Springboard Collaborative

Children spend 75% of their waking hours outside of the classroom, yet our nation does shockingly little to capture educational value from this time for low-income kids. We coach educators and family members to help kids learn to read by 4th grade. Springboard envisions a world in which all children have the requisite literacy skills to access life opportunities. Nationally, we are the only organization to have cracked the code on equipping marginalized families to teach reading at home. At Springboard, 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’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.