If this was the title of a Jeopardy slide, the answers could be numerous. General Motors, Ford, & Chrysler might have been your answer if you are into the world of automobiles. Or maybe Yale, Princeton, and Harvard would have been your response if you followed college football in the 1880s. If you grew up with myself and the rest … Read More
The Intermountain Christian Story: Covenantal or Missional?
One of the foundational questions that every Christian school needs to respond to is that of purpose – Why do we exist? The answer, for some Christian schools, has been deeply rooted in the concept of whether they are a covenantal Christian school or a missional Christian school. Intermountain Christian is asking this question as they re-story. For ICS, and … Read More
The Intermountain Christian Story: Introduction
The ICS story officially began in 1982, originally narrated by a passionate group of parents and leaders from The Evangelical Free Church of Salt Lake. It began as a ministry of the church, commissioned to begin “building disciple-making servants within a Christ-centered Biblically based, academically challenging, and caring environment which is focused on building Christian character and values.” The context … Read More
Platooning and Schools?
Two words that do not immediately fit together in my mind. My immediate connection to the word “platoon” will continue to be the Oliver Stone movie from 1986, starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, and Charlie Sheen as Vietnam soldiers on their tour of duty. I don’t know if this film made the act of war more real for an 18-year … Read More
Saving Money for Public Education through Christian Schooling?
Jeff Spalding, former CFO for the City of Indianapolis and current director of Fiscal Policy and Analysis at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, published an interesting blog post last week titled If you think expanding school choice is expensive. I found his examples intriguing as they stimulated some good discussion around the question of whether we can really fund school choice in … Read More
The Teacher Effect
There was a motorcar company commercial that ran in our local television market, coining the phrase “The Eide Effect”. According to their website, this meant that their company built a business on the values that takes one beyond the “business as usual” transaction. This company wanted customers to know that they cared about the human connection and that this “Eide … Read More
Another Look at Why Parents Choose Christian Schools
Tony Kamphuis, Director of Niagara Association for Christian Education, sent CACE a link after reading More Than Scores – An Analysis of Why and How Parents Choose Private Schools, the Friedman Foundation’s paper documenting their findings on why parents choose private schools. A similar discovery paper was funded by the Society for Quality Education and published by The Fraser Institute … Read More
People, Process, Product
I was listening to NPR radio last week when a phrase caught my attention: People, Process, Product. This phrase, from my quick search, was first used by Motorola in their development of Six Sigma, the set of techniques and tools they developed for process improvement in the late 1980’s. Six Sigma hit the big time when Jack Welch used it … Read More
Why CACE? Why Now?
Good questions for sure! And, ones I have been asked a few times this past month. My personal response reflects two thought paths. The first comes from Philippians 2:1-4: Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united in Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then … Read More
Take One, Leave One: CACE as a Marketplace of Ideas
As we navigate the best ways that CACE can help meet the needs of Christian schools, we have heard this phrase, “marketplace of ideas,” from a number of educators. This phrase has definitely stuck and helped us focus on some specific ways our web presence might facilitate this need of Christian schools. Thus, to learn from the merchant and marketing … Read More