In 2014, Independent by Design, a history of the New York State Association of Independent School (NYSAIS) from its inception in 1947 to 2014 was published. I can imagine a reader asking why I would work on a new volume about NYSAIS just three years later. The answer is twofold. For one, the past three years represent a period of significant organizational growth and development. This new level of momentum and focus has not only established NYSAIS as a thought-leader in the field, operating at a high level among independent school associations world-wide, it also comes at a time when education itself is undergoing a significant tectonic shift. That this surge also comes at a time when NYSAIS is celebrating its seventieth anniversary makes it all that more noteworthy. One way to look at this volume is as an important postscript to the earlier volume. But it also serves as the opening chapter of NYSAIS’s next seventy years of operation. The ability of the organization to make significant adjustments in an era of deep social change and disruption while staying true to its seventy-year-old mission is a clear sign of a healthy organizational future. To say our current era is interesting would be an under-statement. There are a number of forces at work, of course. But a key one is the way multiple generations, with their particular mindsets, overlap and interact. When I was first teaching, for instance, we lived in a world essentially of three generations— The Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, and Generation X. Today, our world is five generations strong—The Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials (GenerationY), and Generation Z. For a long time, the Baby Boomers more or less called the shots, but the shift is now on—with the Baby Boomers moving into retirement and the younger generations having both a greater presence and greater influence. And all signs suggest that this influence will only get stronger. Writing for the Independent School Magazine Blog in 2016, NAIS president-elect Donna Orem underscored this ongoing shift in leadership. “‘Who will lead’ is a refrain we hear routinely in the media as the workforce changes hands from the Baby Boomers and Generation X to the Millennials,” she writes. “The leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation reached retirement age in 2011. According to the Pew Research Center, 10,000 Boomers will retire each day through the year 2030.” This generational shift also corresponds with the dizzying rise of technological innovation. Technology is changing just about everything in our culture, including communications, manufacturing, the workplace environment, entertainment, shopping, and, of course, education. The schools that NYSAIS serves are all multigenerational. They all wrestle with the shifts in education brought on in part by technology, by brain-science research, and by changing cultural perspectives about the role of education in society. For its part, NYSAIS is influenced by all of this—and the progress it makes every day is testimony to the attentiveness and hard work of the staff. Design for Independence, Inspiration, and Innovation: The New York State Association of Independent Schools at 70 presents the changes that have taken place over the past three years within the organization. Granted, this is a short time period, but NYSAIS’s seventieth anniversary and the rapid, impressive changes are more than enough justification for this book—as a birthday celebration, as testimony to the hard work of the current staff, and as an exploration of the evolving role of school associations.
