Rennzer wins prize for school-comparison platform

D.C.-based Rennzer won second place in the My School Information Design Challenge, a contest held by a school reform advocacy group, the Foundation For Excellence in Education.
With its school comparison and ranking platform, the digital consultancy also won the popular vote in the best comparison category.
Rennzer will plow the $12,000 in total cash prizes (plus an additional $24,000 from its own pocket) into developing and testing the platform.
And CEO Omid Jahanbin is already planning ahead: the project is scheduled for demos in startup gatherings in 15 different cities. The next step will be to convince states to use it.
Jahanbin, a former head of global marketing for Blackboard, says he was “intimately familiar” with the uneven level of public schools.
An alum of Montgomery County Public Schools, he said the district “has a wide distribution of performance across all of their schools,” adding, “I know that they have challenges distributing resources adequately.”
The Foundation for Excellence in Education is a nonprofit founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.