Director of Curriculum & Instruction: Science

Job Description

Job Description:\n\nDescription The Director of Curriculum and Instruction: Science is Summit K12’s senior domain leader for K–12 science teaching and learning. The Director owns the research-based principles, science domain architecture, quality standards, and design expectations that guide science curriculum, assessment, digital learning experiences, and professional learning across Summit K12.\n This role protects scientific accuracy, disciplinary integrity, and coherence across grade bands, courses, science domains, state frameworks, and solutions. The Director translates standards, research, assessment expectations, policy, and implementation evidence into practical design guidance that Principal Curriculum Designers, Learning Experience Designers, writers, assessment teams, Product, and external production partners can apply consistently.\n The Director of Curriculum and Instruction directly manages and develops assigned Principal Curriculum Designers and other team members, with accountability for performance, priorities, capacity, professional growth, and the development of deep expertise within the domain.\n The Director owns science domain architecture and academic quality but does not own day-to-day production of individual products. Principal Curriculum Designers translate the domain architecture into detailed solution-level designs, specifications, and buildable models. The Director’s value is in defining what excellent science learning looks like, ensuring those expectations travel across the portfolio, validating high-impact design decisions, and building organizational expertise so science quality can scale without depending on a single expert. Key Responsibilities 1. Science Domain Strategy & Architecture\nServe as Summit K12’s senior academic authority for K–12 science teaching and learning.\nEstablish and maintain science principles, disciplinary frameworks, quality indicators, and non-negotiable design expectations that guide curriculum and learning experiences across the portfolio.\nDefine expectations for coherent scientific knowledge building, phenomena-based learning where appropriate, scientific and engineering practices, modeling, investigation, data use, evidence-based reasoning, explanation, argumentation, and scientific discourse.\nGuide interpretation and application of state science standards and frameworks, including disciplinary core ideas/content knowledge, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts where applicable.\nMaintain coherence across physical, life, Earth and space sciences, engineering and technology connections, disciplinary literacy, grade-level learning progressions, and assessment expectations.\nEnsure science solutions build knowledge systematically rather than treating standards or activities as isolated instructional events.\n 2. Domain Quality, Prototypes & Acceptance Criteria\nDefine science-specific quality indicators, acceptance criteria, exemplars, validation requirements, and decision rules within Summit K12’s broader academic governance and Curriculum Lifecycle.\nPartner with Principal Curriculum Designers to ensure gold-standard prototypes accurately reflect Summit K12’s science principles before production scales.\nReview high-impact or novel curriculum designs, instructional models, assessments, investigations, simulations, and state adaptations for scientific accuracy and pedagogical integrity.\nValidate that phenomena, investigations, models, data representations, explanations, argumentation, engineering tasks, and assessment experiences are purposeful and aligned to intended learning outcomes.\nIdentify systemic science-quality issues and determine whether improvements are needed in domain guidance, architecture, prototypes, specifications, templates, professional learning, or production calibration.\nSupport academic readiness and release decisions for significant science solutions and escalated disciplinary issues without becoming the routine reviewer of every lesson or asset.\n 3. Guidance for Solution Architecture & Scaled Production\nProvide domain guidance to Principal Curriculum Designers while preserving their ownership of detailed instructional architecture for assigned science solutions.\nTranslate science principles into usable specifications, exemplars, rubrics, decision rules, and guidance that internal writers, AI-enabled workflows, and approved external production partners can execute consistently.\nSupport calibration of curriculum teams and external partners on science quality expectations, especially for work involving complex disciplinary judgment, data, investigations, models, or scientific explanations.\nHelp distinguish science decisions that can be standardized and scaled from decisions that require expert domain review.\nReduce dependence on downstream expert correction by making science expectations explicit before large-scale curriculum production begins.\nPartner with Project Management leaders to design the overall team coordination process and set clear guidelines for tracking work, ensuring all solutions move forward together and have the right people assigned to them.\n 4. Cross-Solution Science Expertise & Coherence\nBuild organizational capability so strong science learning principles are consistently applied across science solutions, assessment, adaptive learning, interdisciplinary literacy, and related product experiences.\nPartner with other domain Directors and curriculum leaders to ensure disciplinary literacy and language demands are addressed without weakening the integrity or rigor of science learning.\nDevelop reusable science frameworks, guidance, exemplars, and quality indicators that can be applied across grade bands and state solutions.\nPromote coherence among content knowledge, practices, investigations, models, data, discourse, assessment, and the intended learner experience.\nServe as the escalation point for complex science questions that cross products, courses, science domains, or state frameworks.\n 5. Leadership & Development of Science Expertise\nDevelop the science expertise of Principal Curriculum Designers, Senior Curriculum Writers, Curriculum Writers, Learning Experience Designers, assessment teams, and other relevant academic staff.\nCoach curriculum leaders on science learning progressions, phenomena, investigations, modeling, evidence-based reasoning, disciplinary literacy, assessment, and appropriate cognitive demand.\nUse calibration, design reviews, exemplars, professional learning, and criteria-based feedback to strengthen independent disciplinary judgment across the organization.\nBuild bench strength so scientific accuracy and strong science pedagogy do not depend on a single expert.\nIdentify capability gaps and recommend targeted professional learning, hiring, external expertise, or other capacity-building strategies.