In a recent article on faculty as leaders, ISM identified four actions that faculty leaders take—they assume control of their own growth and renewal, take control of their own curricula and assessment, use time to define and improve their work, and strive to be paid according to the merit of the work they do. This article takes another step further by examining the qualities of leadership and the qualities of teaching to see how the former might be enhanced.

To establish institutional commitment to—and authenticity about—diversity, be sure to clarify and formalize the school's "case" by crafting a Statement on Diversity. This statement complements your school mission statement, especially by providing language to describe the kind of human community that distinguishes your school and supports its educational purposes.

The seemingly dramatic increase in private school tuition between 1990 and 2010 is largely accounted for by the increase in faculty compensation over the same period. It seems that the competitive market for excellent faculty is dictated largely by public schools—not surprising, considering they employ the largest number of teachers.

We want more diversity. This phrase is often uttered during the brainstorming stages of a private-independent school’s strategic planning sessions, followed by nods of assent from other Trustees. Much informal agreement may be expressed on this general proposition; however, planning problems can ensue if key steps are not taken. Several years in the future, planners or constituents might say, “You know, we wanted more diversity but we haven’t done much about it.” A Board of Trustees or other group that wants to include “more diversity” as a planning item should consider the following three questions.

Coaching is a career-long conversation between teachers and their individual coaches about the high-order professional/technical understandings and behaviors that collectively become difference-makers in the lives of students. In a previous article on distributed leadership, ISM identified coaching as a key skill for school leaders. Coaching is intrinsic to faculty evaluation as we have described it in ISM’s Comprehensive Faculty Development Model™. Coaching is also clearly implied for School Heads in the School Leadership Points of Emphasis. In this article, we outline the ISM Relational Coaching Model. While coaching is a form of communication, it is a specialized subset that requires training and practice.

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.