America Achieves
Empowering Families to Raise the Bar in U.S. Education
OVERVIEW
Partnering with America Achieves, in service of the U.S. Department of Education, we helped catalyze a nationwide movement to elevate K-12 public education.
Through human-centered design, we envisioned and strategized for a multi-channel platform that empowered parents with the truth, tools, and ownership needed to spark student success and system-wide change.
THE CHALLENGE
How do you mobilize millions of American families to support higher educational standards—starting at home?
America Achieves, a nonprofit working closely with federal and state leaders, engaged us to co-design a scalable vision that would awaken parents to the urgent need for change in public education. The challenge: connect the aspirational goal of “raising the bar” with concrete, everyday behaviors families could adopt—especially within middle-income households who often feel disconnected from systemic levers of change.
THE WORK
We grounded our approach in deep ethnographic research—interviewing parents, educators, and students across the country to uncover real barriers to engagement. Our insight: most families care deeply about education but don’t know how to meaningfully participate. The system wasn’t built for their involvement.
From that insight, we designed SPARK, a multi-channel achievement platform built around three pillars: truth, tools, and ownership. Through web, mobile, and tablet experiences, SPARK provided families with personalized dashboards, growth mindset resources, goal-setting modules, and school comparison data. Importantly, it met parents where they were—at pickup lines, around dinner tables, in online forums—with nudges and rituals they could actually use.
This wasn't just a digital tool; it was a movement infrastructure designed to scale.
IMPACT:
The work laid the foundation for a bold federal initiative to increase parent involvement and public awareness around Common Core and student achievement.
Inspired by this vision, strategy and movement, America Achieves went on to play a significant role in promoting higher Common Core State Standards (CCSS) across the United States, through initiatives like the SPARK platform, which aimed to empower parents and families to support higher educational standards.
They launched the America Achieves Fellowship for Teachers and Principals, allocating $1.7 million over two years to recruit educators who would advocate for the Common Core both locally and nationally.
The organization also produced videos and lesson plans to aid educators in understanding and applying the standards in classrooms.
While Common Core Standards themselves may have faced a backlash, the vision we provided and supported efforts from American Achieves continue today supporting educational equity and workforce development.