Reflection Sciences announced earlier this month the reception of $1.3 million in seed funding in a round led by Edmentum, K–12 distribution partner for Reflection Sciences.
The University of Minnesota’s Discovery Capital Fund and other investors participated in the round.
The company’s funding, preceded by a quarter million dollars last December from angel investors, has added to a little over $2 million raised in the last year. The company intends to use the new funding to hire more team members and develop additional interventions to support executive function.
Reflection Sciences is a St. Paul, Minneapolis-based startup founded in 2014. The company’s platform is an assessment tool, called the Minnesota Function Scale (MEFS App), and is designed to measure executive function in students of all ages.
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Executive function is the ability of a student to not only perform well academically, but to also manage emotions and portray empathy and perseverance in the face of adversity. Those with impaired executive function may struggle to pay attention and stay organized. Impairment in executive function is often displayed in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); ADHD affects working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control.
“Research consistently shows that executive function skills are the roots of academic and social emotional skill development,” said Jeff Shelstad, the CEO of Reflection Sciences, in a press release in February 2019, when highlighting the importance of using executive function to assist educators in helping students achieve greater academic success.
Reflection Sciences built the MEFS App is to better understand how to increase educational effectivity for affected students.
The MEFS App measures the executive function through analyzing attention, impulse control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. The executive function can be grown and developed through wholesome activities such as play, autonomy-support, and language input. The MEFS App is important because it is easy to use for both students and teachers, is available in a non-classroom setting, and acts quickly in providing relevant data that helps students get the assistance they need from their teacher.
Phil Zelazo, Ph.D. and Stephanie Carlson, Ph.D., two researchers from the university of Minnesota, developed the MEFS App whilst studying executive function. They recognized the lack of effective, scientific, measurement tools, which inspired their creation of the MEFS App. They founded Reflection Sciences to apply the app to the education of children internationally. They provide services to preschools, K-12 schools, after-school programs, Head Start programs, and pediatric clinics. They aim to improve the education, and the educational systems, of young people through the use of the MEFS App.
Visit www.reflectionsciences.com to learn more about this company.
