Sector Change is Coming: Are We Ready?
The chess pieces are now fully deployed on the board. Change is coming to the K-12 independent school sector in the US. It has already begun, one might proffer. It would be misleading to provide a range of years (e.g., three to five) during which this change will happen. Instead, we might consider the notion of an era, in the vein of ‘what is the nature of our era?’
On Emergence
When it comes to the business of transformation, educational institutions largely continue to adhere to the method of analyse, conceptualise, and execute. In other words, analyse ‘how we do school,’ conceptualise some new outcome for one or two parts of that model, then execute by imposing that new concept on the organisation. Everything lives within the locus of control of the organisation itself, which is why the method endures — it provides familiar comfort.
How to Interrogate Your School's Data
We think it's misleading to insist that, when schools are rich in data, quality decision-making will follow. However, an abundance of data is no crystal ball. To make quality decisions, there are principles to be followed, starting by the first question: what is the decision to be made, and why must it be made? The second question deals with the nature of the decision (e.g., is it the only decision of its kind, ever? Highly unlikely.). How one responds to those questions determines the subsequent actions. Among the subsequent actions is likely analysing the data that the school has to-hand.
AI Fails to Understand Strategy
It has been my position for years that strategic plans are rarely strategic. In fact, following a review of over 100 strategic plans that I did in 2010, I came to the conclusion that strategic plans were dangerously formulaic. Some thirteen years later, having reviewed hundreds more, I hold to my earlier assertion. Key learning: if something is formulaic, it can be replicated easily by means of an algorithm.
Lack of Moral Courage Reaches Crisis Proportions
It is disheartening to see so many US independent schools, of varying sizes and histories, grappling with existential crises as we enter 2023. These crises were not necessarily born during the Covid era; although some were, in many cases, their roots can be found 20 years ago, in the lead-up to the Great Recession. The signs were there: a need to 'blend and extend' loans past their original amortization schedules (e.g., blending in other debt and extending a 10-year schedule to 30 years); write-offs of pledge payments that were never honored; reductions in enrollment; increased discounting of seats; fewer donors with the capacity to make large gifts (which masked underlying business model problems). The list goes on.