Chicago Public Schools is hiring: Senior Data Analyst in Chicago

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is one of the largest school districts in the United States, serving over 320,000 students in 600+ schools and employing nearly 40,000 people, most of them teachers. CPS has set ambitious goals to ensure that every student, in every school and every neighborhood, has access to a world-class learning experience that prepares each for success in college, career, and civic life. In order to fulfill this mission, we make three commitments to our students, their families, and all Chicagoans: academic progress, financial stability, and integrity. Six core values are embedded within these commitments - student-centered, whole child, equity, academic excellence, community partnership, and continuous learning.

School Quality Measurement and Research (SQMR) builds a foundation of high-quality, research-based evidence to inform district practice, policy, and vision. Through the timely and accurate reporting of school and district performance metrics, SQMR supports stakeholder involvement in district decision-making and school efforts to improve instructional effectiveness. SQMR is also actively engaging stakeholders to co-design an improved system for driving these conversations.

Job Summary:

Reporting to the Manager of Data Quality, the Senior Data Analyst will support SQMR in providing timely and accurate data to stakeholders throughout CPS (families, schools, central office leaders, etc.) working to meet collective CPS goals.

The Senior Data Analyst will be held accountable for the following responsibilities:

• Lead process for writing and executing code to calculate student, school, and district metrics. Metric calculations will be performed in SAS, and the process will include developing and/or maintaining detailed documentation for metric calculation work.
• Spearhead process for cleaning and processing assessment data from the Illinois State Board of Education and assessment vendors, in collaboration with vendors and the Student Assessment department.
• Use a variety of tools including but not limited to SAS, Visual Basic, Microsoft Office, Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, dashboards, and SQL Server Management Studio to perform complex data analytics, problem-solve, and improve department operations; Adhere to a set of guiding principles for analytic practice as established by the Data Governance Council.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders in an iterative development and improvement process to create new student, school, and district metrics that support district vision, core values, and strategic priorities; Lead iterative processes for continuous improvement of metrics and/or make metric policy recommendations based on feedback from stakeholders and policy experts (both internal and external).
• Compile, manipulate, and analyze data using appropriate statistical techniques and produce reports and slide presentations.
• Discuss data and decision-making needs with internal stakeholders and advise on data availability, appropriateness, and limitations/caveats.
• Fulfill internal and external requests for student, school, and district data (including Freedom of Information Act requests) in a timely manner.
• Facilitate discussions with internal stakeholders about the applicability of data to policy decisions and problems of practice.
• Implement a quality assurance process to ensure that code for metric calculations and other data requests is checked for accuracy before being finalized, and that final data is checked for accuracy and completeness.
• Develop and communicate ad-hoc reports with descriptive statistics on school, student, and district metrics.
• Collaborate with IT staff to ensure warehousing of metric and rating data.
• Collaborate with other departments to maintain an understanding of data needs and work that may require support from SQMR; Communicate data, including high stakes and/or confidential data, in various modes (written, oral, formal, and informal) with multiple internal stakeholders.
• Contribute to annual department strategic planning and goal-setting activities.
• Participate in monthly Data Analyst User Group (DAUG) meetings and activities.
• Other duties as assigned.

In order to be successful and achieve the above responsibilities, the Senior Data Analyst must possess the following qualifications:

Education Required:

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university is required
• Master's degree preferred

Experience Required:

• A minimum of five (5) years of professional data analytics experience in a role requiring relationship management and consultative skills required
• Experience with managing large data sets (retrieving data from multiple data sets, merging data sets, etc.) and applying complex rules to create custom indicators required
• Experience writing code with data analytic tools (SAS preferred, R, SPSS, STATA, etc.) required
• Experience in working with educational data is strongly preferred

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Demonstrated commitment to CPS Core Values: student-centered, whole child, equity, academic excellence, community partnership, and continuous learning
• Demonstrated commitment to self-directed, continuous professional development
• Advanced proficiency in leveraging data analytics tools such as SAS, R, SPSS, and STATA to analyze data and the ability to use data to make meaningful recommendations
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Flexibility to meet changing departmental needs and priorities
• Exceptional organizational, communication (oral and written), project management and problem-solving skills
• Strong attention to detail
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment: Respond immediately to multiple constituencies and meet established deadlines.
• Ability to work in a team, with technical and non-technical personnel, and across departmental boundaries.
• Ability to understand and apply detailed programming specifications and in a complex data management environment.
• Knowledge of educational performance measures, educational research and urban education systems or the ability to quickly learn and apply this knowledge.

Conditions of Employment

As a condition of employment with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), employees are required to:

• Establish/Maintain Chicago Residency - Employees are required to live within the geographic boundaries of the City of Chicago within six months of their CPS hire date and maintain residency throughout their employment with the district. The Chicago residency requirement does not apply to temporary/part-time positions, however, all CPS employees must be residents of Illinois.
• Be Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19 - Unless approved for a medical or religious exemption, all employees are required to be up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccinations, including boosters, and to submit proof of vaccination to the district within 30 days of hire. "Up-to-date" on vaccination is defined as being at least two weeks past all primary vaccine doses and any applicable boosters. Unvaccinated staff with an approved exemption must submit to weekly testing.