“There’s a gap.” Helen sits in her office, mulling over the gap between her school’s mission statement and the reality of her program. “This is a Christian school—Christian teachers, devotions, Bible class, chapel, a positive environment. These are good, but only take us so far in achieving our mission. We need more. I need more. I need an additional way to close the gap.” 
 
Helen leaves her office and heads for the staff room, wondering if defining the mission in terms of student learning would help. “We need to move from activities to goals, goals that help us increasingly do the mission in the classroom.” On the bulletin board she sees an announcement about a workshop on student objectives. She reads, “Use student objectives to close the rhetoric/reality gap.” 
 
Helen thinks, “Student objectives. That sounds familiar. Something like schoolwide outcomes. Wasn’t that what Henry called expected schoolwide learning results?” She keeps reading: “Student objectives define your mission in terms of measurable student learning. They are overarching curriculum standards that are attainable.” 
 
“That’s what I need,” thinks Helen. “Something attainable. Something measurable. Something connected to student learning—that’s what school is about.” 
 
Ever feel like Helen? 
 
Are student objectives right for you and your school? Find out by answering 6 questions: 

1. Yes/No: I want to close the gap between 
2. our rhetoric (our mission) and our reality. 
3. Yes/No: I want to know how well we’re achieving our mission. 
4. Yes/No: I want to connect mission, student learning, curriculum, and school improvement planning. 
5. Yes/No: Using student objectives would help our parents better understand and support our mission. 
6. Yes/No: My students would catch our vision for Christian education better if they understood what it meant in terms of student learning. 
7. Yes/No: Collaborating with other ACSI schools would help urhetoric/reality gap. developed our student objectives, outline a process and a set of criteria that you can use to develop yours, explain how student objectives have helped us, and close with a vision for the future. 

If you answered “Yes” to any of the 6 items above, read on! I’ll start with the story of how we developed our student objectives, outline a 
process and a set of criteria that you can use to develop yours, explain how student objectives have helped us, and close with a vision for the future. 

Are you ready? At Christian Academy in Japan, we weren’t. Read more...


*This blog entry is part of a 7-part series:

1. How can you define what it takes to carry out your school's mission?
2. Are student objectives right for you and your school?
3. What's developing student objectives look like?
4. What questions should you consider before developing student objectives?
5. What makes good student objectives good?
6. What are some reasons for developing student objectives?
7. How are mission, student objectives, and curriculum connected?