Edison High School Names President

​Edison High Schhol in Portland, Oregon has completed a year long search for a new president. After completing the strategic plan for Edison, ISA is pleased to announce that our search led to the selection of Dr. Sean Preston as Edison High School's new President.

Dr. Preston served as the founding head of school for the John Crosland School, a K-13 institution that serves students with learning disabilities and differences in Charlotte, NC. He has also served as head of school at Cypress Heights Academy, the accreditation team chair for the Southern Association of Independent Schools, and a faculty member at University of North Carolina.

Dr. Preston is a true servant leader and a lifelong educator with a passionate zeal for working with students with learning differences. He brings an immediate sense of vision, collaboration, synergy, organization, and fundraising skills to Edison High School. Congratulations to both Edison and Dr. Preston on this new collaboration.

Pacific Ridge School Selects ISA

Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, California has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for research and strategic planning services.  Our work will commence in the summer and continue throughout the upcoming school year.  Pacific Ridge joins a small number of independent schools in the greater San Diego region that we have served over the course of our practice.  We welcome Pacific Ridge to our client community.  

Pacific Ridge School inspires curious young minds to be thoughtful, collaborative, and globally-minded by integrating a multitude of intercurricular opportunities with a robust academic schedule. Through an inclusive and innovative approach to acquiring and applying knowledge, students gain confidence and self-awareness—developing into young adults with advanced communication skills who are prepared to drive and design their success in the 21st century.  Pacific Ridge School was founded in 2007 and enrolls just under 600 students in grades 7 through 12.  The teaching style is seminar-style learning, designed to feed an integrated academic program to allow students to address over-arching ethical questions, and to unite content across thematic touchpoints.

Structural Barriers to Innovation and Change

Why is the education industry so immune to significant change?  Our experience and research indicates that the private education industry, specifically, struggles to change in major ways in an effort to keep up with rapidly evolving markets, consumers, and tools.  Why is that and how do we address it?  

Welcome to an age-old question that educational strategists have been attempting to address for decades.  It turns out that we have a lot of structural barriers - or limitations - that we have either self-imposed or have been imposed upon us.  These barriers are numerous and result in choking the innovation and change that we see present in so many industries.  Here’s a list of just some of these long-standing barriers:

1. Class size - Educators have historically believed that only small classes results in strong learning, driving costs up.

2. Calendar - The industry followed an agricultural calendar giving summers off, limiting the seasons in which we can deliver education.

3. Accreditation - The industry follows accreditation centric rules to good management, creating some unusual practices and policies.

4. Tenure - Few industries award jobs for life but colleges still do.

5. Business Model - In private education, we have adopted a low volume/high price/selective admission model yet wonder why we have enrollment and accessibility woes.

6. Assessment - Arbitrary methods of assessing both student learning and teacher effectiveness still plague our industry.

7. Goverance - Our schools and colleges are governed by a model of accountability and responsibility engineered for non-profits over a century ago and has not been revisited or recalibrated.

So, why don’t we change very quickly?  This is just a small list of the major structural barriers to innovation and change in private education.  There are many others so numerous to list. 

Significant change will not occur in our industry until these barriers are broken down completely allowing new capacity to flow into our models. Most schools and colleges today create plans and manage change on the edges or incrementally. However, there are some innovators in the landscape that are committed to breaking down the barriers and impediments to growth, innovation, and change.   

The Future of Education

We recently released a short presentation and video titled “The Future of Education”.  The document outlines the major shifts and trends that are likely to shape private education, following a similar trajectory to other major industries, such as retail, transportation, and hospitality.  You may watch the video from the Sacred Heart Network conference in St. Louis below.   We will also upload the white paper presentation to our site shortly. 

Ian to Keynote at MISBO in October

Ian will be delivering the opening keynote message at the Mid-South Independent School Business Officers (MISBO) annual conference in October.  The conference will be held October 3 - 5 in Hilton Head, South Carolina and follow a theme of "aspirations to operations".  Ian will specifically be speaking on the three existential questions that independent schools must address in the future.  We are so excited to be joining the MISBO family for this event.

