I came across HiLight almost by accident.
A friend of mine who works as a school administrator in the U.S. mentioned it over a video call a few months ago. She was talking about how exhausted her staff had become, how teachers were leaving mid-year, and how no one seemed to have a real solution. Then she said, almost in passing, “We started using this tool called HiLight. It’s been… surprisingly good.”
That sentence stuck with me.
I’ve spent years traveling and living in different countries, and one thing I’ve noticed everywhere from Vietnam to China to Southeast Asia is that teachers are often the most overworked and underappreciated people in any room. That problem is not unique to one country. It’s everywhere. But in the U.S., it’s reached a point where school districts are genuinely struggling to keep their staff from walking out the door.
So I went and looked up HiLight. And honestly, I was impressed by what I found.
What Is HiLight, Exactly?
HiLight is a recognition, rewards, and culture data platform built specifically for schools and school districts. It’s based out of New Orleans, Louisiana, and it does something that sounds simple but turns out to be pretty powerful: it helps schools celebrate the small wins their teachers and staff are already achieving every single day.
The idea is that most schools pour their energy into finding problems. They evaluate, they assess, they flag underperformance. But they rarely stop to notice when a teacher does something really effective and tell that person, “Hey, what you just did mattered.”
HiLight flips that around. It gives everyone in a school, from principals to cafeteria staff, a fast and easy way to send recognition to a colleague. You can attach it to a school value, add a personal note, and the person on the receiving end actually sees it in a feed, like a social moment that belongs entirely to your team.
Why New Orleans? Why Now?
There’s something worth noting about where HiLight comes from. New Orleans has a complicated history with education. The city rebuilt its entire school system after Hurricane Katrina, becoming a kind of national experiment in education reform. People there know what it looks like when a school system breaks down completely and has to rebuild from scratch.
That context matters. HiLight was not built by people who looked at teacher retention as a nice HR problem to solve. It was built by people who understand, on a pretty deep level, what happens to communities when educators stop showing up.
And the timing couldn’t be more relevant. The United States is in the middle of a real teacher shortage. Hundreds of thousands of positions across the country are unfilled. Educators are burning out faster than schools can replace them. The pandemic accelerated a lot of that, but the underlying issue, which is that teachers feel invisible and undervalued, has been there for decades.
HiLight is not trying to be the entire solution. But it’s trying to solve one piece of it: the part where people stop feeling seen.
What the Platform Actually Does
When I dug into the features, a few things stood out to me.
The recognition feed is the core of it. Staff members can send shoutouts to each other, tied to specific school values that administrators can customize. So it’s not just “good job.” It’s “you showed patience and creativity with that student today, and that matters to who we are as a school.” That specificity makes a difference.
There is also a rewards layer. Schools can offer meaningful incentives so that recognition comes with something tangible. That said, from what I’ve read, the emotional side of being publicly appreciated within your own team seems to be the thing people respond to most.
Then there are the data dashboards. This is where it gets interesting from a leadership perspective. Every staff member gets a personalized view of their own impact, showing what they’re being recognized for and how often. But administrators also get a broader picture of team culture, which parts of the school community feel connected and supported, and where the gaps might be.
That kind of data is genuinely new. Most schools only measure outcomes, test scores, attendance, disciplinary incidents. HiLight is trying to measure something that’s harder to capture: how your people actually feel about being there.
Does It Work?
My friend said yes, but I wanted more than one data point.
According to HiLight’s own results, a recent pilot program increased staff satisfaction by 34%. That’s a meaningful number, especially in a sector where satisfaction tends to move in very small increments.
There’s also some solid research behind the basic premise. Studies have found that employees who feel recognized are about 63% more likely to stay in their jobs. And peer recognition, which is getting appreciated by a colleague rather than a manager, turns out to be about 36% more effective than top-down praise. HiLight builds its whole system around that insight.
The platform has also picked up some EdTech awards and has been recognized by partners in the education space. It’s not just a startup running on a good pitch deck. Schools are actually using it.
Who Is This For?
HiLight is designed for schools and school districts, which means the direct users are administrators, principals, teachers, and support staff. But I think the story of what it’s trying to do is relevant to a much wider audience.
If you work in education, or if you have a kid in school and you care about the people teaching them, this is worth knowing about. The quality of a school comes down to the quality of the people in it, and those people stay when they feel like their work is noticed.
If you’re in school leadership and you’ve been watching good people leave because they feel invisible, HiLight might be one of the more practical things you can plug in without a massive budget or a six-month rollout.
And if you’re just someone who’s curious about what EdTech looks like when it’s solving a real human problem instead of a product problem, this is a good example of that.
My Honest Take
I’m not a teacher. I’m a traveler and a writer who has spent a lot of time around education in different parts of the world. But I know what it looks like when someone feels unseen in their work, and I know that it slowly kills the motivation that brought them there in the first place.
What HiLight is trying to do is simple: remind people that what they do matters, and make that reminder feel real and personal, not like a checkbox on an HR form.
That’s not going to fix the teacher shortage on its own. But it’s working on the right problem. And in a space full of EdTech tools that promise to revolutionize learning, it’s refreshing to find one that’s focused on the people doing the teaching.