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Welcome to Our Blog!

As part of a redesign of our website, we've decided to create this vehicle for sharing the information and insights we gain as we visit independent schools and interact each year with hundreds of school leaders -- administrators, faculty, and Board members.

While we've been writing and distributing longer articles for years, we see this blog as a way to share interesting tidbits in short form. All of us at Wickenden Associates will be contributing to the blog periodically, and we hope our readers will weigh in with comments of their own.

Odds and Ends

It’s been a busy time here, with most of our Head of School searches now in the semifinalist or finalist stages. We anticipate announcements regarding some of these searches shortly, so stay tuned!

Other news of interest:

• I’m delighted to welcome as our newest Senior Associate experienced independent and charter school leader Peter Thorp. Based on the West Coast, Peter is available to work with schools on searches and in a variety of consulting roles.  Read more about him and our entire consulting team here.

• The Lakeview Academy (Gainesville, GA) Head of School search application deadline is October 26.  Details here.

• In partnership with Montclair Kimberley Academy (NJ) Head Tom Nammack, Board Chair Alice Hirsh, and Trustee Eric Pai, I will be presenting a one-hour workshop on Friday, February 26, at the National Association of Independent Schools 2010 Annual Conference. Our topic is The Governance Dashboard: A Powerful Tool to Monitor Educational Outcomes. We will be talking about the process the MKA Board of Trustees is using to develop data dashboards that highlight outcomes and trends in academics, athletics, enrollment, and college placement. At a time when so many schools are struggling with tight budgets and difficult decisions, we are seeing increased interest by trustees and Heads in tools to measure the impact and value of educational programs. In San Francisco, we’ll explain how MKA trustees collaborated with administrators to identify relevant metrics and how these dashboards are improving Board discussion and decision-making on vital issues of mission and program. Hope to see you there.

All of these items and more are covered in this month’s newsletter from Wickenden Associates.  Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here!

More News from the Head Search Front

We’re delighted to announce that we have just been retained to assist Lakeview Academy, a PK-12 day school of 523 students in Gainesville, GA, with its Head of School search for July 2010. My colleague Sue Walters and I will be visiting the school next week to collect information for our Opportunity Statement. Prospective candidates should visit our Searches in Progress page to request a copy of that statement.

Application deadlines for two of our ongoing Head of School searches are right around the corner:

• The Montgomery Academy deadline is Tuesday, September 8. The Academy is an excellent college preparatory day school of 840 students in grades K-12. For more information about the school and the application process, download the Opportunity Statement and/or give us a call at 609 683 1355.

 

• Thursday, September 10, is the application deadline for the Head of School search at Fairfield Country Day School, which provides a terrific education to 280 boys in grades K-9. Learn more  here or contact my colleague Linda Knights to discuss this great opportunity.

The 2010 Headship Sweepstakes Begins

Summer is drawing to a close, and the Head of School search season is heating up. Our first application deadlines for July 2010 headship positions are right around the corner:

• Tuesday, August 11, is the application deadline for the Head of School position at St. John’s School in Houston, which ranks among the nation’s preeminent independent day schools, providing 1,200 gifted students in grades K-12 a first-rate, well-rounded liberal arts education.
  
• Wednesday, August 19, is the application deadline for the Head of School position at Keystone School in San Antonio, a terrific school dedicated to providing more than 430 academically talented and motivated students in grades K-12 with an accelerated and enriching college preparatory program.

Several more application deadlines will follow in September, so prospective candidates should be sure to check our Searches in Progress page frequently.

Independent School Strategic Planning: The Times They Are A-Changin’

Among the many victims of our current economic malaise may well be the standard strategic planning process in independent schools. I can’t say that I will be sorry to see it go.

Having facilitated the strategic planning process for several schools and reviewed the plans of many others, I know how often these plans have included ambitious building projects (typically with significant unfunded ongoing maintenance expense) and a proudly stated goal of outpacing peer or competitor schools in faculty salaries. Many of these consensus-driven plans were little more than capital campaign case statements in disguise, and the foundering economy has now exposed how little strategic thinking actually underpins them.

