ISM’s Advancement Model illustrates the key relationships existing among your school’s advancement efforts—admission and enrollment management, development, and marketing communications.1 With a common focus on your students and mission, your advancement efforts must share a strong message inviting families to enroll and re-enroll, and inspires them to make philanthropic gifts. The model provides a framework for planning, implementing, and evaluating your advancement program.
Why Traditional Teacher Evaluation Doesn’t Work—And What You Can Do About It
Traditional evaluation doesn’t give you the full picture of which teachers are effectively supporting your students and which aren’t, or provide enough context to create professional development plans for growth.
Four Steps Your School Must Take Before Launching a Fundraising Campaign
Launching a new fundraising campaign is both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. Whether you are planning a capital campaign for a specific purpose or an annual fund campaign to support enhancements for the current year, there are certain elements your school must have in place to be successful.
Have You Considered Merit Pay for Your Faculty?
How your school compensates its teachers can be one of the trickiest issues to face as a Head. You want every teacher to feel that he or she is paid fairly for work performed, while abiding by your strategic financial plan and protecting the school’s long-term viability. Some members of the private school community have questioned whether merit pay makes sense as a faculty compensation structure for their school.
Admission and Ethics: A Head’s Perspective
It's a careful balance between managing parental expectations and donor relationships—all while focusing on providing the best mission-appropriate education for your students. We sat down with a School Head who navigates these channels each day to hear his perspectives on today’s pressure to succeed.
Your Mission, Students, and Faculty: Purpose and Outcome Statements Revisited
Most Boards and School Heads understand the power of a well-crafted, emotionally evocative mission statement as the foundation of a compelling case for enrollment and giving. Most also know the mission statement should distinguish the school in a marketplace replete with schools of all types. However, many mission statements fail to capture a school’s essence or provide any clear distinction from other schools. Your mission statement may not be definitive enough to provide guidance to the Board, administration, or faculty in their pursuit of programmatic excellence. It may be an assertion that better describes the school 20 or even 50 years ago. It may not answer the essential question, “Why does our school exist?”
How to Flourish as a New School Head
A new School Head brings excitement to a school’s campus. When you have the opportunity to take on a new Headship, you are presented with the chance to build rapport with your community, infuse new energy into the school’s initiatives, and offer fresh ideas and strategies for accomplishing the school’s goals. But there are a few things you should keep in mind to help manage a successful transition.
Four Ways to Help Your Leadership Team Succeed
The success of your school rests on strong leadership. Each member of the Leadership Team should feel resolute in their ability to support the teachers and staff members that report to them, resolve issues, and carry out the mission with excellence.
The Head Support and Evaluation Committee: Five Steps to Get Started
You, as School Head, have a vested interest in a Head Support and Evaluation Committee (HSEC) functioning at a consistently high level, year after year. ISM's two major premises underlying this strategically crucial committee are these.
The Biggest Tuition-Setting Mistake Schools Make
When it comes to setting your tuition, many schools make assumptions about what their families are willing to pay.Some schools think they must keep their prices low to match their local competitors. Others feel parents will simply refuse to pay tuition over a certain amount.
Our research has found that these assumptions are not the case.