11 minute read
People and Ideas
People and Ideas
An excerpt from the Parents Weekend 2025 Parent Address by Head of School Trevor Ott
I will begin by sharing an excerpt from a chapter entitled “Human Progress and the Individual Idea” from the Management and Leadership Handbook, which is based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard and which students study in their senior year.
"There are individuals, usually in the fields of the arts and philosophy, who postulate new realities for the social order. Social orders progress or decline in ratio to the number of new realities which are postulated for them.
"These postulates are made, usually, single-handedly by individuals of imagination….
"Ideas and not battles mark the forward progress of humankind.
"Individuals, and not masses, form the culture of the race.
"Humankind goes on from the milestone of one individual to the milestone of the next.
"Human history is the track along which individuals, here and there, have been strong or brilliant and have changed the complexion of the road."
This insight can be used to better understand history overall, as well as on a smaller scale, such as that of the school. You may not realize how much you are among the “strong or brilliant individuals” creating the school’s history.
Thinking about this recently, I recalled to my mind a video created by a few of our students, primarily Mikai Karl, in 2014 to launch our fundraising campaign for the Courtyard Renovation Project. It was titled, “Are You a Part of It?”
[Watch the video on YouTube here]
(video transcript)
“The Delphian School was founded in 1976 by a group of educators and parents concerned about the decline of standards in American education.
“Inspired by the vision of our founding headmaster, a small group of courageous individuals began paving a road to a better education for future generations with the most valuable material they had to hand—their belief that a brighter future and a civilization based in reason would exist at the end of that road.
“But even as we appreciate the group that started it all, we can take for granted what it took to pave the road we now walk so easily: their dream of what could be. Our dream exists because of the contribution, courage, and commitment of individuals like you.
“As a group, we now stand on the strength of three generations—on the goodwill and direct support of alumni, graduates, parents, colleagues, and friends numbering in the many thousands. Our hope is that the road we pave together will lead us to a brighter future—but the future can be ever brighter, and the road we pave need never end.
“Delphian’s future is now. I’m a part of it; are you?”
(end of video transcript)
The message of that video rings true today—you are a part of creating Delphian’s future.
When you participate and contribute, whether through a truly special celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week, helping us create a renovated student infirmary or a new student lounge, or by introducing a new family to the school, you shape the track along which we progress, and you change the complexion of the road.
By being part of the team and postulating our future in the various ways you do, you become the milestones by which we both mark and achieve our progress.
We wouldn’t have a group without you, and I point this out because if all you did was send your child here, you played a significant role in helping us create this group.
When considering this year’s address, I felt it was time to revisit and discuss a topic that I last shared ten years ago, when I briefed attendees on the business model of private schools.
Back in 2015, when I first looked into this topic as the new Head of School, I came to the conclusion that the most basic “perceived value” of an education could be described by a simple equation:
For any enrolled family, whether paying full tuition or not, this formula worked for me as a concept. Of course, you could replace the concept of “perceived value” with a number in dollars, representing what the school’s operating budget should be, but that isn’t quite the point.
With no other data available, would you perceive the value of a $70,000 per year school to be higher than the value of a $50,000 per year school?
What if the $70,000 per year school had only one student, while the $50,000 per year school had 1,000?
With that data, which school would you perceive to be of greater value?
With these questions in mind, you can see how the data points in the equation are related; admittedly this isn’t a very sophisticated equation, but it was a useful reference point when first looking at Delphian’s business model.
However, Delphian and virtually every independent school in the country discounts tuition for a significant number of their students, immediately making this equation incomplete if not irrelevant.
If one could get a $70,000 education for $40,000, one would not then think of that education as a $40,000 education. One would continue to think of and expect a $70,000 education from that school.
In 2019, the National Association of Independent Schools reported that 60% of private school students nationally were receiving some form of discounted tuition and that the number of full-pay families was in decline. Today, the national average for boarding school tuition is $69,000, and the average aid given is $25,000.
As a business model, this brings about an interesting problem as the model itself creates a deficit in resources available to deliver both what is promised and what is expected in terms of perceived value.
How can a private school following this model manage to maintain and even increase its perceived value over the decades while simultaneously discounting tuition more, not less, each year?
In looking at this question myself, I found only a single significant answer: endowments. An endowment is an amount of money acquired and invested but never itself spent. As the investment grows, the core investment is protected and only the growth is funneled into the school’s budget. The first role and goal of an endowment is to provide the school with sufficient resources to deliver on its promise to all families enrolled.
A mature endowment makes it possible for all families, whether receiving financial support or not, to receive an education far above and beyond what their tuition dollars alone could possibly achieve. This is the model that all the top schools in the country fall into. It can be seen most clearly at the college level.
