Kot­ter defines vision as “a pic­ture of the future with some implicit or explicit com­men­tary on why peo­ple should strive to cre­ate that future.”  In edu­ca­tion, it is quite com­mon to throw around mis­sion and/or vision state­ments.  Those state­ments can be found posted all over most build­ings, but yet they are some­what mean­ing­less to many.  Because most vision state­ments for schools are nearly iden­ti­cal, they become pretty mean­ing­less.  A vision state­ment of “do good” would be just as effec­tive as many cur­rent vision statements.

Jim Collins lists three basic ele­ments that make up an organization’s vision.

1) An organization’s fun­da­men­tal rea­son for exis­tence
(often called its mis­sion or purpose).

(2) Its time­less unchang­ing core values.

(3) Huge and audacious—but
ulti­mately achievable—aspirations for its own future.

Kot­ters says that “If you can­not describe your vision to some­one in five min­utes and get their inter­est, you have more work to do in this phase of a trans­for­ma­tion process.”  That state­ment res­onates strongly with me because your guid­ing coali­tion will be respon­si­ble for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the vision to stake­hold­ers.  With­out a strong vision state­ment, it will make the com­mu­ni­ca­tion process very difficult.

I absolutely love that vision state­ment that the state of Maine has made.  It reads that “Maine stu­dents will be the most tech­no­log­i­cally lit­er­ate in the world.”  This state­ment is crys­tal clear, and it truly com­mu­ni­cates one of the pur­poses of edu­ca­tion in Maine.  In 2002 Maine put out an infor­ma­tional let­ter to schools stat­ing the things that were required on each school’s tech­nol­ogy plan.  One of the cri­te­ria was a vision state­ment.  The expec­ta­tions for the vision state­ment is listed here. 

Vision  - Estab­lish a vision state­ment link­ing
the tools of tech­nol­ogy with areas such as cur­ricu­lum con­tent, instruc­tional
prac­tices, pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment strate­gies, and enhanced services.

Maine’s require­ment is a good guide for schools.  The guide is very appeal­ing to me because it ties the tools of tech­nol­ogy to learn­ing.  It doesn’t just focus on tech­nol­ogy for the sake of technology.

I must warn you that as you craft your vision state­ment, there are lots and lots of poor mod­els out there.  Don’t be one of the schools that cre­ate a bor­ing blan­ket state­ment with no meaning!