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.
The 21st Century School: Facilities
Volume 36 No. 1 // December 30, 2010
If you, as School Head or Board President, are thinking of or are in the process of planning new or renovated facilities, ISM recommends that you ask this simple question: What do we know about the uses and need for this building in five to 10 years? The honest answer given the dramatic changes in the delivery of education that we and many others have been commenting on is that we are not at all sure. However, there are strong hints and emerging practices in school architecture that provide us with a little confidence in thinking about our next projects.1
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New Faculty and Your School’s Purpose and Outcome Statements
Volume 35 No. 16 // December 14, 2010
The Board, faculty, and administration have worked diligently to develop the three Purpose and Outcome Statements that ISM recommends. The Characteristics of Professional Excellence and Portrait of the Graduate have been especially noteworthy in that they are documents probably created by the faculty (with the administration’s acceptance before implementation). Thus, the faculty “owns” these two statements and how they are fulfilled programmatically and pedagogically.
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ISM Stability Marker No. 1: The Relationships of Cash Reserves, Debt, and Endowment
Volume 35 No. 16 // December 14, 2010
The first-ranked ISM Stability Marker™ has been for some time an item casually referred to as “cash reserves.” While that term is handy, this top-ranked marker is actually a formulaic mix of cash reserves, low/no debt, and endowment. You, as a member of your Board, will be called upon, at least as often as you engage in strategic planning, to give careful consideration to your own school’s position on this, and other, Stability Markers.
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The Head’s Five Major Priorities
Volume 35 No. 16 // December 14, 2010
The extent and (perceived) urgency of the daily demands on you, the School Head, could easily render the job impossible without a reliable sense on your part of the validity of the priorities you hold. Institutional success, personal/professional success, and an actual sense of joy in the role can all be within plausible reach if your priorities are “right,” and provided:
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Moonlighting: What to Do When Part-Time Jobs Clash With School Culture
Volume 35 No. 15 // November 22, 2010
Issue: A faculty member devotes a significant amount of his off-duty time and energy as an online writer for a controversial social cause that some feel is contrary to the culture of the school. Issue: A faculty member’s role as an instructor of adult education classes on pole dancing at the local community college comes to the attention of parents, who contact the School Head to express their concerns.
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The Real Cost of Financial Aid
Volume 35 No. 15 // November 22, 2010
There is much concern, at the Board and management level, over the increasing cost of financial aid.* Yearly, it seems, this budget line item (whether you recognize it as contra revenue or an expense) increases. But an increase in that line item does not necessarily mean the financial aid is costing your school more. A better way to think about the true cost of financial aid is to understand the concept of net tuition revenue per student.
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The 21st Century School: Strategic Schedule Review
Volume 35 No. 15 // November 22, 2010
Schedule reform is becoming one of the most important and adaptive strategies that academic administrators can lead and support—it has the capacity to shift student and faculty cultures in a dramatic and immediate way. ISM has always called for the schedule to be re-examined every eight years, but recently suggested that, with the increased strategic importance of the schedule, School Heads “require, fully engage in, and support schedule review every four years and have a standing faculty committee that continues to review the ongoing research and practice in schedule, student performance, and healthy faculty cultures.”1
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Assessing Your School’s Internal Marketing
Volume 35 No. 14 // November 4, 2010
One of the second-tier markers of the ISM Stability Markers™ is to have mature and effective internal marketing strategies.1 The value of effective internal marketing is accepted by all in independent schools. Satisfied families will re-enroll their children year after year because the school has validated for them the quality and mission fit of the education their children are receiving. In addition, informed parents provide an independent school with an excellent “sales force” to spread the word about the school to potential families.
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Developing Your Business Continuation Plan
Volume 35 No. 14 // November 4, 2010
More and more, government agencies, businesses your school deals with, parents, and major donors are asking to see your business continuation plan (BCP)—or at least questioning if you have such a plan. The BCP, simply stated, answers the question: “How can our school remain in business—or re-open as quickly as possible—if a crisis or catastrophe forces us to close our campus?” Without a business continuation plan, your school could face business interruption, which can lead to lost income, damaged reputation, added expense, and, if serious enough, the closing of your school.
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External Marketing for Your Summer Program
Volume 35 No. 13 // October 13, 2010
Recently, I&P published an article about internal marketing for your summer program. The following article shares effective ideas for external marketing of your program. The targets of your external marketing are families who have not enrolled students in your summer program in the last two years—whether the students are enrolled in your school during the academic year or not.
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