Monday, November 27, 2017

Where All Students Connect, Learn, Grow and Succeed

"Where All Students Connect, Learn, Grow and Succeed." That's the new mission statement for the Richardson ISD. Fifty points if you know what the old mission statement was. It used to be "Where All Students Learn, Grow and Succeed." See the difference?

I'm no marketing genius (my wife always said that if I worked in marketing, our family would starve), but in my opinion, the RISD just weakened a good slogan. Good things come in threes, not fours:

  • Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
  • Of the people, by the people, for the people.
  • Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
  • Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe

"Learn, Grow and Succeed." Not "Connect, Learn, Grow and Succeed." Not only is it discordant, it's the literal definition of mission creep, which has acquired a well-deserved reputation for ending in "final, often catastrophic, failure." I've got nothing against students connecting, but RISD ought to be careful not to overburden its priorities, lest nothing is a priority.

4 comments:

Mark Steger said...

"The Few. The Proud. The Marines."

"The functional version of the rule [of three] dictates that a person should limit his or her attention to three tasks or goals. When applied to strategizing, the rule prescribes boiling a world of infinite possibilities down to three alternative courses of action. Anything more, and a marine can become overextended and confused. The marines experimented with a rule of four and found that effectiveness plummeted."
-- Corps Values

Mark Steger said...

"How to Use the ‘Rule of Three’ to Create Engaging Content"

Mark Steger said...

I took the version of the mission statement from the RISD.org home page, where the "all" is followed by "students." Someone has said that I have it wrong. It should be "RISD: Where All Connect, Learn, Grow and Succeed." The suggestion is that the addition of "connect" requires the removal of "students" because the mission to connect applies to students, parents, community members, and stakeholders. I contend that removal of the word "students" would be a mistake. It would be a serious dilution. RISD's mission should focus primarily on students, not parents or community. Those others are means to an end, not the mission itself. Don't lose sight of the student.

Mark Steger said...

For the record, the strategic plan adopted by the board of trustees October 2, 2017 states:
"The mission of the Richardson Independent School District is to ensure ALL connect, learn, grow, and succeed through relevant and personalized learning experiences..."

The old "all students" did become just "ALL" even though the RISD home page keeps "all students" even after adding "connect."
Also there's odd verbiage added at the end as well that's left off the home page banner. If "all students" was changed to "ALL" to indicate the RISD mission has expanded to include parents and community and who knows who else, why does the new mission statement say it's going to be achieved through "personalized learning experiences." That sounds like it's aimed at students, not "ALL".

Sorry, but the more I dig into this, the more confused I am.