This process worked, after a fashion, during economically robust times. But the chickens are now coming home to roost at many independent schools whose bold and visionary strategic plans have left them with crushing construction debt, exorbitant maintenance costs, and a faculty salary scale they are struggling to sustain.

I don’t mean to suggest that independent school leaders (and consultants) have been oblivious to the shortcomings of the typical school strategic planning process. The literature of criticism is long and on target. Robert Evans’ The Case Against Strategic Planning, published in the Fall 2007 Independent School magazine, has been widely referenced, and Cushing Academy Headmaster James Tracy’s contribution in the current issue of that magazine, Finding Your Inner Hedgehog: The Case for Truly Strategic Planning in Tough Financial Times, adds important insights to the discussion about how strategic planning needs to be reinvented in light of current conditions.

Here at Wickenden Associates, we’re doing a great deal of thinking and some writing about this complex subject. We’ll be sharing our own thoughts soon in a piece to be added to our Leadership Library. In the meantime, here are a few modest suggestions for schools thinking about embarking upon a new planning process or perhaps reopening discussion of an existing plan that is no longer workable:

1. Don’t limit your thinking to possible additions to school facilities or programs. Also consider:
   • subtraction (abandoning marginal or mission-irrelevant programs);
   • multiplication (how the school might reap benefits from synergistic partnerships and cost-sharing ventures with other independent schools or organizations); and
   • division (thinking more broadly about the varying needs of faculty and staff members at different career stages and tailoring benefit programs to meet their needs as well as the needs of the school. Do early retirement incentives or flexible working arrangements make more sense in this economic environment than a one-size-fits-all approach to work conditions and benefits?) 
2. Focus on ways to strengthen governance, an often neglected element that is vital to healthy schools, including:
   • codifying the fundamental policies of the school, e.g. those pertaining to admissions, financial aid, endowment management, spending controls, etc., to ensure that a coherent governance philosophy always underpins administrative decision-making;
   • improving the Board’s own orientation program for new trustees, its process for self-evaluation and Head evaluation, and its professional development efforts. After all, trustees who do not understand their roles cannot be expected to excel at performing them.
   • Developing a sophisticated governance information system, including data dashboards and other regular reporting structures to ensure that trustees have objective data upon which to evaluate the school’s current performance and make decisions about future initiatives.
3. Review and consider restructuring the school administration to ensure that the Head has the time to focus on critically important tasks and the resources to delegate less vital tasks to others. This process might dovetail nicely with a reorganization of job responsibilities and the creation of flexible working arrangements mentioned earlier.

 What’s going on with your school’s strategic plan?

Please weigh in with our quick poll (it’s anonymous):

No Need To Fear the Appointment of an Interim Head

Trustees are sometimes unaware that a typical Head of School search process now extends over six to nine months, a timeframe that allows for an inclusive process and broad outreach to prospective candidates. These days, Heads who initiate their own departures routinely give a year’s notice or more to permit an orderly and successful search for a successor. We are conducting searches now for appointments that will take effect in July 2010, with application deadlines set for late summer or early fall.

Each year, though, there are several independent schools that find themselves in a situation where there is not enough time to conduct a thorough search prior to the Head’s departure. Some will address that problem by appointing an acting Head from within, but most will seek an interim Head to fill the position for the next school year.

While trustees often are initially distressed at the prospect of welcoming two new leaders in two years, it’s been our experience that a one-year interim headship can have extraordinarily positive effects on the school and pave the way for a long and successful tenure by the permanent Head.

Because most of the interim Heads we place are recently retired Heads with extensive experience, the schools who appoint them are essentially getting a “two-fer”:

1. A seasoned leader to manage day-to-day operations.
2. An in-house consultant who will have a full year to evaluate all aspects of the school.

An experienced interim Head can calm the institutional waters if there has been an abrupt or divisive change of leadership and will bring fresh eyes to challenges that might have seemed intractable. An interim Head can be particularly valuable if the departing Head has served the school for many years and is beloved by the school family - providing a transitional period that will make it more likely that the permanent Head will not be compared unfavorably to the departing one.

