Introit

Wallowing in the Rigors of Mediocrity

I'm concerned.

As the economic crisis continued its significant downtrend, it seemed as if new ideas and streams of thought regarding schools were picking up speed. Many schools were genuinely concerned about their methods of operation, to the point that many were pondering their ability to survive.

The "survival question" has not gone away, but I think it's becoming muted. If not muted, then it seems to be moving to the back burner. My fear is that, if the question stays on the back burner for too long, and if the economy does begin a sustainable recovery, it will eventually be removed from the back burner...and forgotten.

In other words, schools may go on with business as usual.

That's too bad.

Especially for schools that are used to wallowing in the rigors of mediocrity.

For these schools in particular, removing the financial survivability (sustainability) question will only perpetuate the mediocrity associated with their operations, as this area pours over into other areas of sustainability.

As Tom Peters says: Excellence! Always!

I don't see a place for: Mediocrity! Always! Do you?

Co-Innovation With 400 Consumers

Yet another way to begin thinking about what your new business model might look like...

Bringing Customers Into the Company

Collaboration...or competition? New business models for independent schools will have to think about the implications - including BENEFITS - of bringing families into the working model...

Click here for an interesting blog post and consider how independent schools might do something similar.

On Single-Sex Education

Here in the northeast corridor in particular, we have many single-sex independent schools. We have withstood the ebb and flow of research on coeducational environments versus single-sex environments; we have witnessed some schools leave behind the single-sex model and move into a fully coeducational model, usually for financial reasons; yet, we have remained (my school is all-boys).

We benefit from two strong networks: the National Coalition of Girls Schools and the International Boys Schools Coalition. Thanks to these two organizations, single-sex Catholic independent schools have at their disposal myriad articles, studies, and other reference points that assist us in making our case for relevancy. If you haven't made use of either organization (other than listing them on your "membership" section on your school's website), you really ought to. As marketing becomes increasingly important, we should be drawing on the strong research that is out there, for both boys and girls.

Speaking of research on the benefits of single-sex education, a peer-reviewed study just released by the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies demonstrates that graduates of girls' schools "consistently assess their abilities, self-confidence, engagement and ambition as either above average or in the top 10 percent. Compared to their coed peers, they have more confidence in their mathematics and computer abilities and study longer hours. They are more likely to pursue careers in engineering, engage in political discussions, keep current with political affairs, and see college as a stepping stone to graduate school." (Quoted from the NCGS website, where you can also download a full copy of the UCLA study. I recommend it highly.)

The website for the International Coalition of Boys' Schools also has multiple articles, lectures, and resources for boys' schools to utilize. In particular, I would highlight the area of "Great Programs in Boys' Schools", where you can find information on 'arts and creativity,' 'character and leadership', and 'service learning,' among others. There is also a section entitled "Action Research in Boys' Schools" where schools can learn about what other boys' schools are doing to address such areas as understanding masculinity, positive relationships, digital literacy, and reading.

As single-sex schools, we need to expand on our engagement in research projects. We need more collaboration with other single-sex schools; the digital age has made such collaboration easier than ever. We should be promoting our own research on our websites and in our print publications, not to mention our admission materials. We should be active in presenting at conferences and in writing articles for professional journals so that we can contribute to the corpus of literature and research on single-sex schools and their benefits.

As independent school leaders and educators discover more about brain-based learning (neurodevelopment), all schools will become more attuned to how to address these learning styles in the classrooms, on the athletic fields, etc. Coeducational schools will benefit from this research just as much as single-sex schools, and co-ed schools will probably begin to incorporate learning strategies and models that address the unique learning patterns of boys and girls. As such, education will be making a leap forward, and students will benefit.

Gut Feeling? Prediction?

Call it a gut feeling rather than a prediction, if you'd like.

If you've followed my posts so far, you know that I'm concerned about how our current business models as schools will allow us to remain competitive in the future (i.e. keep enrollments steady, grow endowments, complete regular facility maintenance and upkeep, provide a relevant curriculum, pay faculty and staff salaries that will keep us competitive in the marketplace, etc.).

As I research business models that might position us for continued future success, I can't help but consider the "what if" scenario. What if...the stimulus package wears off and we re-enter recession? When might such a thing happen?

If it happens, I'm going to guess that it'll be somewhere in 2012-14.

If we're thinking strategically about our schools, that gives us only a short window to begin to change our business models. Even if I'm wrong (I sure hope so), changing our business models remains something we ought to be doing in order to secure our future relevancy as independent schools.

