“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 as the antidote. More than 30 years later—and as evidenced by the frequency with which “rigor” or “rigorous” appears on public and private school websites and strategic initiatives—“rigor” is still perceived to be a prime mechanism by which schools might improve student achievement.
Is Your School Secure? Online Filters and Firewalls, Part One
California is about to make history by passing the strictest rules governing students’ online data in the country. Once the governor signs the legislation, Senate Bill 1177 will ban targeted Web advertisements based on educational data and unnecessary “student” profiles in the Golden State. The bill makes student information such as personal demographics, sports participation, grades, and health files off-limits for advertisers' use.
Schools across the country—both public and private—struggle to stem the leak of student information to data-mining companies, as well as stop students from exposing themselves to inappropriate sites. One solution has been firewalls and filters that block sites deemed dangerous to either the network or the student-user. There are several types of website filters available for school use, and as the first of a two-part series on Internet security, we’ll talk about the common firewalls and filters used by schools and how they work.
Students Skipping Grades: A Judgment Call
With generally more involved parents and dedicated teachers, students in private schools often deftly complete work that would challenge their public school peers a year or two their senior, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But what do you do when you have a student who’s exceptional even in this elite environment, and his or her parents request that you bump their child to the next grade level?
Highlight Your Teachers’ Out-of-School Achievements
A private-independent school is often described as a “community of learners,” and a main tenet of a school’s mission is to instill a love of “lifelong learning.” An excellent display of this conviction is that your teachers spend time improving themselves (professionally and otherwise) outside the classroom. How are you highlighting your teachers’ achievements, both inside and outside the walls of your school?
Hiring, Preparing, and Training Staff for Your Summer Program
Your school’s summer program is now over and you are evaluating the program’s successes and failures as you begin planning for next summer’s sessions. As Summer Program Director, you know the key to a successful summer program, as in any other school curriculum, is its staff. But hiring for the summer program requires a different outlook than hiring for the regular school year. These differences might seem obvious.
Creating a relationship with students and teaching for a week is different from having a year to achieve results.
If you’re teaching an academic summer program, teaching for 3–4 hours a day for four weeks is different from teaching for 50 minutes a day all year long.
The key objective of having fun is not as front and center during the school year as in the summer.
Faculty Compensation, 2013–14: Day School Salaries
In our continuing research on the competition for talented, mission-appropriate teachers for private-independent schools, ISM annually surveys a random sample of I&P subscriber schools about teacher and administrator compensation.1 This year, 262 schools responded to the survey. The following article focuses on the survey results regarding the salaries of day school teachers.
A competitive faculty salary structure is critical in a school’s ability to sustain programmatic excellence over time. Competitive salaries enable you to retain members of your faculty and hire new teachers. Consider the following results of our survey—and where your school falls in the scope of compensation variables.
A Call for Deliberate Heterogeneity
The expression “deliberate heterogeneity” reflects ISM’s commitment to private-independent schools truly delivering each school’s unique mission to its unique students (i.e., deliberately, and not being uniform). The term is defined as a school’s desire to articulate and exemplify its mission distinctives in the marketplace, and thus its confidence in being able to appeal to that marketplace through the power of its own voice. The expression reflects our concern that our schools are being unduly influenced by an educational movement toward homogeneity that strikes at the core of an independent school’s character and competitive position. We introduce the phrase “deliberate heterogeneity” to galvanize schools, one at a time, to take on their mission responsibility and deliver it in creative and innovative ways. Heterogeneity includes your school’s values, unique history, culture, and circumstances influencing your mission-in-action.
Stories to Inspire: Three Creative Teacher Induction Strategies
Last month, we talked to School Heads about the importance of adopting a year-long induction process for new teachers. Let’s allow that momentum to carry us onward and take a look at what other private-independent schools have done to inspire next year’s meetings and induction programs.
Summer Reading for Division Heads: Recommended Books and Webinars
There’s a heat in the air, a humidity that refuses to lift, and an itch in your feet to walk on green grass rather than plush carpet. That’s right, summer’s here! While the classrooms are empty, there’s no need for learning to stop. So spend some time this summer catching up on your recommended reading and that professional development webinar you’ve been meaning to watch.
The Academic Administrator Stance
The overriding responsibility of those who supervise faculty is to increase their capacity and hold them accountable—this is not negotiable. In ISM’s Comprehensive Faculty Development (CFD),1 it is clear the evaluation process and the growth and renewal process are the two key aspects of this singular task (i.e., the way in which to do it), with the Characteristics of Professional Excellence acting as the glue to tie it all together. As Division Heads (and other academic administrators) approach their task, it is important for them to have a stance or attitude with which they come to faculty evaluation/growth and renewal.