\n 6. AI-Enabled Science Quality & Innovation\nEstablish domain-specific standards and validation criteria for responsible AI use in science curriculum, assessment, differentiation, and content development.\nPartner with Principal Curriculum Designers to strengthen science-specific prompts, exemplars, rubrics, specifications, and validation processes used in AI-assisted workflows.\nEvaluate high-risk or representative AI-generated explanations, questions, investigations, phenomena, models, data sets, answer keys, assessments, and teacher guidance for scientific and instructional quality.\nIdentify weaknesses automated systems may miss, including scientific inaccuracies, fabricated or implausible data, misleading models, weak causal reasoning, inappropriate cognitive demand, bias, unsafe investigation guidance, and standards misalignment.\nUse AI and emerging technologies to improve science design, differentiation, quality, and scalability while maintaining expert human judgment and accountability.\nContribute science expertise to the organization’s evolving AI governance and quality systems.\n 7. Assessment, Research & Continuous Improvement\nPartner on science assessment blueprints, disciplinary requirements, cognitive demand, and interpretation while preserving that function’s ownership of assessment-system design, validity, item-bank quality, analytics, and reporting.\nMonitor research, standards, policy, assessment expectations, and emerging evidence relevant to science education and translate significant developments into actionable guidance.\nPartner with the CAO, Executive Director, and Research & Evaluation to translate efficacy findings, implementation evidence, and science-education research into domain guidance and solution improvements.\nBring research and assessment evidence upstream by helping define design requirements, prototypes, measures, and quality indicators—not only interpreting results after development.\nUse educator feedback, student outcomes, implementation evidence, assessment insights, and customer feedback to identify opportunities to strengthen Summit K12’s science approach.\n 8. Cross-Functional Leadership & External Representation\nCollaborate with Product, Engineering, Assessment & Learning Analytics, Learning Experience Design, Professional Learning, Customer Success, Marketing, and Sales on initiatives requiring advanced science expertise.\nRepresent the disciplinary perspective of science in cross-functional product, curriculum, assessment, and implementation decisions.\nSupport accurate interpretation and communication of Summit K12’s science approach, evidence base, instructional design, and academic value.\nSupport state reviews, adoptions, standards correlations, academic narratives, and strategic customer conversations requiring senior science expertise.\nRepresent Summit K12, as appropriate, in professional associations, research partnerships, conferences, state conversations, and other external forums related to science education.\n Success Measures\nSummit K12’s science solutions consistently demonstrate scientific accuracy, rigorous standards alignment, coherent knowledge building, and strong science pedagogy.\nScience expectations are explicit enough to guide solution architecture, gold-standard prototypes, curriculum production, assessment, AI workflows, and final quality review.\nScience quality and coherence strengthen across products, grade bands, courses, state solutions, and science domains.\nPrincipal Curriculum Designers and curriculum teams demonstrate deeper science expertise and greater independence in applying disciplinary principles.\nInternal and external production teams achieve stronger first-pass quality with less dependence on downstream expert correction.\nDomain-specific AI standards improve the quality and scalability of AI-assisted science development without compromising scientific or instructional integrity.\nState solutions and major science releases maintain coherence while appropriately addressing state-specific standards and requirements.\nResearch, implementation evidence, assessment insights, and customer feedback lead to measurable improvements in science architecture and instructional practice.\n Skills, Knowledge and Expertise Required\nMaster’s degree required; doctorate preferred in Science Education, Curriculum & Instruction, a science discipline, Learning Sciences, or a related field.\n8+ of progressively responsible experience in science education, science curriculum design, instructional leadership, or academic leadership.\nDeep expertise in K–12 science standards, learning progressions, scientific practices, inquiry and investigation, modeling, evidence-based reasoning, disciplinary literacy, and standards-aligned assessment.\nExperience designing, leading, or establishing quality expectations for science curriculum across multiple grade bands, courses, science domains, or state frameworks.\nDemonstrated ability to translate disciplinary expertise, standards, and research into scalable frameworks, specifications, exemplars, quality indicators, and instructional practice.\nDemonstrated ability to develop the expertise and independent judgment of curriculum leaders and teams.\nDemonstrated proficiency with generative AI and AI-assisted curriculum development, including the ability to establish science-specific quality standards and critically validate AI-generated scientific and instructional content.\nStrong cross-functional communication and the ability to translate complex science-learning expectations into actionable guidance for academic, product, technical, and customer-facing teams.\n Perferred\nExperience in educational technology, digital curriculum, assessment, simulations, or large-scale instructional programs.\nExperience with state adoption processes, state science assessments, or multi-state science solutions.\nExperience working with external curriculum-production partners or distributed content-development teams.\nExperience contributing to research, publications, professional learning, or state/national initiatives related to science education.\n Benefits At Summit K12, we are committed to pay transparency and equitable compensation practices. The posted salary range reflects the scope of the role and current market benchmarks. Final compensation will be based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, your experience, skills, and qualifications. All offers are made with consideration for the individual candidate’s background and the needs of the role. We also offer a comprehensive benefits package. Highlights include:\nMedical, dental, and vision insurance with multiple plan options\nCompany-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance\n401(k) retirement plan\nPaid Time Off (PTO) program\n10 paid holidays plus 1 floating holiday annually\nWellness resources and support programs\n Summit K12 is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.