A video was posted by Wake County Public Schools of part of the Wake County Schools Board meeting on 1/6/15. In the opening remarks, Superintendent Merrill mentions WCPSS received accolades from “Niche“, a website that scores and ranks school performance.  See the Niche ‘methodology’ for how they rank schools here.

Who runs Niche?
According to the Niche site, the CEO is a member of multiple boards at Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon has been a major supporter and funder of the Common Core Standards. For a look at how much enter ‘Common Core State Standards’ into their grants search box.

Luke Skurman, our CEO, grew up in San Francisco. He came to Pittsburgh in 1998 to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Luke is a member of several boards including the Carnegie Mellon University Board of Trustees, where he serves as the youngest trustee member in its history, and the Sprout Fund. Luke is also a co-founder and chairman of Thrill Mill, a non-profit innovation accelerator, and the founding curator of the Global Shapers Pittsburgh Hub, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. He has won national awards related to entrepreneurship from Business Week, Fast Company, and Inc. Magazine. Luke is married to his amazing wife, Natalia, and they have one awesome son, Oliver.

A WHOIS of the Niche site reveals a private registration through GoDaddy.

Niche is a for-profit company. View their media kit.

Apparently Niche, as College Prowler, had an incident on Facebook a while back.