Schools\u27 Mission Statements, Local Education Agencies\u27 Strategic Plans, and School Accountability

This study examined the role alignment between a school’s mission statement and its LEA’s strategic plan had on their students’ overall academic performance in achieving any of the seven distinctions and a met standard rating on the 2016-2017 Texas Education Agency’s school accountability system. Data were used to determine if there was a higher rate of alignment between Title I or non-Title I schools’ mission statements and LEA’s strategic plan. The conceptual framework of this multiple case study was grounded in Tyler’s model of objectives-based evaluation, utilizing critical incident technique as an organizational tool, which called for three pieces of data: identification of objective, identification of action steps, and evaluation based on performance measures. The school mission statements were used to identify the objectives, the LEAs’ strategic plans were used to identify the action steps, and the school report cards were used as the performance measures. Schools and LEAs qualified for this study if the school mission statement and the LEA’s strategic plans were available on-line. The major sources of data were the content analysis of seven case schools’ mission statements and the LEAs’ strategic plans, and the information provided on the school report cards produced by TEA. While the study did not reveal significant new data in the research related to school mission statements, strategic plans, and school accountability systems, it did provide some insight for school leaders looking to rewrite their school mission statements to better reflect LEA strategic plans and school accountability measures