Example Job Description
Data Literacy Coach
An instructional coach who helps educators and leaders ask better questions, interpret evidence responsibly, and turn data inquiry into equitable improvements in teaching and student support.
Interview Planning Resource
Possible Interview Q&A: Data Literacy Coach
How to use this resource: Select questions that measure competencies established through the district’s current job analysis. Ask candidates the same predetermined questions under comparable conditions and evaluate responses against the same job-related criteria.
The indicators below describe evidence a strong response may contain; they are not required scripts or the only acceptable answers.
- How would you establish priorities and a practical annual work plan for assessment, student information, intervention, survey, classroom, and reporting tools used for educator inquiry?
Strong response indicators: Connects district goals and user needs to risk, dependencies, capacity, owners, milestones, service measures, communication, and review rather than producing an unranked project list.
- Describe a time you found that a familiar process or report was producing unreliable results. How did you investigate and correct it?
Strong response indicators: Defines the expected result, traces evidence to authoritative sources, distinguishes symptoms from root causes, involves accountable owners, tests the correction, reconciles downstream effects, documents decisions, and monitors recurrence.
- You encounter a team drawing a consequential conclusion from a misleading comparison or incomplete dataset. What would you do first, and how would you manage the issue through resolution?
Strong response indicators: Protects people and continuity, establishes scope and authority, preserves evidence, engages the right owners, communicates proportionately, documents decisions, verifies recovery or correction, and completes a lessons-learned review.
- How would you work with teachers, instructional leaders, students, families, assessment staff, data teams, special programs, and school administrators when they disagree about priorities or the acceptable level of risk?
Strong response indicators: Clarifies decision rights and shared purpose, surfaces evidence and constraints, distinguishes requirements from preferences, documents options and residual risk, facilitates a timely decision, and escalates through established authority when needed.
- What controls would you put in place before making a significant change to assessment, student information, intervention, survey, classroom, and reporting tools used for educator inquiry?
Strong response indicators: Includes requirements, ownership, risk and privacy review, representative testing, accessibility where relevant, approvals, change communication, rollback or contingency, validation, monitoring, documentation, and support readiness.
- How would you decide what to automate and what should retain meaningful human review?
Strong response indicators: Selects stable, repeatable, testable work for automation; preserves human authority for exceptions and consequential judgments; addresses access, logging, bias or error, monitoring, failure recovery, documentation, and periodic reassessment.
- How would you explain a serious technical, instructional, operational, or data concern to a leader who does not work in your specialty?
Strong response indicators: States the affected people and services, evidence, uncertainty, consequence, deadline, accountable owners, options, recommendation, residual risk, and next update in plain language.
- What would you do when a request exceeds teacher evaluation, program authority, research claims, student privacy, data ownership, and decisions reserved to administrators or service teams?
Strong response indicators: Recognizes the limit, avoids unauthorized action, clarifies the legitimate need, preserves service where possible, routes the decision to the authorized owner, documents the handoff, and follows through without abandoning the requester.
- How would you protect confidential information while still providing useful service and appropriate access?
Strong response indicators: Applies purpose limitation, minimum necessary access, role-based permissions, secure transmission and storage, approved retention, understandable communication, auditability, timely removal, and incident escalation.
- How would you build staff capability so your office does not become the permanent fixer of every problem?
Strong response indicators: Uses clear ownership, role-based training, usable procedures, coaching, feedback loops, office hours, communities of practice, quality reports, cross-training, and measures whether source practices improve.
- What evidence would you use to determine whether your work is improving educator practice, question quality, interpretation accuracy, action follow-through, student experience, implementation evidence, and equitable outcomes?
Strong response indicators: Uses a balanced set of outcome, implementation, service, risk, equity, and user-experience measures; disaggregates appropriately; explains limitations; establishes baselines and review cadence; and changes course when evidence warrants.
- What would you prioritize during your first 90 days?
Strong response indicators: Would listen to educators and leaders, observe existing data routines, identify common misconceptions and access barriers, establish coaching partnerships, and improve one recurring inquiry cycle without adding unnecessary reporting; listens before redesigning, identifies urgent risks, delivers credible early improvements, and creates an achievable longer-term roadmap with owners and measures.
Position Description
Under the direction of the appropriate district administrator, the Data Literacy Coach builds educator and leader capacity to use multiple forms of evidence accurately, ethically, collaboratively, and productively for instructional and program improvement.
The position connects policy, people, process, information, and technology; establishes repeatable practices; makes unresolved risk visible; and supports continuous improvement without displacing the authority of designated program, legal, privacy, security, fiscal, instructional, or executive decision-makers.
Reports To
Illustrative reporting relationship: Curriculum, assessment, professional learning, school improvement, or educational-services administrator. Insert the school district’s approved reporting relationship here.
Required Education and Credentials
Required
- Bachelor’s degree and professional preparation required for the applicable California teaching credential; a graduate degree or advanced coursework in curriculum, assessment, research, or educational leadership is preferred.
