Deputy Chief of KIPP Through College and Career

  • Full-time
  • Start Date: Immediate opening
  • Department: Regional Support and Leadership

Company Description

Founded in Houston in 1994, KIPP has become a national leader in partnering  with families and communities, to create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose — college, career, and beyond — so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world.

In 2018, KIPP schools in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio joined forces to become KIPP Texas Public Schools, a nonprofit public charter school network, accelerating student academic outcomes and impacting more students across Texas. As a unified, statewide organization, KIPP Texas can more effectively leverage the talent, resources, instructional expertise, financial strength, and advocacy in the public charter school movement, in order to have an even larger impact with educationally underserved communities across the state.

In the 2020-2021 school year, KIPP Texas Public Schools will educate more than 31,100 students in 59 schools, placing the district among the top 50 largest in the state. KIPP Texas will continue to prove what is possible for its students, communities, and state, with a goal of growing to educate 100,000 students and achieving a 75% college graduation rate for alumni.

The mission and vision of KIPP Texas is grounded in five Core Values as its cultural North Star:

As a Team & Family, we:

Champion Equity

Chase Excellence

Persist with Purpose

Bring Joy

Rise Together

KIPP Texas is part of the national KIPP network of 255 college-preparatory public charter schools educating early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school students. KIPP schools are part of the free public school system and enrollment is open to all students. Nationwide, KIPP students complete four-year college at a rate of 36 percent, comparable to the national average for all students and approximately three times higher than the average of students from low-income families.

Job Description

The KIPP Through College Team exists in our four regions within KIPP Texas Public Schools. The current work with KIPP Through College is focused on the successful support and partnerships for our KIPPsters to be prepared to go to and through college and lead fulfilling lives. The KIPP Through College team will also take on developing a career readiness strategy to support all of our KIPPsters. 

KIPP Texas believes we can better support our students and alumni by operating KIPP Through College statewide. Thus, we are seeking a visionary, strategic leader to establish how we work as a statewide team. The Deputy Chief of KIPP Through College and Career will be responsible for the development and execution of a centralized, statewide KTC strategy.

Key strategic opportunities are:

  • Maximizing the college enrollment and college success rates of KIPPsters across the state

  • Developing an integrated college and career success strategy that affirms all KIPPsters on their paths to postsecondary and career success

  • Strengthening and reimagining our approach to postsecondary support to ensure our model scales in a financially sustainable way as the number of KIPP Texas alumni grows.

In addition, the KIPP Texas Deputy Chief of KIPP Through College and Career will be responsible for working with other KIPP Texas statewide and regional leaders, ensuring close coordination between KIPP Texas high schools and KTC teams, building strategic partnerships, and implementing rigorous progress monitoring processes to improve KIPP Through College performance.

The KIPP Texas Deputy Chief of KIPP Through College and Career will: lead a team of four regional KTC Directors, who in turn supervise a statewide team who manage regional staff; manage and develop the KTC Director team; and maintain strong relationships to ensure robust collaboration statewide. The KIPP Texas Deputy Chief of KIPP Through College and Career will directly report to a Chief to be later announced and to the KIPP Texas CEO in the interim.

This position may be based out of the Austin, Dallas, Houston, or San Antonio offices.

Illustrative Key Responsibilities 

  • Setting and executing the strategic vision for the KIPP Texas KIPP through College program. Develop and execute a short-term and long-term KTC strategy to ensure ever-greater numbers of KIPP Texas alumni are earning BA degrees and that more KIPP Texas alumni are progressing into strong first jobs and progressing into fulfilling, economically independent lives in upwardly-mobile careers.

  • Aligning our KTC efforts statewide to fully leverage our scale and accelerate learning: Establish structures and processes to ensure tight alignment among the four regional KTC teams and in coordination with regional superintendents and the statewide academics team. We believe more consistency in practice and approach will enable us to learn faster and drive stronger outcomes. Initial focus areas may include (but are limited to): increased standardization in our approach to college and postsecondary counseling; working with the KIPP Texas MD of High Schools to create a more cohesive program between KIPP Texas high schools and KIPP Through College (e.g., shared goals for college counseling outcomes, implementing a college knowledge success and career success curriculum); and exploring opportunities for synergies in our alumni advising efforts.

  • Driving execution, ensuring continuous improvement, and rigorously monitoring progress against critical milestones, performance indicators, and outcomes: Build robust systems to monitor progress throughout the strategy, including setting annual metrics for statewide and regional measurements, in partnership with regional KTC Directors and the Strategy team. Integrate Career and College Readiness KPIs into statewide progress monitoring dashboards and balanced scorecard. Determine how best to present KTC data and updates on KTC strategy to our four regional boards and state boards, in partnership with the regional superintendents and KIPP Texas CEO.

  • Leading statewide strategic partnership opportunities and engaging key stakeholders: Establish new partnerships and maintain and steward existing partnerships and build strong stakeholder relationships, both internally and externally to KIPP Texas. Determine opportunities for statewide partnership work as part of efforts to align and centralize KTC.

  • Problem-Solving Leadership: Work collaboratively to formulate hypotheses; gather and synthesize data; develop and assess alternatives; and build the final case for recommendations.

Qualifications

Skills and Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year university.

  • Minimum of 6-8 years of work experience in a project management, strategy, education, or consulting-type role preferred.

  • Minimum of 6-8 years leading and managing a high-performing team

  • Experience with college access and, ideally, familiarity with the Texas college access landscape

  • Demonstration of entrepreneurial mindset including strong critical questioning skills, innovation and desire to continuously improve.

  • Excellent analytical and critical thinking skills. 

  • Excellent listening and verbal communication skills.

  • Strong stakeholder management and service-orientation. 

  • Self-directed and results-oriented, demonstrating initiative and follow-through.

  • Experience with charter or charter-like schools and/or with students in low-income urban environments is preferred, not required.

  • Experience with Salesforce or similar-type student database systems

  • Ability to model KIPP’s values at all times.

Additional Information

In addition to a competitive salary scale, a part of KIPP Texas’ competitive benefits options, KIPP offers all employees an $0 HMO plan for the employee only. In addition to our $0 plan, KIPP provides a $600 employer contribution towards a Health Savings Account and a variety of other supplemental benefits such as Dental, Vision, Short and Long-Term Disability, Pet Insurance, Life, etc. 

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