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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
ISM Success Predictor No. 17: Budgeting for Professional Development
Volume 36 No. 3 // February 17, 2011
In an earlier issue of Ideas & Perspectives, we offered “ISM’s 20 Success Predictors for the 21st Century.” As that article explained, ISM expects successful 21st Century Schools to make radical changes in both structure and function to achieve and sustain stability and excellence. We emphasized that the 20 Success Predictors were designed as speculative forecasts of what ISM expects to be needed to achieve long-term stability and excellence in upcoming years. Readers were also reminded that the current (third) iteration of the ISM Stability Markers®—the primary lens through which ISM views private-independent schools—does not lose its general utility as an evidence-driven set of benchmarks for long-term stability and programmatic excellence. Thus, ISM maintains its focus on the Stability Markers, but offers a future-focused set of Success Predictors as accompanying guidelines. (Note: There is some overlap between the two lists. Several of the ISM Stability Markers are also Success Predictors for the 21st century.) This article focuses on ISM Success Predictor No. 17: 3% of the overall budget allocated to professional development.
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Your Strategic Financial Plan: Expenditure Control for the Long Run
Volume 36 No. 3 // February 17, 2011
ISM's recommended 13-line, six-year format for your strategic financial plan serves as a ready reminder to you, the School Head, that today’s expenditure excesses have long-term consequences. In the two tables shown below, only Line 5 (cash operating expenses) and Line 9 (the annual cash surplus/deficit or profit/loss) are shown, for ease of explanation.
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Addressing Bullying and Sexual Misconduct
Volume 36 No. 3 // February 17, 2011
As the competition between private and public schools intensifies each year, it is not always the luxuries or differentiators associated with attending a private school that become more critical. Rather, the basic but vital The ISM 37-School Parent Survey: Why Families Can Afford Your Schools Tuition is of immense concern to private school parents and students. While clearly one of the most difficult and unpleasant topics to attempt to get one's head around, there are no more important issues for you to address than potential misconduct and bullying toward your students. At issue here is not only concern for the student's physical and emotional safety, but the reality that students simply cannot learn effectively when they do not feel safe.
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Understanding Faculty Culture Differences Across School Divisions
Volume 36 No. 2 // January 28, 2011
While ISM has long written about faculty culture, and there has been the sense of a monolithic culture, the reality is that each division in our schools seems to have a particular character. Of course, if your school only has one division, then unity is a much simpler concept to understand.
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ISM’s 20 Success Predictors for the 21st Century
Volume 36 No. 2 // January 28, 2011
ISM has for 15 years published—at five-year intervals—its list of the prime correlates necessary to sustain mission-specific excellence. This periodically revised, evidence-based list, known as the ISM Stability Markers®, has been in widespread use as both a lens through which to self-evaluate and as a means by which to strengthen a school’s longest-term financial and organizational stability and excellence.
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Mid-Year Financial Reports and Your Strategic Financial Plan
Volume 36 No. 1 // December 30, 2010
ISM has long recommended six-year strategic plans that are enacted every four years. The financial expression of that plan, ISM has suggested, should be shown on a single sheet: 13 lines and six columns. ISM calls this single-sheet display the strategic financial plan (SFP).
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Advanced Placement: A Critical Study
Volume 36 No. 1 // December 30, 2010
Harvard Education Press has brought out a new book, AP: A Critical Examination of the Advanced Placement Program,1 which is an interesting collection of essays from a variety of viewpoints, and the findings demonstrate the controversies in this area. Although it is not ISM’s primary interest, social equity is a prominent element of the book. While ISM is sensitive to social issues, we are more directly concerned with the appropriateness of Advanced Placement for private-independent schools. We have consistently opposed its use. How does this new book advance the conversation?
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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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