My research is leading me to believe that it could take up to 10 years to morph into a new business model, so when are we going to begin? Do we really want to wait until another crisis to get our financial house (and model) into shape?

On Saying "No"

Seth Godin writes in his blog post this morning that "You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying 'no' often. [...] But just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work."

Change the world by saying 'no'...? Amen!

It is regular practice in our schools to defer saying 'no' by stalling for time, which usually comes in the form of an extended discussion (even worse if it's in committee), or by telling someone that s/he can continue with the status quo for the time being.

It's time to be counter-cultural. Take advantage of the current climate. Say 'no' - get the pain over with (i.e. the pain of projects/ideas/processes that don't work) and get on with advancing your school.

Some people won't like it when you say 'no' to them. Perhaps you'll be so lucky as to have them resign, which will probably improve your school almost immediately.

Saying 'yes' all the time - or stalling for time - doesn't help anyone, including your school.

The Most Important Project of 2009...and 2010...and 2011...

It's...recalibration.

The post by Steve Yastrow today on the Tom Peters blog was the sixth in an installment on recalibrating businesses to correspond to customers' habits and patterns, which have been recalibrated by the economic crisis.

The Federal Reserve Board has now revised its estimates for recovery...downward. So, for those who thought we were coming out of the woods at a decent pace...think again. And again. And again.

I've said it before - as have others - that we need strategic thinking now more than ever. It is highly likely that there will be more revisions to the forecast of economic recovery; perhaps some will be good and some will be bad. The point is that change is a constant; in other words, recalibration is now a recurrent theme. Our plans and models need to allow for recalibration at almost any time.

Are you thinking of doing a ten-year strategic plan? It might be a waste of the board's time...and your time...and the community's time. The same might be said of a five-year plan, as short a time frame as that may seem.

Perhaps we should look at plans more in terms of trends than anything else, and perhaps we should remove any dates or years from those plans. When you think about it, that's very difficult to do - create a long-term plan with no dates. Yet, my gut tells me that we must do this very thing. If nothing else, the mere exercise will force us to be creative as schools.

Schools without years as part of their plans?

A "trend plan" would have to be based on hard data (choose the data that are most relevant to your plan), but would have to allow for the surgical incisions of a leader who spends substantial time studying current trends - and who shares his/her thoughts on these trends with the board chair on a regular basis. A "trend plan" would allow for divergent models as certain goals of the plan are achieved, yet this very plan would disallow dates to be part of the equation. Perhaps the school needs to change direction mid-year as a response to another wrinkle of crisis; a "trend plan" would allow for an immediate recalibration, instead of waiting for the next school year to re-assess what did or didn't work properly. In other words, a trend plan might be constructed so as to allow for more frequent recalibration in a non-linear fashion.

Consider how many of us have adjusted our saving, spending, and consumption habits since October! That's only eight months! What strategic plan allows for changes in eight months (or fewer)? With a "trend plan", our long-term goal(s) can remain the same, but we need to allow the road map to change, to provide us with detours along the way.

My concern is that, while the past eight months have forced recalibration among consumers, not all schools have recalibrated themselves for the 2009-10 school year. [More than just scaling back budgets and cutting staff] True recalibration for schools will mean, at a bare minimum:

• creating entirely new programs for our students
• creating programs for full families
• dumping programs that don't work [no more multi-year phase-outs]
• moving from "using" technology to "living" with it
• expanding our utility past our own walls
• rethinking traditional assumptions about our business models

Recalibration will look different for each school; diversity of models will be the order of the day. As it should be! Otherwise, wouldn't it all be terribly boring?

This new model will necessitate buy-in from everyone: the board, the admin team, the faculty and staff, the parents, and the students. It is a community effort. In other words, recalibration will be an ever-present, time-consuming, internally- and externally-focused effort of the Head of School.

I wonder how the responsibilities of headship might need to be altered to accommodate such an endeavor?

Professional Development: Deflated Budgets Are a Good Thing!

The current economic crisis has served to exacerbate the weak points in our schools. Many would argue that the professional development budget line is one of those points, and that the budget line should be greater.

Really?

I would like to challenge the conventional wisdom that we need inflated professional development (hereafter PD) budgets to advance our faculties. Perhaps a deflation of that budget is precisely what is needed to jumpstart meaningful PD in our schools.

Where complacency has reigned for far too long, many faculty members find themselves suddenly deficient in teaching methods and even advances in their content areas. These deficiencies are now in the spotlight due to an increase in parents' expectations and information-gathering. (Welcome to the Information Age, in case you didn't get the memo that it arrived some time ago. Parents know what good instruction is/should be; if they don't, they can find out in the space of a single evening of online research).

