Meet Dottie, Your New MTSS Best Friend

Dottie is your MTSS copilot inside Branching Minds. She’s an AI-powered assistant that helps you ask plain-language questions about your students and their support needs.

Dottie was built for the questions that live between dropdowns. When educators aren’t even sure what data exists (let alone where to find it), Dottie acts as a trusted guide. Just ask the question. If it lives in Branching Minds, Dottie will fetch it.

Most AI tools in education focus on content creation or narrating data. Dottie, however, is purpose-built to meet the depth of MTSS, not the breadth of all classroom needs. In other words, she specializes in MTSS and your specific Branching Minds data.

Dottie was built to “connect the dots” by fetching real student data from Branching Minds and providing actionable guidance. All guidance is grounded in vetted, curated research by our team of MTSS professionals and subject matter experts, not a general search engine like other AI tools.

You can ask Dottie plain-language questions like:

• “Which students are flagged for Tier 2 support in math?”
• “What’s the most recent progress data for Student X?”
• “What’s a district-aligned Tier 1 strategy for chronic attendance issues?”

Dottie responds with real answers, not vague summaries or links. She pulls real-time data from your platform and combines it with MTSS guidance to recommend next steps.

For example, instead of saying “Check the student’s progress,” she might say, “Student X’s math scores have declined for two cycles. Consider revisiting the intervention frequency or trying a new evidence-based support.”

Dottie meets you where you are—whether you're in the classroom, running a school, or leading the district:

• As a Teacher: Use Dottie to save time and reduce frustration. Instead of clicking through tabs or hunting down data, you can ask, “What’s the latest progress monitoring data for my Tier 2 students?” or “What’s a strong intervention strategy for a student with decoding gaps?”
  
  
• As a School Leader: Use Dottie to drive building-wide improvement without waiting on data pulls. If you're focused on chronic absenteeism, you might ask: “Which students have missed more than 10% of school this semester and what Tier 1 strategies are recommended for improving attendance?”
  
  
• As a Member of a Student Support Team: Use Dottie to strengthen intervention planning and ensure fidelity. You might ask, “What’s the average time students are staying in Tier 3?” or “What evidence-based supports should we consider for math fluency at Tier 2?”
  
  
• A a District Leader: Use Dottie to monitor system-wide adoption and close implementation gaps. If you’re wondering whether behavior supports are being used effectively, you might ask, “Which schools have the lowest usage of Tier 1 behavior tracking?” or “Which staff members aren’t logging behavior data consistently?” 

Dottie gives you a clear picture of where fidelity is strong, where it’s slipping, and what you can do about it.

Yes. Dottie operates fully within Branching Minds' secure environment. She never uses external models or third-party services that could compromise student privacy. Your data stays protected and never trains any public AI.

Learn more about our commitment to AI Data Privacy and Security.

Dottie is part of the Collaborator Suite, which is an add-on to the core Branching Minds platform.

She’s designed to work with your existing Branching Minds data—pulling from student plans, assessment results, tier movement, and more—to answer questions and offer guidance in real time.

Think of Dottie as a connection between your data and your decision-making. She doesn’t replace the core platform but she makes it more (even more) usable, more intuitive, and a lot more powerful.