About Us

Built by educators. For educators.

Root Compass was founded by Brandee Lapisky, Director of The Compass School and founder of Level 5 Leaders, and Heather Ballantine, a literacy coach and founder of Root Literacy Design.

Our Story

While collaboratively implementing the Science of Reading district-wide at The Compass School, they discovered a major obstacle: the path to data-driven foundational literacy instruction was broken.

As Heather consulted in other schools, she saw these same barriers everywhere. Realizing educators needed a better way, they decided to build a professional solution themselves, and Root Compass was born.

Root Compass manages the heavy data load for you, transforming fragmented paper data into a streamlined instructional roadmap so you can get back to the work that matters most: teaching.

Explore the Research

The Paper Burden

Diagnostic assessments were entirely paper-based, making data difficult to manage and share.

The Time Sink

Each grade-level team spent over five hours per data session manually analyzing data and forming instructional groups.

The Data Tax

Tracking student progress across grades K–8 required massive, manual spreadsheets, costing educators dozens of hours in manual labor.

Mission

Root Compass provides diagnostic student data that empowers educators to make instructional decisions that best serve students.

Vision

We see a world where every educator has the clarity to meet every student's instructional needs with precision, confidence, and coordination.

Meet the Team

Heather Ballantine

Founding Partner & Chief Academic Officer

Literacy coach, certified reading specialist, founder of Root Literacy Design, and longtime advocate for evidence-based literacy instruction.

Brandee Lapisky

Founding Partner & Chief Operating Officer

Director of The Compass School and founder of Level 5 Leaders, focused on the operational systems schools need to make literacy implementation sustainable.