“Academic rigor” is heralded as a central tenet of a quality academic experience. Schools tout it. Parents want it. Governments legislate it. The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, sought to establish that the U.S. education system was enmeshed with mediocrity and called for increased academic rigor as the antidote. More than 30 years later—and as evidenced by the frequency with which “rigor” or “rigorous” appears on public and private school websites and strategic initiatives—“rigor” is still perceived to be a prime mechanism by which schools might improve student achievement.

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With today’s increasingly varied family structures, many private-independent schools find themselves grappling with the issue of how to deal with noncustodial parents. No school can afford to be without a policy that governs the release of information to students’ natural parents and sets rules for in-school visitation, after-school pick-up, and the like by natural, but noncustodial, parents.

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Your school’s summer program is now over and you are evaluating the program’s successes and failures as you begin planning for next summer’s sessions. As Summer Program Director, you know the key to a successful summer program, as in any other school curriculum, is its staff. But hiring for the summer program requires a different outlook than hiring for the regular school year. These differences might seem obvious. Creating a relationship with students and teaching for a week is different from having a year to achieve results. If you’re teaching an academic summer program, teaching for 3–4 hours a day for four weeks is different from teaching for 50 minutes a day all year long. The key objective of having fun is not as front and center during the school year as in the summer.

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Each fall, ISM publishes a set of conversion factors to facilitate recasting previous tuitions into current dollars. (See the accompanying table.) We continue to use the Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).1 However, we also realize 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% above the overall inflation rate. The CPI has a built-in “productivity factor.” It assumes the workforce is increasingly productive as computers, streamlined mechanical devices, and other laborsaving developments provide greater output with fewer personnel. Education, however, differs from industries in that it is people-intensive and not truly “product”-driven. Education cannot offset the total true effects of inflation by increased efficiency—the classroom still basically consists of a teacher and a group of students. If more students enroll, we create more sections with more teachers. Furthermore, even as the demand for additional programs (and teachers) occurs, schools tend not to remove any of the standing programs to lessen the budgetary crunch. Costs go up even as productivity remains static.

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A private-independent school is often described as a “community of learners,” and a main tenet of a school’s mission is to instill a love of “lifelong learning.” An excellent display of this conviction is that your teachers spend time improving themselves (professionally and otherwise) outside the classroom. How are you highlighting your teachers’ achievements, both inside and outside the walls of your school?

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Judging from its incredible growth in the past two decades, home-schooling has clearly become more acceptable for parents seeking alternative education for their children. Like charter schools, home-schooling groups can be perceived as competition for private-independent schools. However, it may be more advantageous to cooperate with home-schoolers than to compete with them. Although students of all ages are educated at home, many are younger children who eventually attend conventional schools. Home-schooling parents typically have views on education that mirror those held by your school’s parents, and their children often prove to be exemplary private school students. With this in mind, consider working with local home-schooling groups as you would collaborate with feeder schools.

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In our continuing research on the competition for talented, mission-appropriate teachers for private-independent schools, ISM annually surveys a random sample of I&P subscriber schools about teacher and administrator compensation.1 This year, 262 schools responded to the survey. The following article focuses on the survey results regarding the salaries of day school teachers. A competitive faculty salary structure is critical in a school’s ability to sustain programmatic excellence over time. Competitive salaries enable you to retain members of your faculty and hire new teachers. Consider the following results of our survey—and where your school falls in the scope of compensation variables.

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The expression “deliberate heterogeneity” reflects ISM’s commitment to private-independent schools truly delivering each school’s unique mission to its unique students (i.e., deliberately, and not being uniform). The term is defined as a school’s desire to articulate and exemplify its mission distinctives in the marketplace, and thus its confidence in being able to appeal to that marketplace through the power of its own voice. The expression reflects our concern that our schools are being unduly influenced by an educational movement toward homogeneity that strikes at the core of an independent school’s character and competitive position. We introduce the phrase “deliberate heterogeneity” to galvanize schools, one at a time, to take on their mission responsibility and deliver it in creative and innovative ways. Heterogeneity includes your school’s values, unique history, culture, and circumstances influencing your mission-in-action.

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If you, as Board President, are confident that your current strategic plan/strategic financial plan meets the criteria spelled out in the No. 2-ranking marker in the ISM Stability Markers®, revisit your Committee on Trustees’ structure and function to determine whether this crucial committee needs revitalization. If you seek to lead your Board forward as a truly strategic entity—one focused upon long-term financial and organizational stability—then the Committee on Trustees (COT), your Board’s “most strategic” committee, must be appropriately staffed and charged.

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A sequence of qualified, effective Heads who stay six years or more—with a series of orderly transitions—is the best-case scenario for any private-independent school. However, in given situations, a temporary replacement can be necessary, appropriate, and advantageous. In the most common circumstance, the school faces a vacancy relatively late in the school year, leaving insufficient time to conduct a careful search for a permanent Head. In other instances, the Board may have conducted a Head search without reaching a clear decision or identifying a need for a hiatus between permanent Heads. Perhaps the Board has decided to postpone an all-out search to test the qualities of an administrator already at the school.

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