Zearn is the nonprofit educational organization behind Zearn Math, the top-rated math learning platform used by 1 in 4 elementary students nationwide. Zearn Math supports teachers with research-backed curriculum and digital lessons proven to double the learning gains of a typical year of instruction. Zearn Math instructional materials - including 400+ hours of digital math learning - are free for teachers and families. Zearn also offers school- and district-wide licenses and professional development to support implementation. Everything Zearn does is driven by the belief that every kid can be a math kid.

Zearn is seeking its first Research Manager to lead research on Zearn’s math learning data, ensuring Zearn Math’s impact for students and teachers across the country, and developing insights to further fields of math pedagogy, behavioral science, and learning engineering. In addition, with billions of math problems solved on the Zearn platform each year, Zearn’s dataset offers massive potential for insights that can guide the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, helping all kids catch-up and move forward with their learning. As Zearn's Research Manager, you will manage day-to-day execution of Zearn's efficacy research and field building research initiatives, and act as a thought partner to strategic evaluation of new research studies. This is a people manager role with individual contributor responsibilities. The ideal candidate will oversee the end to end process- identifying topics/questions to explore, outlining analysis, and summarizing insights to share with different types of shareholders - within the Zearn team, the research community, and key decision-makers at the local, state, and federal level.

Responsibilities:

• Research strategy
  • Partner with Director of Research and Strategy to define Zearn’s multi-year research strategy and themes and ensure alignment with Zearn’s mission and key priority areas
• Efficacy research:
  • Manage day-to-day planning for Randomized Control Trial to rigorously measure Zearn Math impact on student achievement, engagement, and mindsets
  • Design and oversee district-level and statewide correlational studies on an ongoing basis
• Internal explorations:
  • Identify and explore research questions tied to key organizational priorities, informing Zearn product development, customer success strategy, and efforts to support students and teachers
  • Act as a project manager for research question exploration: ideation, design, analysis, and insight generation
  • Translate insight into communication materials to engage the Leadership team and the organization as a whole
  • Provide strategic reporting to internal team members, Zearn’s Board of Directors, and external stakeholders as needed
• External research partnerships:
  • Help build relationships with leading researchers in behavioral science, learning engineering, and math pedagogy
  • Co-design studies with research partners to leverage Zearn data to develop impactful field-building insights, informing and improving approaches to math teaching and learning across the country

Qualifications:

• Masters in a social science field with an emphasis on statistics or quantitative research methodologies required; PHD strongly preferred
• 2+ years years of project management experience in a professional setting
  • Experience in Education field a plus
• Previous people management experience a plus
• Deep statistical knowledge/data fluency required, including a history of data analysis and visualization
  • Research/study design with experimental/quasi experimental methods is a must
• Humility, a team-oriented mindset, and a willingness to roll up your sleeves and dig into the tactical alongside the strategic
• Strong written proficiency translating research to a general audience
• A strong commitment to Zearn’s mission of providing an exceptional education to all children