Several of you had questions regarding the difference between vision and mission. We did not take time to review these terms last week at the family meetings. Vision and mission were first trained out in the fall of 2005. As a district we have reviewed them a couple of times but not in depth. It is important that the terms be reviewed as we work on our 2009-2010 School Improvement Plan. The district’s mission and vision will also be reviewed and revised as part of the district strategic plan.
Let’s start with mission. What is a mission? DuFour would say that mission is the first building block of PLC work. A mission should answer the following questions, “What is our fundamental purpose? and Why do we exist?” The mission should clarify the schools priorities and provides direction for the school. Simply put the mission describes the purpose of the school. If we want to look broader, our district mission statement provides the core purpose for our school district. Blue Valley School District believes our core purpose is unprecedented academic success and unparalleled student growth. Criteria for evaluating your mission statement might include a focus on student learning.
A vision provides a sense of direction for schools. The vision statement reflects what the school could be if it were true to its mission. It might be considered the “desired future state” of what the school or the district wants to accomplish. The vision must be realistic and credible. Some qualities of an effective vision statement are:
- Imaginable
- Desirable
- Feasible
- Focused, clear and concise
- Flexible
- Communicable
Criteria for the evaluation of a vision statement could include focusing on student achievement, addressing school climate and culture, monitoring and/or analyzing data and identifying high functioning PLC teams.
Goals are also a very important part of school improvement plans. I recently ran across an article written by Rick DuFour addressing how goals could be established. The link to the article is http://www.allthingsplc.info/wordpress/?p=224. Reading this was a good reminder around the importance of goals for schools.