Here are some ways in which the Board of Trustees can take full advantage of an interim headship:

• Encourage this experienced leader to identify and defuse potential landmines that would otherwise await the permanent Head. Immune to many of the political consequences that a long-term leader must consider, the interim Head can make difficult programmatic, budgetary, and/or personnel decisions.
• Ask the interim Head to prepare a written report at the conclusion of his or her term to provide the Board and incoming Head with an analysis of the school’s condition in key areas and a set of recommendations for actions that would improve the school.
• Invite the interim Head to suggest ways in which the Board could improve its own approach to governance and most effectively support the next Head during the transition period and beyond.

Wickenden Associates maintains a database of nearly 250 retired Heads and others interested in interim assignments. When schools retain us to conduct a Head of School search, we will conduct the search for an interim Head, if one is required, at no additional charge.

Match, Hatch, and Dispatch

I’m not proud to admit that when The New York Times arrives each weekend, the section I flip to first is “Sunday Styles.” It’s not so much that the articles speak to me or my somewhat sheltered existence, but that they seem to allow me a glimpse into what those “people in the know” are contemplating, aspiring to, or actually living. The article that caught my eye this week was “People Magazine Still has a Bikini Body,” which addressed the all-important question of what to put on the cover each week in order to sell the most magazines.

“The cover brings people into the big tent,” notes People Editor Larry Hackett. The three most effective cover topics? “Match, hatch, and dispatch.”

For People, that translates to which high-profile celebrity couples have fallen in love, which babies are on the way or just born, and who in the public eye has died (ideally in an interesting manner). An eye-catching and interest-grabbing cover enhances circulation and revenue, and its success can be immediately evaluated on a weekly basis.

What could this possibly have to do with independent schools? The idea of match, hatch, and dispatch kept popping into my head throughout the day. I couldn’t help but think that it is a catchy way to approach that elusive concept of mission. Obviously, those same words would mean something different to a school’s constituency than to avid People fans, but aren’t match, hatch, and dispatch what education is all about? And don’t they provide a good framework for defining a school’s mission?

1. Match: Whom do we best serve or should we seek to serve?
2. Hatch: What do we need to provide in terms of culture and program to most effectively bring out the best in our students?
3. Dispatch: What skills and outlook do we want our students to possess when they graduate and take on the world? (With a very long life ahead of them, we hope.)

Defining a school’s mission can be arduous — and so is staying attuned to that mission when faced with external vagaries such as the current economy, the latest educational fad, and whatever else can be tossed into the mix to test the resolve of the school’s leadership.

Match, hatch, and dispatch could keep you on track!

Interesting Findings on Teaching and Learning

I’ve just finished Richard E. Nisbett’s most recent book, Intelligence and How To Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. While the larger purpose of the book is to explore the controversy surrounding the relationship between genes and intelligence, I was most interested in his chapter on “Improving the Schools.”  Through a careful analysis of credible educational research, he provides fascinating insights that may challenge some of our cherished beliefs about teachers and instructional methods.

Not surprisingly, Nisbett’s survey of the research leads him to conclude that “teacher quality matters a lot” in determining student outcomes. But some of his specific findings raise intriguing questions about the determinants of teacher quality:

• Teacher certification and credentialization - including master’s degrees - are unrelated to student outcomes.
• Teacher experience does count. First-year teachers are not as good as they will be, and the process of learning to teach well continues for a few years.
• Most faculty evaluation systems are not particularly good at rewarding the best teachers or weeding out the worst ones. There is some evidence that providing incentives to the most successful teachers results in improved educational outcomes.

With regard to instructional models:

• The evidence on the benefits of small classes is mixed, and smaller classes are of most benefit to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Extremely promising evidence shows that interactive computerized instruction can be very effective, especially for mathematics and science training.
• Some types of cooperative learning, in which students work together toward common educational goals, have proven to result in huge gains in student performance.
• Effective tutors employ a number of very specific strategies that can be taught to aspiring teachers.

Nesbitt’s conclusions suggest some provocative questions that trustees might raise, particularly at a time when the ultra-expensive educational delivery model  practiced by most independent schools is seeming ever more unsustainable. For example:

• If the evidence for the benefits of very small classes is mixed and the evidence for the benefits of computerized instruction is strong, are we investing too much in the former and too little in the latter?
• Are all of our teachers familiar with the research about best practices in cooperative learning and one-on-one tutoring?  Are they expected to incorporate this knowledge into their teaching?
• Do our faculty evaluation, professional development, and compensation policies make sense in light of the evidence about the relationship between student outcomes and teacher training and incentive structures?
• How do we ensure that first-year teachers - particularly in critical positions such as first grade - are appropriately mentored? How do we make sure that our students are not shortchanged if they are assigned to a rookie teacher?

