Demand & Reward

At SSATB this week, Pat Bassett, President of NAIS had some interesting things to say. He always does. I like to hear him speak. But, then again, so did the person who introduced him!*

Among the many interesting things he had to say, he said our schools really needed to wrestle with what are the skills and values that the 21st Century will demand and reward. I love that question and I would love to think about it and wrestle with it. I would love to have my school consider it and make it the topic of a faculty roundtable. It challenges our pasts and makes us ponder the future.

But, unfortunately, it is the wrong question.

Sad as it may be, our colleagues in the university admissions offices sit squarely between what programs and experiences we choose to offer and the very skills and values that the 21st Century will demand and reward. The reality those of us in school administration must face (versus those in school classrooms or those big thinkers like Pat) is that at the end of the day, the vast (vast!) majority of parents are not shelling out independent school tuition to a school without an impressive and mission-appropriate university placement list. Until the likes of the universities our parents envision for their children start to demand and reward those 21st Century skills and values in the admission selection processes, we will not be teaching or nurturing them, lest we do so at our peril.

This whole line of thought is similar to the one I had when NAIS was in Boston a number of years ago. Ruth Simmons, the president of Brown University (the first African-American named president of an Ivy League institution), charged us with what we should be doing to prepare students for the likes of Brown and all of higher education. She spoke so passionately and interestingly about diversity (in all its forms) that I raced back to my hotel room and logged onto the Brown University website. I was so excited and curious to see their application materials and how the criteria and questions therein reflected this important skill set and perspective their president valued. Call me an admissions geek.

Crushing disappointment followed by anger were my emotions as I noticed that standardized test scores, generic college essay questions, class rank, and gpa’s were still all of import to Brown University’s admissions committee. Nothing on their website or in their materials asked applicants about their experience with diversity, contributions they have made, lessons they have learned, perspectives they would bring to the Brown community. I actually sent her a letter. I never heard back.

We know the world is a changing place and whether you work with kindergarten or upper school candidates for admission, we can’t imagine the demands that will be placed on them or the life they will inhabit. We want to give them all that we can to make them the best prepared they can be, as has always been our tradition in independent schools. It’s a good and noble and valuable tradition.

But it comes with a high price tag, particularly in this economy. And unfortunately, it leaves us having to instead ask ourselves what are the skills and values that the 21st Century university admissions office will demand and reward.

Sad.



*If you weren’t at SSATB, I had the honour of introducing Pat. My remarks included a porn reference. I'll leave it at that.

Who are these people??

Greetings from SSATB in Phoenix. For those of you not here, apologies this post may be conference-centric. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the fact that the most popular workshop I’ve attended in the last two days was called “Keep the Job. Lose the Stress”. The room was literally standing-room only. People were seated on the floor in the aisles and piled up at the door, peeking and listening in. Now, I was in this session because I have to renew my Canadian work papers this school year and I thought it a good idea to have a back-up plan in case the Canadian government decided it would have no more of me.

What was fascinating was the number of very seasoned and very respected colleagues who were in this session. One was a past winner of an SSATB award and another I know has been at his school over 20 years and enjoys full enrollment! And then there’s the sheer volume of people in attendance, ranging from rookies to seasoned professionals. What are we to make of this?

Heather Hoerle has gone on this international listening tour through the US and Canada as she has ascended to her post. A great idea I think and my understanding is the tour has made 14 stops so far. In the opening session, she shared with us what she has learned and heard from her far-flung tour of member schools. The very first thing she mentioned was a call from the membership to invest in the test and be sure it is the best it can be.

Who are these people??

I’m not doubting what she’s heard but I’m wondering from whom. The colleagues I talk to are worried about the recession, meeting unrealistic enrollment goals, fighting back the flood of Chinese interest, and figuring out how to maximize financial aid. They are jockeying for respect and resources from their head and board, and trying to be heard by their administrative colleagues. And based on my experience today, they are a bit nervous about their job security, despite their accomplishments. Not a one of them is questioning the validity of the SSAT test. But that’s just my personal network.

SSATB: is it a testing organization with admissions professionals or an admissions organization with a test? I think there is a challenge going forward to finally wrestle this question to the ground. Can it be both? Maybe. But it better know which is the dominant personality and, for now, it seems to me that we have never craved more than we do at this moment a national voice of advocacy and expertise.

In 500 words.

As I start this post, I expect it to be short because I’m not sure what to think of this article from the Wall Street Journal about changes in admissions essay questions to elite MBA programmes. I’m really just sharing. Some of the questions are interesting and even the formats can be intriguing, like the school that wanted the response limited to a tweet. (I guess they assume any MBA applicant worth their trouble has a Twitter account and “tweets”.)

There is some noted concern that paid consultants influence their essays although that’s not much of a stretch from our own concerns that parents influence the essays that we read. I like the essay topics that are grounded in the mission of a school better than the generic ones about challenges, role models/mentors, and what should we know about you. I just spent the last half an hour looking for some good examples from independent schools and what I found was that most of us now have our applications and questionnaires hidden behind logins and online applications. But that’s another topic.

One school did make a nice statement about itself but then followed it up with the pedestrian “how will you contribute?” question. It started well enough but the actual question could be copied and pasted from most other applications. On the other hand, how much does it matter?

I hope they are out there but I don’t really know any colleagues who place so much emphasis on the essay that it can sway a decision one way or the other, despite all other measurable evidence to the contrary. If that is true and the essay can’t win admission for an otherwise weak candidate or deny admission to an otherwise strong candidate, then why bother?

I always read the essay and it is actually one of the first things I go to when reviewing a candidate. But I admit it’s not going to make a paradigm shift in my thinking or decision-making. It is just interesting.

So why require it? I don’t quite know.