TISA MAX Advanced Direct Certification Matching
Your Students Deserve It.
Matching databases is hard. Most districts haven’t spent thousands of hours focused on this challenge which has become important under TISA. Each economic disadvantage match is $1,824 more funding, and missed matches quickly add up in terms of cost. This cost can better be seen as an opportunity: additional funding to be unlocked by finding those matches. We are the matching experts. We have invested heavily to maximize our algorithms, and we built our matching solution in Tennessee, for Tennessee. Our estimate is that our algorithm can annually unlock an additional $20-40 million statewide for economically disadvantaged students and the schools that serve them. With a free initial assessment of your database you can quickly see just how many additional matches it might be possible to find.
Starting as TISA went into effect, we’ve spent years developing and improving our advanced algorithm to match as many students as possible between your Student Information System and the SNAP and TANF database. With low costs that are directly linked to the additional state funding unlocked, it’s a guaranteed win for districts while taking only a few hours of your team’s time. We handle PowerSchool using our custom plugin, and we handle Infinite Campus, Follett Aspen, Skyward, and Edupoint via flat file exports.
Matching Systems Compared
Single Match Key
Because of prevalent slight database mismatches, a single match key like First/Last/DOB typically only matches 86% of true matches. For districts no longer collecting SSNs, this is the norm.
Multiple Match Key / Basic Fuzzy
Implementing multiple match keys including SSN matching or basic fuzzy match may allow you to find 97-98% of true matches. This is not possible for districts no longer collecting SSNs.
TISA MAX Matching Algorithm
Searching deep and using ML, we can generally find 3-25% more matches than existing matching systems. Our internal research on synthetic datasets implies we may be able to find close to 99.9% of true matches.
Simple for Districts
Simple data pulls
We have developed a custom PowerSchool plugin that makes it effortless to pull the relevant data for analysis. We also handle Infinite Campus, Follett Aspen, Skyward, and Edupoint via flat file exports.
Fair, incremental pricing
Districts and schools should always be the winners as this funding is intended for student support. We only charge a low per-match rate for additional matches found (those which your current systems cannot identify). Rates go down as we find more students. Fixed pricing is also possible if preferred.
Ask for a Free Assessment
For most Superintendents, CFOs, and Tech/Data Leaders this is an unknown problem and an unknown opportunity. Every district already has a process or solution in place for finding the economically disadvantaged students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and additional school funding. This is usually handled by a technical employee or an outside vendor. Currently missed matches are nobody’s fault, but rather a fact of life. Your team may even have invested significant effort to see if data cleaning might help increase matches. The fact is that matching is exceptionally hard especially when you want to accurately match across large datasets in an exceptionally thorough and mismatch-tolerant way. Direct Certification is easy to do, yet difficult to maximize. It’s highly unlikely that you are maximizing funding under TISA unless you have matching experts using advanced, Tennessee-focused algorithms that are fine-tuned for each client.
Our experience is that we can almost always find districts 3-25% more matches than their current system is finding. If you’re not sure if there is opportunity for improvement, or it you want a free third-party assessment of your current matching, we would love to do that! We will tell you how many additional matches we have found, give you a free random sample of these additional matches, and let you decide where to go from there. If you want our matching services and complete reports about this aspect of your TISA funding, the fee works out to be pennies on the dollar of additional funding we unlock.
Free initial assessments will be offered through the end of December 2025, and may be extended into early 2026 as staff availability permits. Please reach out soon if you have interest in the free initial assessment as we may only be able to fit in 5-10 more of these during the 2025-2026 school year.
Let's Talk:
If you want to start a conversation about direct certification advanced matching for your district, please use the form below. Our pricing guarantees net positive revenue for your school after we help you find the additional matches that no other currently-available system can find. Our calendar stays rather full so please don’t hesitate to reach out directly via email if you would like to speak sooner than is available below. We will fit you in!