Partner, School Design - Assessment

Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full-time
Reports to: David Nitkin, Managing Partner
Team: Evidence 

Location/Travel: Remote (U.S.-based); willingness to travel approximately once per month, ~30% travel

Who We Are

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support. From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community.

For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

The Opportunity

The purpose of Transcend's Evidence team is to make it possible for extraordinary learning communities to understand and communicate their impact. Unfortunately the most predominant tools for measuring that impact, standardized tests in English Language Arts and math, have significant limitations. These tests capture only a slice of what matters most, leaving higher-order skills like critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and collaboration largely unmeasured.  They are built on the assumption that all students progress and learn at the same pace, making personalized and competency-based learning difficult to implement while creating significant logistical burdens for students and teachers. Part of Transcend's mission is to help change that reality, pushing the field toward new and better forms of assessment.

The Partner, School Design - Assessment will work at the center of that challenge. This role will work directly with schools and districts to help them pilot, validate, and scale innovative assessment approaches that are more personalized, less administratively burdensome, and able to measure a wider range of outcomes and experiences than the current systems allow. In particular, we believe there is significant promise in assessments that combine proven practices such as portfolio- and performance-based assessments with new possibilities enabled by AI. This role sits at the intersection of psychometrics and school design, requiring someone who can translate technical rigor into practical guidance for educators and facilitate the kind of community-driven design that builds genuine ownership.

To hear more about the role, the work, and the team, please watch this video from David Nitkin. 

Key Responsibilities

As a Partner, School Design - Assessment on the Evidence team, you will work closely with school and district teams through design journeys focused on piloting, implementing, and strengthening innovative assessment practices and tools. You will support communities across the country as they build shared vision; align instruction and systems; and move from design into piloting and implementation — while contributing to a collaborative project team committed to learning, iteration, and meaningful impact. 

You’ll be a project lead, taking on ownership of a complex project from end to end. You work with the Managing Partner to define what success looks like, align the work and any team members to get there, manage the conditions for a thriving partner relationship and team culture, and take on increasing external stakeholder management alongside your manager. This will include: 

• Leading project planning and execution: Define overall project success, including milestones, deliverables, and metrics. Build a clear project plan aligned to goals, Transcend's core schema, and local context. Manage project expenses to the approved budget and communicate progress to ensure timeline, quality delivery. 
• Building and leading your project team: Foster a project team culture where members do their best work. Put clear collaboration and communication structures in place, ensure role and work clarity, and create opportunities to reinforce Transcend's values, mission, and equity commitments.
• Managing external relationships: Support the cultivation and stewardship of school partners, funders, and system leaders. This may also include supporting your manager with scoping for prospective projects and grants.
• Contributing to ongoing learning: As you work across schools and districts, you’ll contribute to the Evidence team’s collective learning about the future of assessment and accountability systems. You will also share your experiences working on the ground with school and system leaders with internal and external audiences to showcase examples of innovative assessment practices in action.

Sample projects that you would lead: 

• Piloting uses of AI in literacy assessment: Partner with two secondary schools to pilot AI-augmented literacy assessment embedded in real classrooms. You would convene diverse design teams of students, educators, and administrators to identify high-leverage use cases; pilot new approaches; and document implementation lessons that other schools can follow. This project would help define what responsible, high-impact AI use in literacy assessment actually looks like in practice, establish credible proof points, and help spur broader, responsible adoption of AI to strengthen literacy assessment at scale.
• Revamping accountability systems for a charter authorizer: Generate recommendations for updating a charter authorizer’s high school accountability plan framework and accompanying progress reporting systems to align with a statewide Portrait of a Graduate. You would conduct a national scan of how charter authorizers and state systems are evolving their approaches to high school accountability to encompass holistic student outcomes; directly engage school leaders to understand current practices and invite them to engage with examples of how schools nationally are assessing complex competencies and concrete tools and resources they can adapt for their own communities; and co-develop with the authorizer a clear, actionable proposal for evolving their approach to high school accountability, including recommended updates to measures, evidence sources, reporting structures, and evaluation protocols.
• Facilitate workshops where schools explore and apply a Portrait of a Graduate to their context: Help schools unpack a state Portrait of a Graduate and apply it to their local contexts, providing supporting resources and considering how they may gather evidence against it. You would design and facilitate a workshop where school leaders leave with an understanding of what’s required of their school and students as it relates to implementing the Portrait; how the competencies align with their school’s model and community; and how they might gather evidence towards the Portrait competencies. 