Pilgrim School Selects ISA

​Pilgrim School in Los Angeles has selected Ian Symmonds & Asssociates for research and strategy services.  We are excited to welcome this innovative school in Southern California to our client community.  Our work will commence in May and continue through the summer.

Pilgrim School, founded in 1958, is an independent, co-educational, college preparatory day school for students in Preschool through Grade 12.  The school is in a safe haven cradled in Wilshire Center, 10 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, and attracts a student body as varied as the city's population.  Pilgrim is a city schoool, where individual talents, contributions and skills yield a richer and more dynamic community; where academic skills are applied to real-world challenges and opportunities. Los Angeles is their city. The California Science Center, Disney Music Hall, The Getty, LACMA, Chinatown, the Natural History Museum, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, MoCA, Venice Beach and art galleries, the Endeavour, the Museum of Tolerance, Skirball Center, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Grammy Museum — these are a few of their classrooms.

Kent School Selects ISA

Kent School in Chestertown, Maryland has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for research and strategy services.  Our work will commence in May and continue throughout the summer.  

Kent School's mission is to guide students in realizing their potential for academic, artistic, athletic, and moral excellence. The school’s family-oriented, supportive, student-centered environment fosters the growth of honorable, responsible citizens for our country and our diverse world.  Kent School is a regional, independent day school serving students from Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade. They accomplish their by setting high academic and personal standards; by having a devoted and highly skilled faculty; and by actively living their community values of integrity, respect, responsibility and friendship.

We are excited to welcome this innovative school to our ISA client family. This project will also serve to reunite our firm with head of school Nancy Mugele, who served at Roland Park in Baltimore, also an ISA client family member.  

What Can We Learn from Razors and Mattresses?

We’re witnessing a consumer revolt today among some long-standing industry products.  After years of rapidly increasing prices for the top brands of razors and mattresses, these industries are getting upended by new, low priced, high quality, and easy to access offerings.  Gillette is getting taken to task by companies such as Dollar Shave Club and Henry’s, while Serta and others are getting upended to companies such as Casper.  Online ordering, lower prices, and high core product benefits are making consumers think twice about choosing the traditional, higher price offering.

Sound familiar?  There are so many parallels to our industry of private education.  High price, low volume models of education with overly inflated prices are losing their market position to newer offerings that promise equal quality, better access, and lower price.  What can private schools and colleges learn from razors and mattresses? 

One, if a product is going to command the highest price, it had better have a corner on the quality market.  It has to demonstrate that there is no equal to it in the marketplace.  None.  From top to bottom. 

Two, it better possess the same – if not better – access points as the other options. That means it must possess much more innovation in terms of how easy it is purchase it, access it, as well as any other basic consumer transaction.

Who knew there were so many parallels between education, razors, and mattresses?

St. John's Episcopal Parish Day School Selects ISA

St. John's Episcopal Day School in Tampa, Florida has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for research and strategy consulting.  Our work will commence in May.  St. John’s is the oldest Episcopal school in West Central Florida, with a history of excellence in education that results in stellar students. Grounded by a commitment to spiritual and ethical values, a love of learning enhanced by advanced technology, and the development of strong character, St. John's students grow into caring and successful adults who are equipped for our ever-changing world.

Manlius Pebble Hill School Selects ISA

Manlius Pebble Hill School (MPH) in Syracuse, New York has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for research and planning services.  Our work will commence in May and continue through the summer.  We are excited to welcome MPH to our client community.

Manlius Pebble Hill School’s history dates back to the founding of The Manlius School in 1869. In 1970, The Manlius School merged with Pebble Hill School to form Manlius Pebble Hill School. Many of their continuing traditions, including Red & White Day and the opening day Handshake Ceremony, began at their predecessor schools. Perhaps the most important legacy of those schools is the commitment to academic excellence. While The Manlius School was recognized as one of the top military academies in the country, serving at one time as a feeder school for West Point, Pebble Hill graduates went on to attend some of the best colleges and universities in the country.

Today, with more than 4,200 alumni throughout the world, Manlius Pebble Hill’s students have a strong sense of MPH history.  Plaques dedicated to alumni who gave their lives in World War I and World War II personalize those significant events. Photographs of the undefeated football teams of The Manlius School encourage school pride in our athletic tradition. “Headboy” plaques lining the hallway of the McNeil Science Center and Pebble Hill award plaques in the dining hall inspire top students to work hard so their names, too, will be recorded in the history of the School.

