In ISM’s terminology, a “long range plan” (LRP) is a constituency-based planning document developed with the participation of current parents, past parents, grandparents, faculty members, and others from the communities served by your school. It’s not just the work of the Board and senior administration. Unfortunately, many long range plans omit one or more of the four necessary ingredients in any planning document, regardless of type.

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The ISM Student Experience Study (SES) produced instrument outcomes that included the Student Culture Profile II and the Faculty Culture Profile II. While these two instruments—both statistically related to student performance, student satisfaction, and student enthusiasm—provided straightforward operational definitions for an optimal teaching/learning environment, they did not in themselves address the characteristics of school cultures that lack strength in “predictability,” in “supportiveness” (the paired critical ingredients in the optimal culture), or in both. This article addresses those characteristics. You, as School Head, Division Head, Department Chair, grade-level coordinator, or other position implying supervision of teachers, were introduced long ago to ISM’s seminal study of student performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm. Labeled the ISM International Model Schools Project (1989–95), that study identified “predictability and supportiveness” as the paired organizational-culture ingredients associated with enhancing the student experience. The original study’s findings were validated and refined by the recent ISM Student Experience Study.

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ISM published its Student Experience Study (SES) outcomes in January 2012, and published related articles in Ideas & Perspectives throughout the spring. Among the features in the report were a revised Faculty Culture Profile—ISM’s long-standing measure of the quality of a school’s faculty culture—and a revised Student Culture Profile, along with the study’s statistical findings and an instrument for use as part of any school’s approach to faculty evaluation, the Characteristics of Professional Excellence II.

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Mission-based advisory is the front line of guidance and the center of a school’s leadership programs. It accomplishes those objectives through the recruitment of faculty who see advisory as a crucial element of their teaching practice, whether in middle or upper schools.1 Teaching, to these faculty, is holistic and encompasses the wider framing of a student’s success or failure. For optimal success, each student must experience a predictable and supportive environment in which at least one teacher truly knows and appreciates him/her, can act as an advocate in both good and bad situations, and is a crucial communications link between the school and the parent.

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Over a decade ago, ISM quoted Noel Tichy as saying that what distinguishes winning organizations is that they “teach leadership.” In that article, we called for a “culture of observation” for coaching, for ongoing conversation, and for evaluation as a process carried out every year. Interestingly, while ISM then quoted others on leadership, we said almost nothing about it ourselves. The leadership literature demonstrated, we thought, the opacity of the term. Anyone, by their own definition, could be a leader. The books written by those who espoused the highest standards of leadership (that others should thus emulate) were often on the best-sellers lists. But what it meant for our schools seemed far less certain.

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It’s the first day of the new school year and, by midmorning, three teachers have reported that an expected student (two new and one returning) has not shown up for class. As Admission Director, you get on the phone to contact these families. The results of your calls are discouraging. In each case, the family chose another school.

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Before going on-site at a client school, ISM Consultants examine numerous documents to gain a thorough grounding in each institution’s approaches to governance, operations, and student programs. The school’s mission statement is a central component in this review. Once on-site, observations, conversations, survey interpretation, and interviews at times reveal discrepancies between the school’s published mission statement and its de facto statement. The de facto mission (or missions) comprise sets of principles or practices that have come to be observed at some levels or in some departments of the institution and that do not conform to the published statement. In some cases, ISM has found that there appears to be a different de facto mission for each academic division, for each academic department, and/or for each component of the cocurriculum. The published mission statement appears thereby to “wander” its way through the school, applied with one interpretation here, with another interpretation there, and with no attention to its very existence somewhere else.

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A central component of providing “direct and consistent donor cultivation” is the school’s ability to assist donors in making informed decisions about their giving, while protecting the school from awkward, inappropriate, or perhaps risky gift transactions. Consider the following two scenarios. A donor wants to make a gift to the school using securities that she has owned for many years. She requests the school hold the stock for a month before selling it. A patron of a nonsectarian school will make a seven-figure gift if the school agrees to add a religious component to its mission.

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As a candidate for a private-independent school headship, you must learn, in a short amount of time, a great deal about the school you are considering. If, like many candidates, you have more experience in programmatic areas (e.g., curricular and cocurricular programs, student issues, parent communication, faculty support) than in operations (e.g., facilities, finances, human resources, risk management), acquiring an understanding of a school’s financial condition could present a challenge. Look to the on-site interview(s) as the best time to gather the information you need about the budget and other monetary matters. Make sure you talk to the Chair of the Finance Committee and Business Manager/CFO separately. These people (with the current School Head) will provide the most useful detail in answering your questions.

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Many private-independent schools encourage students of all ages to become involved in community service—an ongoing, schoolwide program of service to others. These schools may also specify that students complete a prescribed number of hours as a graduation requirement. These service programs are designed to broaden students’ sense of social awareness by exposing them to the “real world” and to instill in these young people a lifelong commitment to caring for and about others. In addition, a school should offer service learning—those components of the school’s curriculum that support and complement the community service efforts.

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