- Valid California teaching credential appropriate to the assignment; additional authorization or administrative credential may be required for locally assigned duties.
- Successful completion of all district-required employment clearances and assigned privacy, security, accessibility, records, and safety training.
Preferred
- Graduate study, advanced coursework, or current professional learning directly related to the position’s assigned scope.
- Relevant training in project management, facilitation, change management, data-informed improvement, and public-sector service.
Required / Desired Experience
Required Experience
- Successful classroom teaching plus experience facilitating collaborative inquiry, assessment literacy, instructional planning, intervention, or professional learning.
- Experience coordinating deadline-driven work with multiple departments, users, or school sites.
- Experience handling confidential information and documenting decisions, exceptions, and completed work.
Desired Experience
- Experience coaching adults, analyzing disaggregated data, supporting PLCs, evaluating implementation, developing dashboards or protocols, and integrating qualitative evidence.
- Experience developing procedures, training users, improving processes, and supporting continuity during staff or system changes.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Coaching and Professional Learning
- Provide individual, team, school, and district coaching on data questions, evidence selection, interpretation, visualization, action planning, and reflection.
- Design sustained professional learning, protocols, exemplars, office hours, communities of practice, and facilitator development.
- Model inquiry cycles and help leaders create time, norms, roles, and follow-through for productive collaborative learning.
Assessment and Evidence Literacy
- Build understanding of purpose, validity, reliability, error, growth, benchmarks, subgroup analysis, qualitative evidence, and limits of inference.
- Help teams triangulate classroom, assessment, attendance, behavior, service, survey, implementation, and student-experience evidence.
- Review reports and visualizations for clarity, accessibility, context, appropriate comparison, and risk of misinterpretation.
Instructional and Program Improvement
- Support teams in connecting evidence to standards, curriculum, instruction, intervention, enrichment, student support, and implementation conditions.
- Develop action measures that distinguish adult implementation from student outcomes and support timely adjustment.
- Facilitate learning reviews that document what was tried, what changed, what remains uncertain, and what should happen next.
Ethics, Access, and Program Coordination
- Reinforce privacy, minimum-necessary access, respectful language, suppression, nondiscrimination, and responsible use of AI-assisted analysis.
- Coordinate with assessment, research, data, curriculum, special programs, and technology teams to improve tools and reduce reporting burden.
- Evaluate coaching reach and impact, maintain continuity resources, and perform other related duties consistent with credential and classification.
Required Skills and Abilities
Knowledge of
- Assessment literacy, formative and summative evidence, validity, reliability, measurement error, growth, comparison groups, disaggregation, and appropriate inference
- Collaborative inquiry, improvement science, multi-tiered systems of support, curriculum and instruction, adult learning, coaching, and facilitation
- Student privacy, data ethics, equity, accessibility, bias, small-group risk, qualitative evidence, and responsible visualization
- K–12 student information, assessment, intervention, survey, dashboard, spreadsheet, and reporting environments
Ability to
- Help teams move from broad concerns to answerable questions, appropriate evidence, bounded conclusions, and testable actions
- Explain technical ideas in accessible language without oversimplifying uncertainty or limitations
- Facilitate psychologically safe inquiry that examines systems and practice rather than blaming students or employees
- Coach educators through planning, action, evidence review, adjustment, and reflection
- Identify misleading charts, inappropriate comparisons, missing context, and unsupported causal claims
- Protect confidential information and adapt learning for varied roles, experience, language, and access needs
Work Environment
- Work is performed primarily in district offices, schools, meeting rooms, training environments, and other computer-based professional settings, with remote participation as authorized.
- The position requires extended computer use and detailed review of records, systems, reports, procedures, communications, or technical documentation.
- Work involves frequent coordination with teachers, instructional leaders, students, families, assessment staff, data teams, special programs, and school administrators.
- The employee may encounter competing priorities, interruptions, confidential matters, fixed deadlines, and time-sensitive problems requiring calm, documented judgment.
- Workload may increase during school opening and closing, reporting cycles, audits, major changes, incidents, and other critical district operations.
Other Requirements
- Successfully complete required criminal-record, fingerprint, and employment clearances.
- Complete a tuberculosis risk assessment and any examination required by applicable law or district policy.
- Complete district-required cybersecurity, privacy, accessibility, nondiscrimination, workplace-safety, and records-management training.
- Maintain professional confidentiality and comply with district policies governing records, information security, acceptable technology use, conflicts of interest, and data access.
- Travel between district offices, schools, meetings, training locations, and professional-development activities as assigned.
- Possess a valid California driver’s license and maintain insurability when driving is an essential function of the position.
- Occasionally work evening, weekend, or extended hours during critical operations, incidents, deadlines, public meetings, or system transitions.
- Regularly sit, stand, walk, speak, hear, read, and operate computers and standard office equipment; occasionally lift, carry, or move records, equipment, or supplies weighing up to 25 pounds.
- Perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation.