I love August because we get to be problem solvers for schools at One Schoolhouse.  As schools get ready for the academic year to launch, challenges bubble up. Issues arise with student schedules.  Students return from the summer with new passions they want to pursue in the school year. Students need greater flexibility than a traditional school day would allow for. Teachers leave unexpectedly or have unexpected constraints on what they can teach. And, in a final review of course offerings, schools sometimes realize that they are better served by not having low enrollment courses on campus.

August 1 hits and we have conversations with schools and parents about these issues every day -- just yesterday I had four such conversations.  The exciting thing is that we can help schools solve problems, while giving students the high quality, high touch academic program that students and parents expect from their schools.

Let’s hear from some of the students who we helped in these situations last year:

Allow an athlete to pursue her passion
“My entire life since elementary school, I've been balancing,” says Katie, an elite skater and high-achieving student from Miss Porter’s School. In the fall of 2017, she decided to devote more time to skating, traveling to Dallas to train intensively. “It was an incredible experience… I never had the opportunity to test out what that lifestyle would be like. Doing the One Schoolhouse courses and having that flexibility gave me the opportunity to try that out.” By taking three courses with One Schoolhouse while she was away from school, Katie says, “I found classes I was really interested in and passionate about.” Her AP Comparative Government class inspired her to take an international relations course at Miss Porter’s after she returned to campus. When she got back to a more typical school experience, we asked her, ”Would you take another online course?” Absolutely, says Katie. “You can learn anywhere and connect with people around the world--that's the future.” ​

How well would you do on a short quiz about independent school finances?
• What percentage of independent day school revenue comes from tuition: 59%, 69%, or 79%? 
• How about the percentage from gifts and grants: 8%, 12%, or 25%?  
• What about other programs and auxiliary services (campus rentals, summer camp, after school, etc.): 5%, 7%, 10%?
Now, let’s switch to the expense side. 
• ​What percentage of independent day school expense comes from faculty and staff salaries and benefits: 48%, 60%, or 72%? 
• How about instructional costs: 2%, 4%, or  8%? 
• And, finally, how about facilities: 10%, 14%, or 24%?
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If you are like the cohort of great educators who just took the course that Jeff Shields and I taught for NBOA & One Schoolhouse, “Budget Meets Mission,” the answers may surprise you.

79% of revenue in independent schools comes from net tuition, with only 8% from gifts and grants, and 7% from other programs and auxiliary services.  72% of that revenue goes to cover faculty and staff costs, with 4% to instructional costs, and 10% to facilities.  These numbers often surprise even experienced members of the independent school community.  Why?  There seem to be a few reasons:

• On the revenue side, most assume that development is a larger percentage of the overall revenue picture… in part because it used to be.  In the 1990s, advancement accounted for as much as 15-20% of revenue, or more.  What happened?  Even though we increased development efforts (and costs) and actual dollars raised increased, it became a smaller share of the revenue because of annual raises of tuition.  In other words, we became more tuition driven by increasing tuition so quickly.
• Looking at revenue, we’ve been led to believe -- through publications, blog posts, conference presentations, and the like -- that there is some magical silver bullet out there for increasing revenue.  “If only our summer camp was more successful.” “What if we started a micro school?” “Could we rent out our campus for lots of money?” As a result, administrative teams and boards spend a disproportionate amount of time on “alternate revenue streams.”
• On the expense side, most assume that facilities are a larger expense, especially considering the building boom on many campuses in recent years.  However, new and upgraded facilities costs (while significant) can’t keep pace with the number of faculty and staff that we’ve added over the last twenty years.  One study notes that between 1992-2013, the average number of students to faculty/staff dropped from 8:1 to 5:1.  We’ve added to program costs by adding people across all facets of our schools.
• In addition, on the expense side, educators are often led to believe that instructional costs are a much larger part of the school’s budget than they actually are. This can, unfortunately, stem from business offices focusing on “departmental budgets” rather than the true drivers of department costs: the number of teaching faculty.