The nation’s top colleges are spending two to four times tuition on every student enrolled. This filters all the way down into the high school and grade schools as an expectation.
In 2015, we announced the Founders Endowment and launched our initiative to strengthen the school’s financial position. The endowment held $2 million at that time, and we were tied with four other schools for fourth place out of 182 US-based private schools on BoardingSchoolReview.com. Unfortunately, it was fourth from last. The top school was Phillips Exeter, an East Coast private high school with an endowment exceeding $1 billion.
The endowment itself, really, is a postulated future, one in which the school continues to exist and thrive into the future, secure, and with sufficient resources to successfully pursue its goals.
Today, we have moved up on that list to 61st place, with an endowment that roughly holds $50 million, making it possible for us to pursue aspects of future building that were previously completely out of reach, which is pretty fantastic—2015 postulate achieved!
But what of the next postulate?
While we have made significant progress, the truth is that we are in catch-up mode, as our endowment does not yet replace the budget for the financial aid we provide each year. Last year, we provided $4.8 million in scholarships and financial aid. The endowment yield we added to the budget was $1.65 million. Our actual model looks like this:
Does that help you understand why, despite enormous recent progress, our endowment needs to continue to grow?
Thankfully, the business model Delphian spent the first 40 years pursuing, the model we still pursue today, has provided us a significant competitive advantage in the field of education disrelated to our endowment’s annual draw. It is, in fact, our greatest strength. It would still be our greatest strength, even were our endowment to grow to infinity and beyond.
It is the Study Technology® and educational philosophy of Mr. Hubbard and our curriculum and program, which are designed from the ground up based on that technology and philosophy, which provide us with this enormous competitive advantage. With it, we are doing more with our resources than any other school I’m aware of.
We can illustrate this advantage by reviewing the test scores from a battery of standardized tests our students took this year in comparison to the scores from students at other schools nationwide.
Non-comprehension is on the left and full comprehension on the right, with the vast majority of students falling somewhere in between. It is sobering to see that such a small percentage of the nation’s students achieve comprehension levels greater than 80% as measured by this test.
The first thing you may notice is that Delphian’s results do not form a bell curve. One way you might interpret this graph, as I did, is that it demonstrates that a truly revolutionary result has been achieved in education. On the left, you see students entering the Delphian program with varying levels of competency, and on the right, you see them near the completion of their Delphian programs. This year’s testing revealed that Delphian students, on average, across the board, are at least 1.5 grade levels ahead of expectations in all subjects.
And to further illustrate the revolutionary results our students are achieving, the next graph shows just the results from students nearing the end of the Delphian program.
Exceeding all standardized expectations, the Form 7 and 8 students simply maxed out the test in reading, language, math, science, social studies, and English.
Building on these strengths, what could we accomplish with additional resources? With a mature endowment? With fuel added to an already blazing fire? What are we already doing that we could do even better? What change would come relative to education here on the hill?
Let’s take a moment to stir our imaginations by looking at our published vision, goals, and purposes.
Vision
A civilization based in reason.
Goals:
Give young people a challenging educational structure that involves them responsibly and creatively with their environment and spotlights integrity, backbone and professionalism; where they can come to a certainty that their lives and careers are theirs to build; and where they develop the intellectual, ethical and productive tools they will need to build them.
Help bring about fundamental change in the field of education.
Purpose:
Develop a comprehensive and exemplary K–12 program, including curriculum, graduation requirements and faculty training materials, always striving for higher standards of workability, efficiency and effectiveness.
Create and maintain a premier international boarding and day school where every student can thrive and where individuals and delegations—educational, political, philanthropic, etc.—can observe this pursuit of an educational ideal.
Establish and maintain an association of schools and educators who share these goals and purposes. Support these educators through licensing and sales of program elements, materials and other services.
Build a growing flood of individuals who can help bring about an improved civilization.
When we think of our endowment goals, it will serve us well to consider the magnitude of this set of vision, goals, and purposes. These are not your typical goals for a private K-12 school, or any school for that matter.
Therefore, postulating an endowment comparable to that of other top schools can only be the first step in a larger plan, because the school’s ultimate goal isn’t simply academic excellence or producing graduates with knowledge, ethics, integrity, and leadership.
It’s a star-high goal, a vision. It’s the creation of a civilization based in reason, which we can only realize one individual at a time.
The world our children are inheriting demands so much more than knowledge. It demands judgment, courage, and the strength to be in control of one’s life and environment, despite challenges on countless fronts.
As we approach our 50th anniversary, let’s look forward to another 50 years. In doing so, I invite you to ask yourself, “What legacy will I leave?” Through your involvement and support, you have the opportunity to ensure that Delphian’s mission not only endures but also thrives long into the future.
