Tools of the Mind provides comprehensive, play-based Pre-K and kindergarten curricula with aligned teacher professional development that support the development of executive function skills for children, which are shown to be predictive of reading and math achievement, as well as outcomes beyond schooling and into adulthood. Kindergarten programmatic data from 2020-21 show that children in Tools of the Mind classrooms were significantly more likely to read at grade level (56 percent) compared to their non-Tools counterparts (48 percent).
The organization has grown its reach by 123 percent since 2021, serving over 76,000 students in SY 2025-26 to date. To accelerate its growth and lower barriers to entry, Tools developed Bite of Tools, a standalone professional learning offering designed to help teachers build their understanding of children’s self-regulation development and provide practical strategies to build self-regulation skills through playful classroom routines. Bite of Tools has been particularly helpful as a high-impact entry point given the long timeframe of curriculum adoption cycles. After launching in 2023, Bite of Tools now reaches over 900 educators.
In 2023, Tools of the Mind also piloted SEED, an assessment of children’s self-regulation development that helps educators gain insight into these critical skills in just 90 seconds within regular classroom activities, enabling teachers to scaffold based on where more support is needed. Over a two-year pilot, SEED generated 11,386 classroom-level data points across 83 classrooms, giving teachers actionable insight into executive function skills that are typically difficult to measure during everyday instruction. Initial data and feedback suggest SEED is user-friendly and valuable for teachers, and early pilot analysis also found that SEED-measured self-regulation development predicted literacy outcomes in a sample of Tools Pre-K children.
Since 2021, Overdeck Family Foundation’s multi-year general operating support has provided Tools of the Mind with maximum flexibility as it continues to innovate and scale. Our associated capacity-building support also helped Tools grow its reach by 29 percent from 2024-25 by building the team’s outbound sales capacity and developing a plan to target states and districts with favorable scale conditions.
