Alan Jones

So…if not mission statements or strategic plans, then what???

July 11, 2025 by Alan Jones

In previous blogs, I argued that school administrators and boards of education should reconsider the practice of writing mission statements and strategic plans. Instead of three retreats with posted notes decorating motel conference room walls, administrators and board members should follow Warren Buffett’s three rules in investing—what he terms, “the value of simplicity.”

In a recent interview, Warren Buffett offered the three rules he follows in investing—what he termed, “the value of simplicity.” Before Superintendents and Boards adjoin to their weekend conference venues to write out their values and plans for the district they should first consider Buffett’s three simple rules for investing.

Rule #1: What are the fundamentals of schooling

In the last decade, school districts have bought into private industry’s love of analyzing huge amounts of data. Districts have purchased all manner of software programs to collect data and employed all manner of administrators specializing in the analysis of data. In Buffett’s view, slicing and dicing data—student demographics, attendance, test scores, disciplinary actions, course enrollment, grades—are informative, but miss the essential question that should be asked of school performance: What are the fundamentals of the schools we are governing and how do these fundamentals effects student learning?

Instead of spending money and time on gathering and analyzing data, school boards, central office administrators, and building-level administrators should spend a week sitting in classrooms in their districts. What they will find, in the words of educational historians is: “The Grammar of Schooling.” The chart below represents two very different “fundamentals” of schooling. The column on the left lists the goals and practices of the “grammar of schooling.” The column on the right lists the goals and practices that are commonly listed in school mission statements. Administrators exiting the classes that have sat in would find that the fundamentals of schooling present the goals and practices listed in the left column—the grammar of schooling.”

	The Grammar of Schooling	Educational Driven Pedagogies
Educational Goals	Cover the material	Do the work of the field
Pedagogical Priorities	Breadth	Depth
View of Knowledge	Certain	Uncertain
View of students	Extrinsically motivated	Creative, curious, and capable
Role of Student	Receiver of knowledge	Creator of knowledge
Role of teacher	Dispenser of knowledge	Facilitator of learning
View of failure	Something to be avoided	Critical to learning
Ethos	Compliance	Rigor and Joy

After the classroom visits, Buffett’s investing model would ask school administrators to take time to learn about the instructional models in their buildings and the impact these models are having on students. Over the last decade, surveys of students’ attitudes towards their schooling experience have expressed a general discontent with the grammar of schooling. If you reduce their comments listed below to one term it would be, “boring.”

Monotonous schedules and lack of choice
Perceived irrelevance
Rote memorization
Lack of freedom and autonomy
Excessive homework
Too much teacher talk

Rule #2: How are these fundamentals being implemented?

Now returning to Buffett’s model, he would then ask, “What does the company produce and how does it make money? Translated into school practices, schools are organized around the institutional goals of preparation, acquisition of information, delivery of information, compliance with state standards, accumulation of credits, and scores on standardized tests. The fundamentals of schooling—grades, credits, subjects, tests—the fundamentals that students find boring—are from an administrative standpoint aligned with a school organization that prizes preparation over the expansion of the intellect; acquisition of information over the construction of meaning; delivering of information over facilitating understanding; scores on standardized tests over solutions to authentic problems.

Rule #3: Are the current goals and organization of schools worth investing in?

From an administrative standpoint, the answer to the worth of poring money into schooling would be a resounding YES. From the surveys of student experiences and the goals written into school mission statements, the answer would be a resounding NO.

This divide between the institutional goals listed in district policy and operations manuals and the goals and values listed in school mission statements should be the focus of the discussions at district strategic planning sessions. If conducted honestly and openly, it would become apparent early on in the discussion that the curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that all parents want their sons and daughters to experience in classrooms is being suppressed by a school organization and practices that value the grammar of schooling over the poetry of schooling.

To follow through on Buffett’s model, schools, as currently designed would not be a wise investment. And, for investment purposes, the model would stop there. For the stakeholders sitting in weekend retreats, however, they could continue with the model by asking the question: “How could we change the fundamentals of schooling to align with the educational goals and practices we have written into our school mission statements?

