• The XYZ School District believes that all students can learn and strives to help all learners reach their full potential.
• We will fully prepare our graduates for college or a career.
• In the ABC School’s social studies department, we nurture future citizens to be ready to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
Mission statements such as these are ambiguous and trite. They lack the specificity necessary to guide actions. They leave us asking: “What does it mean for students to reach their full potential?” “What does it mean to be fully prepared for college or a career?” “What exactly would we expect a future citizen to do?” “What learning outcomes will make it more likely that students will be able to succeed in a rapidly changing world?”
Another common characteristic of poorly constructed mission statements is a focus on what the educational institution or program will provide for its students rather than on student accomplishments. The following are examples.
• The QRS School District is committed to providing a warm and nurturing environment in partnership with parents to support all our learners.
• The TYG International School offers the rigorous International Baccalaureate Program along with a wide range of electives to prepare students for future success.
• All faculty in the mathematics department at NOP Prep have advanced degrees and many years of teaching experience.
Such descriptions may sound appealing, but notice that being warm, nurturing, and rigorous are descriptions of means, not ends. They state what the district, school, or department will offer rather than specifying the long-term learning outcomes for students. Indeed, we find that organizations often confuse the environment, program, teachers’ credentials, and facilities—all means for achieving a goal—with the goal itself.
So, how do you move from a vision of what you believe is most important for your students to achieve to an articulation of a mission that truly guides your actions? Our recommendation is straightforward: an educational mission statement should expressly state the desired outcomes in terms of student learning. More specifically, we contend that the outcomes for a modern education should have several distinguishing characteristics.
• They are long-term in nature; for example, they specify exit outcomes to be developed over time in school.
• They are performance based and involve transfer; for example, they specify what learners will be able to do with their learning when confronted with new situations.
• They call for autonomous performance; for example, they establish independent performance by the learner without coaching or prompting as the goal.
• They reflect the most important outcomes of schooling for a modern era; for example, they need to represent the learning priorities identified in the portrait of the graduate or other such statements.
Some mission-related educational outcomes fall within traditional subject areas (disciplinary), while others cut across disciplines (transdisciplinary). In general, we expect to find disciplinary outcomes rooted in the mission statements of subject-based departments (for example, in mathematics or visual art), while district- and school-level missions typically identify transdisciplinary outcomes, such as 21st century skills and dispositions. Here are a few examples of such mission statements for a district or school as well some as for discipline areas.
The mission of GHI School is to develop learners who are independently able to:
The mission of the mathematics department is to develop learners who are independently able to:
The mission of the history department is to develop learners who are independently able to:
Table 1.2 shows examples of both types of mission-based outcomes.
Table 1.2: Two Types of Mission-Based Outcomes
| Disciplinary Outcomes | Transdisciplinary Outcomes |
| Effective writer | Critical thinker |
| Mathematical reasoner | Effective collaborator |
| Creative artist | Self-directed learner |
Although we advocate framing the mission of a district, school, or department (or program) in terms of student learning outcomes, there is often a need to define and describe these outcomes, especially those that are transdisciplinary in nature. West Windsor-Plainsboro Township District, a public school district located in northern New Jersey, engaged in a unique and effective process for clarifying its four transdisciplinary outcomes by declaring the following characteristics in its district’s mission: (1) self-directed learner, (2) responsible and involved student and citizen, (3) creative and practical problem solver, (4) and effective team member (M. Wise, personal communication, 2012).
The distric started with an end-of-the-school-year faculty meeting (to plan for the upcoming year) in which teachers were seated in heterogeneous groups of mixed subjects and grade levels (five to six people per group) and asked to brainstorm performance indicators for one of the four transdisciplinary outcomes. Each group recorded its initial list on chart paper and posted the large sheets on the walls of the meeting room. Then, the entire staff participated in a gallery walk to view the lists of other groups and used sticky notes to propose edits to the draft lists. Predictably, the gallery walk generated rich professional conversations among the faculty members.
Following the ninety-minute meeting, a designee typed up the lists and proposed edits for a committee representing various roles (administrators and teachers of various grades and subjects) to synthesize. Later in the summer, a school administrator emailed the draft lists of indicators for the four transdisciplinary outcomes to the staff with an invitation to review the document, propose any final edits, and return their comments by a designated date in August. When the faculty returned for the start of the school year, the committee distributed the final set of staff-generated performance indicators at a meeting, along with