In a culture increasingly obsessed with “today,” Manlius Pebble Hill often looks to its past for guidance. With Central New York roots stretching back more than 140 years, the School continues to provide an unparalleled education that prepares its students for the challenges of the future.

Three Simple Questions We Must Address

I think we can all agree that education, just like many other industries, is moving through a stage of considerable change.  As our industry moves through this current inflection point and reemerges on the other side, how different might education look in just ten years?  A decade is a long time, considering that the Apple iPhone is just celebrating a decade long anniversary.  Will the same schools and colleges still be around?  In the same configuration with the same programs?  

The University of Wisconsin at Steven's Point recent news highlights some of the issues that education is facing.  The University has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology and Spanish — while adding programs with more clear and direct career pathways as a way to address declining enrollment and a multimillion-dollar deficit.  It is a classic conversation about the role of liberal arts in a new world of career preparation.  

While the news was a shock and generated a lot of dismay and protests around the campus, it was not a surprise to many in our industry who have seen these issues bubbling under the surface for years.  Find an industry that does not occasionally have to recalibrate offerings, price points, and delivery models. You won't find one.  This is the normal regeneration and life cycle of any industry.  It is commonplace and I suspect will be a more frequent occurrence in the future. 

As we look to the future, there are three prevailing questions facing the future of education.  If your school or college is developing a strategic plan or formulating priorities for the future, you should probably start by considering these basic questions as they relate to your organization and context.  They are:

1. What will be the role of education in the future? 
2. What should “high quality” educational models really cost?
3. How should education be delivered?

While none of us can predict the future, I believe it is fairly certain that it won't look the same as it does today.  Building some assumptions about how your school or college will respond to these questions now may save a tremendous amount of recorrection in the future. 

A Strategy for What?

Most of us develop strategies for our organizations on a regular basis.  However, we often forget exactly what we are trying to accomplish in that strategy.  In other words, to what end or intended outcome does each strategy accomplish?  

We have found that there are four distinct purposes or intended outcomes under which you can categorize any strategy.  They are:

1. Missional Mandate - Achieving this goal will purely align with your mission.
2. Competitive Imperative - Achieving this goal will be responsive or "catch up" to marketplace demands.  
3. Element of Distinction - Achieving this goal will position your organization as the only one of a kind in a specific category.
4. Revenue Producer - Achieving this goal will produce revenue which can be invested back into program or product. 

If your strategy does not meet any one these goals, you might want to question exactly what it does accomplish for your organization.  A successful portfolio of strategies typically are balanced among the four distinct purposes listed above. For example, it is often best if your organization is meeting missional mandates, being responsive to the market demands, creating new distinctions, and generating new revenue to invest in program. 

Remember a strategy is in and of itself not enough.  It must be intended to accomplish a specific objective.  Understanding what you are trying to accomplish and aligning your strategies accordingly is a best practice in planning. 

Changing the World Through Education

I'm feeling a bit inspirational and a need to stay grounded in our cause this morning.  Nelson Mandela reminded us that education remains the most powerful tool to change the world.  That sentiment became the foundation of our #JustCause campaign.  As we look to the future, we know that the work of education - particularly independent schools and colleges - can continue to play the primary role of transformation of people and culture.  

No matter how divisive and hurtful our geopolitical context, I know that education will continue to transform people and that love will always win. I believe the values of the 21st century can be largely dictated by the work of our independent schools and colleges.  How we define, shape, and solve our accessibility is not so much about our own sustainability, but the rather the health and well-being of our future. 

Education does equal transformation.  Here's a quick reminder of what we are really working for in this video by U2 celebrating the work of Nelson Mandela.  

Baylor School Launches Strategic Plan

Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee has launched their strategic plan.  Developed through a comprehensive planning process with Ian Symmonds & Associates, Baylor continues to establish themselves as a definitive leader in independent day and boarding education in the Southeast and beyond.  Baylor's strategic plan will continue to fuel the "Baylor Leads" and "Forever Forward" campaigns.  Check out this recent video as part of their ongoing communication effort on leadership.

