According to an article in the May 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, “the makeup of the global workforce is undergoing a seismic shift: In four years Millennials—the people born between 1977 and 1997—will account for nearly half the employees in the world. In some companies, they already constitute a majority.”1 To better understand the shift, the Society for Human Resource Management recently conducted a survey of younger workers. The participants were asked to respond to the following: “I’m most concerned about my older managers’_____.” Their responses were:

In previous I&P articles, ISM has noted that regular team “walkarounds” by the School Head and academic administrators are a prime administrative task for improving the capacity of adults in your school. This leadership style requires the School Head to be physically and visibly present to every student and employee, and to develop teacher leaders. The primary task of all academic administrators is facilitating the development of faculty who are the interface of the mission with the students. This has been one of ISM’s most consistent and insistent teachings for academic administrators—that they view their faculty as their own “works of art” and move persistently to improve both the individual faculty member as well as the faculty culture as a whole.

As School Head, you want to assure that there is solid alignment between the way you and your marketing team portray your school and the actual outcomes your graduates experience. For example, if you tell others that you offer one of the leading college preparatory programs in your area, you want to be able to back that up with data about your graduates’ college experiences that substantiate your claims. You also want to be able to celebrate the successes of your graduates in ways that reinforce your mission, help keep your alumni engaged, and align your alumni’s values with your mission and vision so as to enable more robust financial support of your school.

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.

When a school experiences a change of leadership, the Board must ensure that the new Head’s transition into the school goes smoothly. Responsibility for directing the essential work of assimilating, assisting, and supporting the new Head usually falls to the Search Committee, the group of four or five Board members who guided the Head-search process.

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.

Each fall, ISM publishes a set of conversion factors to facilitate the recasting of previous tuitions into current dollars. (See the table below.) We continue to use the Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).1 However, we realize that the CPI-U does not completely reflect expenditures in private-independent schools; it can only serve as a base figure. There are compelling arguments for adjusting your tuition at a rate 2% above the overall inflation rate. The CPI has a built-in “productivity factor.” It assumes that the work force is increasingly productive as computers, streamlined mechanical devices, and other laborsaving developments provide greater output with fewer personnel. The more efficient a business becomes, the more the business can stabilize or reduce the effects of inflation.

The School Head is the sole employee of the Board. It is essential that the Board be fully conversant about trends in Head compensation. Only then can the Board determine what adjustments, if any, are needed to ensure that the school retains the Head, or to enhance its ability to be competitive in its next Head search. Make management of the Head’s compensation a high priority, in terms of Trustees educating themselves about the marketplace and understanding the complexities of the School Head’s job. ISM recently surveyed a random sample of I&P subscriber schools concerning compensation for faculty and administrators. This article focuses on the survey results regarding the salaries of School Heads at our participating schools.