Director of Knowledge and Impact Knowledge & Impact Team

New York, New York
KIPP Foundation

KIPP

Great education transforms lives. KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a non-profit network of 255 college-preparatory, public charter schools educating more than 110,000 early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school students. KIPP schools are tuition-free, public charter schools open to all students. KIPP schools, KIPP regions, and the KIPP Foundation are united by a common mission, a commitment to excellence, and a belief that if we help children develop the academic and character strengths they need for college and career success, they will be able to build a better tomorrow for themselves, for their communities, for us all.

KIPP Foundation trains and develops outstanding educators to lead KIPP schools, provides tools, resources, and training for excellent teaching and learning, promotes innovation, and facilitates the exchange of insights and ideas within the KIPP network and with partners including: other charters, districts, colleges and universities, and non-profit organizations across the country.

Why work at KIPP?

By working for the KIPP Foundation, you help more students across the country receive the high-quality education they deserve. If you believe all children deserve great schools and programs where they can gain the knowledge, skills, character, and habits necessary to achieve their dreams while making the world a better place, please join us!

Position Overview

The Academics and Talent Team (ATT) launched a Knowledge and Impact Team in the spring of 2020. The Knowledge and Impact team is charged with leading program evaluation, knowledge management and strategic planning for KIPP’s academics and talent programming for KIPP regions all with the greater goal of improving program rigor and implementation fidelity, spotlighting our ability to meet regional and student needs via our programming, increasing the ATT’s capacity to use data for reflection, program improvement and organizational learning and leveraging data-driven insights to guide program design and strategy.

Specifically, we are looking for a Director of Knowledge and Impact to drive alignment of our program evaluation, knowledge management and planning efforts. You will drive the organizational learning cycle by designing and executing evaluation strategies that answer program teams’ key research questions, translating learnings from program evaluation into knowledge management and ensuring these insights are strategically integrated into annual planning and future program design. On a daily basis you will find yourself engaging in a variety of efforts from designing and leading evaluation studies, researching and sharing insights from the KIPP network and broader ed sector to influence program team decision-making, facilitating data discussion and reflection with program teams, or bringing your experience and perspective into our knowledge management and planning.

In the short-term, this could look like building out our approaches to knowledge management and summative evaluation in a way that centers equity, meets our programming teams’ needs and furthers our commitment to being an antiracist organization. In SY21 and SY22 we will continue the formative evaluation that we have started of KIPP’s Early Literacy and Principal-in-Residence leader development programs.

The ideal candidate has an understanding of the cycle of organizational learning and implementation, particularly with respect to program design, program evaluation and program improvement. They will bring an understanding of analytical approaches and program evaluation methodologies, insightful interpretation of data and the ability to facilitate program teams to refine program design and implementation based on analytical findings and research.

This Knowledge & Impact team consists of a Senior Director, Knowledge & Impact and a Senior Manager, Program Evaluation. The Director of Knowledge & Impact reports to the Sr. Director of Knowledge & Impact. This team sits within the Academics and Talent team given the primary role is in coaching and thought partnering with program teams. This role will also work collaboratively with the Insight and Analytics and Research and Evaluation teams at KIPP. (The Insight & Analytics team supports the use, analysis, presentation and application of high-quality data and research regarding KIPP schools, teachers, students and parents. The Research and Evaluation team leads our external evaluation work and assessment strategy.)

Key Responsibilities and Duties

• Lead the ATT to make data-driven and research-driven continuous improvement in our programmatic offerings
• Shape the ATT’s research priorities to identify opportunities to further advance the KIPP mission

• Build a research-based framework and approach for summative evaluation of leader development and academic supports

• Coach ATT program teams through the cycle of organizational learning
  • Work with program teams to build logic models, set evaluation goals and identify clear and compelling evaluation/learning questions
  • Formulate appropriate research designs to measure implementation and impact aligned to program goals and context
  • Continuously improve strategies for collecting and analyzing the data needed to evaluate our programs by clearly defining data needs and ensuring data collection mechanisms are developed and implemented effectively
  • Analyze and interpret data to support program teams in reflecting on program implementation and impact relative to program goals; synthesize analysis and reflections to surface insights that inform annual planning and future program design
  • Partner with program teams (or intended audience) to take action based on the data
  • Surface and capture programmatic lessons learned, as well as lessons learned in the field
  • Create systems for ensuring that lessons learned from evaluations are deeply internalized and incorporated as organizational practice
• With the K&I team, collaboratively build the knowledge management agenda for ATT, facilitating sharing and dissemination of learning across programs and teammates
• Partner with Sr. Director of Knowledge and Impact on incorporating insights from program evaluation into strategic and annual planning
• Collaborate with KIPP Foundation’s Insight & Analytics, Research & Evaluation and Technology teams to provide seamless support to program teams in answering summative evaluation questions

Key Competencies

• Continuous Learning
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Planning and Execution
• Communication
• Impact & Influence

Experience and Qualifications

• Deep passion for educational equity and KIPP’s mission and values
• Systems builder with respect to cross-team collaboration, learning and executional excellence
• Critical thinker when analyzing impact, identifying opportunities, formulating solutions, and gaining support from stakeholders
• Experience and demonstrated success in leading systematic process of design, evaluation and iteration to improve impact of a program or strategy
• Experience designing logic models and carrying out evaluation plans for either formative and summative evaluations
• Excellent research and communication skills (written and verbal), particularly for engaging with and collaborating with program teams and communicating research findings to non-research audiences
• Excellent command of monitoring and evaluation methodologies; strong analytical skills and experience working with large datasets
• Ability to surface and clearly communicate insights from data so that those insights can be used for strategic decision making around programs
• Experience with organizational knowledge management systems (codification of resources, processes and structures for knowledge sharing)
• Demonstrated success managing multiple projects in a fast-paced environment
• Demonstrated ability to work as part of a team and foster a sense of teamwork
• Deep commitment to racial justice with experience centering equity in evaluating impact

• An advanced degree in social science or related field (statistics, evaluation, public policy, etc,)

• At least 7 years’ experience in training and technical assistance, evaluation and/or performance management
• At least 2 years’ experience serving as a project lead on evaluations or evaluation capacity building efforts
• Ability to be flexible to shifting contexts and realities

Location & Travel

• Remote and / or NY, Chicago, SF, DC
• Travel requirements are limited, ~5-10% of the time in a typical year (Travel currently suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

Compensation and Benefits

KIPP offers competitive salary commensurate with experience. A comprehensive benefits package, generous vacation and PTO, 401k retirement plan with both pre- and post-tax options, as well as gym reimbursement, flexible spending account (FSA), and cell phone reimbursement are also offered by KIPP.

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