Children typically spend 75% of their waking hours outside of the classroom, yet our education system does shockingly little to capture instructional value from that time. Parents’ love for their children is the single greatest—and most underutilized—natural resource in education. Springboard Collaborative has cracked the code on activating and equipping low-income parents to teach at home. Since launching over 10 years ago, we have grown Springboard Collaborative’s reach from 40 to nearly 30,000 students nationwide. Amidst rapid growth, Springboard Collaborative consistently delivers best-in-class results. Students average a 5-month reading gain during each 5- or 10-week cycle, closing the gap to grade-level performance by more than half. Our vision for systemic impact is to make parent-teacher collaboration standard practice in American education. We envision a school system in which families and educators work together—rather than in isolation—to accelerate student learning. This will quantifiably reduce achievement and opportunity gaps that have persisted for the better part of a century. It will also make schools more equitable places that value marginalized parents as assets and invest in them as partners.
