Job Description

Position: Senior Director of Secondary Partnerships-Program Design & Strategy, District Partnership Program (DPP)

Position Type: Internal/External

Reports to: Andy Schmitz, Managing Director of Secondary Partnerships

Start date: October 18, 2021

*This position is grant funded until Aug. 23, 2023. OneGoal will work to ensure the position is sustained over the long-term.

Location: Preferred within a OneGoal region: Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Houston, TX; Boston, MA; New York City, NY; Bay Area, CA; but flexible within the following states: Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington D.C., Wisconsin

Apply by: September 14, 2021 (applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis)

OneGoal

Despite decades of work and millions of dollars invested, the degree divide continues to be one of our nation’s most complex and critical injustices, with deep roots in systems of oppression and racism. Only 22% of students from low-income communities earn a college degree, compared to 67% of their peers from high-income areas.

COVID-19 further exposed and exacerbated inequity, with communities of color and those in low-income areas impacted at disproportionately high rates. We are looking for individuals to join us in our fight for equity during this extremely critical time.

• OneGoal has grown from a small afterschool program serving just 32 students in Chicago to a nationwide movement that is serving some 14,000 students in six communities.
• Our model, honed over 14 years, has three core differentiators: A rigorous, culturally relevant content and experience, cohorts of students who can support each other over the course of three years, and a teacher who supports our most vulnerable students’ long-term ambitions.
• 88% of OneGoal high school graduates enroll in a postsecondary institution and 79% of those who enroll persist one year after high school.

 

District Partnership Program Team:

The District Partnership Program (DPP) team exists to support OneGoal in creating a postsecondary solution for districts that is scalable, affordable on public dollars, and impactful. Partner districts will transform the postsecondary pathway experience for students across the district by building the capacity of multiple adults already in those districts who directly impact critical postsecondary outcomes, and by embedding postsecondary success programs/systems/tools into the fabric of K12 education. DPP is intentionally developing a model that reduces the costs of achieving impact and allows OneGoal to reach districts and students anywhere in the country, not just those in our existing regions.

To achieve this mission, our overarching goals are to: (1) improve student postsecondary outcomes in partner DPP districts, (2) reduce our reliance on philanthropy, over time, through larger investments of public dollars in the program, (3) support districts to institutionalize transformative and equitable systems that support student postsecondary success, and (4) hire, retain, and grow a highly talented DPP team that continuously innovates in support of our broader vision: to close the degree divide in America.

The Role

You are driven by a strong belief that all students deserve an equitable opportunity to achieve their greatest postsecondary aspirations. There are two distinct areas of focus for this role:

• Leading the program design and strategy development of our Professional Development (PD) service offerings (trainings, resources, consulting) for district and school leaders in the postsecondary success space
• Engaging in continuous improvement around these PD services by testing/iterating these offerings such that we improve our ability to achieve impact at scale over time,

 

Together, we’ll achieve a system-level change that puts the majority of students in a district on a better trajectory towards their postsecondary aspirations.

Your primary responsibilities include:

• Program Design and Strategy (50%): Codify OneGoal’s Professional Development Services design and strategy. Refine and develop products for district and school leaders that build their capacity to lead postsecondary improvement.
  • Continue to develop/expand our three pilot products/supports (postsecondary readiness rubric, postsecondary school improvement series, and postsecondary improvement leadership coaching) by adding to our programmatic design
  • Plan high quality professional learning experiences for district and school leaders around key postsecondary topics
  • Ensure products/supports build the capacity of leaders and systems and are aligned to adult learning principles
  • Identify opportunities for integration with OneGoal’s core classroom model
  • Connect products and supports to overall DPP team strategy and vision , and ensure a coherent user experience across all three products
  • Collaborate with the MD, Secondary Partnerships and SD, Secondary Partnership – Program Implementation to continuously refine the vision and direction of OneGoal’s PD services – including making adjustments to dosage, service offerings, pricing structure, staffing organization, etc and innovating on new service iterations
  • Outline measures of success and evaluation framework for OneGoal’s PD services, in collaboration with colleagues

 

• Learn, Continuously Improve, and Innovate (30%): To enhance our PD services, engage in continuous learning and research around the needs of leaders and the literature around postsecondary success. Meticulously monitor program outcomes to improve program design and to seize opportunities to innovate on new iterations of our PD services.
  • Assess school and district leader needs in this space, gathering user feedback and leveraging research
  • Use our progress monitoring data (formative and summative) to engage in continuous improvement cycles and adjust program design and strategy
  • Connect with others in the field of postsecondary access and success to improve our PD services model
  • Research the latest trends and literature around postsecondary access and success to inform our products and services and iterate on new models; build the PD Service team knowledge around important trends and literature
  • Launch and project manage small scale pilots of new products and services under our PD services umbrella
  • Assist the MD, Secondary Partnerships with codifying and spreading the PD service model and smaller innovations across the organization to different regions

 

• Leadership Coaching + Training (20%):
  • Coach a small portfolio of school and district leaders across the country in order to ensure positive postsecondary outcomes with partners. (This person will have a small number of district and school leaders that they directly coach in addition to managing the broader team of coaches)

 

The Person

The Senior Director of Secondary Partnerships – Program Design + Strategy is likely to see himself/herself/themselves in the following examples, as they are designed to help you determine if this opportunity aligns with your own passion, purpose, skills, and experiences.

You believe deeply in our Fellows and their ability to graduate from a postsecondary institution.

