Featured Insight
Enrollment pressure, affordability, and AI aren’t separate problems anymore; they’re converging at once. Ian Symmonds & Associates argue that AI is not just adding a classroom tool but reshaping what education means. This briefing defines high-performing schools, leadership teams, and boards and identifies four types of schools on a strategy continuum: fatalities, preservationists, adaptors, and disruptors. Does your school have the clarity to know where it stands, the courage to say what needs to change, and the staying power to build the leadership that gets it there?
Leadership & Governance
Jennifer Abrams shares how giving and receiving feedback are learnable professional skills, not fixed traits, yet most school leaders never get trained in either. She breaks down four key moves: naming issues in professional language, saying less and sitting in silence, suspending certainty when receiving feedback, and treating reactions to feedback as a skill to build rather than a flaw to judge.
Giving and Accepting Feedback Is a Professional Capacity That Can Be Improved
- The Responsibility of Setting the Tone
- Treasury and IRS Proposed Rules May Impact Tax-Exemption of Independent Schools
- What “Healthy” Actually Means for a School
Community & Connection
Most educators believe digital technology has fundamentally “rewired” children’s brains, leaving them less able to sustain attention than students a generation ago. Cognitive Scientist Daniel Willingham argues the more likely explanation is motivational. Kids may still be fully capable of paying attention, but less willing to do so because digital devices have raised their expectations for immediate reward and lowered their threshold for boredom.
Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Do Today’s Kids Have Reduced Attention Spans?
- Are Schools Inadvertently Making Students More Stressed?
- K-12 Cybersecurity Foundations
- The Next Hiring Season Starts Now: 5 Ways Independent Schools Can Strengthen Their School’s Hiring Process
Teaching & Learning
A recent Stanford review found only 20 rigorous studies among 800+ papers on AI in K-12 schools. Studies revealed that AI boosts student performance while in use, but gains often fade on unassisted tests, suggesting tool-dependence rather than real learning. Teachers benefit more consistently from AI adoption, saving planning time without quality loss. Noted concerns are the lack of U.S.-based studies, research skewed toward math, and student well-being effects that remain almost entirely unstudied.
The Evidence Base on AI in K-12: A 2026 Review
- Taking a Gradual Release (GRR) Approach to Student Choice
- What Effective AI Professional Learning Should Look Like
- Why “Productive Struggle” Still Matters In the Age of AI
Brand & Communication
Thrive Hive demonstrates how schools should treat parent communications as a strategy. They encourage schools to clarify where parents should look for information (with a practical template), match messages to the right channel, coordinate across departments so families aren’t flooded, and write with the parent’s inbox experience in mind, asking schools to stop thinking about what they need to send and start thinking about what families need to receive.
Are Your Parent Communications Working for Parents?
- Personalization Is the New Expectation
- Today’s AI Impact on the Role of Enrollment Director
- What To Do When A Great Prospect Goes Quiet
From the Archives
Independent schools are navigating uncertainty, complexity, and accelerating change. What does it mean to lead teaching & learning, support faculty growth, and make decisions that will hold up over time? The SAIS Teaching & Learning Framework is a practical tool designed to help school leaders reflect on, strengthen, and design learning that endures.