From the President

NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett

Welcome to NAIS online - a virtual community ready to serve you "anywhere, anytime." I invite you to browse around our website to learn more about our organization and about our nearly 1,400 private, independent schools that we proudly serve as members. NAIS's mission is to be the national voice for independent schools.

Our website is one way we deliver to our schools targeted resources, including tools and research. Increasingly we seek ways to use the website to not only deliver information, but to gather information, and to allow for networking and information sharing.  As NAIS aspires to be the information and knowledge organization for independent school education, we will regularly populate our site with new monographs, sample templates, links, and other resources. We encourage you to contact us as well to indicate "what's missing" or "what's needed." Below you will find a series of queries leading to different destinations on our site. Click on the links to explore what we have.

NEW!  Presented at the 2009 NAIS Annual Conference:
Also link to NAIS's resources on financial sustainability, which include a videocast by Pat Bassett.

• Inevitable Surprises, Brutal Facts, and Unshakeable Beliefs - President's Breakfast & Annual Meeting (2/26/09)
  Bassett used sailing metaphors to describe the challenge schools face in navigating our economy's financial storms. Although it sounds counterintuitive, he recommended sailing into the storm. In the words of former NAIS trustee and fellow sailor Peter Tacy, "When a boater finds himself in weather that exceeds his vessel's capacity for normal management, he should try to keep the boat's bow into the wind and waves since for most boats of modest size that's the safest way to manage the forces that are involved."
• Financial Survivability - Featured Workshop
  Pat Bassett, NAIS president, presents an accounting of six factors of "the perfect storm" that in confluence may place schools in financial jeopardy.  Given this reality for some and possibility for others, how does a school go beyond financial sustainability planning to prepare for other scenarios? Bassett helps schools to develop three contingency plans, "best case," "worst case," and "most likely case."

Click below or use the navigation items on the left to view more of Pat's most recently published work.

Why Belong to NAIS

NAIS, the National Association of Independent Schools, representing approximately 1,400 schools nationally and internationally, has as our mission to be the national voice of independent schools and the center for collective action.

Bassett's Blog

This feature by NAIS President Pat Bassett offers advice, commentary, and a solicitation for feedback by readers.

PowerPoint Presentations

This section contains NAIS President Pat Bassett's PowerPoint presentations featured at various locations around the country.

Commentary Articles

Op-eds and opinion pieces by NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett, published in a variety of publications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to questions on a variety of services that NAIS provides.

Bassett Blog 2010/06: Disruptive Realities (Part II)
June 1, 2010
This blog is derived from the NAIS President’s Annual Report to the Membership, February 25th, 2010, Moscone Center, San Francisco, California. This is culled from the second half of that address. Last month’s blog came from the first half.

Bassett Blog 2010/05: Disruptive Realities (Part I)
May 1, 2010
This blog is derived from the NAIS President’s Annual Report to the Membership, February 25th, 2010, Moscone Center, San Francisco, California. This is culled from the first half of that address. Next month’s blog will come from the second half.

Basset Blog 2010/04: The Seven Seals
April 1, 2010
This essay is derived from the NAIS President’s Annual Report to the Membership, February 25, 2010, Moscone Center, San Francisco.

Bassett Blog 2010/03: PFB Remarks on NAIS Diversity Leadership Award Presentation to Reveta Bowers, Friday, 11:30 am, 2/26/2010
March 1, 2010
The following remarks were presented by NAIS President Pat Bassett in presenting the NAIS Diversity Leadership Award to Reveta Bowers, head of school at The Center for Early Education, who has also served as president of the California Association of Independent Schools and treasurer of the National Association of Independent Schools in a long career in independent schooling. The remarks appear here in a slightly edited form.

Bassett Blog 2010/02: Change Leadership, Part Two
February 1, 2010
What works — even in schools? Here are three thoughts that occur to me. (1)Understanding the psychology of the horses in the stable. (2) Aligning the rider and the stallion. (3) Betting on the fast horses.

Bassett Blog 2010/01: Change Agency Leadership: — Why Bother?
January 1, 2010
When we feel most skeptical about our next quixotic tilt at windmills, it’s useful to remind ourselves the motivation for taking a school leadership job in the first place.

Bassett Blog 2009/12: On Mascots and Nicknames
December 1, 2009
Recently, a constituent wrote to me to wonder if NAIS had written anything on managing the furor over changing mascots — i.e., abandoning a team name like the Indians. I replied that, no, we didn’t have a piece, but since I’m the expert on this matter, I’d write one. Why can I claim expertise? Because I’ve handled this matter badly, twice.

Bassett Blog: The Essential Ted
November 1, 2009
The first time I met Ted Sizer in person was when he returned as an alum (class of 1949) to speak at Pomfret School (Connecticut), where I was head at the time, and I thought, “Here is a man with gravitas, sorely in short supply in the world.”

Bassett Blog 2009/10: On Being College-Prep
October 1, 2009
What is driving the loyalty to independent schools? At the deepest levels, NAIS believes that independent school families appreciate the value-set of our schools, see the peer attitudes/ kid culture as affirming of an orientation necessary for success, appreciate the culture and climate the faculty instill in terms of “knowing and valuing” each child, and, in this particular moment of economic uncertainty, accordingly commit to whatever it takes to keep their children safe and secure in a familiar and working educational setting. In short, parents seems to have concluded, “Let’s sacrifice as needed to keep the kids in their school so we at least don’t have to worry about their well-being, while we sort out how to hold the rest of our economic lives together.”

Bassett Blog 2009/09: Onboarding
September 1, 2009
As I tweeted recently, "Not having new teacher induction is like throwing toddlers into the pool without instruction: Most don't drown and do learn to swim, after being traumatized."

Bassett Blog 2009/08: Seven Myths About Independent Schools
August 1, 2009
We know why families choose independent schools. They value what Tony Jarvis, past-head of Roxbury Latin School, called environments where students "are known and loved," and they believe what the research documents, that independent schools' intimacy, manageable size, and universally high expectations for behavior and achievement produce graduates who succeed in college and life.

We know as well why families who can afford independent schools don't choose them (aside from the "confirmation bias" we all have of preferring what we have chosen to other alternatives). Families who reject independent schools tend to believe in one or more myths about independent schools.

Demonstrations of Learning for 21st-Century Schools
One year ago, I wrote a piece entitled “An Education President for the 21st Century,” in which I cited current scholarship on the skills and values that will be necessary for students to succeed and prosper in these turbulent and ever-changing times. All five of the sources cited were in extraordinary agreement about the six basic skills and values that will be expected and rewarded in this century. Since the publication of that article, a sixth influential work has been released — The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need — And What We Can Do About It, by Tony Wagner, co-director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard University — with virtually the same list of skills and values.