• You believe that students in underserved communities face real systemic barriers to postsecondary completion, and that empowering their families, their teachers and themselves to own their unique path will help them to overcome those barriers.
• You believe a user-centered design approach ensures that our program is responsive to students and educators AND leads to the greatest impact on postsecondary outcomes

You design and create user-centered, impactful solutions

• You leverage research and user needs to guide your design of products and supports for system-level leaders
• You develop different product prototypes and engage in rapid cycle learning to iterate on different versions
• You understand the internal-facing and external-facing programmatic architecture need to stand up school/district leader products and services
• You create a variety of different professional learning sessions, artifacts, tools that help leaders execute their postsecondary priorities
• You are familiar with and deeply passionate about human centered design principles and practices, especially creating, testing, and refining prototypes to complex problems.
• You utilize these principles and practices to create and refine our program innovation systems, tools, and processes.

You work is detail-oriented, innovative, and customized

• You pay attention to small details in order to standardize content and products
• You recognize that no two schools and districts have the same content and can adapt our products as needed
• You connect the dots for partners across our products/services so that they understand the interplay to maximize impact

You are a champion of adult learning principles

• You take a problem-centered approach to support adult learning
• You develop multiple ways to have adults practice a new skill or concept in your professional learning and coaching sessions
• You narrowly focus your support around a discrete set of objectives because you know adults must master one concept before moving onto the next

You’re an expert in postsecondary access and success

• You’re an experienced leader in the postsecondary access and success space with a clear and measurable track record of success.
• You’re forward-thinking within the postsecondary access and success space including having a keen eye towards technology and innovation as a tool for enhancing our program.
• You’re understand the nuances, systems, and structures related to postsecondary access and success in K-12 systems

You are a learner

• You identify ways to engage in rapid cycles of improvement (test-iterate) to learn what parts of our new products/supports are working well, and which of those need improvement through data-driven decisions.
• You strive to fix areas that are not working.
• You use data (quantitative and qualitative) to make short- and long-term improvements and to inform future analysis and learnings.
• You seek out experts and colleagues in the school support organization/college access organization space to provide input and feedback
• Your decisions are grounded in what is be

You see the system

• You recognize that without alignment and coherence, improvement initiatives often fail
• You apply continuous improvement principles to your own work in vision and direction setting
• You monitor progress relative to our vision, and understand the role the system places in accelerating or inhibiting progress

You are a creative thinker, problem solver, and innovator

• You are excited by problem solving excites and you are always ready to go back to the drawing board to develop a different approach.
• You’re comfortable with non-linear thinking.
• You know there are multiple pathways to arriving at a solution
• You propose innovative solutions to complex challenges.
• Your creative instincts help you deal with vague situations and develop new approaches with limited guidance.

You believe deeply in our Fellows and their ability to graduate from a postsecondary institution.

• You believe that students in underserved communities face real systemic barriers to postsecondary completion, and that empowering their families, their teachers and themselves to own their unique path will help them to overcome those barriers.
• You believe a user-centered design approach ensures that our program is responsive to students and educators AND leads to the greatest impact on post-secondary outcomes

Qualifications:

• Lived experience of the Fellows we serve (Preferred)
• Bachelor’s Degree (Required)
• Master’s Degree in School/District Leadership or Administration (Preferred)
• 3+ years of leadership [administrator/counselor] experience at the high-school level (Preferred)
• 3+ years of leadership experience in a district central office (College & Career/Postsecondary Department) (Required)
• Strong familiarity and knowledge of and experience with postsecondary systems and structures [eg. FASFAs, common application, NSC etc.] (Required)
• Experience coaching and developing and designing professional learning for school or district leaders (Required)
• Ability to travel a few days every month, once COVID-19 related travel restrictions are lifted (approximately 20-30% of the time, mostly throughout Illinois)

Our Team

Guided by a clear set of core values and beliefs, you will join an impressive group of more than 150 OneGoal staff across the country who believe in the untapped potential within students. The OneGoal team challenges themselves and others to regularly ask, “Is there a better way?”

The Tangible Good

We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package* which includes medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, retirement matching, paid parental leave, and more. We also offer a generous paid time off policy, including 20 paid vacation days, holidays and 6 wellness days (flexible sick time).

*OneGoal reserves the right to change benefits at anytime according to business need.

You believe in people and the promise of humanity and are committed to equity and inclusion

You believe in an inclusive and culturally competent society and the essence of our commitment to diversity and inclusion. We believe that in order to create the change we seek, each person we hire brings a remarkable and diverse set of experiences, skills and characteristics that individually and collectively, will contribute to the radical change needed to move us towards a more equitable and just nation.

How to Apply

Throw Your Hat in the Ring. Please click here to complete an application, which includes attaching an updated resume and cover letter explaining your passion and alignment to this position. OneGoal is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of actual or perceived sex, race, color, ancestry, citizenship, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, disability (mental or physical), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, pregnancy, breastfeeding or related medical condition, parenthood, genetic characteristic or information, military or veteran status, marital status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or local law ------------------------------------------------ Quarter Five, a coaching and consulting firm that specializes in supporting organizations as they navigate complex and consequential change, has been retained for this engagement. About Quarter Five Quarter Five (Q5) represents an extra quarter in the year to focus on the things that matter most. We know that true partnership matters - we are that true partner. Our partnership includes: Our partnership includes: Business Consulting

• Executive Leadership Transitions and Team Restructures
• Individual, Team, and Leadership Development Through Change
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Design and Implementation

Executive Team Coaching

• Transitions
• Restructures
• Navigating Complex Issues and Crisis Response

Recruiting and Hiring Support

• Matching diverse talent to your organizations' needs

Learn more about Quarter Five here.

Bureaus: Chicago. Job Categories: Full-Time. Job Types: Operations / Administration.