from limited working memory, weak visual-spatial skills, or sequencing problems. Reading struggles often involve weaknesses in verbal reasoning, visualization, or working memory. When educators identify the underlying cognitive contributors, they can select strategies that leverage strengths and directly support weaker processes. This approach moves instruction from trial-and-error to targeted intervention focused on root causes rather than surface symptoms.
For example, a student who struggles to begin a writing assignment and produces disorganized prose may be told to create a traditional outline. If that student has stronger visual-spatial reasoning and weaker verbal sequencing, an outline may not help. A semantic map or mind map aligns better with the student’s cognitive profile, enabling them to capture ideas and connections visually and to produce a more coherent draft.
Teachers no longer need to rely on guesswork. Modern assessment tools and evidence-based cognitive training make it possible to peer into the learning process, identify what is helping or holding a student back, and apply personalized strategies that address those factors. The science of learning has advanced considerably, and the technology to put that science into practice is widely available. When schools combine insight into cognitive processes with well-designed instruction, students are put in a far better position to succeed—and learning becomes more effective, efficient, and enjoyable.
About the authors
Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, which develops programs to build learning capacity through applied neuroscience. An experienced educator, she has studied the connections between neuroscience and education with experts in the field. She served as chair of the board of trustees at Chicago State University and teaches strategic thinking in the MBA program at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, where she received a Contribution to Learning Excellence Award. Betsy holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA from Northwestern University and is co-author of the book Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?
Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. For more than a decade he has worked to translate the science of learning into accessible cognitive assessment and training tools. He led the development of BrainWare SAFARI, a comprehensive, integrated cognitive training program delivered online, and has focused on making cognitive literacy tools affordable and effective. Roger is co-author of the book Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?