New Profit Commits $1 Million In Support of Match Education

October 2, 2015 (Boston): New Profit, a nonprofit venture philanthropy fund working to break down the barriers standing between people and opportunity in America, is investing $1 million over the next four years to support Match Education (Match), a high-performing education organization that envisions creating a transformed system of Pre-K through career education.

The investment in Match will be a part of New Profit’s Reimagine School Systems (RSS) Fund, a cross-sector collaboration aimed at significantly and rapidly increasing the number of high performing schools serving low income students by transforming the way school systems work and lifting up successful school models that can scale across the country.

“We are excited to partner with New Profit as Match continues to increase our reach in preparing all children for college and career readiness,” said Stig Leschly, Chief Executive Officer of Match Education. “A New Profit investment offers us the benefit of their experience and network of resources in helping scale some of America’s highest-impact education organizations.”

Match operates a Pre-K–12 network of high-performing charter schools focused on serving low-income students, and the Sposato Graduate School of Education, which trains teachers and instructional leaders for high-poverty schools. Match has had breakthrough results: Match students outperform the state on Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test, AP pass rates, and SAT scores. Seventy-eight percent of Match high school graduates go on to a four-year college and, among early cohorts of students in Match’s schools who have been given enough time to finish post-secondary education, 56% of Match’s alumni have graduated from 4-year college, compared to 14% for low-income high school graduates nationally. Drawing on its lessons from achieving these results, Match has started to share its best practices and innovations through its Match Export platform, which allows districts, charters schools, and institutions that train teachers and school leaders to adopt Match practices. Match is actively partnering with charter management organizations and districts in big cities in the US (including New Orleans, Houston, and Chicago) to transfer its novel, proven ideas and practices.

The organization’s integrated approach and potential for creating widespread impact make it an excellent fit and partner for New Profit’s RSS fund, which is focused on (a) creating actionable demand for better schools through changing the policies and politics of education systems, and (b) supporting great school models that can grow the supply of high quality schools to meet that demand.

“We welcome the opportunity to bring New Profit’s full suite of resources to support the Match team,” notes Alex Cortez, Managing Partner of the RSS Fund. “The success of Match and its peers in Boston have been incredibly influential in changing system policies starting in 2010 to allow high quality charters to grow, and they continue to serve as a proof-point that drives national dialogue. Match’s willingness to codify and share its best practices in areas such as instruction coaching, curriculum, assessment, and school culture setting through Match Export will magnify their impact, allowing public district schools and public charter schools to deploy these resources to better serve all students.”

The funding from New Profit’s Reimagine School Systems Fund will be unrestricted and supplemented by strategic advisory support from New Profit staff in collaboration with Deloitte.

Learn more about Match Education by visiting www.matcheducation.org.