Learn practical strategies to handle emerging trends and leadership challenges in private schools.
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.
I&P has shared targeted research, up-to-date insight, and sound theory with school leaders since 1975. More than 8,500 private school decision-makers find the answers to their schools’ administrative and governance matters in our advisory letter. We give you the strategic answers you need.
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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
Target Your True Recruitment/Retention Issues
Volume 33 No. 11 // September 6, 2008
If your school’s enrollment is declining and its budget is looking worse by the day, your Management Team and Board may assume the following. It’s the economy. There aren’t enough parents who can afford our tuition. The demographics are declining—it’s the trend.
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Ex Officio Board Members
Volume 33 No. 10 // August 15, 2008
We often hear the term "ex officio" when referring to the School Head’s status at Board meetings. The term is often misused and misunderstood.
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Cost Effective, Sustainable Building Solutions
Volume 33 No. 10 // August 15, 2008
Sustainability is no longer a trend; it is an integral part of conversations about school design and management. Sustainability, green buildings, and high-performance buildings are all part of the conversation—and, although the three terms are used interchangeably, it is helpful to remember that, while green buildings incorporate a number of sustainable ideas, the terms are not synonymous.
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Characteristics of Professional Excellence: Faculty Interviews
Volume 33 No. 10 // August 15, 2008
As a School Head, there is no more pivotal, important task than ensuring your school hires mission-appropriate faculty. Whether you interview all candidates, delegate initial interviews to someone else and then interview the finalists, or delegate full responsibility to a member of your Management Team, the quality of the faculty is inescapably your responsibility.
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Will New Section 125 Regulations Impact Your School's Health Benefits Policies?
Volume 33 No. 9 // July 23, 2008
Over the past several years, many private-independent schools have looked for efficient, low-cost ways to better support the work, family, and health needs of their current employees, while also attracting new, top-level talent. One of the ways they’ve done this is by offering Section 125 plans (“cafeteria plans”) as part of their overall health benefits packages.
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The Allocation of Time and Your Faculty's Professional Growth
Volume 33 No. 9 // July 23, 2008
As School Head, you are aware that your success in developing a growth-focused faculty culture is the most critical ingredient in the long-term quality of the student experience—that is, the central determinant of your students’ performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm. You are aware, as well, that the qualities of "predictability and supportiveness" in your students’ environment (the conditions most closely associated with high-level performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm) are most reliably generated by establishing those same two qualities in your teachers’ environment.
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Revisit Your Conflict of Interest Policy
Volume 33 No. 8 // June 28, 2008
Over the past few years, ISM Consultants have worked with a number of private-independent schools that have faced conflict-of-interest issues. Such problems usually occur because a school has not (or not properly) written a conflict-of-interest policy.
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ISM's Standards for Professional Growth and Renewal: Process Standards
Volume 33 No. 8 // June 28, 2008
The ISM Standards for Professional Growth and Renewal provide private-independent schools with a way to assess whether their investment in faculty professional development is focused clearly on students, clearly articulated as a systems activity, contextually meaningful in building professional relationships among faculty, and accountable for the results achieved. This article, the third in a series, recommends a set of metrics related to the Process Standards.
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Teacher Impact: How to Identify the Difference Makers
Volume 33 No. 7 // June 4, 2008
Faculty evaluation is, by and large, an individualized exercise. Evaluation is rarely considered within the context of the faculty as a whole, i.e., what is this teacher’s impact compared with others in the school? In this context, "impact" means the level of effectiveness demonstrated by the teacher in delivering the mission of the school to the students.
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ISM's Standards for Professional Growth and Renewal: Culture Standards
Volume 33 No. 6 // May 9, 2008
The ISM Standards for Professional Growth and Renewal provide private-independent schools with a way to assess whether their investment in faculty professional development is focused on students, clearly articulated as a systems activity, contextually meaningful in building professional relationships among faculty, and accountable for the results achieved. This article, the second in a series, recommends a set of metrics related to the ISM Culture Standards.
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