Executive Director, Assessment

College Board • New York, NY

10d • $144,000 - $210,000 • Remote

About The Position

The Executive Director, Assessment will own the exploration and identification of assessment design options for new career-focused AP courses. This role is responsible for ongoing assessment development, from initial test blueprints through pilot exam versions and into ongoing, year-over-year assessment item and version development. The position requires partnering with assessment innovation leaders to identify, select, refine, and implement innovative item types, choosing the right blend of formats and modalities for each course. Collaboration with the College Board’s Psychometric department and curriculum experts is essential to ensure course design and assessment design progress together. The role also involves building internal cases and stakeholder buy-in for new assessment approaches alongside traditional formats. The ideal candidate possesses expertise in designing authentic, relevant assessments, fluency in psychometric fundamentals for technical conversations, and strong stakeholder management skills to guide partners through new assessment approaches.

Requirements

• 10-15+ years in assessment design, test development, or curriculum leadership roles with direct, hands-on exposure to how assessment and measurement work, even if the role sat on the curriculum side rather than the psychometrics side.
• A demonstrated track record of innovation in assessment design, ideally in skills-based, project-based, or credential-connected models.
• Working fluency in assessment data and psychometric output (item statistics, score distributions, equating concepts) sufficient to partner credibly with measurement specialists.
• Experience running complex, multi-stakeholder timelines against fixed external deadlines, such as field-testing windows and item-review cycles.
• A track record of driving change and building buy-in across stakeholders with differing perspectives to advance new approaches.
• Experience building and leading teams in a matrixed organization.
• A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work.
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and comfort with learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.
• Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal.
• A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.
• A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.
• A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.
• Authorization to work in the United States

Responsibilities

• Partner with Learning and Assessment innovation leaders to identify, select, refine, and incorporate promising and innovative item types within the New Course AP Exams and that clearly and distinctly measure the skills identified as the targets of measurement for the new course, thereby inspiring productive and relevant classroom focus and student practice.
• Lead design and development of test blueprints and pilot exam versions for new courses, partnering with AP Program Enablement to select the assessment format, traditional, performance-based, or project-based, and scoring models that will enable on-time, accurate, and efficient scoring of free-response questions.
• Define and own assessment models that generate, store, and enable student utilization of workforce credentials, not just an exam score.
• Partner with AP Program Enablement to identify annual version development and usage braiding plans and then take responsibility for managing and delivering ongoing, year-over-year assessment item and version development beyond initial pilot versions.
• Partner with Learning and Assessment to recommend and set the vision for new AP assessment models, working with measurement partners to establish validity and defensibility for each format introduced; ensure this vision cascades across their direct reports and the NCD team.
• Partner with the measurement/psychometrics team on exam version assembly, equating, and standard settings, including for novel formats that don't fit legacy models.
• Win buy-in from stakeholders attached to traditional assessment models; build trust and shared ownership of new approaches.
• Represent assessment considerations in cross-functional project reviews with curriculum, design, and program management partners.
• Build and hire a team of assessment design staff who have subject matter expertise in the new course domains and will enact the annual cycle of item and version development and administration responsibilities for the new course exams.
• Oversee calibration and training of subject matter expert panels on writing and reviewing all assessment types, new and existing.
• Sign off on assessment deliverables at each project decision point, i.e., the milestones where a course's assessment work must be approved before design can proceed to the next stage.

Benefits

• Meaningful career
• Supportive team
• Comprehensive package designed to help you thrive
• Fair and competitive compensation grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market
• Open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it’s like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: No Education Listed