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Senior Education Analyst

The D.C. Policy Center is looking for a self-motivated and well-organized analyst to support the work of its Education Policy Initiative. Established in 2017, the Education Policy Initiative has created a data-rich landscape of D.C.’s traditional public and public charter schools, with research on the transition from high school to college or career, what an at-risk preference would mean in the common lottery, and an annual report of the State of D.C. Schools. The analyst will support upcoming work to produce briefings and research connected to creating opportunity for D.C.’s students, maintain a periodic D.C. Voices publication, disseminate findings at events, and facilitate meetings with school leaders, parents, teachers, students, and other key stakeholders.

This is an intermediate level position primarily focused on research, with additional communication and coordination duties. The ideal candidate will have strong analytical and writing skills, excellent attention to detail, and a demonstrated interest in the District of Columbia and its public education system. The analyst’s work will focus on topics such as the boundary review process, measuring early career outcomes for high school alumni, and enrollment shifts after the pandemic, among other topics related to COVID-19 recovery.

Experience: At least three years of previous experience in a similar position




Responsibilities

  • Support the Director of the Education Policy Initiative by carrying out research tasks such as acquiring data from local or national data sources, conducting literature reviews, and analyzing trends or patterns in large datasets.
  • Create and format high-quality data visualizations (including maps), tables, and infographics.
  • Assist in writing and delivering feedback on articles and essays (including an independent check on accompanying analyses), reports, press releases, and other publications.
  • Prepare essays, reports, and briefings for publication in WordPress and print.
  • Write quarterly blog posts for D.C. Voices and engage community members such as parents, teachers, students, and school leaders to contribute.
  • Assist in the planning of report launch events.
  • Manage projects independently to meet deadlines.
  • Additional duties as necessary


Experience and qualifications


Required
  • At least three years’ experience (or education) in economics, public policy, education, statistics, demography, or related fields.
  • Experience with education and demographic data sets, such as the American Community Survey (ACS), D.C. educational data files, geospatial data, and survey results. For example, the applicant should feel comfortable downloading ACS estimates and linking them to data from other sources.
  • Ability to design and implement analyses of local education data, such as how public school enrollment has changed over time by Ward or local subdivision.
  • Strong writing and communication skills for policy, practitioner, and general audiences.
  • Excellent time management skills, with an ability to take initiative, work independently, and meet multiple deadlines in a fast-paced work environment.
  • Experience coordinating events with 50 or more attendees.

Strongly preferred
  • Bachelor’s degree and three years’ experience OR Master’s degree and at least one year of experience in economics, public policy, education, statistics, demography, or related fields.
  • Robust understanding of D.C.’s local education policy or practice.
  • Familiarity with statistical packages and/or programming languages (e.g., Stata or R), including experience with large-scale datasets in an applied research setting outside of the classroom.
  • Experience in mapping and data visualization (e.g. Tableau).
  • Experience writing and editing publications for wide audiences.

Send a resume, cover letter, one writing sample, and one data visualization sample as a single PDF to jobs@dcpolicycenter.org with the subject line “Senior Education Analyst”
Priority deadline for applications is June 25th, 2021. Applications received after that date will be evaluated as needed on a rolling basis.