About SimpleGroup
Why it exists, and how decisions about it get made.
Every teacher running group work has the same two bad options: count off by fours and accept whatever comes out, or spend an evening moving names around on paper. The research tools that solve this properly — CATME’s Team-Maker above all — were built for university researchers working with consenting adults under ethics review. A high school teacher with thirty sophomores and a first-period bell is a different problem.
SimpleGroup is that tool rebuilt for the classroom: it takes what the school already knows about a student from Canvas, adds the thing only their teacher knows, and produces groups that balance on criteria you chose and can explain.
What doesn’t change
The teacher’s judgment is the signal
Most tools here start with a student survey. We don’t — self-report gets gamed, and a student asked whether they work hard always says yes. The person who has watched these thirty kids work every day is the better instrument.
Local-first is a commitment, not a stage
Student records we never receive are records we can never leak, lose, or be compelled to hand over. It is harder to ship and harder to support, and it rules out whole business models. We took that on purpose.
No criterion that stands in for who a student is
Grouping on a protected characteristic carries real civil-rights exposure, and the law turns on effect rather than intent. We hold the product to that standard even where nobody is checking.
What we won’t do
- Put student data on a server we operate.
- Add analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, or any AI service.
- Ship a grouping criterion that stands in for a protected characteristic.
- Write anything to Canvas that a teacher hasn’t read and confirmed.
- Sell, share, or broker anything about a student. There is nothing to sell.
Built for one classroom at a time.
If this sounds like the way your school thinks about student data, we should talk.