A Vision and Mission We Can All Be Proud Of

One of the most critical roles of today’s district leader is fostering a collaborative environment to create a common mission and vision toward continuous school improvement. The creation of a district mission and vision is important to define your purpose, assess the current situation of your district, and to determine where you would like your district to be in the future. Before creating a vision, the district needs to create a mission statement, or a statement clarifying our purpose. After creating the mission statement, creating the common vision begins by asking two simple questions: Where are we right now? What do we hope to become? The dialogue around these two questions needs to take place in a collaborative environment created by the district leader, including but not limited to, School Board Members, district leadership, teachers, support staff, parents, and community members

The continuous school improvement process in the North Crawford School District will begin by defining our mission and vision. Prior to beginning the school year, we will work with a small leadership group, consisting of selected members from the above named groups, to define mission and vision, and to analyze pertinent student data.  It is imperative that this leadership team understand what a vision and mission statement are, and are able to teach this to the rest of the staff.  As important is the ability of the leadership team to select and interpret the district data necessary to formulate the vision and mission.  We need to look past the "standard" data, such as WKCE scores, MAP results, and ACT scores, and recognize that there is a wealth of other student data that exist in our district which will assist us in our goal.  Often overlooked student data includes attendance rates, behavioral referrals, student and parent surveys, and others. 

During our fall inservice days, under the direction of the leadership team, the staff will collaborate to define what a mission and vision statement are, and what is the purpose of creating a mission and vision statement. The leadership team will share student data with the staff, looking for trends in the data. Working from the data, we will then have staff work in small groups to create a mission statement. The small groups will consist of individuals from different representative groups, under the direction of one of the leadership team members.  The individual mission statements will be discussed with the whole group, and used to develop an overall mission of the district. After defining our purpose, we will begin the exploration of our vision. Again, this will occur by having small groups explore the two questions stated above. Common themes will be examined within the large group setting, until a common vision can be constructed.

Once the mission and vision are completed, the whole group will examine the following questions as it pertains to the mission and vision statements:

• Is the mission and vision focused on student engagement and student achievement?
• Does the mission and vision attempt to move the district forward?
• Is the mission and vision in line with School Board and District goals?
• Will the district vision and mission be useful to our Professional Learning Communities in their daily collaborative efforts?
• Did we ensure that our vision and mission meets the needs of all the stakeholders involved?
• Is there a process in place to continually revisit and examine the effectiveness of our district mission and vision?

Creating an effective district vision and mission are the most important initial steps in a district's overall school improvement plan.  The process requires a collaborative effort with all district stakeholders, and most importantly, strong leadership at the top to facilitate and coordinate this important endeavor.  The leader must recognize the importance of establishing an effective vision, and inviting others to share in its development.

Sources:

How To Help Your School Thrive, Gabriel and Farmer, 2009

District Leadership That Works, Marzano and Waters, 2009