While I would never argue that the Board of Trustees should substitute its educational judgment for those of the educational professionals it employs, I do think that trustees should not be reluctant to request information about the empirical evidence underlying  proposed approaches to teaching and learning.

Setting an Example

In this time of tight budgets, independent schools are responding with significant financial adjustments.  Many are postponing the launch of major building projects or putting capital campaigns on hold. Some Heads are announcing their intention not to fill vacancies, and many schools have instituted salary freezes or granted only very modest raises to staff.

Most independent schools so far seem to be making a concerted effort not to cut programs or financial aid. In fact, many of the schools with whom we’ve consulted are increasing financial aid this year - a strategy we applaud for both practical and symbolic reasons.

And speaking of symbolism, I think this is a great time for independent school leaders to consider making a personal sacrifice as well. If, for example, the Head of School were to publicly reduce his or her own salary by an amount sufficient to fund one child’s attendance or to save a position or program that would otherwise be on the chopping block, that would send a powerful message indeed.  Furthermore, it would give the school’s leadership more credibility when communicating with the school family about the “hard decisions” that have to be made.

May Day Mayday?

Anecdotal reports are all over the lot as independent schools wait to see how this year’s admissions cycle will shake out. Many are full. Some have been pleasantly surprised that demand is holding steady despite the wobbly economy.  A few are benefiting from concerns about local public school budget cuts. Everyone is seeing increased demand for financial aid, and many admissions officers — particularly at smaller, modestly endowed schools — will be holding their breath until summer.

Here’s an interesting piece from Smart Money about the ways in which schools and parents are responding to the challenging economic environment. . .

Communicating About Swine Flu

Did you see the White House press briefing Sunday on the rapidly evolving swine flu situation?  As a former newspaper reporter and editor, I was impressed by the masterful performance of the public health and homeland security officials.  They were clear, proactive, reassuring without being unrealistic, and open about what they did not yet know. They offered detailed information about the steps various federal agencies were taking, and they provided concrete suggestions for individuals and organizations that might be affected.

The fact that the U.S. epicenter of the outbreak is a New York City private school drove home the relevance for independent schools. As  I listened to the briefing, I could imagine the scene that would be played out Monday morning in many independent school Head’s offices: digging up the crisis management plan, reviewing applicable health policies, and convening administrators to discuss communication strategies.  Perhaps also fielding a call or two from parents in the “worried well” category. . .  

Independent schools generally are doing so much better at managing situations like this than they used to.  Not so long ago, when we would visit a client school for a search or strategic plan consultation, we would inevitably hear complaints about inadequate communication from school leaders about important issues. We don’t hear that as much these days.

There has been a major change in the mindset of independent schools over the past decade. Savvy leaders now understand the benefits of communicating early and often with the school family when issues arise.  That was apparent earlier this year when we saw multiple examples of school Heads communicating quickly and thoughtfully with parents and faculty as the economic crisis unfolded. Most schools now have a communications professional on staff - a rarity just a decade ago. Of course, technology has made crisis communications much easier to manage.  School leaders are blogging, twittering, emailing, and updating intranet postings with skill and alacrity.  

The White House briefing on Sunday offered great lessons for independent schools thinking about communicating with their own constituencies about swine flu:

• Get ahead of the story. Be proactive. Don’t wait for parents to contact you.
• Reassure the community by explaining the policies and plans already in place to deal with such a situation. Outline how you intend to monitor the situation and how you will communicate any updates pertinent to your school.
• Offer specific suggestions about steps families can take (reminders about handwashing, keeping sick children home, etc.) If you intend to use this as a teaching opportunity with students, let parents know that, too.

With proper communication strategies, even a topic as unpleasant as this can ultimately help to strengthen the relationship between a school and its families. Nothing beats a well-executed, proactive demonstration of competence to earn the trust of the parents who are entrusting their children to you.

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