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No matter if you’re a School Head, Admission Director, Development Director, Board member, or any other private school administrator—Ideas & Perspectives, ISM’s premier private school publication, has strategic solutions for the pervasive problems you face.
- Tuition not keeping pace with your expenses? In I&P, explore how to use strategic financial planning to create your budget and appropriately adjust your tuition.
- Enrollment dropping off? Discover how to implement the right admission and enrollment management strategies that engage your community—and fill your classrooms.
- Trouble retaining teachers? Learn how you can best support your teachers using ISM’s Comprehensive Faculty Development framework. Your faculty members will become more enthusiastic about their roles—which ultimately improves student outcomes.
- Fundraising campaigns not as successful as you’d hoped? Implement ISM’s practical advice and guidance to build a thriving annual fund, construct an effective capital campaign, and secure major donors—no matter your community size or location.
- Not sure how to provide professional development—for you and your staff? Learn ways to develop and fund a successful professional development strategy. You can improve teacher-centered satisfaction and growth, which in turn strengthens student-centered learning.
- Problematic schedule? You can master the challenges of scheduling with the help of ISM’s practical advice, based on our experience with hundreds of schools and our time-tested theories.
- And so much more.
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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
The Responsibilities of Gift Documentation
Volume 46 No. 7 // September 1, 2021
Knowing that careful recognition and stewardship of their donor’s gifts lies at the heart of building strong relationships with donors, the Development Office must take care to maintain complete, accurate documentation—electronically and on paper—of all gifts received by the school, whether a gift to a fundraising campaign, a planned gift, or a gift of tangible personal property.
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Managing the Assimilation of a New Division Head
Volume 46 No. 6 // June 1, 2021
As School Head, you have devoted time, effort, and likely paid a hefty placement fee to a search firm to find the perfect candidate for an open Division Head position. The new person is accomplished, experienced, and confident. However, within a few months—and maybe even weeks—there is apparent friction between the new Division Head and the teachers they are expected to lead
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What the School Head Should Target When Interviewing Admission Director Candidates
Volume 46 No. 6 // June 1, 2021
As School Head, you have selected the best candidates to visit your school for the Admission Director position. They are all qualified. Knowing you must establish a comfortable working relationship with the new Admission Director, you use the interview to choose the applicant with the best “chemistry.” However, having a friendly relationship with the candidate is not everything. Moderate disagreement might help the school sharpen its approaches to marketing and student recruitment. Too much agreement often leads to “group think,” while too much disagreement can prove too discordant.
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Assessing the Quality and Impact of a Faculty Growth Goal: A Rubric
Volume 46 No. 6 // June 1, 2021
ISM’s growth and evaluation framework for teachers clarifies that growth itself is not to be evaluated. This frees teachers to try new things and take risks without fear of failure. The Essential Expectation is only that they “authentically engage in self-reflection and development of a growth and renewal plan. This includes written goals and progress toward those goals.”
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Empower Your Teachers to Be Frontline Re-Recruiters
Volume 46 No. 6 // June 1, 2021
Among the many factors that drive families to choose private schools are safety and security, academic outcomes, and mission-alignment. But, as School or Division Head, you recognize that retaining families requires more than small class sizes and an impressive next-level placement record. Your faculty, in fact, is a primary reason your families stay at your school (or not).
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Create an Effective Annual Giving Plan
Volume 46 No. 6 // June 1, 2021
Annual giving is the foundational program from which all other development efforts grow and flourish. Not only is annual giving a revenue source for enhancing your school’s programs, but it is also the starting place for many prospects as they begin and sustain their philanthropic relationship with your school.
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The Headship: Leadership and the ISM Circle
Volume 46 No. 5 // May 1, 2021
The number-three ranking ISM Stability Marker—School Head leadership—is measured by the ISM Executive Leadership Survey.3 The first five items of the survey are shown here by example. Your review of these will inform the discussion that follows.
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Faculty Growth Plans: An 11-Stage Process to Ensure Authentic Engagement
Volume 46 No. 5 // May 1, 2021
One of ISM’s Essential Expectations on which faculty are evaluated is that teachers must “authentically engage in self-reflection and annual development of a growth and renewal plan, to include written goals and progress toward those goals.”1 To determine whether faculty members are meeting this expectation, ISM’s growth framework provides a clear process, developed to ensure “authentic engagement” while allowing for the risk-taking and failure required for meaningful growth
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When a Crisis ‘Goes Social’: Be Prepared to Respond
Volume 46 No. 5 // May 1, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic gave every private school a crash course on adapting and responding to a rapidly changing and difficult situation. Likewise, many schools found themselves immersed in the Black@ social movement, which necessitated consequential conversations with students, alumni, and other stakeholders in a public setting with unlimited reach.
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Preparing for the Unforeseeable
Volume 46 No. 4 // April 1, 2021
Economic downturns, natural disasters, and worldwide pandemics—events not only unforeseeable but sometimes interrelated and feeding off one another—will not be going away. As Board President or School Head, seize the opportunity in times of relative normality to keep these facts of institutional life in mind when your Board assembles for its regularly scheduled strategic planning sessions.
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