Independent School Magazine Columns

"Independent Perspective" columns written by NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett for Independent School magazine.

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High Anxiety, the Sequel
In my mind’s eye, I can imagine the opening of a school management team meeting held in an independent school head’s office. A grim-faced head begins the meeting by noting that he has called on each member of the team for a “condition of the school” report, an “update” that spares no “brutal facts.” What ensues is the catalog of mutually reinforcing factors that are “depressing.”

Change Leadership
At the NAIS Institute for New Heads each year, I give school leaders a wry piece of advice: “If something goes terribly askew at school, and you need to buy time to rectify it before your parent body finds out, suggest a change to the dress code. This tactic will keep parents distracted for at least 18 months in dress-code debates, giving you plenty of time to quietly fix the problem.” Next July, for the new group of school heads, I’m going to add a similar strategy for keeping the faculty preoccupied: “If you need to implement a change that would normally cause gnashing of teeth and drawing of battle lines among your teachers, do it after you form a task force to study changing the compensation system to a merit-pay model. The faculty will be so annoyed and preoccupied by the merit-pay proposal that the other change will seem minor by comparison.”

When Parents and Schools Align
To educate children and adolescents, good schools know that they must also spend time educating parents. When parents are not on the same page with educators, kids move through the chiaroscuro of misaligned home and school life, receiving conflicting messages rather than similarly focused ones from both sides. Accordingly, I'd like to share some observations that parents and educators can contemplate together.