A metaphor we’ve heard a lot lately has been the “Pole Star”—an institution’s ideals or values that can serve as a moral beacon for leaders making decisions about programs, policies, and practices. The distractions of the pandemic have brought “pole star” into more common use, usually with the crucial distinction that this is not the same thing as “the way we’ve always done things” nor is it some “normal” to which an institution or its leaders must return.
Independent schools as institutions are under fire these days, from without in the popular press and from within among leaders in the industry itself. Some of us have been hectoring schools about their need to move forward, to lean into the challenges of living up to their ideals, and even—better sit down if you’re easily rattled—establishing themselves as palpably positive social goods. We’ve grown a bit more frustrated and a bit more shrill. I have been suggesting for years that the regulatory freedoms and privileges independent schools enjoy ought to be taken as a quid pro quo (check out my book Public Goods: Expecting the Best in Ethical Rigor, Moral Excellence, and Civic Engagement from America’s Independent Schools), but too often the chatter around “the public purpose of private schools” seems more performative than substantive.
And I will stop myself right there to provide some context for what probably sounded like a cruel generalization. That “performative” appearance is exactly one million percent NOT what the academic leaders, service coordinators, teachers, student volunteers, community engagement officers, and other people “on the ground” in independent schools intend as they develop and lead students and colleagues into ambitious and meaningful community engagement, service, and social justice-focused programs and projects. Despite the cynical way that many outsiders see things, “looking good”—perhaps on some application—is NOT the intention or the point of advocacy campaigns and service learning led and supported by students, school offices, and individual educators. Maybe, sometimes, it does add useful luster, but if the effort has been meaningful in any way to anyone, so what?
In many (no, not all, please understand me) independent schools there is a gulf between those who are leading this work on the ground, daily, and the way the effort is seen and promoted by senior leadership and governing bodies. “Community service” and engagement are often presented as social window dressing that reflects brightly on a school’s brand. In their fiduciary roles, boards don’t always appreciate that this work, like so many other initiatives in all areas around diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, social justice, and civic and community engagement, is soul work to those who do it. This is work of meaning and purpose for teachers, administrators, coordinators, and leaders of these efforts, inspired by their own values and beliefs. They came into our profession to live and to share this inspiration with the children and young adults in their charge.
Too often those who “run the school” are trapped into sustaining and fortifying its brand at all costs. Too often this means living by the mantra that even the high-mindedness and social outreach that fuel and propel the educators “on the ground” is little more than an impetus for offering programs that “look good on an application” and that might interest donors and attract applicants.
This toxic assumption extends to other aspects of schools’ programs and to the work and lives of teachers and students. “Innovation” was a scary term in independent schools until it became an imperative and every school had to build its maker space, design lab, or call it what you will. Soon carbon copy “innovative” programs were ubiquitous, devaluing the word itself into a kind of inside joke. But it seemed to be what the marketplace demanded, and probably plenty of the work students were doing did look good on applications—and sure, much of it may have had real meaning. Other efforts to advance curriculum and to truly build learning programs that both serve and involve students have gone forward school by school until they become some kind of “industry standard” or “best practice,” when everyone jumps on board.
Those who “run the school” tend to err on the side of the notion that school needs to “look like school” to prospective families and to potential supporters. In this construct, appearances matter most, and if this means moving slowly on initiatives about which some starry-eyed faculty members feel passionate, well, then. . . well, you can’t risk the brand. You can’t put the school at risk—that is, you can’t discourage prospective families and potentially generous donors. If they fall into the trap of being defenders of brand rather than champions of mission and values, senior leaders and boards can become curators of the status quo, of an image of the school that may only slightly reflect the current passion of forward-thinking educators and the yearnings and dreams of today’s students.
In engineering, a governor is a device that limits an engine’s speed; independent school governing boards, regardless of all the ambitious strategic plans they might produce and the good will of their members, are too often inertial dampers on the pace of meaningful change—stifling passions and dreams that might well embody the very missions these boards have set. Straddling the gulf between those who “run the school” and passionate and creative faculty and students, too many academic leaders will admit to trepidations and even painful experiences when bringing particularly forward-thinking or unusual initiatives before heads and boards.
I will offer up a new star for readers to consult: Guidestar. The Guidestar website publishes the IRS 990 forms that all non-profit organizations, including independent schools, must file annually. Deep in each 990 lies data on some salaries, and it will surprise no one that heads of school are the most highly compensated employees in independent schools. Other top-level salaries are also listed; your own may be among them, depending where you are in your school’s pecking order. This information, if it is new to you, will seem luridly fascinating, and you can look at the 990s of other schools and even search out 990 forms from previous years.
I ask you, for the sake building a deeper context, to consider the multiplier between the salary of the head of school and the next-most-highly-compensated employee (and what office that person might hold). Look at previous forms; go back, if you have the patience, 10 or 20 years. You are likely to find that the multiplier has grown larger, that head pay has risen faster than that of other administrators.
Being an independent school head may be a trifling gig by Wall Street standards, but compared to where many teachers started out and still are, it pays really, really well—far better even than most division-head or academic administrative positions.
Guidestar’s numbers reveal one reason why independent schools often don’t dare to do better and be better—why inertia and brand defense can outweigh ideals. No one wants to lose a job as a head or to be on a board that has to fire a head or vote to close a school. No wonder, then, that heads of school and the boards who hire them and set their pay can be extra skittish when some new idea pops up that might pose some imagined “risk.” With the news full of controversies where a commitment by a school could discourage applicants or turn off donors, it seems to make sad sense to retreat to the safe centers, away from controversy and novelty, paying little more than lip service, if necessary, to underlying, substantive concerns.
Timid governance and over-energetic brand protection can keep schools from truly living up not only to their own missions and values but to the promise they might yet hold of being positive forces for educational and social change.
We need to have the courage of our convictions, people, and to demand that senior leaders and boards abandon timid ways and brand anxiety and start committing themselves to the true meaning and promise of their schools—as I have written here before, to figure out who their school is at its heart as a place of promises and dreams, and then to become and BE that school, fully and devotedly. The schools that have done this already, truly, without fear, tend to be thriving.
Forget the fear and do this thing. It is the right thing to do, for students and educators alike—and for the world and its future.