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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
Another Way of Looking at Retention
Volume 34 No. 14 // November 20, 2009
Of all the research that ISM reviews, periodically there is a report that merits some reflection by our client schools. In this article, we review a major finding of the Brown Center Report and consider its implications.1 The Brown Report looks at three aspects of education: the latest NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) mathematics scores, enrollment patterns in private and public schools, and the relationship between time and mathematics achievement. We will consider the issue of enrollment patterns.
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The Difference Between Corporate Planning and School Strategic Planning
Volume 34 No. 13 // October 21, 2009
Many Trustees come from the corporate sector and, understandably, tend to bring corporate assumptions and concepts to private-independent school strategic planning. Examples of corporate-to-school strategic applications that are appropriate and useful include accurate revenue forecasting, an understanding of complex stock market indices and expectations, a broader view of salary trends across the for-profit sector, and projected salary gradients for employees. On the other hand, examples of corporate-to-school strategic applications that are less appropriate and/or questionable include reassigning employees who provide core services to achieve enhanced efficiencies and/or simply reduce their number, reducing advertising costs; and postponing planning entirely (e.g., pushing planning dates out indefinitely).
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The 21st Century School: Teaching Time
Volume 34 No. 13 // October 21, 2009
The best teaching environment for learning is one where a teacher can manipulate time/content to meet the needs of every student. This is best illustrated by lower school homerooms where teachers have blocks of 60 to 180 minutes with students. For private-independent schools, the stakes are high. The expectation is that students will succeed at and above what they and their parents can imagine. This requirement for every student to succeed, implicit in the admitting of mission-appropriate students, must now drive our concept of teaching time in the 21st Century School. The 20th century paradigm for class length was the seven- or eight-period day of 40- to 50-minute classes over a school year of 180 days—yielding 8,100 minutes (180 x 45) of teaching, or 135 hours, per class each year. The justification for this paradigm was compelling. There was an enormous amount of knowledge that students had to learn in order to participate in the industrial society. The architecture of schools emphasized this knowledge acquisition with rows of desks facing the teacher at the front “armed” with chalk and ruler, and working in isolation from colleagues. And the aristocracy of schools ensured that students not only entered a class, but entered their “class” in terms of the type of knowledge presented: abstract and university-bound, or practical and trades-bound.
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New Research: The Relationship Between Faculty Professional Development and Student Performance
Volume 34 No. 13 // October 21, 2009
ISM’s six-year International Model Schools Project found powerful relationships between a professional-growth-focused faculty culture, on the one hand, and student performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm, on the other. In ISM’s review of literature accompanying one of the two books produced in concert with that project, ISM cited Stanford University’s Dr. Milbrey McLaughlin’s work. She had noted, during a 1983 presentation to the annual conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, “… [R]esearch studies on planned change and teacher evaluation give clear evidence that, when interaction of this sort (i.e., teacher-to-teacher interaction dealing with teaching-learning equations and with professional excellence) does occur, especially on a regular basis, it has a substantial, powerful, and positive effect on what and how well students learn.”
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Directors and Officers Insurance: Why Your School Can't Afford to Be Without It
Volume 34 No. 12 // September 25, 2009
Directors and Officers insurance (also known as School Legal or Trustee Liability insurance) may be the most critical insurance and protection for your school. Having the “wrong” policy or one that is weak could potentially be devastating to your school. Damages sought under D&O insurance can range anywhere from a nuisance claim to one seeking millions of dollars in compensation, and may include a request for punitive damages if the action in question is considered egregious enough (e.g., willful disregard for protected categories under ADA or where the school knew of a wrong action that was occurring and did nothing to stop it). The cost to protect and defend a school against such claims is no mean exposure either; it can often cost $75,000 in legal fees just to prove nothing wrong occurred in the first place. It is critical, therefore, that your policy not only cover both actual losses and defense costs, but provide additional limits for defense, and thus not erode actual claims limits should the plaintiff prevail.
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Internal and External Administrative Candidates
Volume 34 No. 12 // September 25, 2009
When an administrative job opening occurs in a private-independent school, candidates are often sought both from within and outside the school community. The obvious intention seems to be to ensure a pool of exceptional candidates, all of whom will compete on an equal playing field. There is, however, quite a difference between an internal and an external candidate (see the table below) and we recommend that they be treated differently.
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Enrollment Management, Character Education, and Your Athletic Program
Volume 34 No. 12 // September 25, 2009
As School Head, you have long recognized that your middle and upper school divisions (grades 6-12) have a great deal both to gain and to lose from your athletic program. The interrelationships among enrollment, character development, and interscholastic sports are many and complex. The advantages of your athletic program should not obscure issues that are evident in what happens to children. Consider the following statistics. (Cited in Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids by M. Hyman [Boston: Beacon Press, 2009].)
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How to Assess Teacher Impact in Your Summer Program
Volume 34 No. 11 // September 16, 2009
Knowing how effective your summer program teachers are is essential in maintaining and improving the reputation of your program, and thus your ability to sustain or increase its size. The reputation of your summer program is almost entirely dependent on the impact that faculty have on students for the brief time that they teach and entertain them, typically in one-week periods.
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Recess May Be More Than You Think
Volume 34 No. 11 // September 16, 2009
As more and more curriculum and program are being squeezed into our academic days, schools are looking for creative ways to make everything fit. One practice gaining in popularity is eliminating or significantly curtailing the time permitted for recess in lower schools. In the battle for the awarding of precious minutes, academic time may be deemed more important than physical time. But studies published this year in the Journal of Neuroscience, The Journal of School Health, and Pediatrics suggest a strong link between activity and students’ ability to learn.
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Appropriate Tuition Adjustment: Recasting Financial Figures, 2009-10
Volume 34 No. 11 // September 16, 2009
Each fall, ISM publishes a set of conversion factors to facilitate the recasting of previous tuitions into current dollars. (See the table on the next page.) We continue to use the Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). However, we also realize that the CPI-U does not completely reflect expenditures in private-independent schools; it can only serve as a base figure. There are compelling arguments for adjusting your tuition at a rate 2% or more above the overall inflation rate.
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