Popular Professional Development Platform Secures Impact Investment to Help Districts Better Support Their Educators

Achieve Partners backs KickUp to provide schools and districts around the country with the tools to measure – and improve – educator learning and development

NEW YORK, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Achieve Partners today announced a strategic investment in KickUp, a platform used by more than 300,000 educators across the country to deliver better professional development outcomes and drive more meaningful learning experiences for students. The partnership will support KickUp's continued work to help school districts connect their investments in professional learning, instructional coaching, and teacher evaluation into a coherent picture of educator development.

"Districts spend the vast majority of their budgets on people, and for good reason — educators are the single biggest in-school driver of student learning. But while plenty of systems exist to understand students, we've heard for more than a decade that district leaders don't have the information they need to best support their colleagues in the classroom," said Jeremy Rogoff, Co-Founder and CEO of KickUp. "Today, the people who matter the most are the ones leaders often have the least information about. Providing that information, and connecting insights on learning, coaching, and evaluation that are too often siloed, can have a profound impact on helping administrators see measurable returns on their investment in professional development."

Founded in 2014 by former teachers, KickUp aims to address a persistent challenge in K-12 education: districts spend billions of dollars each year on professional development, but little of it is connected to evidence of what actually changes in the classroom. Because the disparate systems used to coach and evaluate educators – observation notes, survey results, PD attendance records, evaluation scores – typically live in separate systems and rarely speak to each other, administrators must often make decisions about teacher growth and instructional strategy without a clear picture of what approaches will be most effective. The need for a new approach to PD is only growing more urgent: with a recent report from the Research Partnership for Professional Learning noting that educator training "may be a particularly vulnerable line item when budgets tighten," a clearer understanding of which efforts yield the greatest impact will be crucial for administrators navigating budget cuts.

KickUp's platform integrates three areas that have historically operated in silos: professional learning management, instructional coaching and classroom walkthroughs, and teacher evaluation. With partners in more than 35 states, representing a range of sizes, regions, and contexts from small rural districts to large urban systems, KickUp helps districts take a more strategic approach to how they manage, support, and invest in their talent. This fall, the company will release an intelligence tool based on its proprietary data set to help instructional leaders more efficiently deliver actionable feedback to teachers.

"At a time of economic uncertainty across the K-12 landscape, it's more important than ever for district leaders to ensure that their professional development spend actually helps educators do their jobs better," said Troy Williams, Managing Director at Achieve Partners. "What sets KickUp apart is their commitment to building trust with administrators across the country and building a set of tools that leaders don't just use, but love and evangelize. We're looking forward to helping them and their district partners realize the promise of PD as a way to better support teachers and students."

About Achieve Partners
Achieve Partners is engineering the future of learning and earning by investing in cutting edge technologies and novel business models to bolster skill development and secure the future of work for millions of Americans. By harnessing digital transformation, Achieve helps teachers, administrators, schools and communities improve student learning and outcomes. www.achievepartners.com

About KickUp
KickUp is the modern educator growth platform that connects professional learning, coaching, observation, and evaluation for K-12 school districts — so every educator gets the right support at the right time. Founded in 2014 by educators, KickUp was built as one platform from the start, replacing the disconnected systems districts usually stitch together to manage educator development. The result is efficiency, visibility, and coherence across a district's entire investment in its people. More than 300,000 educators use KickUp today. Learn more at kickup.co.

SOURCE KickUp