I have written six books on the gaps that exist between the grammar of schooling and schools that develop in children and adolescents the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that are promised in their school mission statements. Each book goes into great detail on the what and how of actualizing these values in school classrooms. For school administrations and governing boards to close the gap between the grammar and, what I will term, the poetry of schooling, they should refrain from writing mission statements and strategic plans, and instead, spend the time at the weekend retreat studying the fundamentals of schooling they are sending their sons and daughters to and committing to plans, not a strategic plan, but, a plan listing specific organizational and administrative changes and initiatives that remake our schools into wise investments.

“Mr. Jones, You Make an Excellent Shylock”

June 30, 2025 by Alan Jones

In my junior year in high school, I enrolled in a course titled “World Literature.” When I walked into the class on the first day, I expected to be handed a huge tome filled with authors from all regions of the world—Africa, East and South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America/Europe. Although I was certainly no authority on great literature, some authors I expected to read were Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Dickens, Orwell, Austin, and Shakespeare.

I sat at my desk, inspecting the room. What caught my attention were large posters announcing various Shakespearean plays, a model of a theatre, and the teacher’s name written on the chalkboard, “Miss Steinberg.” What was missing from the class was the treaded book cart.

The second bell rang, and in walked Miss Steinberg. What struck me about her appearance was the large black horned claws that seemed too large for a petite-framed woman. Her hair, which was pitch black, was pulled back in a bun. She was wearing a well-tailored suit with no jewelry. Miss Steinberg’s appearance and professional manner left me with the impression that this class was all business. Her introductory comments doubled down on my overall impression and left all of us in class wondering what we had gotten ourselves into:

“Good morning, class. My name is Miss Steinberg. Before going into detail on the goals and expectations for this class, I want you to understand that the title of this course, World Literature, is a misnomer. The only world author we will be studying is William Shakespeare. I will not go into my efforts to convince the administration to change the name of the course. But, be that as it may, I wanted to be forthright with you about the works you will be studying. As you have probably noticed, the room has no textbook cart. Our department’s textbook inventory does not have all the works of Shakespeare. So, I will provide paperback versions of Shakespeare’s plays at a minimum cost. Before leaving class, pick up the reading list from the front counter.

Miss Steinberg then launched into a description of Elizabethan England. Her dramatic descriptions of royalty, poverty, plagues, and wars that shaped Shakespeare’s worldview placed me in a trance-like state—so trance-like that I did not hear the passing bell go off.

As we were leaving the class, Mrs. Steinberg informed us that there were openings in other literature classes if we wanted to drop the class. Several students I walked down the hallway with announced they were dropping the class. In the words of one of them: “There is no way I am spending a year reading all of Shakespeare’s plays. Besides, Steinberg is no joke. I can’t afford a C or D on my transcripts.”

There was no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Steinberg was no joke. I also had reservations about reading all of Shakespeare’s plays. There was something, however, about Mrs. Steinberg’s intellect and obvious love of Shakespeare that compelled me to remain in the class. It turned out that the year I spent journeying with Mrs. Steinberg’s Shakespearean adventure was pivotal in deciding to become a teacher and how teaching should be conducted. It was not so much the particular teaching methodologies employed by Mrs. Steinberg that made each period pass by so quickly. Rather, it was her enthusiasm for questioning the behaviors and motivations of the characters that Shakespeare wrote about.

I can still hear her call out at the top of her voice: “Mr. Jones, what do we have going on here?” What transpired next was not a literal interpretation of a character’s statement but a series of questions or comments from Miss Steinberg that asked me to grapple with characters coming face to face with their failings or pursuing power at the expense of others. There was no hint in these discussions of connections between Shakespearean themes and the politics of the day. However, I often left class seeing parallels between political figures we studied in history and family dinner conversations.

Aside from Miss Steinberg’s ability to incite doubt and stimulate the imaginations in adolescent minds, the usual trapping of institutional schooling—grades, quizzes, tests, papers— was never brought up. We were required to keep a journal that recorded our responses to prompts posed by Miss Steinberg or an open-ended question about what we were discussing. We were critiqued on our performance in different activity structures: debates over character motivations, creating modern adaptations, role-playing scenes, and watching film interpretations.

