Our methodology

At Springboard Collaborative, we believe that family-educator collaboration is the most joyful, culturally affirming, and cost-effective way to give kids access to high-quality instructional time. Our recipe for impact is a method called Family-Educator Learning Accelerators (or FELAs). FELAs are 5-to-10-week cycles during which families and educators team up to help kids reach learning goals. In the beginning, educators and family members build a relationship, measure the student’s baseline, and set a learning goal. Over 5-10 weeks, the family-educator team convenes weekly or biweekly to share skills and support each other’s efforts. On a daily basis, children work toward their goals by practicing with their teachers, with their families, and independently. The cycle concludes by measuring progress and celebrating together; small wins lead to big wins!

When educators and families collaborate, the results are extraordinary. In districts that struggle to get 20% of parents to show up for report card conferences, Springboard Collaborative’s weekly family workshops average 88% attendance. For every hour that a teacher leads a workshop, parents deliver 25 hours of tutoring at home. As a result, students average a 3-4-month reading gain during each program cycle, closing the gap to grade-level by half in just five or ten weeks.

All of our programs are built with the FELA methodology as the foundation. The methodology can also be used independently and in domains beyond literacy.

Springboard Collaborative’s 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.