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- 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.
Multiple Uses of Landscaping
Volume 42 No. 1 // January 13, 2017
A modest investment in landscaping can make a significant difference in a school’s appearance. Attractive, well-kept grounds build pride in your school—among your staff, students and their families, and in the community. Consider these guidelines to make the most of your grounds.
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ISM’s Success Predictors: Update and Revision, Part One
Volume 42 No. 1 // January 13, 2017
ISM periodically issues revised and updated versions of its Stability Markers, a list of evidence-based variables that, according to ISM data, comprise the critical elements in underwriting a private-independent school’s long-term viability. The ISM Stability Markers have been in widespread use by Boards of Trustees and senior administrators, both as a lens through which to self-evaluate and as a vector on which to move to strengthen a school’s longest-term financial and organizational stability and excellence. ISM here offers its first update and revision of the ISM Success Predictors—not to be confused with the Stability Markers—which represent ISM’s deliberately considered speculation on what will be needed in private-independent schools as they adjust to the always-changing technological, educational, and cultural milieu in which they move. The ISM Success Predicators, unlike the ISM Stability Markers, are not evidence-driven in the same way, i.e., not as outcomes of data analysis. Since evidence of efficacy is impossible to gather before widespread use, readers should understand the ISM Success Predictors are forecasts—not conclusions-from-data—of what ISM expects to be needed to achieve long-term success in the private-independent school marketplace.
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Creating Divisional and Departmental Mission Statements
Volume 42 No. 1 // January 13, 2017
The Board of Trustees and the School Head are entrusted with creation of the school’s mission statement; that is amplified through development of the Portrait of the Graduate and the Characteristics of Professional Excellence. Collectively, these documents are called Purpose and Outcome Statements. What do they mean, however, for the life of each division and department?
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What You Need to Know About the New Fiduciary Rule
Volume 41 No. 16 // December 19, 2016
You, as School Head or Business Manager, may be aware of the new Department of Labor (DOL) guidelines issued on April 6, 2016, as they pertain to fiduciaries. Generally noted as the “Fiduciary Rule,” it will be phased in with initial compliance obligations beginning on April 10, 2017, and full compliance expected by January 1, 2018. The new rule amends regulations related to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). It mainly targets financial advisors, broker/dealers, and insurance agents who give investment advice and/or sell annuities and other investment vehicles used in 403(b) and 401(k) accounts found in many employer plans and in IRA pension plans. This article primarily focuses on 403(b) and 401(k) plans.
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Essential Expectations of the Board President
Volume 41 No. 16 // December 19, 2016
ISM has, in the past, provided counsel about those basic observable behaviors that underlay the Head’s strategic goals in and through the support and evaluation process. In this companion article, we consider the position of the Board President. It is, of course, true that the Board President is a volunteer and not a paid employee of the school. At the same time, the Board President’s position is a key strategic function. And the partnership of the Board President and the School Head is the key strategic partnership in the school.
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Professional Development: Five Worst Practices
Volume 41 No. 16 // December 19, 2016
As a Division Head, your most critical responsibility is to increase the capacity of your teachers. You may be in the process of reevaluating your school’s professional development with this in mind. Here are the five worst practices that ISM often witnesses in schools, and the recommendations that go with them.
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Can a Talented Teacher Be a Good Administrator?
Volume 41 No. 16 // December 19, 2016
The answer, of course, is a qualified “yes.” As the School Head, you have a vested interest in identifying administrative talent. When you find a teacher who can take charge of an operational area—however small—you relieve yourself or another Administrative Team member of a burden. This may even free time to devote to other imminent tasks and issues.
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Your Board’s Key Documents: Do You Know Where They Are?
Volume 41 No. 15 // November 28, 2016
As Chair of your Board’s Committee on Trustees (COT), consider the ease—or difficulty—with which you would be able, if asked, to put your hands on the array of documents that are critical to the history, ongoing life, and future of your school’s governing body. A standard array of such documents could be placed into the categories of: standing documents, pre-planning documents, primary strategic documents, secondary strategic documents, facilitative documents, and archives.
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Educational Specifications: The Foundation for the Facility of Your Dreams
Volume 41 No. 15 // November 28, 2016
Any professional, knowledgeable architect will ask your school for educational specifications—a definition of the “who, what, when, why, and how” for each space in the structure. These “building blocks” make the difference between a generic, restrictive structure and one specifically designed to: support your school’s mission; meet the needs of your program; serve the students, faculty, and staff who use the building daily; and stay within your budget constraints.
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Professional Learning Communities
Volume 41 No. 14 // November 7, 2016
As School Head or Division Head, you may already be immersed in the practice of Professional Learning Communities (PLC), or you may be just starting to integrate them into your practice. They can, of course, exist in various settings—here we will apply it strictly to teachers working together. The term dates from the 1960s when researchers were already trying to find an antidote to the isolation experienced by teachers. It gained popularity in 1993 with the work of Milbrey McLaughlin, when she and her collaborators identified the major characteristics of a PLC that have largely survived intact to this day.1 These characteristics include:
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