The critiques, however, were never the usual deficit-based model we all experienced in other classes. Miss Steinberg never made a judgmental statement focusing on what was wrong or lacking. Instead, she had the uncanny ability to focus on what was working for us and how we could augment what was working for us. She also possessed the rare skill of knowing when a particular activity structure was uncomfortable for the class. In these instances, she had a way of moving to a different activity without signaling that an individual or class was in over its head.

Although I was proud to receive an A in the class, what meant more to me than the A, was a comment made to me when she passed me in the hallway: “Mr. Jones, you make an excellent Shylock.” In addition to being an excellent Shylock, the other educational gift I received in the class, one which I only realized later in life, was being introduced to vocabularies and ways of thinking that allowed me to step away from my parent’s vocabularies and ways of thinking into a self-authoring individual. No, I did not leave the class rebelling against my parents. I did leave that class with a questioning mind. A mind that all school mission statements profess to be a goal, but are rarely practiced in classrooms or school offices.

“The WHY of Schooling”

June 17, 2025 by Alan Jones

Students are demoralized, bored, and distracted in school, not because of a lack of interesting methods, but both teachers and students lack, a narrative to provide profound meaning to their lessons.

(Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of Schooling)

In the forty years I have spent in public school administration, the many hours I spent in offices policies, mandates, systems, finances, legal opinions, staffing, and the crisis of the day. I cannot remember ever discussing the educational goals and values written into school mission statements—what I term the why of schooling.

My prior books on the subject list the following reasons why the occupants of main offices never discuss what kind of public should their school be creating.

The occupants of the main offices are consumed with the managerial details of running a school.
The occupants of main offices assume that the why of schooling has already been answered by state legislators, school boards, or central offices.
The occupants of the main offices see little value in spending time on ivory tower discussions of the way of schooling.
The occupants of the main offices lack the academic training to engage in thoughtful discussions over the why of schooling.

Without a compelling narrative to inspire a reason for schooling the occupants of main offices are unable to develop a meaningful response to the following problems of schooling:

Problem #1: Coherent Response to the Five Fundamental Questions of Schooling

The force behind creating an engaging learning environment is a coherent response to the following six fundamental questions of learning:

What are the goals of schooling?
How do children learn?
What knowledge is of most worth?
How should knowledge be organized?
How should we assess what students understand?
HOW SHOULD WE TEACH?

All of these answers to these fundamental questions depend upon what goals of schooling main offices and classrooms are pursuing. Over the years schools have pursued the following goals:

To educate (what is the meaning of life?)
To emancipate (who am I?)
To join (How do I effectively participate in a democratic community?)
To prepare (What do I want to become?)
To socialize (How should I behave?)

While school mission statements tend to emphasize goals 1, 2, and 3—critical thinking— most school curricula and school organizations are designed to train and follow orders. A school curricular and school organization dominated by credits, seat time, grades, and subjects, responds to the fundamental questions of schooling far differently than a school curricular and school organization designed to develop: agency; a sense of belongingness; an interest; and a critical thinker.

Problem #2: The Problem of Mandates

Every school year occupants of main offices enter their offices with their in-boxes filled with new policies, directives, or mandates that governmental or administrative bodies expect their administrative teams to implement. Most of these mandates involve routine changes to school curricula or school organizations. Some, however, are controversial and draw occupants of main offices into philosophical questions. Take, for example, recent trends in curricular mandates asking schools to emphasize and implement materials specifically designed to advance the concept of multiculturalism.

On the face of it, curricular materials designed to foster the acceptance of different cultures in society and the active support of these cultures by both majority and minority groups would appear to be a value worth embracing. On the other hand, public schools from their inception have favored the goal of cultural pluralism in which multiple ethnic groups can coexist and maintain their unique cultural identities while participating fully in the dominant society.

The problem with such a mandate is which curriculum should a school pursue:

A multicultural curriculum is designed to focus on recognizing and celebrating diverse cultures within a society or should a school pursue a cultural pluralistic curriculum emphasizing the coexistence and interaction of different cultures? This distinction may appear to be splitting hairs, but, at a board meeting, parents may question either approach, and, in the process, raise philosophical questions over assimilation versus integration, loss of identity, educational disparities, and social integration. With such issues, the managerial what’s and how’s of board meetings quickly turn to the whys of schooling.

