All school districts spend considerable time and money on the authoring of a school mission statement. The content of these statements list what I term educational universals—goals and values that community members and school staff believe in, and, are committed to implement in their districts. The most cited goals and values written into these universal statements are: critical thinking, diversity, excellence, personalization, accountability, compassion, challenging, justice, leadership, kindness, growth, inclusion.
There is no question about the value or intent of these educational universals. There is a question about why most of these goals and values are rarely carried out in main offices and classrooms. I have written an entire book describing in detail why schools are unable to live up to their published educational universals. (https://www.amazon.com/Living-Your-School-Mission-Statement/dp/147586292X). The brief version of the problem of unrealized universal values, is the embedded difficulty of aligning an abstract universal with specific behaviors in a main office or classroom.
The source of the problem lies with the failure on the part of school leaders to take time to develop a consensus around the definition of a published universal value. Take for example one of the most commonly cited value in a school mission statement: “excellence.” Main offices, classrooms, and all school publications are crowded with the vocabularies of excellence: rigor, greatness, mastery, superiority, achievement, peak performance, high standards, being number one, perfect score, valedictorian.
There are, however, two distinct vocabularies and narratives for defining excellence. One set of vocabularies and narratives, the set that school personnel and the school community believe they value is excellence defined as the optimization of talent. This definition of excellent values and works to optimize the individual talents, abilities, and interests of students in their schools. Along with the vocabularies and narratives of personalization is recognizing there are degrees of mastery of knowledge and skills—we all begin as novices, and depending upon our talents and interest, progress through stages of mastery—competent performer, expert, and public performance. Depending upon the individual talent and interest of a student, they may be satisfied with different levels of mastery or decide that the activity they are pursuing is not worth the time or effort.
The other distinct vocabulary and narrative of excellence that governs schooling in this nation is defined as maximization of talent. This definition of excellence believes talent is a zero-sum game: a few gifted students will rise to the top of the schooling pyramid; most students will sink to the middle or bottom of the schooling pyramid. Translated into organizational and instructional specifics, this definition of excellence values grading, standardized curriculum, standardized testing, ranking, classrooms, seat-time, credits.
Rarely, if ever, do school leaders articulate the disconnect between universal educational values and specific practices. The governing assumption being, that the specifics of schooling are aligned with an universal value. In this case, the school community assumes their schools are optimizing the talent of their son or daughter, when, in reality the school organization is structured to assign their son or daughter to a position on the school achievement pyramid.
Most organizations, including schools, are structured around the specifics of implementation—time, money, space, personnel, rules and regulations, standardization—and not, the universals values written into mission statements—autonomy, creativity, doubt, diversity. In the public and private sector, those leaders that stand out from their colleagues articulate and then resolve the gaps between the specifics of their organization and the universal values listed in their mission statements.
Alan C. Jones 