These misconceptions about independent school finance have encouraged us to focus efforts on school sustainability in the wrong places.  We’ve cut and tweaked and gained at the margins rather than examining and challenging the big drivers: tuition and faculty/staff costs. What if we were to focus our energies there instead?  What innovations might emerge?  Would we be as willing to add new staff, or replace every leaving staff member with the exact same job and position description? Would we raise tuitions at the same rate? Would financial aid look the same?

Are there models we should be looking at to get at the these two main drivers?  Sure. I’ll explore some of those next month.


* Data accessed for 2017-2018 school year from NAIS DASL

​Last month, I offered an on-ramp for understanding the concept of personalized learning -- the idea that personalized learning is about offering students a choice as they move through different pathways to mastery of skills and competencies.  This month, let’s explore what that looks like in an academic class.

Let’s take a learning objective that lets us  think of many pathways to create: understanding how a bill becomes a law in the United States.

OK. What would the typical process for meeting this objective look like? Probably something like this: in class, the teacher introduces the topic via a short “lecture.” Then, for homework, the students read pages 123-130 in their textbook and answer factual questions. In class the next day, the teacher kicks off the lesson by sharing the famous Schoolhouse Rock segment, "I'm Just a Bill" -- enjoy that flashback to 8th grade!  After that, there are a couple of short activities in order to differentiate the instruction, and some opportunity for students to ask questions.

This is a good lesson.  There is some differentiation.  There are many entry points into the topic for students.  But, was all of the learning meaningful for all students?  

What if we approached the lesson from a learner-driven, personalized perspective? That might look something like this:  When students arrive in the classroom, the teacher introduces the learning objective, and then offers students multiple pathways to reach the learning objective.  Those pathways are simply the different parts of the previously explained linear lesson, but instead of students having to do each segment, they have choice on which pathway (or, likely, pathways) they need in order to meet the objective.  Some students will start by reading the textbook, others will start with videos, others will gather with the teacher at the whiteboard for direct instruction, and so on.

We know that we sometimes need to take different pathways in order to learn a new skill. Think back to the headlight example -- we might start by using the manual as a pathway, and then realize that the visuals from YouTube are needed in order to complete our objective. So when designing for pathway choice, teachers also need to understand that some students will need to take multiple paths in order to reach the learning objective--just like we need to.

With summer approaching, I encourage every teacher to think about a lesson from this perspective. Start small, with just one class.  Consider the learning objectives that you have for a day and work backwards to create pathways for your students to meet those objectives. This doesn’t have to be an arduous effort. In fact, it can be a fun afternoon activity. Start by working with what you have already, just organize it so that the students have choice rather than your making the choice for them.

“Personalized learning” can seem like one of those educational buzz-phrases that is difficult to unpack and understand.  But, let me offer an entry point into this concept. Personalized learning is about approaching learning from the perspective of the learner, rather than the perspective of the teacher, just as we do as adults in the course of our lives every day.

Consider this everyday challenge: the lightbulb in the headlight of your car burns out.  How are you going to fix it?  Go ahead, write down your first step.  Now, write down your next step.

I’ve done this activity with close to a thousand educators this year.  The answers they’ve given span a range: “Finding a YouTube video for my car’s make and model,” “Heading to the car manual first,” “Not messing with it; going to the dealership,” “Easy, I already know how to do this,” “I’m just going to start unscrewing things,” “My spouse takes care of these things.”  

As adults, we make personalized choices every day about how we learn new skills and acquire new information. We know there are many viable and good “pathways” to reaching the learning objective. 

The choice that we make in terms of what pathway we choose for changing the lightbulb is typically based on three factors: the situation (time, speed needed, challenge level, etc.), our prior experience, and our go-to-problem solving strategies (some of us are more comfortable following directions on YouTube, others of us want the step-by-step from a manual).

As educators, we know that there are many good and viable pathways towards reaching the learning objectives in our classrooms, too. There are many ways to understand how a bill becomes a law, or how to solve a mathematical equation. It’s just that we often choose the pathway for our students, rather than giving students all of the pathway options and giving them agency.  Why?  What if we gave them choice? I’ll explore that next month.