Of course, the reality is that the faculty members in question have (probably) been deficient for some time, but the "age of abundance" allowed them to gloss over (ignore?) such deficiencies at the expense of pursuing personal interests rather than the interests of the school. In other words, there was a subtle shift in priority from the institutional to the individual, and I would argue that much of this shift occurred in schools with decent to substantial ("abundant") PD budgets.

I realize that my thesis may be taken as somewhat heretical in a culture where tremendous emphasis is put on the individual. I think that it comes down to an essential question: what is a school? The simplest answer, devoid of complex elaborations, is that a school is a community. A community comprises individuals, yes, but these individuals collaborate toward a common purpose.

An English teacher may wish to study architecture, or an art teacher may desire a degree in creative writing...but are those wishes congruent with the school's mission and current needs? Is it meaningful PD, from the school's perspective?

First things first: teach like no one else, and be immersed in pedagogical research like no else, and you'll be remembered like no one else.

There is nothing wrong with teachers pursuing other avenues of interest (either personal or tangentially professional), but the school should be funding first things first. Period.

"But the costs!" you might say. "Our faculty is very well-educated, but the feedback from parents is that they want more current instructional methods. How can we afford to engage our entire faculty in ever-improving instructional practices?"

In case you haven't noticed, there is a ton of PD available in web-based format. Web 2.0 has brought us so much, yet not enough schools are taking advantage of what is being offered - and it's growing daily. The need for costly travel, lodging, and high three- to four-figure registration fees has diminished greatly; now teachers can take webinars and distance-learning courses offered by ever more universities.

But I caution you to think big! Think...the world! Why not join a webinar or course in the UK, New Zealand, or Argentina? Just take a look around; I think you'll be surprised. I've taken two Italian courses from Italian universities (Perugia and Siena), and have had no issues whatsoever. What's more, since I understand my own learning style, I can determine in which courses I might find the greatest degree of success. I know if I want to take advantage of online tutors, etc. What is more, at the end of the day, if I really want to sit for an exam, I can travel to a regional test site and take a test offered by another country!

Conversely, create a PD ning at your school, and have the teachers run it, with the appropriate administrator as moderator. This method represents viral networking for PD, and is free! PD would be ongoing in your social network, and not confined entirely to PD days at your school.

In choosing an approach to PD based on simplicity rather than abundance (of funds), we can actually have more with less. We get back to the basics: a focus on mission, a focus on teaching, a focus on building community. And that re-discovered focus will launch us on a new trend upward!

Your Admin Team: Dysfunctional Family or Multigenerational Team?

If you were to describe your administrative team, would you call it a "dysfunctional family" or a "multigenerational team"?

My thanks to a recent article in Advancing Philanthropy for pushing me to think about this concept as it applies to independent schools.

We may have as many as four generations in our administrative team today. (My school has three generations). Each generation approaches the concept of work from a different perspective, meaning that each one also has different expectations for the jobs that are performed within the admin team.

When these differences are left as single strands rather than woven - by a leader - into one solid cord, the admin team suffers, as does the rest of the school program.

And, by the way, parents will notice.  But, not only will they notice, they'll stop buying our product.

We can no longer afford to have "dysfunctional families" leading our schools.

Gone are days of no admin team retreats (or a meager one retreat per year).

Gone are staid admin models that fulfill no purpose for the school. Parents notice, but we don't???!!!

The answer is a "multigenerational team" model. The eduleader (to use my neologism from last week) must possess a high degree of emotional intelligence in order to weave together these various strands. S/he will need plenty of time for one-on-one meetings with team members, plus meetings with the entire team assembled. S/he will need to embrace the diverse role each member plays, while articulating the cohesive vision for the whole team. In other words, in diversity is found unity.

Enter a minimum of quarterly retreat days for the admin team, with the eduleader as head coach, ready to run the tried-and-true plays, but also ready to design his/her own plays. And ready to listen! S/he needs to pursue what Tom Peters calls "excellence in strategic listening."

Enter significant administrative restructuring that corresponds to the rapidly-changing needs of our schools and our families.

Enter an increased presence of the Head of School in external relations, irrespective of whether s/he wants to.

Seth Godin's TED Tribes Talk

I highly recommend the following talk. It'll prompt  you to think about your school and what you're doing (or not doing). Settle in with a beverage - it's 17 minutes...but well worth your time.