Vice President, High-Impact Tutoring

ExpandED is dedicated to ensuring that all young people have access to enriching learning opportunities that affirm their identities, teach them valuable skills, and spark new possibilities. Through program development, capacity-building, research and advocacy, we work toward our vision of a vibrant and stable publicly-funded system of school-community partnerships so that all New York City children thrive.

Established in 1998, the organization today reaches more than 119,000 children and 900 programs throughout New York City to ensure that students in under-served communities have access to innovative, engaging ways of learning to enable them to reach their full potential. Over the last two decades, ExpandED Schools’ program, research and policy efforts have led to increased recognition of the academic, social, and emotional benefits of afterschool, increased funding, and new models for school-community partnership. The pandemic further highlighted the importance of academic and SEL support as well as ExpandED’s vital function in providing high-quality learning activities.

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the Vice President, High-Impact Tutoring, will play a leading role in designing and advancing ExpandED’s development of a high-impact tutoring ecosystem that will ensure that students and families from the most marginalized communities with historically minimal access to tutoring and individualized interventions receive the academic and social emotional supports they need. The VP will engage a community of professionals from the youth development, K-12 education, tutoring, and higher education sectors in a continuous improvement process to establish standards for high-impact-tutoring and build systems that maximize impact for students, educators, and school communities. 

The Role

We are hiring a Vice President, High-Impact Tutoring, to lead ExpandED’s dual-impact initiative scaling access to high impact tutoring city-wide. This initiative, in partnership with the NYC DOE and other city agencies, will help coordinate efforts to ensure high impact tutoring services reach all students who would benefit from them while also building capacity of the district, tutoring providers, and community-based organizations to deliver high impact tutoring. In parallel, the initiative will also establish a strategic tutor-to-teacher pipeline to recruit and train the next generation of diverse and talented New York City public school educators.

The citywide tutoring initiative will focus on three main areas:

1. Develop skills in young people who need additional help.
2. Transform how schools provide individualized and small-group support so more young people develop critical literacy and math skills.
3. Build an innovative and transformational pipeline for educator talent which is diverse, strong, and sustainable.

We currently envision that the initiative will initially have three strands:

Strategic planning and piloting: Building on landscape analysis research and a strategy blueprint already completed by external consultants, the Vice President will engage with key stakeholders (tutoring providers, higher education leaders, service education leaders, district level school leaders, family and community-serving organizations) and develop a long-term plan for action. Immediately, the Vice President will oversee the hiring of a team of approximately 8 members with a focus on systems (community engagement, policy and research) and implementation support (program coaches). The Vice President will collaborate with the DOE to determine roles and responsibilities across the partnership on this initiative. The initiative is planned for a 5-year timeframe, after which the work of ensuring access to high-impact tutoring and sustaining a tutor-to-teacher pipeline is expected to be sustained via a dedicated team within the DOE.

Building a tutoring ecosystem: The Vice President will form a coalition of organizations that are connected to tutoring in New York City, including tutoring providers, NYC DOE, higher education institutions, family- and community-serving organizations, and others. The purpose of the coalition will be to establish and spread understanding of what constitutes high-impact tutoring, communicate the benefits of the initiative to families and other stakeholders, overcome bottlenecks in supply (particularly in tutor recruitment/retention), and support the development of a tutor-to-teacher pipeline.

Implementation: Initial implementation will focus on reaching 15,000 early elementary and middle school students in five to ten selected school districts over the next three years, as well as coalition-level support to reach additional students, schools and tutor partners throughout the city. A team of program directors and managers will support NYC DOE-pilot implementation by streamlining curriculum and program selection and supporting high-impact tutoring implementation. The initiative will offer centralized support while keeping full decision-making authority with Superintendents and local school leaders.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop, implement and continuously improve ExpandED’s tutoring initiative strategy, including:
• Collaborating with other academic and enrichment providers;
• Managing funder relationships and securing additional funds for ExpandED’s tutoring work ($1.4M is raised for year one);
• Advancing programmatic priorities in topics such as social and emotional learning, cultural responsiveness, early literacy (K-2) and middle school math.
• Hire, develop and lead team of approximately 8 members, focused on systems (community engagement, policy and research) and implementation support (program coaches)
• Form and convene governance and advisory structures for the initiative that bring selected members of the broader coalition into leadership roles and ensure citywide expertise in decision-making.
• Develop and strengthen relationships with government staff and officials in New York City and State, including the New York City DOE, Mayor’s Office, City Council, city agencies, State Education Department, Office of Children & Family Services, and other agencies.  
• Develop, maintain and build on ExpandED Schools’ external partnerships and coalitions throughout the city with tutoring providers, institutions of higher education, and community-based organizations.
• Manage the development and launch of high-impact tutoring communities of practice within the ecosystem in order to support collaboration, capacity building, and learning throughout the tutoring and public education ecosystem in NYC.
• Collaborate across departments internally to build programmatic choices that reflect ExpandED priorities and beliefs.
• Engage partners in the initiative implementation and engage diverse stakeholders in the New York City education community to iterate and continuously improve the initiative’s strategy.
• Establish data infrastructure to track and evaluate programmatic outcomes for schools, providers, tutors, and students.
• Develop and advance a research agenda seeking to gain lessons about effective citywide implementation systems for high-impact tutoring.
• Model iterative re-design of program learning from early local implementation experiences.
• Manage tutoring initiative budget and grants, contracts and relationships with relevant consultants.
• Focus on systemic implementation of tutoring with high-fidelity implementation in order to reach most marginalized student communities.
• Flexibly strategize multiple models for school delivery of high impact tutoring services (e.g. afterschool, in-school, summer/weekend programming).
• Perform other work as assigned.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience scaling education initiatives and experience with research, continuous improvement and driving programmatic strategy and systems change, preferably in New York City or State.
• Experience building partnerships/coalitions across diverse stakeholders for collective action.
• Experience working in and/or with city agencies, preferably in New York City.
• Experience designing and/or delivering academic intervention services for youth in a K-8 school-day or afterschool setting is a plus.
• Strong cultural competence with respect for and knowledge of the cultures of stakeholders we work with and communities we serve.
• Deep commitment and passion for educational equity.
• Flexibility, adaptability, and comfort with complexity and change.
• Ability to manage multiple large, complex projects in a fast-paced environment, and work as part of a team.
• Exceptional organization, motivation, and detail-orientation.
• Excellent speaking, writing, and facilitation skills with diverse audiences.
• Willingness and ability to travel, frequently within New York City and occasionally outside the city. 
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience, with experience in public affairs, education and/or policy.
• Competent computer skills, including knowledge of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.