Problem #3: The Problem of Contradictions

Although rarely articulated in school meeting venues—faculty meetings, parent open houses, board meetings—there are contradictions between what schools profess in their mission statements and the realities of school policies and classroom practices. The most glaring example is the educational value most frequently mentioned in school mission statements—critical thinking. While this value is most often announced from auditorium stages, the goals they list—agency, interests, questioning—disappear in main offices and classrooms pursuing institutional goals and values—standardization, accounting, compliance.

Problem #4: The Problem of Relevance: Connecting the Dots

W. Edwards Deming, the father of TQM, emphasized the distinction between information and knowledge. In Deming’s view, information is not knowledge. Knowledge, according to Deming, is the ability to predict future outcomes and understand the past, requiring a theory or framework for analysis. Information, on the other hand, is simple data without the context or theory to make it meaningful.

In school classrooms, the pedagogical methods teachers employ treat information as if it were knowledge. In the words of Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher in Dickens’s novel Hard Times: “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

When students question the relevance of the facts they are required to memorize, the common teacher response to these questions is to assure students that they will need these facts later in the course or some distant future—a future that never seems to materialize. The large amounts of information that are transmitted in daily lesson plans and in textbooks align well with classroom-based testing instruments. However, facts alone align poorly with real-world applications that require, in Deming’s words, a theory or framework for analysis or simply put, are shaped by the relationships we have and the situations we are in.

THE FINAL PROBLEM: Student Discipline

The problem that dogs school organizations is how to work with students who do not conform to the norms of institutional schooling. School administrators address this ongoing problem with institutional responses: discipline codes; parent conferences; suspensions; detentions; time-out rooms; and demerits. In the last decade, schools have moved from looking upon student discipline as a matter of poor parenting or biological proclivities of different age groups to a variety of explanations for student misbehavior: attention-seeking, learning difficulties, unmet emotional needs, lack of social skills, power struggles, problems at home, medical issues.

While all of these explanations are reasonable as far as they go. What they all ignore is the inconvenient truth of institutional schooling: schools are boring. In John Goodlad’s seminal study of classroom practices in thirteen high schools throughout the country, he describes what a boring classroom looks like in practice:

[I saw] the teacher explaining or lecturing to the total class or a single student, occasionally asking questions requiring factual answers; the teacher, when not lecturing, observing or monitoring students working individually at their desks; students listening or appearing to listen to the teacher and occasionally responding to the teacher’s questions; students working individually at their desks on reading or writing assignments; and all with little emotion, from interpersonal warmth to expressions of hostility.

(Goodlad, A Place Called School)

If students are not engaged in what is occurring in the classroom they become disruptive. Changing the inconvenient truth of schooling asks school administrators to “self-author” a narrative composed of three parts:

PART I: Schools are boring

Openly admitting to the reality that the design of the school organization and the organization of curriculum align well with institutional goals, but, fall short of creating a learning environment that would fully engage children and adolescents. Included in Part I of the narrative are specific organizational and instructional strategies administrators and teachers will pursue to address one or more of the problems of schooling listed above.

Part II: What does an engaging learning environment look like?

Throughout this narrative school administrators must describe what teachers and students are doing in a learning environment where students are socially, emotionally, and intellectually engaged. There are many descriptors for engaging learning environments. The answers to Elliot Eisner’s list of questions listed below could serve as a template for designing a school organization that places the goal of creating engaging learning environments ahead of the enforcement of institutional goals.

Part III: The HOW of creating engaging learning environments:

Once the why and what of engaging learning environments has been established, the final paragraph in the narrative would describe specific changes to the school organization and curricular design that would develop engaging learning environments. Listed below are the four areas in a school organization that would signal a change in what goals and values classrooms would be pursuing:

The budget
The curriculum
The master schedule
The training regime—professional development

WHAT IS A GOOD SCHOOL: EISNER

(Eisner, E. W. (January 01, 2001). FEATURES – What Does It Mean to Say a School Is Doing Well?

