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.
Navigating Uncertainty: Supporting Your Community
Volume 50 No. 5 // May 1, 2025
To many school leaders and families, the current cultural moment seems particularly fraught — marked by uncertainty and division. But many schools have weathered previous storms and have even grown and prospered during challenging times. In periods of stability and periods of tumult, we know from ex...
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Strengthen Your Annual Fund With a Volunteer Cabinet That Works
Volume 50 No. 5 // May 1, 2025
The annual fund is more than just a fundraising campaign — it’s the heartbeat of your development program. It engages the widest circle of your school community, builds a culture of giving and getting involved, and often serves as the first step in identifying those who will take on further leadersh...
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Business Outlook for Private-Independent Schools: Gloomy, With Heavy Rain Likely — A Chance of Isolated Major Thunderstorms
Volume 50 No. 5 // May 1, 2025
For 50 years, ISM’s advice has been consistent — the school’s mission and its core values must remain the bedrock by which its leaders evaluate the school’s operational realities. For boards and administrators alike, navigating political and cultural changes is difficult work. But in tumultuous time...
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Introducing ISM Stability Markers 6.0
Volume 50 No. 5 // May 1, 2025
ISM is pleased to introduce ISM Stability Markers® 6.0, a completely revamped set of research-based indexes designed for the heads, governance leaders, and top administrators of private-independent schools. The Stability Markers have been created especially to inform the decision-making of boards...
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Include “Loose Periods” in Your Middle and Upper School Schedules
Volume 50 No. 4 // April 1, 2025
ISM research has repeatedly shown that a strong sense of community is a differentiator when students and parents are choosing a school or choosing to remain at a school. In middle and upper school, this sense of community is fostered during assembly, advisory, and activity programs. Furtherm...
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Setting a Data-Driven Annual Fund Goal: Key Metrics for Success
Volume 50 No. 4 // April 1, 2025
As your school’s development director, you know that setting the right annual fund goal is critical to your program. Despite that, at some schools, the annual fund goal is set by the board and school head to “fund the gap” between expenses and expected income. But this is not the right way to establ...
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Stop Bragging About Rigor
Volume 50 No. 4 // April 1, 2025
“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 ...
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It’s Time: Let Go of Your Outdated Middle and Upper School Schedules
Volume 50 No. 4 // April 1, 2025
One of the most underestimated factors that influence a school’s success is the school’s schedule (or “timetable”). To maximize their development, performance, and future readiness, your students need a schedule that supports their well-being and takes into account the best research on how they lear...
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Board Leadership in Fundraising: Strategies for Engagement and Growth
Volume 50 No. 3 // March 1, 2025
ISM consistently advises that hard income should cover a school’s operating budget, where “hard income” is defined as all revenue sources other than annual fundraising sources.1 But even in schools that regularly achieve this goal, income from gifts can make a critical difference in the school’...
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Dear Board Member
Volume 50 No. 3 // March 1, 2025
We are addressing this to you. We are writing this about your sole employee, your school head. Perhaps the title you use is president or headmaster, but at most independent schools, the title is “head of school.” So, here’s the punchline: The use of “head” over-intellectualizes the role. Let us e...
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