A Vision of Schooling for the 21st Century

We believe that our schools, while preparing our students for their futures, can make a positive difference in their lives and in the lives of their parents; that learning is lifelong and must include opportunities for adults as well as students; that community input is vital to the success of our schools; that our campuses must be places for safe growth and development; that through the process of building stronger families we are creating a foundation for successful schools; and that change and growth are accepted and welcomed as agents of progress and will enhance the success of our schools with the cooperation of students, parents, school system employees and the community.

- Adapted from Policy AD

POLICY AD

I. Mission Statement

The mission statement of the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools is...

DETERMINING OUR FUTURE

The purpose of a mission statement is to succinctly state the 'business" of the organization. After lengthy discussion in 1992, both educators and community members adopted the above mission statement. As we look to the 21st century -- education will become the single most important factor in determining one's success in life. There is no question that the role of public schools as future determiners is critical. If schools are not successful in increasing the percentage of students who are learning and are therefore able to be successful, everyone's future will be impacted. The very economic and social fiber of society depends upon a steady stream of well-prepared, capable young people moving into adulthood.

The 21st century -- the era of the knowledge worker -- will be the first time in the history of mankind that one's level of education will solely determine one's standard of living. With this stark fact as a backdrop, the above mission statement well defines the importance of our business.

In pursuing this mission, the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools will adhere to the following principles and beliefs:

· All children can and must learn to higher standards; therefore schools must educate students for their future not the past of adults.

· Schools exist to educate students for their future not our past; therefore, a future orientation for schools is mandatory.

· A future orientation means change; therefore, schools must be places that value adult learning as well as student learning.

· All schools can make a positive difference in all children's lives.

· Students, their needs and the quality of work provided them, will be the central concerns in all decisions made in the school district.

· The district must build community with parents, citizens, businesses and institutions around shared concerns for the welfare of all children and the common good of all citizens.

· Decisions should be made as close to the point of implementation as possible and should always be based on research, data, and practices shown to be effective in teaching all children.

· Our schools belong to the community. Therefore, the school district must seek input from the community and must invite and support partnerships with various community organizations to ensure that schools have the resources needed to be successful with all children.

· The role of the school district must be to create the capacities to encourage and support continuous improvement at the school and classroom level.

· The school district must value the role of parenting by developing appropriate programs and working with community agencies designed to build stronger family units.

· Fairness, honesty, responsiveness and openness are core values in the district. All who work and make decisions for the district will uphold and demonstrate these values.

· All students have the right to develop in a challenging, caring, and nurturing environment in which they are safe -- physically, mentally and emotionally.

· The school district must ensure that structures are in place to ensure continuity in the organization while encouraging change that includes adding new initiatives as well as abandoning old ones.

II. Vision

A. Preamble

To assist ourselves in realigning today's schools, with real world needs for the purpose of preparing all students to be productive and responsible future citizens we, the Board of Education, have adopted the following vision statements. These statements describe the way we envision change occurring in our schools. Since today's schools are extremely complex entities, the Board believes it is necessary to have multiple visions in order to effectively communicate the required 21st century school. The four areas that must be envisioned are the organizational structure, student accomplishments, teaching and learning, and assessment.

B. Organizational Structure

Organizational structure describes the roles, rules, and relationships that exist between and among the internal and external customers and constituents of schools. The board envisions the new structure of schools driven by the students' role as volunteer worker and the organization's role as producers of quality knowledge which engages students. As workers students are active participants in the knowledge work process. Their job is to take the knowledge embedded in the curriculum and process it in a way that makes it their own. As volunteer workers, students must be provided with knowledge work that gets students engaged in working on and with knowledge and keeps them engaged. Within this vision, the teacher is elevated to the role of a professional who is responsible for the design of the work, is the leader of a work team and is responsible for motivating workers to higher levels of productivity. In addition to having a thorough knowledge of their subject area, they now must also have prerequisite skills to collaborate with others concerning their work and must value continuing adult learning in order to focus on continuing improvement of the quality of work they design for students.