Phi Delta Kappan, 82, 5, 367)

1. WHAT KINDS OF PROBLEMS AND ACTIVITIES DO STUDENTS ENGAGE IN?

2. WHAT IS THE INTELLECTUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IDEAS THAT THEY ENCOUNTER?

3. ARE STUDENTS INTRODUCED TO MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES?

4. WHAT CONNECTIONS ARE STUDENTS HELPED TO MAKE BETWEEN WHAT THEY STUDY IN CLASS AND THE WORLD OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL?

5. WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO YOUNGSTERS HAVE TO BECOME LITERATE IN THE USE OF DIFFERENT REPRESENTATIONS FORMS (i.e. various symbol systems that give humans meaning)?

6. WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO STUDENTS HAVE TO FORMULATE THEIR PURPOSES AND DESIGN WAYS TO ACHIEVE THEM?

7. WHAT OPPORTUNITIES TO STUDENTS HAVE TO WORK COOPERATIVELY TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS THAT THEY BELIEVE TO BE IMPORTANT?

8. DO STUDENTS HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY IN WAYS THAT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THEIR INTERESTS?

9. TO WHAT EXTENT ARE STUDENTS ALLOWED TO WORK IN DEPTH IN DOMAINS THAT ARE RELATED TO THEIR APTITUDES?

10. DO STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN THE ASSESSMENT OF THEIR WORK?

11. DO WHAT EXTENT ARE STUDENTS GENUINELY ENGAGED IN WHAT THEY DO IN SCHOOL?

STARS

May 18, 2025 by Alan Jones

In my book recent book, Standout School Leaders: Challenging What it Means to Lead, I draw a distinction between Administrators Good at Their Jobs (AGJ’s), and Standout School Leaders (SSL’s). The blog below is an example from the book illustrating how an SSL closes the gap between the educational values written into school mission statements and the goals of institutional schooling.

In the realm of education, the tension between institutional structures and the individual needs of students has long been a subject of debate. Traditional educational models often emphasize standardized curricula, rigid schedules, and uniform assessment methods relying on hierarchical administrative models, departmental divisions, and standardized teaching methodologies. While these structures aim to maintain order and ensure measurable outcomes, they can become inflexible, hindering innovation and responsiveness to the diverse needs and potential of individual students—leading to disengagement, absenteeism, and a lack of motivation among learners.

Standout School Leaders play a pivotal role in navigating this balance, ensuring that educational institutions serve not just as centers of academic learning, but as nurturing environments that foster the overall growth and well-being of every student.

What is a Standout School Leader? Within the context of the delicate yet crucial balance between institutional structures and the needs of individual students, educational leaders can be categorized into two distinct groups: Administrators Good at their Jobs (AGJs) and Standout School Leaders (SSLs). AGJs excel in maintaining effective school operations, ensuring that institutional functions such as credentialing, accreditation, standardization, regulation, and accounting are efficiently managed. Their focus is predominantly on the “what” and “how” of schooling—the managerial aspects that keep the institution running smoothly.

In contrast, SSLs focus on the “why” of schooling. They recognize the limitations of traditional institutional frameworks and strive to bridge the gap between institutional and educational goals. SSLs think differently about educational practices, often challenging the status quo to implement student-centered approaches. They prioritize the well-being and personal growth of students, ensuring that institutional objectives align with individual needs.

My first effort to address the disconnect between established school operations and the goals and values in our mission statement focused on a group of freshman students, who, in the words of the Director of Pupil Personnel Services, “refused to do school.” Students in this group were fourteen and fifteen years old. Every member of the group had missed over thirty days of school by November and were failing every subject.

This effort began with a simple brainstorming session. After I described the profile of our missing students to our truant officer Sarah, she responded, “I know what will work with these kids, but you won’t do it.”

“That’s not true, Sarah. I’m willing to try anything to help these kids through school.”

“Anything?” she asked.

Sarah proceeded to describe a school structure that would work for students who “refused to do school.” Students would begin school at ten o’clock. The course of study would be designed by the students in consultation with the director of the program. The physical education program, which was a constant nemesis for these students, was redesigned to be more user friendly to students who disliked both “dressing” for gym and traditional activities that emphasized competition and team sports. The maximum class size for the program was set at fifteen. The classroom for the program would be located away from the normal distractions of the high school day.

