Manager of High School Data

Job Description

Your biggest priority will be ensuring that the data systems that support teaching and learning in our high schools operate efficiently. This may mean building new pipelines into our central database or troubleshooting with our school operations teams to ensure we have clean data entry processes. Every day is different, but there are cycles throughout the year. There is systems turn-over, set-up, and course rostering at the start of the school year. In the middle of the school year, we work on reporting requests and optimizing our existing data flows. The end of the year includes many compliance and data reconciliation tasks, systems documentation, and preparation for the new school year. At times there might be ad hoc tasks to help with a new priority. Nevertheless, you would be expected to oversee the following in this role:

• Build and maintain the automated data pipelines required to move data from multiple student information systems (SIS) and student application platforms into a centralized database (Amazon RDS).
• Execute SQL queries to prepare relational data for visualization tools.
• Produce and maintain regional and school facing Tableau data reports for our high schools, including: in-progress grades and GPA, gradebook fidelity, attendance and chronic absenteeism, graduation progress, and credit tracking.
• Review existing portfolio of reports and collect user feedback to determine improvements to the reporting suite.

• Work with the Managing Director of High Schools to standardize high school grading scales, GPA policies, progress reports, and transcripts, ensuring alignment across schools and equity for all students.
• Work with the high school ops teams and the Managing Director of High Schools to operationalize regional grading policies in a new SIS (PowerSchool)
• Support high school operations teams with SIS troubleshooting, facilitating SIS training, and managing data quality assurance for two SIS platforms (Infinite Campus and PowerSchool).
• Work with the Regional Data Manager to create systems for consistent HS master scheduling across high schools
• Conduct ongoing audits of core high school academic health data (including weekly academic health dashboard audits, quarterly gradebook setup audits, quarterly GPA quality audits).
• Build data tools that set our high school teams up to monitor GPA data quality and flag common roster issues related to course enrollments.
• Regularly write and update documentation of existing and new data systems.

• Engage with regional staff and high school leadership teams as we build standardized strategies to leverage data systems for decision-making across our high schools.
• Support high schools with data presentations for data days and data stepbacks.
• Ensure families have access to on demand grade and GPA information by building data tools or expanding family access to existing data tools.

Qualifications

Exceptional attention to detail: Our team supports our schools by ensuring our students have access to the tools and platforms they need for learning, and by ensuring our teachers and school leadership teams have the data and information they need to teach and make strategic decisions. We’ll count on you to ensure those systems are running every day, to surface and resolve issues that might otherwise go unnoticed, and to meticulously ensure the integrity of the information shared with our teams. You check everything 2, 3, or 4 times before you’re sure it’s right. Your meticulous attention to detail will help catch problems before anyone else so you can swiftly move to resolve them.

A passion for continuous learning and getting better at systems optimization: We are a team of constant learners. We started with basic spreadsheets skills like vlookups, pivot tables, and conditional formatting, and learned to use queries, SQL, Python, and AWS along the way. We’ll count on you to see new tasks and ask, “is there a better way to do this?” then research and implement solutions. You take ownership of the problems in front of you and dive head first into creating the best solutions for all stakeholders. Your continuous hunger to research and learn new skills will support both the optimization of our systems and your growing toolkit of data system knowledge.

Good data sense: you notice when details don’t look right and realize the implications of even the tiniest error in your system.

Strong written and oral communication skills: you know when to ask questions, how to get people invested in a process, and when/how to give clear step-by-step guidance.

Highly resourceful self-starter: you can learn new data platforms/systems quickly, and then drive projects to completion without a significant amount of guidance.

You should have proficiency with these technical skills, although the right candidate can pick up some skills on the job:

• Pulling data from web-based applications
• Reconciling data from disparate sources and systems
• SQL
• Python
• Advanced proficiency with Google Sheets/Excel formulas

You should have experience with several of the following platforms:

• PowerSchool
• Infinite Campus
• Tableau Desktop
• Tableau Server
• AWS RDS
• Microsoft SQL Server
• DeansList
• Illuminate

Experience cleaning and manipulating large datasets

Experience planning and executing data projects across multiple teams

Previous experience working with schools required; previous work with high schools strongly preferred

Demonstrated passion for the mission, vision and values of KIPP Nashville; comfort and willingness to actively participate in the KIPP Nashville community

Passionate and committed to being a leader for racial justice and equity, and working in schools committed to anti-racism

Bachelor’s degree required

4+ years of experience working in a data role

Additional Information

Location: Flexible, with quarterly travel to Nashville required for non-local employees.

Our comprehensive compensation package includes life insurance and long-term disability coverage provided by KIPP Nashville, voluntary medical and dental plans, in addition to retirement benefits and an annual salary increase.