THE SCIENCE OF LEARNING & PERFORMANCE
Get to the root of what’s holding your student back.
Many students perform well below what they’re actually capable of.
The Performance Diagnostic uncovers why — and provides a custom, science-backed plan to help your student reach their full potential.
Developed and offered exclusively by learning scientist Rich Daker, PhD.
Countless parents know their child is more capable than their current grades or test scores show, but feel lost on how to help them.
So many students:
Work hard but don’t see that reflected in their grades
Used to thrive in school but don’t anymore
Feel stuck and don’t know what to do differently
If this gap between a student’s potential and their performance goes unaddressed, it can limit their entire academic trajectory.
My philosophy is simple: If you want to help a student reach their potential, you need to understand exactly what’s holding them back.
Most solutions to help a student improve focus on improving their knowledge of content. But there are countless reasons why a student can struggle to do their best. And even when content knowledge is the issue, simply teaching it doesn't address why the student struggled to learn it in the first place.
There are entire sciences dedicated to understanding and improving student performance, but too often none of this knowledge is brought to bear to help a student struggling to do their best. This means students needlessly struggle, repeating the same fixable mistakes that keep them stuck on a worse trajectory than they could otherwise have.
This is why I developed The Performance Diagnostic.
It combines a deep understanding of your child’s academic history with proprietary methods based in the science of learning and performance to put your family on a clear path to help them reach their full potential.
FOCUS AREAS
A Deep, Personalized Look at Your Student’s Learning and Performance
Most efforts to help students only scratch the surface. I take a comprehensive look across three levels of analysis to find the real reasons a student struggles to do their best.
Performance Dynamics
Students can get problems wrong for many different reasons — weak content knowledge, insufficient planning, execution errors, test anxiety, time pressure, and more.
I identify patterns in the kinds of mistakes a student makes so I can prescribe the most effective fix for each one.
Learning Behaviors
Learning and studying behaviors have an enormous impact on academic performance, but most students have never been taught which techniques are most effective.
I assess how a student studies, does test prep, engages in class, and approaches their work so I can recommend the most impactful learning changes they can make.
Traits, Habits, & Circumstances
Who a student is as a person — their personality traits, daily habits, and life circumstances — shapes everything about how they learn and perform.
I take the time to get to know each student so my recommendations account for the full picture of who they are and what their life looks like.
METHODOLOGY
The Diagnostic Process
I use a 3-step process to diagnose what’s holding a student back, combining proprietary assessments with a genuine understanding of who they are.
01
Discovery Session
The goal of this session is to get a strong understanding of the student’s learning background and academic history. For students in middle school through high school, I do this as a 1-on-1 session with a parent. For students in college and beyond, I have a 1-on-1 session with the student.
02
Diagnostic Assessments
Once I know what the student’s main improvement goals are, I construct a custom set of proprietary diagnostic assessments for the student to complete from the comfort of their own home. These help to diagnose the underlying causes of a student’s errors and provide a snapshot of their academic habits and attitudes.
03
Deep Dive Session
In this 1-on-1 session with the student, I dive deep into the specifics of their academic context and get to know them as a person. This allows me to test my hypotheses about the core things holding them back from doing their best and ensures that my recommendations are deeply personalized.
THE IMPACT
Students get the clarity they need to reach their full potential.
The Report
Once the diagnostic process is complete, I compile everything into a comprehensive, deeply personalized report that identifies the core barriers holding the student back. For each one, I prescribe the most effective strategies science has identified to overcome it. This gives you a concrete, actionable plan your student can put to work immediately.
The Strategy Session
From there, I walk your family through everything in a supportive strategy session — explaining the findings, answering questions, and outlining clear next steps so your student can get on the path to doing their best.
The end result? A student who knows exactly what’s been holding them back — and exactly what to do about it.
BETTER GRADES · BETTER TEST SCORES · MORE CONFIDENCE
Ready to get your student on the path to reach their full potential?
The Performance Diagnostic is for motivated students — middle school through grad school — who want a clear, science-backed path to performing their best.