ISM has published before on athletics and character development, including an athletics checklist for schools to employ. However, there seems to be a changed environment for athletics, certainly in the United States. Some schools seem to be getting to the point in secondary athletics (with its trickle-down impact in middle school) where they must make a decision regarding this question: To what extent are we going to allow our school to be driven off course (off mission) to meet the perceived competitive needs of our own and the next (college) level? Just as some schools are (appropriately) moving away from a mass curriculum/testing version of education encapsulated in Advanced Placement,1 so ISM believes that schools need to think carefully about their obeisance to college athletic pressures and focus on their own school cultures.

The 20th Century School has as its educational center the autonomous teacher who exists in an egalitarian culture and is rarely, often never, effectively evaluated for impact on student performance, enthusiasm, and satisfaction. At all levels of the school, teachers are organized into silos of teaching (by grade or by content area) with little effective time within the silo to truly collaborate and professionally assess and grow, and equally little effective time to communicate outside the silo in any meaningful way. Teachers spend most of their time teaching on their own and preparing on their own to teach. Administrative meeting time, regularly scheduled, is universally disliked as irrelevant even though led by School Heads who themselves largely come from the teaching ranks.

One of your most vital tasks as School Head is to supervise your school’s operations. All of your school’s constituencies expect a consistent level of excellence in all the programs and functions. However, while you are responsible for these operational tasks, you are not responsible for actually performing them. Joining you is your Management Team—the deputies to whom you have delegated supervision of various portions of the day-to-day programs and functions. However, always keep in mind that you must hold your deputies accountable for performing their tasks, and that ultimately it is your duty to evaluate them accordingly.

ISM has defined advancement as “the process by which a school supports admission, development, and marketing/communication programs.” To stress its direct relationship to faculty, we will now add another aspect to this definition—“to provide the resources for strong and sustained student performance, enthusiasm, and satisfaction.”

As the Summer Program Director, you want to attract as many participants as you can. Because the program (with the exception of those that offer credit classes) does not have admission requirements, is oriented toward enrichment rather than academics, and is open to almost any student interested in a rewarding summer adventure, you can accommodate as many students as space allows.

What would you, as the Head of School, do if your Business Manager were unable to perform her job responsibilities – especially those that are critical (e.g., preparing your school’s IRS Form 990), confidential (e.g., processing the payroll), or mandatory (e.g., completing a required state report)? Who would assume the day-to-day operation of the Development Office if the Development Director fell gravely ill? If the Upper School Head suddenly resigns, who will submit names of students for membership in the National Honor Society or Cum Laude – and when is the deadline?

The following article comprises a supplementary recommendation regarding next-level placement and success. One of the least used – yet potentially most effective – approaches to determining your school’s overall success is tracking your students’ next-level placement and accomplishments. From this, your school can develop a database from which to strengthen its marketing impact. The two-step process involves: – deriving a graduate-outcome descriptors list from your mission statement, and – creating and using a short survey of your young alumni based upon that descriptors list.