What is it that REALLY keeps independent school leaders up at night? For much of 2017 and early 2018 I was collecting feedback on a series of simple, provocative, open-ended prompts from independent school heads, senior administrators, and trustees. I have just published some results in Independent School Magazine. Check it out; I think you [...]
There is no American Dream without the possibility of upward economic mobility. Education is, at its core, about preparing young people to succeed in a life to which they aspire, which is almost always at least as fruitful, if not more so, than that of their parents. Today, that dream is more remote for more [...]
Following the lead of my new friend, Seth Godin, short blogs are better. This picture really is worth 1,000 words. Schools that are increasingly faced with the challenge that their students can and might select another school to attend, must develop, communicate, and deliver a winning value proposition or face loss of enrollment, and the [...]
As we get ready to launch a new learning year, let’s laser-focus on a very simple reality: Schools, like every other organization that lives in a competitive marketplace, have just two “keys to sustainable success” according to strategy guru Michael Porter: good strategy and highly effective operational systems. Operational effectiveness means that your school is [...]
I absolutely could not give the rationale nor tell the story of school transformation better than Tim Quinn and Liz Schmitt of Miss Porter's School on this podcast with Peter Baron and Hans Mundahl of Enrollment Management Association. I was honored to be able to help guide MPS over the last year as they began to [...]
When we see people and places in need, do we stop, ask questions, and help? Or do we walk on by, assuming someone else will take care of the problem, hope it will go away, or silently give thanks that we are better off? What problems do you have at your school that can even [...]
Happy start of summer! In the past 10 days, I have worked with superintendents from north-central New York, stretched in a 3,000-strong yoga jam with Michael Franti at Redrocks, hauled myself up and down the Colorado front range, intersected with 130 forward leaning educators to kick off the annual Traverse gathering in Boulder, and prototyped [...]
This is the commencement address I gave on May 27 at Delphian School in Oregon. Delphian is a very unusual school, with a program that fully embraces performance-based learning. Students work at their own pace; teachers are mentors and tutors, and do not hold traditional classes. They have been getting a flood of visitors recently [...]
I have an upcoming meeting with members of a school board to help them understand how strategic planning is evolving. There is so much to talk about, but I wanted to lay a foundation, so I challenged myself to put together about a ten slide, ten minute summary of what I think schools are doing [...]
Education is a mirror of societal interactions. For millennia, knowledge and information have been vastly more "push" than "pull". The big ideas of a few rulers, politicians, philosophers, celebrities, scientists, artists, authors, and the like have molded the evolution of human thought and action. In logarithmic terms, the 10 have led the 100,000, or perhaps [...]