Project STARS (Success Through Accepting Responsibility) began that day in my office. I was able to secure money for materials and a salary for the teacher. I found a room in a remote part of the building. I worked with the physical education chairperson to modify the program for these students. STARS was a huge success. By the end of the first semester, students who were virtual dropouts were now attending school on a regular basis, arriving on time to the program and successfully completing self-selected correspondence courses in academic and elective courses. Over the next seventeen years as principal, I handed out over seven hundred diplomas to students who, without the STARS program, would have become statistics on a dropout report.

The years that I worked with staff and students in the STARS program taught me that traditional institutional approaches to improving achievement—doing more of the same, only harder, or searching endlessly for pathologies in students—only alienated students from purposeful approaches to learning. STARS freed professional staff from the constraints of institutional schooling, allowing them to stop the blame game—if only students would, if only parents would, if only the administration would. Now staff focused on asking the right question: “How can we help this student be successful in our school and beyond?”

This experience underscores the importance of flexibility and innovation in educational leadership. By challenging traditional structures and adopting a student-centered approach, SSLs can create environments where all students have the opportunity to succeed. This involves not only rethinking schedules and curricula, but also fostering a culture of empathy, collaboration, and continuous learning among staff and students alike.

While AGJs ensure the smooth operation of educational institutions, SSLs take it a step further by aligning these operations with educational goals that focus on the holistic development of students. The journey from being an AGJ to an SSL involves reauthoring the professional self from managing institutional functions to embracing and putting into practice the educational goals and values written into their schools’ mission statements. This process provides school leaders with the narratives and managerial tools to bridge the gap between systemic goals and individual needs, and to create what educators must aim for – a more inclusive and effective learning environment.

“Why Schools Should Abandon Strategic Planning”

May 10, 2025 by Alan Jones

The annual strategic planning process at his organization resembled an exotic ritual put on for show. “No one is exactly sure why we do it, but there is an almost mystical hope that something good will come out of it.”

(CEO to McKinsey Consultants)

An annual ritual school administrators and school district stakeholders schedule for the summer is the writing of a district’s mission statement and a strategic plan to implement those goals and values. The ritual takes place at a local conference center, where school district administrators, boards of education, selected members from the school community, and a professional facilitator, gather together for a weekend designed around writing a formal statement of educational values and goals and a strategic plan to implement written goals and practices. This ritual takes on greater importance when a new Superintendent arrives in the district. His or her promised goal in their interview was setting a new vision and mission for the district.

The attraction of central offices to the mission writing exercise is twofold: First, it is a practice that private industry has adopted. The new generation of Superintendents has traded in their instructional leader mindset for a new CEO, master of the universe mindset. Second, it is an excellent exercise in bringing the school community together to discuss and codify educational values and goals.

Stakeholders involved in the process always leave with the feeling they have contributed something special to their district. The two difficulties with both understandings are twofold: first, the private sector has abandoned the writing of mission statements and strategic plans a decade ago; and second, rarely if ever to the educational values and goals written at that weekend retreat become operationalized in main offices and classrooms.

In my recent book, Living Up to Your School Mission Statement[1], I have described in great detail why schools fail to live up to the goals and values written in their mission statements. What follows is an abbreviated version of the reasons why school mission statements and strategic plans fail to become actualized in main offices and school classrooms.

The Failure of Strategic Planning

Reason #1: The assumption that the future is certain and predictable

Strategic plans are written with the assumption that the future will resemble the past. No matter how rational the planning process is carried out in central offices when the plan arrives at the building level, principals experience Mike Tyson’s analysis of planning: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” When the school bell rings on the first day of school, the metaphorical punches start flying.

Reason #2: Planners are detached from reality

The stakeholders that attend the two-day strategic planning retreat are detached from the reality of the organization they are planning for. Those participants housed in a relaxed retreat setting rely on hard data—test scores, attendance records, grades, budgets, and behavioral data—with little attention to soft data—interviews, observations, meeting minutes, surveys, photographs, and student notebooks. Basing a plan on what is measurable leaves out the all-important human variables that will make or break the implementation of the plan.

