Response to Kane Atlantic Article

In his recent article in the Atlantic, Thomas Kane highlights what the research tells us about children’s learning loss over the course of the pandemic.  The news he shares is sobering and a clarion call for schools – and their communities – to develop clear, ambitious, and equitable plans to ensure that their students are able to catch up, or at the very least that the gap between where students are and where they ought to be is narrowed.

Independent Schools have not been immune from the challenges posed by the pandemic, and they would do well to assess their students, determine what gaps exist, and develop concrete plans to address them.  While some schools may want to soft-peddle the learning losses their students have experienced, they would do well to be highlighting the strategies that they plan to put into place to close the gap and ensure student progress (Kane suggests extending the school year, adding double periods in math and reading, and creating small tutoring cohorts, all of which have been shown in research to be effective in closing achievement gaps). 

Aggressive, thoughtful, research-validated strategies will appeal to many parents who wonder how their children will ever catch up.  Helping parents understand the challenges their children face and what their school proposes to do to address those challenges can serve as welcome transparency, help build trust, and support student retention.  On the recruitment side, families who feel their current schools are not responding quickly enough may be looking for alternatives. Independent Schools that actively promote the plans they have developed to close the pandemic gap will be better positioned to recruit new students from families who demonstrably care about their children’s future. 

One area that Kane does not address, but which has gotten tremendous press coverage, is the social and emotional toll that the pandemic has taken on young people, call it the Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) gap.  Independent Schools are uniquely positioned to support students in the ongoing development of their social skills and emotional resilience as students are so well known by their teachers, advisors, and coaches.  Independent Schools would do well to highlight all that they do to support students in these critical areas of development that are so often neglected, both to assure current parents that their children are being cared for in all respects, and to help prospective parents understand one of the critical values of an Independent School education.

This is a rare opportunity for Independent Schools to demonstrate the value that they bring to the educational experience of their students.  It all begins with assessing where each school population is in terms of academic and SEL gaps and then committing the resources necessary to closing them.

Written by Kolia O’Connor
Managing Director

What should An Admissions Director's Summer To Do List Look Like?

Ahh….summer. The mere thought of it can make you want to jump in a pool with a cold drink in your hand. However, although you need that R&R to refresh and rejuvenate you from a long school year, the summer is an excellent time to focus on making your next school year less stressful and more productive. Here are some crucial checklist items you don’t want to miss this summer to ensure you’ll hit the ground running in the fall.  

Step away from the office ... to work. 

Without the high demands of visitors shadowing, touring and attending admissions events, take your team (or just yourself) off-campus to work and focus on your goals for the next school year. Without co-workers distracting you and the phone ringing, you can take a wider look at your admissions calendar and events, your strategic goals and the job responsibilities of each team member. Whether you find a local coffee shop or cafe, you’ll be shocked how the ideas and creativity will flow. Make sure to pre-plan by having a detailed agenda so that everyone stays on track. Before you know it, you’ll be highly caffeinated, but most importantly, motivated to execute a plan of action for the next year. 

Engage with your summer camp audience. 

Most schools host athletic camps, at the very least, on campus during the summer. Others have more robust summer camp programs including fine arts and academics. If your school offers camps to younger students, you need to be present. Campers and their parents deserve the full customer service experience from the second they step foot on campus. Partnering with your summer camp director to help facilitate a great on-campus experience and add the lens of admissions will really raise the bar and leave customers feeling great about your school. 

Map out your printing/marketing/social media plan for the year. 

Ugg…this sounds like a lot of work, right? Yes, you are correct. It is a ton of work. But when you spend the time to map out your marketing/social media plan when the phone is not ringing off the hook and students aren’t in your office hounding you and asking questions, you’ll be grateful in November that you took care of this in June. Be sure to bring your budget to the table and your Marketing/Communications Director to hash out the plan for the year. By creating monthly themes and planning a social media/marketing plan for big admissions events, you’ll never get behind! 

Time used wisely and strategically in the summer can make you feel much more motivated to conquer another year. Call that local coffee shop or cafe and reserve a spot for your next meeting now! 

Written by Tricia Roos
Managing Director

What Should A Development Director's Summer To Do List Look Like?

Here's a quick list to put some detail around a central belief we have at The Gowan Group:  great Directors of Development kill it over the summer so that once families return to campus in the fall, they can devote themselves to the most important part of their work: building relationships.

• Create calendars for all Development activities, layered together, to insure there are no collisions

• Construct Annual Report

• Finalize your own evaluation, that of your team and establish new yearly goals cascading from the Head's goals

• Create yearly Development Plan 

• Write (and hound delegate writers for) all Annual Giving communications

• Meet with Director of Enrollment to review new families

• Update alumni information with high school and college graduations

• Rough out themes and content for alumni publications and other periodicals

• Distant horizon planning: e.g. imminent capital campaign, event sunsetting, personnel change

• Map out Development Committee agendas w/ Chair

• Meet with Head and Facilities Director to review capital needs of school

• Clean up:  set summer goals for database manager, toss obsolete materials, archive important work from last year

• Thank/celebrate admin peers and your team

• Review Development budget with Dir. of Business

• Take a real break

Failure to complete these summer projects sets off an avalanche of unhappy consequences: the development team bunkered in the office through September and October unavailable to families and colleagues, hurriedly compiling the Annual Report (with donor-irking errors and impact-reducing delay), issuing spastic Annual Giving communications, some of them stepping on other key school initiatives.  As a result, continuing families re-confirm their perceptions of the school's development efforts as immature and aggravating, and new parents feel confused. Conversely, the Director of Development who has checked off most of this list starts the school year with momentum having built the time to personally welcome new families and continue stewarding continuing families. 

Written by:
Mike Vachow
Managing Director, The Gowan Group