I applaud the federal government’s No Child Left Behind – and its lesser-known predecessor, Clinton’s Goals 2000 – for compelling schools to define themselves. Regardless of the public distaste for the standards and tests in their current form, most states and schools operated in a vacuum beforehand. There were many curricular “black holes” in America. You would expect responsible parents to inquire about the educational approach of a school weeks before they drop off their incoming kindergartner or freshman on the first day. Before the standards movement, this was a futile enterprise. Most parents could not discover what and how their child would learn in their new school because, tragically, their child’s new principal didn’t know either. The modern publication of content standards and corresponding test scores – a practice, we should remind ourselves, that is less than a decade old – can at least give parents of sense* of what their sons and daughters will learn, what forms the instruction will take, and how well a school can serve students with a wide variety of backgrounds and needs.
* Note: I say “sense”. Not a universally valid measurement, not an unequivocal declaration, not a comprehensive preview, but a vague “sense”. This is still more than many American schools could give to parents before Goals 2000 was passed. Individual teachers could articulate the vision for their classroom, but a school-wide vision or mission was largely absent and certainly not mandated.
Naturally, we’ve discovered, rather quickly, that an education focused exclusively on standards and scores under-serves everyone. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has, in effect, dismissed schools from the stringent federal requirements for proficiency, so schools no longer need to define themselves by their numbers. Now, schools are faced with a question that will prove pivotal over the next five years: how do they define themselves?
I looked at a sample of mission and vision statements from a large unified district in California, conducting a “field study”, if you will, of how prominently schools might display their mission and vision statements. The District website has a presentation entitled “Moving Forward Together” front-and-center on its home page, and just a few slides in, you come to their vision: “The … District commits to inspire and prepare all students to succeed in a global economy.” Career preparation emerges as a clear guiding principle. My review of eight schools within the district, however, uncovered a host of visions that were, shall we say, a bit blurry. Of two elementary schools, one couldn’t decide if they were a school or an academy (the school’s name was listed twice – attached to both nouns), and neither had any kind of mission or vision statement. One K-8 school publishes seven bullet points as its mission, while another middle school “provides an educational environment that facilitates academic and personal success through interaction of students, staff, and community.” I assumed all schools did that.
The high schools fared a touch better – the charter school explicitly champions college readiness for young immigrants, while another magnet declares a similarly clear focus on arts appreciation. One high school, however, features the phrase “Simply the place to be” on its home page banner. No other mission or vision statement can be found, yet the slogan says nothing about teaching or learning. It seems borrowed from a Visa commercial. In sum, even when the district seems to have a very clear idea of how they wish to prepare students, individual school sites seem to be fumbling with the same task.
This will be a mission critical in American education for two important reasons. First, as the leaders of our schools look to emancipate themselves from a test-only approach, they need to have an alternate vision, or at the very least, know how to cultivate one in their community. On the other hand, the very notion of a “community” is decaying in this country. Based on current trends among adults age 30-40, school districts can expect 10-20% of their families to move each year – as many as one in five current students leaving or new students entering the attendance area. More critically, author William Deresiewicz argues that our formal schooling system already leaves students under-developed in terms of their ability to build inter-personal relationships, and a recent study by UCSF indicates that even autism disorders – the medical epitome of social skill deficiency – could be influenced by a child’s environment far more than previously believed. All of these discoveries point to a harrowing conclusion: thousands of students may well be entering our campuses without any sense of community at all.
More than ever, the leaders of our schools will be entrusted with the responsibility to create a genuine community, based on shared values and a unique point-of-view that the entire neighborhood supports. We know full well that the test-driven smorgasbord of acronyms and numbers cannot fill that identity void – not for students and families, nor for any teachers or employees. Thus, a pivotal question emerges: if it’s not enough to stand by our standards, how will educational leaders chart the journey that enables their schools and all their constituents to move forward together?
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