In the recent research ISM carried out relating to faculty compensation and benefits, a corollary to the findings was this one: Schools are still underfunding professional development. In the chart below, the percent of budget spent by schools on professional development is 1% or less in 82% of responding schools. ISM’s Success Predictor No. 17 suggests that the appropriate amount is “roughly 2% of the total budget of expenses to be devoted to faculty professional development, plus an additional allocation of 1% of the total budget for support of professional development for nonteaching personnel (including Trustees).”

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Many schools are exploring alternative revenue sources to mitigate ever-increasing tuitions; some strategic plans even call for an investigation into this concept as a means to maintain sustainability. Is this a wise course of action? On the surface, exploring alternative revenue sources is indeed logical. If a school could design a way to create, for example, $265,000 in profit, tuition increases could be curtailed. This thinking can, however, be misleading—and even detrimental, in some cases.

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The School Head is the sole employee of the Board. It is essential that the Board be fully conversant about trends in Head compensation. Only then can the Board determine what adjustments, if any, are needed to ensure that the school retains the Head, or to enhance its ability to be competitive in its next Head search. Make management of the Head’s compensation a high priority, in terms of Trustees educating themselves about the marketplace and understanding the complexities of the School Head’s job. ISM recently surveyed a random sample of I&P subscriber schools concerning compensation for faculty and administrators. This article focuses on the survey results regarding the salaries of School Heads at our participating schools.

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Salary alone is not enough to attract and retain a mission-appropriate, quality faculty. When searching for employment today, teachers have expectations about benefits. While insurance coverage, pension plans, and paid time off are likely to devour a large portion of your school’s budget, they are critical components (with salary, of course) for the recruitment and retention of valued faculty.1 In ISM’s continuing research concerning the competition for quality teachers that private-independent schools are now experiencing, we recently surveyed a random sample of I&P subscriber schools. The 178 responding schools answered questions concerning the salaries, selected benefits, and hiring of faculty members. This article focuses on the health insurance benefits of teachers at our participating schools. (A subsequent article will discuss the survey results concerning other benefits in school compensation packages.)

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Concentrated close-of-summer planning is one of your Board’s best guarantees of strong Board performance. An evening buffet or weekend cookout at the start of the school year—sponsored by the Board for faculty, school administrators, and key staff—can do much to increase your school’s sense of community and “family.” This is especially effective when invitations are extended to spouses as well. Try to hold the event on campus. The setting will remind everyone of their common tie: service and dedication to students.

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In a previous article, we identified challenges to the school community in a 21st century learning architecture. The importance of the school community and its concomitant virtue of fairness is more important than ever. In addition, our increasingly competitive environment is causing students and parents to question the value they are getting from their school. In this article, we consider the issues of fairness, competitiveness, and high performance from the viewpoint of assessment. While this is a limited snapshot, we hope that it will encourage much deeper conversation about assessment practice among your school’s faculty.

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While we believe that much is changing in educational architecture, we don’t believe that to be necessarily true of teaching practice. And the challenge will not be in how to teach—we actually know a lot about that already—but how to establish culture/community within the new 21st century architecture.

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In our continuing research concerning the competition for quality teachers that private-independent schools are now experiencing, ISM recently surveyed a random sample of I&P subscriber schools. The 178 responding schools answered questions concerning the salaries, selected benefits, and hiring of faculty members. This article concerns the salaries of teachers at day schools only (164 schools).

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Your school is preparing for a capital or comprehensive campaign.1 As Development Director or Advancement Director, you want to ensure that the campaign will be successful, so you’ve contracted with outside fund-raising counsel to provide a feasibility study to test whether your campaign dollar goal is achievable. While testing a dollar goal is part of what you will determine from the study results, you are not getting the full value if you stop there. A robust feasibility study tests the waters for a particular campaign, and also tests institutional readiness and lays the foundation for long-term development success.

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In a previous article, we noted particular characteristics of the lower, middle, and upper school divisions. Management/leadership would do well to understand these characteristics and take them into account in working with the faculty cultures there. However, there is a fourth "division" that rarely is given much attention. This one incorporates teachers who typically teach across two or even three divisions. Working with these faculty members, without recognizing that they face and respond to unique challenges, you run the risk of talking constantly past them and rarely to them. Note that ISM is opposed to cross-divisional teaching in theory and in practice. This article recognizes the reality in today's schools and tries to place these teachers in a useful administrative context. We need to be clear: ISM does not intend to suggest that there is a balance between positives and negatives. In addition to the challenges noted below, cross-divisional teachers are part-time in each division in which they teach and inevitably drive the schedule. This practice is generally considered the only fiscally prudent way to provide course needs; it is a pragmatic business decision, but rarely is it a satisfying solution to teaching excellence within a school. As such, it is often not in the best interest of students.

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