Accountability Reporting Analyst - Classified

Full Job Description

Colorado Department of Education – What We Do
The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) provides leadership, resources, support, and accountability to the state's 178 school districts, 1,888 schools, over 53,000 teachers, and over 3,200 administrators to help them build capacity to meet the needs of the state's approximately 905,000 public school students. In addition, CDE provides structural and administrative support to the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind and the Charter School Institute.

As the administrative arm of the State Board of Education, CDE is responsible for implementing state and federal education laws, disbursing state and federal funds, holding schools and districts accountable for performance, licensing all educators, and providing public transparency of performance and financial data.

CDE is a values-based agency that serves students, parents, and the general public by protecting public trust through ensuring adherence to laws, strong stewardship of public funds, and accountability for student performance.

CDE strives to incorporate five core values that we uphold in our work internally and externally. If you come to CDE, be prepared to incorporate Integrity, Equity, Accountability, Trust, and commitment to Service in what you do.

Why Work For CDE
The work we do is rewarding and impacts the students, families, educators, and communities across Colorado. Our leadership also promotes a culture that puts families and self-care as a priority. Along with meaningful work and an environment that puts employees first, the state also offers rich benefits that intend to make us an Employer of Choice!
The following is a summary of the benefits we offer:

• Flexible work schedules and flexible workplace options that may include flexible working hours, working from home, working in the office, and/or a hybrid working environment.
• Premier medical, dental, vision, and dependent life insurance options. All with a generous employer contribution keeping employee costs as low as possible.
• Employer-paid short-term disability and life insurance.
• Up to 160 hours of Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML).
• 11 paid holidays per year.
• Competitive vacation and sick leave accruals.
• Retirement through the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) www.copera.org.
• Employer-paid RTD Eco Pass (certain restrictions may apply).
• Paid professional development opportunities.

A wide salary range is posted for this position, and any job offer is based upon a salary analysis to comply with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. The salary analysis considers relevant experience, education, certifications, and state seniority relative to others performing substantially similar work. While most salary offers are made within the posted range, occasionally an offer is made below or above the posted range based upon this salary analysis.

The State of Colorado strives to create a Colorado for All by building and maintaining workplaces that value and respect all Coloradans through a commitment to equal opportunity and hiring based on merit and fitness. The State is resolute in non-discriminatory practices in everything we do, including hiring, employment, and advancement opportunities.

Requirements

Work Environment:

• Extended hours during the evening or the weekend may be required by business needs.
• 20% Travel required within the State of Colorado for Meetings/Trainings.
• Overnight Travel may be required.
• A Remote (Home) office is required.
• Required to report to the work location per business needs OR Daily.
• Essential Functions (ADAAA)
  • LIGHT/Office environment:
    • Required to sit, view a computer screen, and utilize a keyboard and mouse for extended periods of time.
    • May be required to lift and move up to 10 lbs of force frequently or 20 lbs occasionally.
    • Required lifting, bending, stooping, pushing, walking, etc.
    • Light work usually requires walking or standing to a significant degree.
  • Colorado DL Required: Required to safely operate a motor vehicle (OR State of Colorado Fleet motor vehicle/Colorado DL required) to complete travel requirements.
    

Position Summary:
This position serves as an accountability expert, supporting internal and external access to accountability data to drive continuous improvement for CDE staff and stakeholders (e.g., district leaders, school leaders, educators, families, education associations, policymakers). This position plays a lead role in designing, developing, and maintaining user-friendly reports, visualizations, resources, and technical support to CDE staff and external stakeholders (district administrators, school leaders, BOCES, families, community members, policy makers) on data usage and interpretation. This position is functionally shared between the School Quality and Support Division and the Accountability Analytics team in the Assessment Division. This role will be responsible for coordinating across the department, such as pulling together cross-collaborative teams (PWR, Assessment, ESSU, Federal Programs, Data Services) to design reports, working with the Data Warehouse and Assessment teams to structure tables/views, deduplicate and clean data, build queries, and execute stored functions using shared data. This role is key in meeting legislative requirements related to the state accountability system and public accessibility. The department, districts, and the greater school community rely on these cross-program data visualizations for data-informed action. The position works department-wide with data owners to ensure that cohesive, timely, and accurate student performance and descriptive data are available for district and school improvement efforts, accountability clock monitoring, grant eligibility, and school bright spot identification.