The elevation of teachers within the organization and the focus on quality make the principals' role that of leader of leaders. The principal's role is to share information, resources and power and to ensure that long reaching decisions are made jointly. Principals are responsible for developing mechanisms that make this process possible, and also for fostering the cultural norms necessary for collaborating.

Our schools will be linked together by a central office, responsible for setting the overall direction of the district. This direction is to be determined through community input, Board of Education input and educator input which is focused on what students will need in order to be successful during their lifetime. The Central Office is also responsible for building the capacity of all employees throughout the district to support and sustain continuous improvement in this organization. Both the district and the schools will be open places that encourage focused dialogue by all stakeholders. The purpose of this dialogue will be to foster the sense of trust, of commitment and of team throughout the community necessary to provide every child the opportunity to reach his/her potential.

C. Student Accomplishments

Historically, what we wanted students to learn has been organized around the disciplines of English, math, science, social studies, the arts and physical education and health and has been "delivered" by an adult talking to a group of children. Over time each discipline has evolved a sequence of content that students were to learn. Generally learning each discipline has been viewed as a separate area, an end in itself and learning has been defined as the passive act of listening. However, when one studies work in the world outside of school, one quickly sees that it is complex and often requires a simultaneous application of knowledge from many disciplines. One also finds that workers don't talk about what they know or what they learn, they talk about what they did or accomplished.

We envision one of the most important purposes of schooling is to teach apprentice workers to work on knowledge work that is designed to model work in the real world. Real workers are concerned with significant accomplishments -- what they can do with what they know. Knowledge now serves the purpose of helping students to develop the skills or competencies that are needed beyond the classroom. The content of the disciplines becomes the raw material used by apprentice workers to practice and master their essential knowledge work skills. Disciplines are not ends in themselves; they are means to achieving much larger ends -- genuine valuable accomplishments. This vision of student accomplishment realigns schooling with real world needs, focuses the curriculum on the future, and establishes the importance of the application of knowledge. This new focus on applying what one has learned significantly raises the learning expectation for each student.

D. Teaching and Learning

Viewing the school as a knowledge work organization means that students are no longer mere passive receptacles into which information can be poured. Students are responsible members of the organization. Students are apprentice workers who must learn how to work in preparation for the adult roles they will fill as citizens and workers. Learning, therefore, is an active, meaning-making process that occurs as a result of engaging in high quality work.

Teaching, therefore, must become much more than simply transmitting bits of information through lecture to students. Teaching must be the art of facilitating student engagement in high quality work that teachers invent or design. Teachers must not only coach students to develop their basic skills to a higher level, but they must also help students become confident, independent and reflective learners; effective problem solvers; and productive team workers which are all critical skills for the apprentice worker to master in order to be able to succeed in the 21st century workplace.

The following framework should be considered when designing quality work for students:

1. Content & Substance
2. Product Focus
3. Clear & Compelling Product Standards
4. Authenticity
5. Affirmation of Performance
6. Organization of Knowledge
7. Protection from Adverse Consequences
8. Affiliation with Others
9. Novelty & Variety
10. Choice

E. Assessment

Historically, assessment has been testing which was done after learning had stopped. Our vision of assessment is that it links curriculum and instruction by communicating clear and compelling standards and by providing examples and feedback to enable students to reach those standards. Significant student accomplishments remain somewhat vague and generic without the development of specific assessment tasks, acceptable levels of performance and examples of exemplary student work necessary to assess these accomplishments. Once these performance tasks and standards and examples have been developed they become extremely important instructional tools. Teachers explicitly engage students in a dialogue about quality and actually teach them what quality standards look like through applying these quality criteria to their own work and to the work of their peers. Gradually students will be empowered to assess and monitor their own progress.

Adopted: May 26, 1998
Revised: March 27, 2000

Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools 1200 S. Halstead Blvd. Elizabeth City, NC 27909 Phone: 252.335.2981 Fax: 252.335.0974

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