All plans
Points & Rewards
Spark, Glow, Blaze. Points only ever go up.
See Points & Rewards: Points & RewardsCheck-In/Check-Out
Keep the card. Lose the folder.
Students carry the same paper card they always have. At check-out, the Mentor snaps a photo, and the scores are recorded and graphed with no data entry.
What CICO is, in two lines
Check-In/Check-Out is a Tier 2 support: a student checks in with a Mentor each morning, carries a card that teachers score through the day, and checks out with the Mentor in the afternoon. The daily scores show whether the support is working.
The usual headaches
CICO works. The folder of cards is what wears teams out.
- A folder of cards sits on my desk until someone has time to score it.
- Every afternoon, someone types the same numbers into a spreadsheet.
- When the team meets, the data is two weeks behind.
- Before a referral, we dig through a box of cards to show what we tried.
With BrighterBalance the school keeps its paper card, and the folder goes away.
Snap it and it is charted
The same card, with no data entry.
The school keeps its paper card. The Mentor snaps a photo at check-out and the scores are recorded and graphed with no data entry.
Print the cards
Print cards for the students in the program, straight from BrighterBalance.Carry the card all day
Students check in with their Mentor and carry the card to class, as they always have.Snap at check-out
The Mentor snaps a photo of the card. The photo finds its student.Charted, no data entry
The scores are recorded and graphed. Nobody types a number.
The whole program
Every student in the program, and the phase they are in.
See every student in the program and their phase, from baseline to fading, in one list. The Tier 2 coordinator sees who is moving forward and who needs a change, without opening a single folder.
- Baseline
- Intervention
- Fading
One student at a glance
Daily scores and goal days, graphed as they come in.
Each snapped card becomes a dated point on the student’s chart: the day’s score, whether it was a goal day, and the phase they were in. The Mentor can see the week before the student even sits down for check-out.
- Daily card scores, charted by day
- Goal days counted for you
- The original card photo kept with each day
Before a referral
The dated record the team needs, already kept.
When a student needs more than Tier 2, the team has every day of the support on record: what was tried, for how long, and how the student responded.
Every card, dated, with the photo it came from, ready for the SPED referral conversation.
From Tier 2 CICO through to an IEP, the same student record carries the whole story.
From the research behind BrighterBalance
Why paper first.
In a study of an online daily report card, 12 of the 20 teachers who implemented it still tracked behavior on paper and entered it later. So BrighterBalance keeps the card teachers already use. The team’s review is set in weeks, because when CICO works, improvement has been shown to appear within the first week.
Source: Owens et al. (2022); Paananen et al. (2025), as reviewed in The Research Behind BrighterBalance.
The facts
At a glance
- Who uses it
- Tier 2 coordinators, CICO Mentors, the teachers who score the card, and MTSS teams.
- What gets captured
- Each student’s daily card scores and goal days, by phase, from baseline to fading.
- Where the data comes from
- The paper card itself. The Mentor snaps a photo at check-out; nobody types a score.
- What the team keeps
- Its card, its routine and its decisions. The dated record is there when the team meets.
Same student record
Where this connects
Every feature reads from and writes to the same student record, so nothing is entered twice.
All plans
Student Profile
Every log from every adult, with the pattern surfaced.
See Student Profile: Student ProfileAll plans
Goal Progress
Each behavior goal tracked from everyday logs.
See Goal Progress: Goal ProgressFAQ
Questions teams ask
Do we have to change our CICO card?
No. Students carry the same paper card they always have. The Mentor snaps a photo at check-out.
Who types in the scores?
Nobody. The photo of the card finds its student, and the scores are recorded and graphed with no data entry.
Can we see where each student is in the program?
Yes. Every student in the program is listed with their phase, from baseline to fading.
Do CICO cards count toward Points & Rewards?
Yes. CICO cards are one of the places points come from, alongside positive logs and goals met.
Which plans include Check-In/Check-Out?
Check-In/Check-Out is part of the Team and Organization plans.
See the behavior. Understand the student.
For districts and special education teams
Documentation your district can stand behind.
See how BrighterBalance fits your MTSS workflow, your rostering and the platform you already own. Most districts start with a team of five.
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