Match.com For Schools

One aspect of the school choice debate that gets surprisingly little attention is that choice is good for teachers not just for students and families.  Why?  Because one characteristic the best schools – in all parts of the education sector –  share is that they are intentional places. People, big people and small people, want to be there.  But school district human resources remains a backwater.  The worst practices are the low-hanging fruit like “force transfer” provisions that allow teachers with seniority to unilaterially transfer into schools or policies restricting who schools can hire. But underneath the obvious issues are a set of more complicated ones around “fit.” And fit is what proffessionals really look for (and something other fields often recognize better than education).

A new company is aiming to do something about that.  Based out of Kansas City myEdmatch seeks to match teachers and schools OkCupid style.  Basically their algorithm helps schools and teachers find each other based on commonalities (and hopefully without the awkwardness of blind dates). It won’t solve the HR problems but in the vein of 100 one percent solutions, it’s an idea to watch especially if similar “me too” businesses spring up alongside it.

One Reply to “Match.com For Schools”

  1. I think it would be interesting if school districts used the Gale/Shapley algorithm to match teachers to schools. NYC and Boston already use it to match HS students to schools.

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