Bassett Blog

Bassett Blog 2010/08: Leading from the Middle
August 1, 2010
When you look at the independent school industry’s demographics, you know that we will soon have an avalanche of retiring Baby Boomer school heads who will be replaced by their Generation X successors. In a keynote to the 2010 NAIS Summer Diversity Institute’s (SDI’s) participants to kick off their week’s work, I shared the following ruminations about what it’s like to “lead from the middle,” and how much is expected of our middle managers in schools, whether they be diversity directors/coordinators, division heads, admissions directors, development directors, financial aid officers, deans, department chairs, or chief financial officers.

Bassett Blog 2010/06: Disruptive Realities (Part II)
June 1, 2010
This blog is derived from the NAIS President’s Annual Report to the Membership, February 25th, 2010, Moscone Center, San Francisco, California. This is culled from the second half of that address. Last month’s blog came from the first half.

Bassett Blog 2010/05: Disruptive Realities (Part I)
May 1, 2010
This blog is derived from the NAIS President’s Annual Report to the Membership, February 25th, 2010, Moscone Center, San Francisco, California. This is culled from the first half of that address. Next month’s blog will come from the second half.

Bassett Blog 2010/04: The Seven Seals
April 1, 2010
This essay is derived from the NAIS President’s Annual Report to the Membership, February 25, 2010, Moscone Center, San Francisco.

Bassett Blog 2010/03: PFB Remarks on NAIS Diversity Leadership Award Presentation to Reveta Bowers, Friday, 11:30 am, 2/26/2010
March 1, 2010
The following remarks were presented by NAIS President Pat Bassett in presenting the NAIS Diversity Leadership Award to Reveta Bowers, head of school at The Center for Early Education, who has also served as president of the California Association of Independent Schools and treasurer of the National Association of Independent Schools in a long career in independent schooling. The remarks appear here in a slightly edited form.

Bassett Blog 2010/02: Change Leadership, Part Two
February 1, 2010
What works — even in schools? Here are three thoughts that occur to me. (1)Understanding the psychology of the horses in the stable. (2) Aligning the rider and the stallion. (3) Betting on the fast horses.

Bassett Blog 2010/01: Change Agency Leadership: — Why Bother?
January 1, 2010
When we feel most skeptical about our next quixotic tilt at windmills, it’s useful to remind ourselves the motivation for taking a school leadership job in the first place.

Bassett Blog 2009/12: On Mascots and Nicknames
December 1, 2009
Recently, a constituent wrote to me to wonder if NAIS had written anything on managing the furor over changing mascots — i.e., abandoning a team name like the Indians. I replied that, no, we didn’t have a piece, but since I’m the expert on this matter, I’d write one. Why can I claim expertise? Because I’ve handled this matter badly, twice.

Bassett Blog: The Essential Ted
November 1, 2009
The first time I met Ted Sizer in person was when he returned as an alum (class of 1949) to speak at Pomfret School (Connecticut), where I was head at the time, and I thought, “Here is a man with gravitas, sorely in short supply in the world.”

Bassett Blog 2009/10: On Being College-Prep
October 1, 2009
What is driving the loyalty to independent schools? At the deepest levels, NAIS believes that independent school families appreciate the value-set of our schools, see the peer attitudes/ kid culture as affirming of an orientation necessary for success, appreciate the culture and climate the faculty instill in terms of “knowing and valuing” each child, and, in this particular moment of economic uncertainty, accordingly commit to whatever it takes to keep their children safe and secure in a familiar and working educational setting. In short, parents seems to have concluded, “Let’s sacrifice as needed to keep the kids in their school so we at least don’t have to worry about their well-being, while we sort out how to hold the rest of our economic lives together.”

Bassett Blog 2009/09: Onboarding
September 1, 2009
As I tweeted recently, "Not having new teacher induction is like throwing toddlers into the pool without instruction: Most don't drown and do learn to swim, after being traumatized."

Bassett Blog 2009/08: Seven Myths About Independent Schools
August 1, 2009
We know why families choose independent schools. They value what Tony Jarvis, past-head of Roxbury Latin School, called environments where students "are known and loved," and they believe what the research documents, that independent schools' intimacy, manageable size, and universally high expectations for behavior and achievement produce graduates who succeed in college and life.

