Rutgers University professor and school finance expert Bruce D. Baker conducted a recently published study titled Private Schooling in the U.S.: Expenditures, Supply, and Policy Implications. Here are three of the major findings.

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The question of fair, competitive compensation is a primary concern when developing your school’s budget. Your school’s ability to attract the best candidates is a prerequisite for excellence in the classroom, and compensation is a piece of that puzzle.1 As we continue our discussion of the 21st Century School, it is clear that private-independent schools must not only provide financial support and appropriate time for ongoing and effective professional growth and renewal, but also compensate faculty competitively.

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For several years, ISM has pushed academic administrators (typically Division Directors, Department Chairs, and School Heads) to recognize that faculty culture (defined as the pattern of customs, ideas, and assumptions driving the faculty’s collective set of professional attitudes and behaviors) is the critical determinant of a school’s “excellence.” The contention is that the top of a culture cannot escape the bottom.

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Your Case for Support is one of the core elements of any fund-raising campaign, whether it is for annual, capital, or major gifts. This marketing tool communicates with donors and prospects, and begins the process of matching their values and interests with your school’s mission and guiding principles. Donors give and continue to give when they know that their gifts will make a difference and that their gifts are used as intended.

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Every September, Phi Delta Kappa releases its poll on the American public’s attitudes toward public schools. Reviewing the poll results is enlightening. As School Head, be mindful of how parents view public education and how their opinions may affect your school's competitive advantage. The 41st Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools offers several general conclusions, three of which will be discussed in this article.

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ISM has long held that the proper role of the Board is to attend to the strategic viability of a school for future generations of students, while the role of the School Head is to manage the day-to-day operational needs of the school. With that core principle in mind, the question arises as to who is properly responsible for ensuring that the school has an effective, up-to-date employee handbook.1 As employee handbooks are primarily comprised of day-to-day operating policies, we believe that the answer clearly is “the School Head.”2 At the same time, however, there is an important strategic oversight role that the Board can and should play in ensuring that organizational risk is limited—but always showing deference to the Head on the operating details.

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In the 19th century, education in schools in the city was year-round (although it is unlikely that attendance was). At the beginning of the 20th century, the calendar moved to its present orientation—nine months on and three months off in the summer. For city dwellers, the change came about because summers were unbearably hot, disease was easily spread, wealthy people went on vacation, and too much education was considered bad for frail minds. The situation was different in rural areas where, in the 19th century, children went to school for only six months (summer and winter), leaving them free to help with the crops and animals in the spring and fall. For them, the schedule changed because the experts thought that children were not taught enough, and they wanted to come into line with changes happening in the city.

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Of all the research that ISM reviews, periodically there is a report that merits some reflection by our client schools. In this article, we review a major finding of the Brown Center Report and consider its implications.1 The Brown Report looks at three aspects of education: the latest NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) mathematics scores, enrollment patterns in private and public schools, and the relationship between time and mathematics achievement. We will consider the issue of enrollment patterns.

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Many Trustees come from the corporate sector and, understandably, tend to bring corporate assumptions and concepts to private-independent school strategic planning. Examples of corporate-to-school strategic applications that are appropriate and useful include accurate revenue forecasting, an understanding of complex stock market indices and expectations, a broader view of salary trends across the for-profit sector, and projected salary gradients for employees. On the other hand, examples of corporate-to-school strategic applications that are less appropriate and/or questionable include reassigning employees who provide core services to achieve enhanced efficiencies and/or simply reduce their number, reducing advertising costs; and postponing planning entirely (e.g., pushing planning dates out indefinitely).

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The best teaching environment for learning is one where a teacher can manipulate time/content to meet the needs of every student. This is best illustrated by lower school homerooms where teachers have blocks of 60 to 180 minutes with students. For private-independent schools, the stakes are high. The expectation is that students will succeed at and above what they and their parents can imagine. This requirement for every student to succeed, implicit in the admitting of mission-appropriate students, must now drive our concept of teaching time in the 21st Century School. The 20th century paradigm for class length was the seven- or eight-period day of 40- to 50-minute classes over a school year of 180 days—yielding 8,100 minutes (180 x 45) of teaching, or 135 hours, per class each year. The justification for this paradigm was compelling. There was an enormous amount of knowledge that students had to learn in order to participate in the industrial society. The architecture of schools emphasized this knowledge acquisition with rows of desks facing the teacher at the front “armed” with chalk and ruler, and working in isolation from colleagues. And the aristocracy of schools ensured that students not only entered a class, but entered their “class” in terms of the type of knowledge presented: abstract and university-bound, or practical and trades-bound.

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