2026 SAIS Annual Conference

Independent schools are operating within a widening web of interconnected crises – educational, cultural, economic, technological, and ecological – that increasingly shape what schools can do and who they can become. In response, many institutions adopt an “abundance” strategy: adding programs, initiatives, and innovations in an effort to remain competitive. Yet this expansion often produces the opposite of what leaders intend:  greater fragmentation, mission drift, and institutional incoherence.
This session invites participants to explore how systemic dynamics such as Goodhart’s Law (when metrics become targets), Jevons’ Paradox (efficiency driving greater consumption), and multipolar traps – situations where individually rational choices lead to collectively destructive outcomes – shape decision-making in independent schools.
Participants will examine how well-intentioned initiatives can become absorbed into existing institutional incentives rather than transforming them and consider how schools might restore coherence between mission, culture, incentives, and practice. Attendees will leave with conceptual frameworks and practical questions for navigating complexity while preserving the deeper purposes of education.