Reason #3: That a strategy can be formalized

The act of planning assumes a logical progression of established managerial steps that will achieve an agreed-upon outcome. In school building offices, however, administrators are continually drawn into situations that require creativity and intuition to resolve. Planning maintains in place organizational processes and categories. Creativity on the other hand creates categories and rearranges established ones.

What all three reasons point to is the distinction between two types of school administrators: categorical and nuanced managers. Categorical managers try to manage by the book, even though the book or plan lacks: clear objectives; buy-in from stakeholders; alignment with other district goals; and resources to implement the plan.

Before implementing a plan, nuanced managers read the room first. What is the actual situation they are becoming involved in and, most importantly, do they have all the organizational tools necessary to orchestrate the desired changes outlined in the plan? Nuanced managers are adaptive information manipulators, opportunists, and organizational architects. Their outcomes may not be according to plan, but, there will be outcomes, ones that make collective sense to those charged with implementation and will advance a mission-driven goal.

The Failure of Mission Statements

The failure of school administrators and teachers to live up to mission-established goals and values falls into two categories: the mechanical and the philosophical. Listed below is a summary of both categories.

Systemic Problems

If you have seen one school mission statement, you have seen them all

No matter the where, the when, the who, and the how of the strategic planning retreat, all the stakeholders will write a mission statement composed of the same educational goals and values: critical thinking, life-long learning, pursuit of excellence, success in a global economy, respect for diversity, develop well rounded, confident and responsible individuals, provide positive, safe, and stimulating environments. I could go on, but, the mechanical problem what these bundles of educational abstractions is what they mean and how those meanings translate into classroom practices.

They sound nice and please everyone

Any declaration of purpose by an organization assumes that those in charge of implementation will do this rather than that. In these planning sessions, it is never determined what the this is or what the that is. No mission statement should appeal to everyone. They should reflect choices in what an organization finds important and where it wants to go. It should inspire some groups and put off other groups. In these planning sessions, the tension between different goals and values is avoided by ignoring the differences in each goal and value and attending to their similarities.

Philosophical Problem

The leading problem with mission statements and strategic plans is the failure on the part of stakeholders to grasp the fact that the schools they send their children to and the schools they work in each day are in fact, institutions. Institutional-based organizations are compliance-based, whose efficient operations rely on standardization, quantification, accountability, and falling in line. The national, state, and local rules, regulations, and policies governing schools—standards, race to the top, no child left behind, accountability—have all installed in schools’ goals and values that are opposed to growth-based goals and values written into school mission statements: flexibility, individualization, responsibility, inventiveness, optimization.

In addition to governing bodies mandating that schools pursue institutional goals and values, private entities, particularly the testing juggernauts —Educational Testing Service (ETS); American College Testing (ACT); American Council on Education (GED); The Carnegie Foundation (Carnegie Unit); and College Board (SAT/AP)—infuse in our classrooms a pedagogy that gives up on deeper learning in exchange for memorization of right answers and a narrowed curriculum aligned with the contents of standardized tests.

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Harvard Faculty Dean, made the following observation about the condition of schooling in this nation: “One cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost.” This observation goes to the heart of what is so wrong with school mission statements. All school mission statements proclaim they are pursuing John Dewey’s aims—students learn through active participation and problem-solving. These same aims, however, are housed in schools designed to implement Edward Thorndike means—grades, credits, testing, and vocations. Although for over a century school administrators and teachers have tinkered with Deweyan utopian pedagogies—as evidenced in their mission statements—at the end of the school day, most students experience the daily grind of Thorndike’s administrative systems.

So…if not mission statements or strategic plans, then what? In reading many critiques of mission statements, the one that applies best to schooling was stated in a recent interview with Warren Buffett. Although he was not directly addressing the value of mission statements, he was responding to businesses captivation with the analysis of data. In my next blog I will describe Buffett’s problem with solely focusing on numbers. His approach to investing looks past the numbers to the what, why and how of the companies he is looking at—what he terms the value of simplicity. In my next blog I will apply Buffett’s value of simplicity to how schools should authoring their educational mission.

[1] (Jones, A. C. (2021). Living up to your school mission statement : reforming schools from the inside out. Rowman & Littlefield, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.)