We know as well why families who can afford independent schools don't choose them (aside from the "confirmation bias" we all have of preferring what we have chosen to other alternatives). Families who reject independent schools tend to believe in one or more myths about independent schools.

Bassett Blog 2009/06: On Crime and Punishment
June 1, 2009
Is there a limit to the authority of the individual teacher in a classroom to set academic expectations and to exercise punishment for failure to comply?

Bassett Blog 2009/05: Net Tuition Discounting
May 1, 2009
In the preface of the new NAIS book, Affordability & Demand: Financial Sustainability for Independent Schools, I wrote about the imperative to re-engineer the independent school financial model to achieve financial sustainability, in the face of twenty years of hyper-inflationary tuition increases and in the reality of reaching the price-break point in many markets. That admonishment has taken on larger dimensions given the global economic crisis and its implications for financial survivability for many schools.

Bassett Blog 2009/04: On Awards Assemblies
April 1, 2009
NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett It's that time to begin the onerous task of preparing for the end of year award assemblies. I have to admit that my experience of them as a faculty member, then as a school head, in independent schools (for a combined 22 years) was less than enthusiastic.

Bassett Blog 2009/03: Sailing into the Storm
March 1, 2009
The theme of the NAIS Annual Conference on February 26-28, 2009 in Chicago was Sailing the Winds of Change, a theme chosen over a year ago, before the collapse of the economy and the stormy seas that have emerged. In recent months, the programming of the conference migrated away from the sailing image and more toward an apt and related counter-theme, The Perfect Storm: Riding the Waves of Roiling Seas.

Bassett Blog 2009/02: Communicating in Stressful Times
February 1, 2009
I have been so impressed by the independent school versions of letters to the community that I have seen so far - all of which have well-communicated transparency, relative confidence, and steps that school leaders and boards are taking to preserve program and staffing during this time of uncertainty and turbulence.

Bassett Blog 2009/01: PoCC in the Context of the 2008 Presidential Election
December 30, 2008
Don’t call NAIS on January 20th, 2009. NAIS follows the federal government’s declaration of government office closings (usually for snow days), and, not surprisingly, a DC office closing is coming on January 20th, when somewhere between two and four million out-of-town guests are project to arrive to witness the historic event of Barack Hussein Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States. The NAIS staff will be beating it for the hills. like our federal employee counterparts (1620 L Street houses several federal offices), since DC is a town of around 600,000, without the space, much less the capacity, to handle that many people on the National Mall. In 1971, I drove a van full of students to the March on Washington to participate in the Vietnam protests, and that was anarchic, with only 500,000 in the streets. So discretion being the better part of valor, I’m watching from the (distant) sidelines. But watch I will, for this is a day in American history for the ages.

Bassett Blog 2008/12: Setting Price in a Down Market
December 1, 2008
In a recent exchange with an executive of one of our country's state independent school association executivess, my wise colleague shared the following observations:

As you can imagine, there is a fair amount of guessing in my state about what will unravel in the economy during the next few months — and what the "appropriate" rates of increase for tuitions should be. My response has been of the "It all depends…" sort, as we have many microclimates in the state, and situations here can vary quite a bit. Are you making any recommendation on this topic this year?

Bassett Blog 2008/11: Core Values
November 1, 2008
Although there are many thoughts one may have about how to train leaders for such a complex future, the one I'm thinking about now is to make certain that, in difficult circumstances, we continue to return to what's most important as the bases from which to venture out: our institutions' core values. And from these bases, where we do feel safe and confident, we can replenish ourselves for the struggle ahead.

Bassett Blog 2008/10: Trust in God, but Tie Up Your Camel
October 1, 2008
We’re getting lots of queries from schools wondering what the implications of the financial meltdown we’re experiencing are for us in the independent school world.

Bassett Blog 2008/09: Everything I Needed To Know about Parenting I Learned (Too Late) at Dog Obedience School
September 1, 2008
At the demise of my last basset, an octogenarian named Buffy, I became disconsolate, and obviously very much in need of a new basset puppy. My wife did not empathize with the gravity of my emotional need and insisted on jointly preparing one of those annoying decision-maker charts of plusses and minuses, her side the minuses, my side the plusses, before proceeding with adding a new family member. Suffice it to say, her side was substantially longer than mine (actually, the only plus I could think of was that I needed someone happy to see me when I came home from work, no matter at what time). Regardless, by cleverly manipulating her into visiting a new litter with me, I prevailed. Although we had the pick of the litter and my wife opined that the comatose pup named Sleepy would be her choice, I selected the more obviously energetic basset pup, seven-week old Scarlett.