Who You Are 

You are a leader who lives at the intersection of psychometrics and school design, energized by the challenge of making assessment more meaningful, more personalized, and less burdensome for students and educators. You move comfortably between big-picture strategy and the day-to-day details of a multi-site, traveling role, staying organized across multiple workstreams while adapting as plans evolve. You build trust easily with a wide range of stakeholders and bring the political acumen to navigate complex dynamics with discernment and care.

And to all of this, you bring: 

• A deep commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education and a passion for designing learning experiences where all students thrive. 
• Curiosity, care, and a drive to make meaningful change—living into Transcend’s values through how you work, connect, and lead.
• A genuine curiosity about the possibilities AI creates for assessment, tempered by the discipline to test rigorously before scaling anything new.
• Prior experience directly implementing K-12 assessments in schools in which you've seen firsthand what works, what doesn't, and where the field's biggest opportunities lie.
• A robust foundational knowledge of core psychometric principles (e.g., validity, reliability, comparability, bias), and the ability to translate that technical rigor into practical, everyday guidance for educators.
• Strong facilitation skills and a knack for leading inclusive, engaging design experiences: the kind that builds genuine shared vision, ownership, and momentum with the school and district teams you partner with.
• An R&D orientation, you're energized by learning, iterating, and improving your approach over time, both within your project team and alongside the communities you support.
• Outstanding project management and organizational skills, with the ability to juggle multiple workstreams and keep the logistics of a traveling, multi-site role running smoothly.
• Strong self-management skills, including comfort navigating ambiguity, structuring your own time, and adapting as plans shift, all without losing sight of the bigger picture.
• Skill and care in building relationships across a wide range of stakeholders, including students, families, teachers, school leaders, district leaders, and funders.
• Resourcefulness and a solutions-oriented mindset,  especially when conditions are complex, evolving, or imperfect, you are able to find the practical path forward.
• A willingness to travel approximately 30% of the time (roughly once a month) to work directly with the school and district partners you support.
• And above all, you care deeply about getting assessment right for students, pushing past the limits of standardized tests toward approaches that reflect the fuller range of what students know and can do.

Application & Hiring Process

We review applications on a rolling basis and are committed to a thoughtful and people-centered hiring experience that helps candidates understand what it’s like to work at Transcend. Here’s a sample hiring process at Transcend; though the stages for this individual role may vary:

• Initial interview with the team via Zoom to learn more about your interest and experiences. 
• Try-on activity to engage in a role-aligned exercise. This helps us get a sense of how you approach the work and gives you a feel for what the role might be like. 
• Interviews with the team, where you will meet with a small group of Transcend teammates with whom you are likely to collaborate with in the role.
• Final round interviews with two senior leaders at Transcend, including the Managing Partner, David Nitkin. 
• Reference checks to learn more about your superpowers and working style. 

Salary 

As a national team, we apply a cost-of-labor adjustment by adjusting salaries into 3 geographical bands (geo-band) in order to offer competitive compensation for all employees across the US. These geo-bands help us tailor compensation appropriately based on the specific location of each teammate. Below are the three salary geo-bands for this role, and we will confirm the individual range for your location during this initial interview, if you move forward in the process. 

• Geo Comp 1:  Currently Includes: NYC metro area, CA Bay Area, Boston City, LA City, Washington, D.C, Seattle  $145,000 - $210,000 
• Geo Comp 2: Currently includes locations such as: San Diego; New Haven, CT; Ventura, CA  $137,750 - $199,500 
• Geo Comp 3: Currently Includes: Most other US locations  $130,500 - $189,000 

A Few Nuts & Bolts

We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive. We are also committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package and offer medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.

We look forward to learning more about you!