Battle Ground Academy Selects ISA...Again

Battle Ground Academy in Franklin, Tennessee has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for strategic planning during the 2018-19 academic year.  Already part of the ISA client community, we completed a comprehensive strategic plan in 2014-15 for the school.  

Battle Ground Academy is an independent college-preparatory school for grades K-12. BGA is located in Franklin, Tennessee. Founded in 1889, the school was originally located in part on the site of the Battle of Franklin in the U.S. Civil War.

Excellent implementation and extraordinary leadership has readied the school for a recalibrated plan for the following year. We are excited to be back working with BGA.

Scenario Building and the Future of Private Education

This next month we will begin tackling an interesting topic.  What is the future of education, especially as it relates to independent or private education models?  As part of our series on Recalibrating an Industry, we will explore three different scenarios that are potential futures for our industry.  Watch for the series to begin in April and continue throughout the month.

Polytechnic School (CA) Selects ISA

Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for research and consulting services.  Our work will begin this spring and continue through the summer and fall.  We are pleased to welcome Polytechnic School to the ISA family.

In 1907, Polytechnic School became the first nonprofit, independent school in Southern California, enrolling 106 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. True to its name and to the educational philosophy of the day, Poly’s curriculum emphasized both academics and manual arts—from English and math, to sewing and woodworking.

Fifty years after the school’s founding, the decision was made to expand the educational program through the 12th grade. Poly’s Upper School campus opened in 1959, and in 1962, the first senior class graduated. 

Today, Poly remains an ambitious, forward-thinking school community—one devoted not only to scholarship but also to the creative arts, the camaraderie of team sports, the joy of service to others, and the welcoming spirit of friendship—here on our historic campus and around the world.

Oregon Episcopal School (OES) Selects ISA...Again

Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, Oregon has selected ISA for research and strategy work.  A long time member of the ISA family, we have completed strategic plans, marketing plans, and strategic enrollment management counsel over the past decade.  We are excited about continuing our long term relationship.  We will begin working on research and consulting activities with the school in the spring 2018.

Among the woodlands, wetlands, and wildlife of the hills of Southwest Portland lies the unique educational experience that is Oregon Episcopal School. The school occupies a 59-acre campus where 870 students in Pre-K– Grade 12 share an excellent faculty, a college preparatory curriculum, and a strong sense of community.

Offering a true liberal arts curriculum, OES is dedicated to scholarship and an enriched academic environment of "learning by doing" that strives to help each individual reach his or her fullest potential. Small classes provide intimate learning environments that allow teachers to instill in each student a love for learning and the joy of discovery. 

The oldest Episcopal school west of the Rockies, OES values developing the spirit as well as the mind. Though steeped in Episcopal heritage and tradition, the school welcomes students of all beliefs. OES provides instruction about all major faiths, and encourage individuals to discover their own spiritual path. 

Derryfield School Selects ISA...Again

Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire has selected Ian Symmonds & Associates for research and strategy work.  The only independent day school in the state, Derryfield School enrolls roughy 400 students from throughout Central New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts in grades six through twelve.  We have a long history or working with Derryfield School, including developing their strategic plan, marketing campaigns, and strategic enrollment management practices.  We are excited to get back to working with the school!  

Recalibrating An Industry > Is it Merely About Price?

As we continue our series on recalibrating the industry of independent education, we turn our thoughts to an age-old question about our price: 

Are all of our collective strategic woes simply about our price?  In other words, as we see declining demand, increased financial aid leveraging and tuition discounting, and shrinking enrollments in many areas of the nation, does it simply boil down to our pricing model?  Is independent education, as it is currently defined and practiced, simply too expensive for the future?

From my vantage point, it’s a mistake to think that price is a unilateral issue with private education. It is a serious issue, make no mistake.  But, price has to be considered within a larger context, such as the varying delivery platforms of education, new types of schools (micro schools, charter schools, etc), new consumer mindsets, changes in generational thinking, or the role of education in our society.  Each one of these areas is a moving target, evolving as we speak.  

Is there a role for independent education in our society?  What should it cost?  How large should be the enrollment?  And how should it be delivered?  We will look at three potential scenarios later this week.