Welcome to the Blueprint

At GLP, we believe that staying abreast of new ideas, trends, and information is essential to visionary leadership. This is the second edition of our new monthly newsletter that seeks to help leaders cut through the noise and find resources that are worth reading. Please forward to colleagues who may wish to subscribe - and let us know what you think!

Schools and Learning

1. As Public Schools Innovate, All Children Thrive

Between 80 and 90 percent of Montessori schools in the U.S. are private schools, but a recent Edutopia profile of a Title I public elementary school challenges us to ask: is this a perception or a reality? Great conditions for learning — which at Latta Elementary, include a student-centered, inquiry-based curricular approach and a deep investment in professional learning — benefit all students, regardless of background or perceived ability. We are curious to know how many self-described Montessori or inquiry-based independent schools see themselves reflected in this story — and can attest to the same levels of investment in professional learning, training, and assessment of learning outcomes. A serious whole-school commitment to a vision for learning and investment in capacity building are essential — and it can happen at scale. “One of the biggest misconceptions about Montessori education is that it is just for privileged children in the private sector,” says Dollie Morrell, the principal of Latta Elementary in South Carolina, “but as a large public school, we’re showing that Montessori works for every child.”

2. A New Era: Mergers, Acquisitions, and Closures

In March, two different private colleges in Vermont — College of St. Joseph and Southern Vermont College — announced that they would close at the end of the spring semester. They join a number of other small private institutions of higher education in New England that have recently announced closures or mergers . Moody’s forecasts that in the near future, private colleges will be closing at a rate of roughly fifteen colleges per year . It seems clear that we’re living in a difficult era for private educational institutions.

Virginia Sapiro, Professor of Political Science at Boston University, reminds us in a recent working paper that closures and mergers have been an intrinsic part of the educational landscape in the United States throughout the country’s history. While it’s worth reading the paper in full for its examination of college life cycles over the past two centuries, Inside Higher Ed has a summary and an interview with Sapiro here . Sapiro shows how colleges that are highly dependent on tuition are frequently pushed “over the cliff” by crises; over the centuries, these crises have pushed educational institutions to transform themselves in notable ways.

Sound familiar? We believe we are entering the next big wave of mergers, acquisitions, and closures for K-12 and higher ed. According to the 2018-2019 NAIS Trendbook , forty-five percent of member schools lost enrollment between 2013-2014 and 2017-2018. Of that forty-five percent, fourteen percent are classified as “in high decline,” having lost ten percent or more of their enrollment during that period. Elementary schools have been particularly affected: twenty-nine percent were in high decline over those five years. Sapiro’s research makes it clear that tuition-dependent colleges are at risk without substantial changes to their model; independent schools need to be having these conversations as well.

3. What if Collaboration is the New Competition?

Ben Hecht, the president and CEO of the organization Living Cities, understands the power of collaboration on an unusually large scale. At Living Cities, Hecht oversees a collaborative of eighteen of the world’s leading foundations and financial institutions to improve the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live. This unique, network-driven approach to social justice work is a radical departure from the work of most not-for-profit organizations, in which efforts are driven primarily by institutions on their own.



In this article , published jointly by Harvard Business Review and Bridgespan, Hecht outlines five vital lessons for driving large-scale social change through collaboration. We wonder: how might schools engage in similar strategic collaborations? In what ways could schools share resources in ways that sustain operating models, improve services, and achieve greater programmatic scale? Why don’t schools collaborate more robustly for learning and talent development?

In an emerging era of school mergers, acquisitions, and closings, these questions seem timely — and if you have experience in forging these kinds of collaborations, we’d love to hear about them!

Governance, Leadership, and Management

1. Can Conflict Be Productive?

If you’ve spent any time in schools — whether as a member of the professional community or as a trustee — you’ve probably noticed that most schools tend to exemplify what Liane Davey in Harvard Business Review describes as “conflict-avoidant culture.” While we may eschew conflict with good intentions, if teams aren’t able to engage in difficult conversations and work to find solutions, both productivity and organizational culture will suffer.

Although many organizations try to resolve this through training, Davey makes the provocative argument that leaders should instead normalize conflict in an organization: “To get productive conflict, you need to create an expectation that there will be (and should be) tensions on your team. If you can articulate what desirable, healthy, productive tensions look like, you can prevent people from interpreting diversity of thought as a dysfunctional dynamic.” We recommend that leaders explicitly distinguish between episodes of dialogue and discussion in meetings, so that a full exploration of tensions precedes an informed debate and decision making process.

Most helpful is the exercise Davey offers teams to map out these relationships. Davey writes, “With heightened awareness and a shared language, your team will start to realize that much of what they have been interpreting as interpersonal friction has actually been perfectly healthy role-based tension."

2. Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong

This article by Peter Cappelli (George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources) is clearly focused on the hiring practices of for-profit businesses, but we’d like to highlight a few of Cappelli’s ideas that could help shape how schools approach hiring as well.

Cappelli argues that organizations are too frequently relying on outside hiring as a default strategy to fill vacancies. Since there are significant costs involved with recruitment and on-boarding, Cappelli urges organizations to prioritize retaining current employees and, when vacancies do arise, hiring from within to fill those slots. We see this play out in schools — from mid-level to senior leadership roles - all the time. Without clear practices and paths for leadership development, schools discourage their own talent and look outside when openings arise.

Schools would benefit from learning how to screen and interview candidates, too. We recommend that schools become proficient in structured interviewing techniques , and a more robust screening and demonstration process before candidates come to campus. For example, fewer interviews, conducted with greater depth and methodology, are far better that the marathon day marching from office to office that most schools employ. Interestingly, Cappelli also offers new insights into the common practice of using employee referrals. When referred new hires are successful in their roles, we often take that as proof that the referral process helps to identify great candidates. In fact, research suggests that those new employees tend to do well primarily because they are actively mentored by their referrers. These relationships do matter, but they’re not aligned with the structures in place.

Finally, Cappelli argues that organizations should buck the trend of trying to maximize the number of candidates that apply for a position (which leads to multiple logistical issues). Instead, organizations should make the application more challenging, resulting in a narrowed applicant funnel and a smaller pool of better-qualified candidates.

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