Partner, School Design - Assessment

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.

About the role

The purpose of Transcend's Evidence team is to make it possible for extraordinary learning communities to understand and communicate their impact. The Partner, School Design - Assessment will work at the center of the challenge to 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 current systems allow. 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 community-driven design that builds genuine ownership.

Responsibilities

• Lead 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 timely, quality delivery.
• Build and lead 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.
• Manage 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.
• Contribute to ongoing learning: Share experiences working on the ground with school and system leaders with internal and external audiences to showcase examples of innovative assessment practices in action. Contribute to the Evidence team’s collective learning about the future of assessment and accountability systems.

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. 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.
• 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. Conduct a national scan of evolving approaches to high school accountability, engage school leaders, and co-develop a clear, actionable proposal for evolving their approach.
• 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. Design and facilitate workshops where school leaders leave with an understanding of implementation requirements and alignment with their school’s model and community.

Requirements

• A deep commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education and a passion for designing learning experiences where all students thrive.
• Prior experience directly implementing K-12 assessments in schools, with firsthand knowledge of what works, what doesn’t, and where the field’s biggest opportunities lie.
• 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 that build shared vision, ownership, and momentum with school and district teams.
• An R&D orientation: 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 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.
• A willingness to travel approximately 30% of the time (roughly once a month) to work directly with the school and district partners you support.

Skills

• Genuine curiosity about the possibilities AI creates for assessment, tempered by the discipline to test rigorously before scaling anything new.
• Ability to move comfortably between big-picture strategy and day-to-day details of a multi-site, traveling role.
• Political acumen to navigate complex dynamics with discernment and care.
• Curiosity, care, and a drive to make meaningful change—living into Transcend’s values through how you work, connect, and lead.