The final salary is anticipated to fall within the posted salary range; however, it could be higher or lower depending on the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other qualifications of the preferred candidate while considering internal equity.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:
State Accountability Data Reporting & Evaluation

• The core responsibilities of this position are to ensure the successful fulfillment of legislative requirements related to the annual reporting of state accountability data (e.g., Performance Frameworks, Improvement Planning reports) in coordination with the Assessment Division.
• Develop data reporting solutions that allow stakeholders (district administrators, school leaders, families, community members, policy makers) to access data, including the development and maintenance of state accountability and school improvement data dashboards (e.g., District and School Dashboard, Data Explorer Tool) using SQL, data visualizations using Tableau, and related technical assistance.

Query, clean and coordinate data from various sources, as well as collaborate with CDE data architects in IMS and Assessment to define requirements for reporting views and stored procedures in the Data Warehouse.

When developing new reports, this role will be responsible for navigating data governance expectations, negotiating with IMS, Assessment, and data owners on data frameworks, consolidation, interpretation, and display best practice

• Coordinate with other staff in the unit, division, and across the department (e.g., IMS, Communications, Post Secondary and Workforce Readiness, Federal Programs, ESSU) to establish standards, assess data governance policy, and develop and implement validation procedures that ensure the accuracy and integrity of data reports.

Provide technical support to the Accountability Analytics Office and other division offices in responding to internal and external data requests, such as requests from the State Board or Accountability Working Group on HB25-1278 related analysis of assessment participation, student subgroup disaggregation, or post-secondary credential attainment.

This would include the development of user-friendly visualizations of requested analyses for public interpretation of assessment team calculations.

This requires the ability to understand complex analysis and be able to synthesize and extrapolate high-level themes and consolidate into a visual format for stakeholders at all data literacy levels.

Provide assistance and collaborative support to the director of Accountability Analytics on the engagement of and communication to CDE staff, the State Board of Education, the Technical Advisory Panel, Accountability Work Group, and public stakeholders (e.g., districts, BOCES, schools, advisory groups) to understand technical components and needs related to various state accountability indicators and data trends.This includes the creation of communication materials (e.g., memos, presentations, analysis) regarding data reporting on student assessment, growth, PWR, demographic and descriptive student data, and the accountability system.

Materials would support district, school staff, and community members on interpreting results and making school improvement decisions.

Develop and use internal (data owners, unit leadership) and external (district, school, BOCES, community, policy makers) feedback protocols to gather input and facilitate continuous improvement, increasing the usefulness and robustness of accountability data tools and reports.

• The role would be responsible for convening stakeholders, designing and leading focus group protocols, analyzing results, and presenting findings to leadership to inform implementation decisions.
• The resulting work would include report enhancements, new report development, or new cross-data-team infrastructure for department-wide data displays.

Synthesize information (e.g.

work with the TAP, AWG, department leaders, data owners, to interpret accountability legislation such as HB25-1278 to determine data needs, scope out and collaboratively design with IMS and Assessment new visual reports or enhancements to existing reports), develop resources (e.g., visualization or accountability data interpretation guidance for districts, schools and the community for use in grants, school improvement and bright spot identification), and facilitate timely results communication for external stakeholders and CDE staff related to the continued implementation and improvement of the accountability system for schools and districts and the CDE strategic plan.

• Support the school and district accreditation process (i.e, data export and import from the data warehouse to Salesforce, data tool development for request submissions, submission quality review, negotiation with assessment vendors on acceptable cuts and data sources), including request to reconsider, in alignment with state legislation and state board rule.
• Provide technical assistance to schools and districts (e.g., provide office hours with district superintendents, data analysts on how to clean, calculate and submit within the provided data tools, design and populate submission tools to support district request to reconsider submissions), participate as a member of the request to reconsider review team with other analysts and school improvement specialists to assess request submissions for quality, accuracy and that they meet predetermined approvability criteria.
• Assist with the data validation of submissions (review of local assessment data results, matriculation data, other state assessment or student biographical data submissions for accuracy and legitimacy for use in the request to reconsider process)and support the creation of final communication materials such as emails assessing district submissions and communicating approvals and denials via pre-created template letters, development of State Board of Education data reports and slide decks for final approval of performance frameworks.

• Support to other offices within the unit as needed, including the Salesforce UIP Online System administration, assistance with editing performance framework interpretation resources, including the Accountability Handbook, UIP Handbook, Identification supplement, and framework component one-pagers.

• Assist with field communication of framework results, including review of communications for accuracy. Support reviewing Unified Improvement plans for monitoring and legislative compliance.

• Represent the unit at public meetings (PPRSAC, AWG, ACEE, SACPIE) and to internal teams at the department (PWR, ESSU, Federal Programs, Standards, etc) to discuss framework visualization and results interpretation.