Bassett Blog 2008/08: Schools of Integrity
August 1, 2008
As independent schools and their boards entertain a key generative strategic question, "What are the most important skills and values the 21st century will demand and reward?" one answer from our work in the field and the consensus of the literature on schools of the future is "integrity."

Bassett Blog 2008/06: The NAIS Affordability Index
June 1, 2008
I fear that, in some cases, we are in danger of becoming the Porsche of the school industry: indisputably "best of breed," but with a sticker price that is generally perceived to be so high that fewer people will even bother to come in for a test drive.

Bassett Blog 2008/05: Guilds in Schools — Back to the Future
May 1, 2008
It occurs to me that the nature and role of teachers evolves over time, depending on the society’s definition of school.

Bassett Blog 2008/04: A Message to Teachers… on Behalf of your Students
April 1, 2008
All students in the world deserve at least one teacher “who makes all the difference” in their lives.

Bassett Blog 2008/01: All Aboard the Clue Train
January 30, 2008
Philanthropy should start young. So should teaching our kids how to "make the case."

Bassett Blog 2007/12: Why I Luv Bits
December 1, 2007
NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett I know, I know. Everyone's feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of bits (the 1/0, on/off atoms of digital content), especially from e-mails. One knows there's a revolt coming when corporate America starts declaring "e-mail-free Fridays." (Now, how dumb is that? What's a Friday "bit holiday" going to do for your Saturday or, worse yet, your Monday?)

Bassett Blog 2007/11: Growing Our Own Leaders
November 1, 2007
Recently, an NAIS trustee from the corporate sector (who also serves as a trustee for an independent school in the Pacific Northwest) wrote to me to observe how odd he found it that independent schools typically seek their heads from outside of their institutions (at least 90 percent of head appointments are external candidates), whereas the corporate model works largely in the other direction, the typical CEO appointment being from within.

Bassett Blog 2007/10: The Value of Data Markers in Your Financial Planning
October 1, 2007
The NAIS book, Financing Sustainable Schools, outlines a six-step process for school leaders to consider as a model for shaping their thinking on their school's internal and external trends, financial drivers, and assumptions driving their financial models.

Bassett Blog 2007/09: The Conversation We’d Like to Have with Colleges
September 1, 2007
For as long as I can remember, there’s been much caterwauling from NAIS and our schools about the damage done to us and our students by the relentlessly growing expectations from colleges regarding our curriculum, and by the increased pressure on students to perform and to add more and more to their transcripts and résumés. So, if we actually succeeded in convening a summit of school heads and college counselors with our higher-ed counterparts, college presidents and admissions deans, what would we say to them? What do we really want and expect?

Bassett Blog 2007/07: Rushworth Kidder on Striking Out
July 1, 2007
Because NAIS frequently assesses staff morale and organizational climate, we've used many tools over the years and learned much from each of them. Nonetheless, we were perplexed by the contradictory results from a climate survey we administered a couple of years back that revealed, for the most part, staff satisfaction with their leaders but dissatisfaction with leadership decision-making.

Bassett Blog 2007/05: Z Decision Making
May 1, 2007
Because NAIS frequently assesses staff morale and organizational climate, we've used many tools over the years and learned much from each of them. Nonetheless, we were perplexed by the contradictory results from a climate survey we administered a couple of years back that revealed, for the most part, staff satisfaction with their leaders but dissatisfaction with leadership decision-making.

Bassett Blog 2007/04: The New Triple Bottom Line — People, Planet, Purpose
April 1, 2007
The theme of the triple bottom line for schools (People, Planet, Purpose) is, of course, a play on the new corporate triple bottom line, "people, planet, profit." What suggests to me a divinely orchestrated new reality is the fact that major corporations have found that doing the right thing in terms of people and planet is increasingly the right thing in terms of profit. But financial profit is not our bottom line metric.

Bassett Blog 2007/02: Generation Next
February 1, 2007
A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, entitled A Portrait of "Generation Next": How Young People View Their Lives, Futures, and Politics, provides some fascinating insights about what researchers are calling the kids currently in school and college: Generation Next (alternatively referred to as Gen Y or the Millennials).

