MATCH EDUCATION
STATEMENT ON DIVERSITY
Across our work at Match Education we seek outstanding educational outcomes for the students and families we serve. We believe that three aspects of our work and organization – a staff that is diverse by race and other factors, a professional environment that is inclusive of all perspectives, and a curriculum in our preK-12 school that is culturally competent – are vital to our goals and mission.
Specifically:
Deliver a culturally competent curriculum. The goal of our preK-12 public charter school is to prepare our students at high rates for success in college and beyond. To reach that goal, we think it is important that we offer our preK-12 students a curriculum that resonates with their lived experiences and that presents them with authors, texts, and materials from diverse points of view, including in particular points of view from authors and writers of color. For example, our English language arts, history, and general humanities curriculum includes a high proportion of texts by authors of color.
Recruit a diverse staff. In all parts of our organization, we strive to recruit, retain and develop a team that is diverse by race, ethnicity, culture, income background, gender, sexual identity, and a variety of other factors. A large and unassailable body of evidence shows that our students will learn and develop more if they are taught and mentored by a diverse staff. Relatedly, as a staff, we will make better decisions when those decisions benefit from input and debate from a wide mix of perspectives. With this priority in mind, we recently expanded our recruiting efforts for tutors and teachers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and, on other college campuses, in multicultural fraternities and sororities and in student communities of color.
Retain and develop a diverse staff via an inclusive professional workplace. For us to do our job well and for us to make good decisions, we need an inclusive workplace in which all of our staff have voice and input in our decisions and in which all staff – particularly staff of color – persist. We strive for a professional workplace in which staff of color feel welcome, respected, and understood and in which all staff are invited to reflect, debate, and participate in planning and decision-making. To this end, we are committed to an ongoing, annual sequence of staff professional development focused on building and sustaining an inclusive workplace.
In 2016 and to pursue the three objectives above, we formed and launched a permanent Match-wide task force on diversity and inclusion. The nine task force members hold positions at all levels, from every area of our organization. They are people of different genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and economic backgrounds. The mandate of the task force, which is staffed from across our organization, is to deliberate on, and make organization-wide recommendations related to, the three objectives above. The task force has wide authority and autonomy to gather input, reflect, and reach conclusions. The task force itself is designed to model the diversity and inclusiveness that we seek across Match Education.