• Complete other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

MINIMUM EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS:

Experience:

• Seven (7) years of relevant experience in Education, Public Policy, Psychology, Statistics, Sociology, or in a related field

• Three (3) of the seven (7) years must include experience in a related field involving analyzing, designing, and implementing data reports and tools.

OR

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Education, Public Policy, Psychology, Statistics, Sociology, or a related field.

• Three (3) years of experience in a related field involving analyzing, designing, and implementing data reports and tools.

OR

• Master’s degree or higher from an accredited college or university in Education, Public Policy, Psychology, Statistics, Sociology, or a related field will substitute for six (6) years of the required experience. But not the specific experience listed below.
• Minimum of two (2) years of experience in a related field involving analyzing, designing, and implementing data reports and tools.

QUALIFICATIONS AND CONDITIONS:
Qualifications for Success in the Position:

• Understanding of Colorado data systems, analysis, accountability measures, and reporting.
• Experience analyzing, designing, and implementing data structures necessary to support the functioning of operational systems.
• Knowledge of school/district organization and practice.
• Program management and ability to implement a work plan including related communication and collaboration. Ability to work effectively with diverse stakeholders.
• Advanced Tableau or data visualization skill, and ability to work across a variety of web based tools (e.g., Salesforce). Intermediate proficiency using databases (e.g., SQL, TOAD) and statistical software (e.g., SPSS, R).
• Willingness to learn or experience with interim or formative assessment analysis.
• Strong written, verbal, and presentation skills. Intermediate to advanced proficiency with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong attention to detail (proofing work, spelling, grammar, formatting, etc.).
• Demonstrated ability to effectively balance quality of work and productivity expectations.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively collaborate with internal and external customers (e.g. school districts, other CDE units).
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize and organize work to accommodate and meet the changing needs of the department and meet deadlines.
• Demonstrated ability to take initiative and exhibit a proactive approach to work.
• Demonstrated ability to identify problems and recommend solutions prior to the standard being jeopardized.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently, as well as on a team.
• Ability and willingness to travel.

Conditions of Employment (Required):

• Must be willing and able to submit to the pre-screening process and pass a background check.
• Ability and willingness to independently determine, obtain means, and complete required travel (20% Travel required within the State of Colorado for Meetings/Trainings).
• Work extended schedule per business needs.
• Report to work location per business needs.
  
• Valid Colorado Driver's License Required: Required to safely operate a motor vehicle to complete travel requirements.
• Sign the acknowledgment form that this position is state-funded through state funds and subject to availability.

Additional Information

Complete Applications must include:

• Completed Online Application: Required - Submitted through our ATS.
• Cover Letter: Required - Attached to the application
• Resume: Required - Attached to the application
• Transcript: Required if using education to meet MQs - Attached to the online application and meeting requirements as described under "College Transcripts".

FOR CURRENT OR FORMER EMPLOYEES OF THE STATE OF COLORADO:

Per the requirements of the Step Pay Program implemented on July 1, 2024, any State employee must be paid a rate that is equal to or greater than the appropriate step pay rate within their classification’s pay range based on completed years in their current class series as of June 30. All current and former State employees must ensure that your entire work history within the State Classified System, including at Institutions of Higher Education, is indicated in your application so that your time-in-series can be calculated accurately.

Email Address:
All correspondence regarding your status in the selection/examination process will be conducted via email. Include a working email address on your application; one that is checked often as time-sensitive correspondence such as exam information or notification will take place via email. Please set up your e-mail to accept messages from "state.co.us" and "info@governmentjobs.com" addresses. It is your responsibility to ensure that your email will accept these notices and/or review your junk mail and spam-filtered email.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and Equal Employment Opportunity
The State of Colorado believes that equity, diversity, and inclusion drive our success, and we encourage candidates from all identities, backgrounds, and abilities to apply. The State of Colorado is an equal opportunity employer committed to building inclusive, innovative work environments with employees who reflect our communities and enthusiastically serve them. Therefore, in all aspects of the employment process, we provide employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, a medical condition related to pregnancy, creed, ancestry, national origin, marital status, genetic information, or military status (with preference given to military veterans), or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

The Colorado Department of Education is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, our agency will assist individuals who have a disability with any reasonable accommodation requests related to employment, including completing the application process, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, participating in the employee selection process, and/or performing essential job functions where the requested accommodation does not impose an undue hardship. If you have a disability and require reasonable accommodation to ensure you have a positive experience applying or interviewing for this position, please direct your inquiries to hr@cde.state.co.us.