K-12 School Success, 7 things we learned started Schoolze

Why am I writing this?

Few months ago, I wrote about how a product demo to a group of international customers transformed Schoolze’s mission into a K-12 School Success Platform. Since then, I’ve been sleeping, eating, drinking, and dreaming about one question:

What actually makes a school successful?.

After two years of persevering through product-market fit, I seriously believe we finally have a grounded answer. And no, it’s not test scores or grades.

This post documents what we’ve learned so far. It also kicks off a 7-part blog series that will go deeper into each insight over the coming weeks.

Phase 1 (2016): Classroom Productivity

Schoolze started small.

When my son entered preschool, his teacher needed help communicating with parents. I built a simple web app as a side project. That app quickly spread to other classrooms and helped teachers engage parents in ways they hadn’t experienced before.

That early traction led me to research parental engagement more deeply. What I found was striking: parental disengagement is one of the top three issues in U.S. K-12 education, strongly linked to dropout rates.

This insight convinced my long-time colleague (and now co-founder) Nirmal and me to quit our jobs and launch Schoolze as a research-based parental engagement platform - starting with classroom tools, then expanding to school-wide and PTA tools.

Phase 2 (2016–2017): Engagement as a Measurable System

We immersed ourselves in the research. The evidence was clear: higher parental engagement correlates with better student outcomes, especially when tied directly to learning.

We built Schoolze into a predictive platform that measured parental engagement using frameworks from multiple states and the U.S. Department of Education. Nirmal led the creation of the Parental Engagement Index® (PEI).

Then came a realization from a live 2nd-grade classroom: our model included parents and teachers, but left out the student. So we then redesigned the framework to include students directly, evolving PEI into what we now call the STP Framework (Student–Teacher–Parent). We’re currently transitioning our measurement systems to reflect this more complete model.

A Hard Interlude (Late 2016): Parental Advocacy

This period deserves its own mention.

By mid-2016, Nirmal and I were financially maxed out. We had our first paying schools and early validation, but cash flow was still fragile. At the same time, we confronted a sobering truth: over 50% of U.S. families live with persistent financial hardship.

As education entrepreneurs, this forced a reckoning. If a parent is working multiple jobs or struggling to put food on the table, expecting “engagement” without structural support is unrealistic and unfair.

This insight reshaped everything we built afterward. It pushed us to think beyond engagement toward advocacy - and toward helping schools generate real financial resources for families. We prototyped a “Parent Advocacy” module during this period. Early tests were small, but the implications were large enough that we’ve scheduled full development beginning in 2019.

Phase 3 (2017): Making Money for Schools

This phase began organically.

Schoolze allowed teachers to securely share classroom photos with parents. Over time, schools accumulated thousands of images—one school alone uploaded nearly 14,000 photos in a year.

Then a school asked: “Can you help us get these to our yearbook company?”

That request opened our eyes.

The yearbook industry is a $1.5B market, and schools struggle every year to source quality images. We already had them.

Instead of giving the photos away, we proposed building the yearbook ourselves. Nirmal and I paused everything else and built a yearbook designer in three weeks. It worked—and schools made money.

That feature expanded into a full merchandise and fundraising platform, including donations and item sales, supported by white-labeled printers nationwide.

This became a major inflection point.

Selling to schools is hard. Helping schools make money changes the conversation entirely. This “land and expand” model strengthened our mission and set the foundation for the advocacy work ahead.

Phase 4 (2017–2018): Schoolze University

Early on, we decided that long-term success required educating adults, not just building tools.

Kids model adults. Parents and teachers shape over 80% of a child’s waking hours. If adults are stressed, burned out, or unsupported, kids absorb that too.

Originally, we planned to address adult education in a 4–6 year window. Then something changed. In 2017, I met Dr. Joe Mazza (UPenn GSE). Over multiple conversations, Joe convinced us that parent and teacher education wasn’t a “later” feature—it was foundational.

That led us to launch Schoolze University (beta) in Fall 2018, focused on high-impact areas for educators and families.

The Breakthrough: School Success Is About Context

By Summer 2018, a pattern had emerged.

Across hundreds of schools, countless teachers, principals, and superintendents, we identified seven parameters that determine school success. Engagement was only one of them.

Together, these parameters form what we call The CONTEXT of a school—intentionally contrasted with today’s hyper-focused, content-driven education model.

Schoolze currently has strong capabilities in parameters 1 and 2, early beta work in 3–5, and exploratory ideas for 6 and 7. We’ll explore each in detail in the upcoming posts.

Rethinking “School Success”

One final reflection.

We’ve used the term school success throughout—but what does success actually mean?

Is it grades? College admissions? High-paying jobs?

Those may be milestones, but they’re not a ceiling. We see too many high-achieving students who are stressed, anxious, or disengaged.

So we propose a different mission:

The goal of K-16 education is to help each child realize their maximum potential, become fearless, and gain the internal and external tools to lead a happy, fulfilling life.

We know this mission will evolve. We invite your feedback as we refine it.

Cheers!

/ak