So much is being published on the 21st century in education that it is time to reflect on the many claims that are being made, and provide some direction as to what makes sense and what does not. As a School Head, you must be able to discriminate amid the blizzard of information being offered you. So, here is ISM’s list of what we believe to be the major myths around the education changes that are influencing our schools.

There is a management conundrum that is usually hidden in the area of faculty accountability. The vast majority of what ISM has written relates to the support and evaluation of faculty with regard to their academic function, overlain with their numerous other responsibilities for advisory, lunch duty, and so on. However, many teachers—stretching across all divisions—also act as coaches within the school and thus also report in that capacity to the Athletic Director. As coaches, they are responsible to the Athletic Director for student athletic accomplishments, students’ actions, successes and failures, parent relations, and volunteer coordination. It is a management tenet that an employee cannot effectively report to two people, and this dysfunction is a complication in many teachers’ lives.

In a previous article, we identified challenges to the school community in a 21st century learning architecture. The importance of the school community and its concomitant virtue of fairness is more important than ever. In addition, our increasingly competitive environment is causing students and parents to question the value they are getting from their school. In this article, we consider the issues of fairness, competitiveness, and high performance from the viewpoint of assessment. While this is a limited snapshot, we hope that it will encourage much deeper conversation about assessment practice among your school’s faculty.

In our continuing research concerning the competition for quality teachers that private-independent schools are now experiencing, ISM recently surveyed a random sample of I&P subscriber schools. The 178 responding schools answered questions concerning the salaries, selected benefits, and hiring of faculty members. This article concerns the salaries of teachers at day schools only (164 schools).