Schools talk a lot about the importance of mission and vision, though understanding the ways in which this matters in practice is more subtle, and frankly, took me quite a while to appreciate. Many schools I’ve seen can function pretty well without a clear mission or vision. Sometimes it’s because they have a legacy culture that is no longer intentional but is still persistent; at other times it may be because a school is in a small town or neighborhood and so it’s the only game in town or it functions as a big-tent school for a community (and I’m sure for other reasons as well). All schools exist to educate children, but what values they bring to that project, what priorities, and with what level of clarity, can matter quite a bit in how decisions are made, and how people buy into that particular school’s educational project.
In a recent conversation with some school leaders I spoke to, they talked about how the parents at their school always seem more critical of them than the parents of their competitor, even though they have a similar population, and offer a similar quality of educational experience. They could not put their finger on why. They referred to it as a kind of glow or halo around the other school. And the question is – what accounts for the difference?
My thought, as the title of this post and my intro gives away, has to do with clarity of mission. But let me dig a little deeper first. A few months ago I was in New York visiting a yeshiva high school. One of the administrators made an interesting comment that stuck with me. He said that his school didn’t set up a STEM lab until recently, even though ‘all’ the schools were doing it, and it had become a point of competition between schools to have robust STEM programs. Why not? Because in this school’s mind, they don’t compete with anyone. They simply are who they are, they are very clear about who they are and the kind of experience they offer, and they are outstanding at their core competency. There was no arrogance in saying this. They accept that this means they will not be strong in other areas. They knew their mission, the parents accepted it, and decisions were made on those terms, not anyone else’s.
Now, to look back at the previous case of two similar schools, one with critical parents and one without. In the latter case, the school has an exceptionally clear sense of itself, and shares that vision with parents. As such, even when they fail, when they do something that pushes people’s boundaries, the parents understand that this is happening as part of the school’s mission. It’s much harder to be critical when you understand the terms of the partnership, and maybe even embraced the school for its boundary challenging tendencies in the first place. This requires not only an exceptionally clear mission and vision, but an outstanding ability to communicate it.
The first school is, without question, an exceptional educational institution – but it lacks clarity about who it is and what it really stands for. Maybe because it’s a community school and is trying to be ‘big tent’ so commitment is harder, maybe it’s scared to take a stand and scare off some of its families, which is an entirely rational and self-preservational thing to do. But the result is that families then have their own ideas about what the school should be, and when there is a vacuum of ideas from the school’s side about what it wants to be, and when many people try to fill that vacuum, discontent, and sometimes discord, fills the empty space.
Boards and school leadership go through mission and vision exercises all the time, often because they know they are supposed to, or in the event of accreditation, are required to. What I think is often missed is the incredible potential that exists in the impact that this process and its outcomes can have, not only in the areas described above but in many others like hiring, budget allocations, and more. This reminds me of the notion that whenever we say yes to one thing, we’re saying no to a myriad of other things. And with our many constituencies at school, it can be very hard to say no. And that’s what mission is about.