Bassett Blog 2006/12: Too Much Pressure and Too Little Time?
December 1, 2006
Ever since the publishing of The Over-Scheduled Child, conventional wisdom, especially in independent schools, has been that our kids' rising stress levels are exacerbated by their hectic schedules. Regardless of who is contributing to the cause (and the culprits we acknowledge seem to be faculty, parents, and students themselves, bent on more homework, more activities, and more AP courses), we have convinced ourselves of three things:

1. that kids are overscheduled;
2. that being so busy produces deleterious effects; and
3. that there is no way out of the dilemma.

Bassett Blog 2006/11: High Season for Head Searches
November 1, 2006
While the old adage in the head-search business, that all search committees are looking for "God on a good day" still applies, in practice, we seem to agree not only on the skills needed, but also on the rank order of priorities for heads: managing school climate; recruiting faculty; strategic planning; etc.

Bassett Blog 2006/10: 'Opting out' of Private Schools
October 1, 2006
Recently, there was another flurry of conversation about public vs. private schools, generating more heat than light, courtesy of a Wall Street Journal article, "Opting Out of Private Schools." Relying on anecdote, rather than statistics, the author claimed to be observing movement away from private schools back to public schools, justified in part by findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that its annual snapshot showed public school kids doing as well or better on the NAEP tests in grades four and eight than private school kids, once scores were adjusted by socio-economic class.

Bassett Blog 2006/09: Buckminster Fuller's Leadership Principles
September 1, 2006
The September-October issue of The Futurist presented a retrospective of Buckminster Fuller’s gigantic contributions to philosophy, architecture (the geodesic dome), and the social change agenda, exploring in some detail Fuller’s Leadership Principles. It strikes me that there is much wisdom in this list of principles and that one could measure the legacy of a leader by the extent to which he or she lived by them and manifested them.

Bassett Blog 2006/07-08: The Small Classes Debate
August 1, 2006
While the research and opinion on small classes is mixed and highly controversial, the independent school public still identifies "small classes" with high student achievement. Although NAIS marketing research indicates that "small classes" are a factor that drives parents to independent schools (i.e., giving us a "marketing edge"), educational research, finally, does not show that it's class size that drives student achievement.

Bassett Blog 2006/06: College Student Debt
June 2, 2006
The average debt for a college graduate is now about $17,000, up from around $9,000 in 1992–1993. With the recent interest rate increases, student loan fixed interest rates will be about 7%, so payments of the loan on a 10-year payment plan would be about $200/month. For a decade at least, I’ve been recommending that schools adopt a compensation "philosophy" rather than just a compensation "system," and we are pleased to see a growing movement away from the public school model of fixed pay scales that reward only years of experience and advanced degrees to a more flexible performance award system that achieves a compensation philosophy’s goals of the 3 R’s: recruiting, rewarding, and retaining talent.

Bassett Blog 2006/05: Affordability and "the Family Ford"
May 1, 2006
Is independent school tuition supposed to be, as we’ve been saying for decades, "about the cost of the family Ford?"

Bassett Blog 2006/04: How Does Your School Measure "Academic Success"?
April 1, 2006
How does your school measure "academic success"? What are you willing to share with parents regarding test scores, school and college placements, and the success of your graduates at the next level of schooling? How will you accommodate parents' increased need for data about results?

Bassett Blog 2006/02: Giving
February 1, 2006
NAIS is delighted to report that our schools experienced another banner year in terms of financial support from their constituencies. According to the StatsOnline data in our National Tables (from 2004-2005 financials), independent school average giving per student is up 30 percent over 10 years, 21 percent in the last five years alone.

June 2005 Bassett Blog: The Balanced Scorecard
June 1, 2005
NAIS is attempting to borrow a strategy called "The Balanced Scorecard" long-employed in business (first introduced in the Harvard Business Review over twenty years ago), and apply it to our own operations. The essence of this business approach is that it is folly (as schools have known forever) to judge an organization's performance by only one measurement, the financials (return of investment to shareholders), since that one metric can lead to catastrophic short-term thinking and manipulations. (Think Global Crossing, Enron, and Tyco, as recent examples.) Better to devise multiple metrics to measure success. So how should we measure success at NAIS? And for that matter, success at NAIS schools?