About Springboard
Children spend 75% of their waking hours outside the classroom, yet our school system struggles to capture educational value from this time for children in low-income communities. These students lack continuous access to learning at home and school, slowing down progress during the academic year and leading to chronic regressions over the summer. Springboard Collaborative closes the literacy gap by closing the gap between home and school. We offer summer and afterschool programs that combine differentiated reading instruction for Pre-K through 3rd graders; workshops training parents to teach reading at home; a rigorous coaching cycle for teachers; and an incentive structure that awards learning tools to families in proportion to student reading gains.
Since launch in 2011, Springboard has scaled from 40 students to nearly 4,000. Last summer, our scholars replaced the typical 3-month reading loss with a 3.1-month reading gain. Weekly parent training workshops averaged 91% attendance and were featured in the New York Times, PBS Newshour, and Forbes. We are out ahead of the field proving a simple but powerful truth: parents’ love for their children is the single greatest and most underutilized natural resource in education. Learn more at: https://www.springboardcollaborative.org/
The opportunity
Springboard’s recently completed 5-year vision will position the organization to make impact at a much greater scale. Our goal is to catalyze a culture shift in the national education field, making family engagement a matter of course. The Director of Strategic Initiatives (DSI) will help bring this vision to life by designing, executing, and evaluating the organization’s pilot initiatives to embed parent-teacher collaboration into daily school and family life more deeply. The DSI will develop a district blueprint for family engagement and create a model for disseminating Springboard’s best practices at a large scale.
The DSI will report to the President and work closely with the CEO to design innovations that can extend Springboard’s impact beyond its direct service program offering. The DSI will also collaborate with the Director of Curriculum & Instruction and the Director of Analytics to design experiments and evaluate progress on new and existing pilots. Ultimately, the DSI is fully responsible for all aspects of design, execution, and measurement related to Springboard’s strategic initiatives. This is a great opportunity for someone who is seeking to catalyze a culture shift in the national education field. It took a long time for the sector to embrace the idea that all children can learn. It is Springboard’s ambition—and our charge—to prove that all parents can teach.
Position outcomes
The DSI is responsible for effective execution of multiple pilots in close collaboration with partners to ultimately enable Springboard to:
• Identify innovative approaches to influence school systems
• Work with districts to co-create a blueprint for family engagement for citywide implementation to enable long-term scalable and sustainable change
• Distill core elements of Springboard’s approach that can be disseminated broadly and managed independently (e.g.: licensing and franchising)
• Iterate on existing service offerings and/or develop new services to share Springboard’s best practices at a national scale
Key responsibilities
In order to achieve the preceding outcomes, the DSI will:
• Partner with the CEO and CSO to develop a long-term strategic plan for innovation, using Springboard’s five-year vision as an anchor for disciplined innovation and pilots
• Advance strategic initiatives by developing thoughtful designs and detailed plans to translate strategy into executable implementations plans
• Lead and manage all pilots to enable successful execution and evaluation; this includes developing relationships with key stakeholders to encourage their participation in new initiatives; monitoring and supporting frontline staff with pilot implementation; tracking deadlines and measuring outcomes; evaluating pilots in conjunction with Director of Analytics to extract insights from successes and failures in order to continuously iterate on initiatives; and disseminating lessons learned internally and externally as appropriate
• Co-create a district blueprint for family engagement for citywide implementation i.e. Springboard Schoolyear initiative in Philadelphia
• Create and pilot decentralized methods for sharing Springboard’s best practices i.e. explore options such as but not limited to franchising, licensing, and reading clubs
• Gather information and feedback from Springboard’s customers and stakeholders (district leaders, principals, teachers, parents, students, etc.) so the organization can further understand and address their unique needs
• Proactively keep track of other innovations in the field, to keep Springboard on the cutting edge of family engagement and parent-teacher collaboration
Your skill set
As the incoming DSI, you will possess many, though perhaps not all, of the following characteristics and qualifications:
• You are a systems thinker with experience navigating large systems to influence long-lasting change; you can successfully navigate within school districts to engage and partner with a variety of stakeholders effectively
• You are an experienced program builder and/or manager with strong organizational skills, and the ability to translate strategic plans into actionable implementation plans while successfully managing all key stakeholders;
• You bring experience designing, launching, and evaluating pilot programs to ultimately inform your efforts to implement large-scale initiatives;
• You are a strategic thinker who can quickly analyze various points of view and pieces of data to develop a tailored approach to build and maintain key partnerships;
• You are comfortable with tracking and interpreting data, capable of leveraging the analysis of pilot outcomes to influence iteration of future service designs;
• You have exceptional oral and written communication skills; you have previously served as an external representative and successfully engaged with a variety of senior external stakeholders;
• You thrive while working collaboratively with team members in an innovative, fast-paced, and entrepreneurial environment; you are a self-starter, humble, highly comfortable operating autonomously in a rapidly growing cutting-edge organization;
• You are an inquisitive problem solver, dedicated to continuous iteration as it enables you to achieve strong outcomes for students you seek to ultimately serve. Your teammates describe you as a solutions-oriented, creative colleague who is always willing to pitch in when required
To apply
Please upload a resume and cover letter addressed to Aubrey White outlining how your skills and experience meet the qualifications of the position and how you heard about the opportunity. The documents must be in Word or PDF format and should be uploaded here. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Springboard Collaborative offers a competitive salary and benefits, commensurate with experience and skills.
Springboard Collaborative is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to cultivating an environment where diverse perspectives and backgrounds are embraced, acknowledging that a team reflecting diversity of race, gender, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, marital/ domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, and veteran status allows us to serve our communities better. We celebrate the diversity of our nation and communities, and we seek to build a team that reflects that diversity. We welcome and encourage all applicants who share that same vision, as we want to engage all those who can contribute to our powerful mission.