Imperative: Strengthening the Supervision Skills of Faculty Administrators

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

Benchmarking for Good has been researching the state of faculty climate for the past year. Our research contributers include 23 Jewish day schools with nearly 1200 faculty members. 

A key topic our research explored is the extent to which faculty members believe the supervision they receive enhances their professional skills. The data suggest there is ample room for improvement. In fact, only 43% of faculty are very satisfied that the feedback provided by their work superior makes them grow professionally. Nearly 30% are either unsatisfied or aren’t sure one way or the other.

Drilling down among the schools in our sample and using the Net Promoter Score metric, which nets out the scores of faculty members who are unsatisfied from those who are very satisfied, we learn that there are significant differences in performance on this measure among day schools.

Question to Readers: where does your school's performance fit on this chart on this issue?

What this Information Means for the Field

Schools in the top ⅓ of performers include Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston, New Jersey and the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Hartford. These schools recognize that it is vital to take steps to ensure supervisors have the skills to instill a growth mindset among their faculty members. These school leaders recognize the fact that it is unwise to assume that assuming that experienced faculty members will automatically become capable supervisors is a "bridge too far." They recognize that training supervisors on how to supervise effectively is the most powerful type of professional development a school can invest in. 

To Learn More

To learn more about how to evaluate the effectiveness of your school’s supervision, I invite you to contact me at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org. We can also have a discussion about how your school can take advantage of Benchmarking for Good’s school research grant programs to enhance school effectiveness and climate. 

4 Steps that Will Make Your School a Magnet for Teachers in 2025

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good

It is a new year and the right year for taking the steps to make your school a magnet for the best faculty out there. In support of this, Benchmarking for Good’s faculty climate research among more than 1,100 educators working in 23 diverse Jewish day schools with over 8,000 students provides statistically significant guidance for school leaders striving to retain valued faculty and recruit talented staff additions.

We analyzed the factors that correlated with schools scoring the highest on the question: “How likely would you be to recommend working at your school to a friend or family member?” The winning schools exceled at the following factors:

1.       Faculty feeling alignment with their school’s Mission. Schools whose faculty felt strongly aligned with their Missions are significantly more likely to be advocates to potential new hires. While no school offers the perfect working environment and conditions, it turns out that feeling Mission aligned really helps compensate for any shortcomings that might exist in other areas and turns employees into advocates.

2.       Faculty members’ perception that their supervisors have realistic expectations about workload. Schools whose faculty felt they had clear workload expectations and whose supervisors exhibited empathy about workload limits were significantly stronger advocates for working at their school.

3.       Satisfaction with the work environment (collegiality, supervision, support, space, etc.) Perceiving their work environment to be a congenial one in terms of interpersonal and supervisory relationships, available support, and space was the third most important correlating factor relative to being an employer of choice.

4.       Satisfaction that they were being provided with the tools needed to perform their work (e.g., in terms of curriculum, technology, etc.) Related to the previous point, faculty members who perceived their school leadership as going the extra mile to ensure they have the tools to effectively do their job are significantly more likely to advocate employment at their schools than faculty who feel unsupported in this regard. 

Acting on These Findings

1. ·         Regularly conduct faculty climate research to learn how your faculty believes you perform on these four factors. Benchmarking for Good would be happy to discuss partnering with you via our grant programs on such research.  

2. ·         Where the research indicates you are falling short, speak-- via focus groups on one on one interviews --with trusted staff members to learn how they assess your school’s performance and what they believe it would take to improve it.  

3. ·         Assess what you have learned and decide on your appropriate action.

4. ·         Create an implementation plan and communicate about it to the faculty so they understand and will support your plan.

5. ·         Finally, monitor the impact of your plan via short, tactical surveys ("How are we doing?). As appropriate, celebrate the wins with your faculty, and, where necessary, learn from shortfalls, and take corrective action.

   
   

You can be confident that you are on a journey of building increased trust with your faculty and learning how to steadily improve on the journey to being an employer of choice in your market.

For support understanding and learning how to strengthen your school’s faculty climate please contact Dr. Harry Bloom, at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org

Why Day School Educational Administrators are Happier than the Teachers They Supervise...And What to Do About It

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

In an environment where day schools are struggling with faculty retention and hiring challenges, Benchmarking for Good research points to an important barrier to improvement. Educational Administrators are happier than the teachers they supervise!

Some of this is likely due to the fact that competent educational administrators are in high demand and have more negotiating power with current and prospective employers than do faculty. Or, to the fact that Administrators are more likely than teachers to move from school to school, and, in the process, negotiate better compensation, increased responsibility, and more authority.

Why this Matters

A key consequence of this phenomenon is that administrators may be assuming their faculty are as content with their condition as they are, and miss the danger signs that can lead to faculty attrition and lack of advocacy for potential new teacher hires to work at their school.

The Facts

Based on 2024 Benchmarking for Good surveys of teachers and educational administrators in 15 Jewish day schools employing close to 1000 teachers and 67 Educational Administrators, we learn that, relative to administrators, teachers are significantly:

·         less proud of working at their school

·         less aligned with their school’s mission

·         less happy with their jobs and work environment, career advancement opportunities, and with the openness of communication.

And, in terms of satisfaction with salary, while administrators were far from ecstatic with their salary, their satisfaction soars far above that of faculty members!

Administrators desiring to retain their teachers and attract new faculty should be aware of these discrepancies in satisfaction and plan to take action to maximize retention and enthusiasm.

Taking Action

What kinds of actions can Educational Administrators take to acknowledge the gaps and work to bridge them? Here are just a few ideas to consider:

1. Conduct Faculty Climate research so that you are aware of precise areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among your own faculty. Our work to date does suggest that it is not uncommon for school leaders to gain fresh insights into faculty climate from well conducted surveys of their staff members. Knowledge is power!

2. Conduct listening sessions with trusted faculty members who are invested in your school’s success and “have their fingers on the pulses of their colleagues.” Use the sessions both to ensure employees feel heard about perceived problems and to surface reasonable improvement suggestions.

3. Address faculty members’ salary dissatisfaction by advocating with the Board to benchmark your faculty salaries relative to those of competitors. In addition to working to bring your salaries into alignment with benchmarks, take steps to build confidence among the faculty that the system for administering salaries is both educationally sound and equitable.

In Summary

In a landscape where qualified faculty are in short supply and successful retention and recruitment are crucial, it's essential for school administrators to possess a fact-based understanding of faculty satisfaction. Access to timely research that facilitates this understanding is priceless. Benchmarking for Good has amassed considerable experience in conducting and analyzing faculty climate research and invites your school to inquire about our grant programs that provide such research. For further information, please reach out to Dr. Harry Bloom at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to explore the opportunities in this regard.