Schools in high-poverty areas encounter unique obstacles. Families in these communities often struggle with limited financial resources, inadequate healthcare, food insecurity, and poor housing conditions. These challenges are compounded by restricted access to technology and educational support for their children. Schools serving these families have a crucial role in helping students overcome these barriers and achieve educational equity.
Aligning vision, mission, and action plans is essential for any school or organization, but this alignment can be particularly helpful for schools serving students in low-income families. Moreover, when we add the element of a morally driven commitment to doing what is right and for the right reasons, the vision, mission, and action plans are elevated to a cause with a well-defined “why.”
Educators who have a well-defined why (cause) have greater clarity about what they need to do to help their students improve socially and academically.
These educators often push artificial boundaries, go above and beyond, and have a keen observation they can leverage to enact equity-guided educational practices academically and socio-emotionally. This relationship is discussed in the book Four Pillars to Guide Visionary Educators (Collado, 2025).
History is full of examples of moral clarity and demonstrated leadership giving rise to an uncompromising commitment to a cause because followers found their own why. One of the most influential documents that defines this principle-based leadership-guided action plan aligned to a moral compass is Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK, 1963). Its conclusion is a stunning summary of compromise, humility, and defining the essence of what morally driven actions and leadership look like at crucial moments in history:
“If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you (the clergy) to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that makes me settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me” (MLK,1963)
In this quote, Dr. King clearly connects the actions he has taken or is about to take to two important entities that are at the center of his life: he asks forgiveness from his fellow men for his possible transgressions, but in a clear-eyed spirit, asks God for forgiveness in the event that his patience and inactions have given way to injustice.
In education, effective leadership has, or should have, a gravitational pull that equally aligns missions, action plans, and values, particularly in low SES and disenfranchised communities. This alignment is crucial to define everyday actions and their purpose in accomplishing the expressed vision. All too often, we see schools (and school systems) that, by not creating a coherence that should exist between vision, mission, action plans, and moral compass, underestimate the incredible power of creating a cause-like atmosphere to elevate the teaching and learning environment in their schools. Other times, we see vision and mission statements as little more than monolithic, feel-good statements that are empty aspirational phrases that may look great on a wall but have no real connection to the day-to-day work of teachers, staff, students, and their families.
This lack of clarity and alignment is also a loss of opportunity to motivate all involved to work toward a cause greater than any individual: positively impacting the lives of children, professionals, and communities.
This opportunity educators have to positively impact students’ lives is a trust families have placed in educators and schools. It is a trust earned or lost through actions or lack of actions.
But what does it look like in action? How can educators (both teachers and leaders) enact visionary leadership? Consider the concepts of awareness, system conditions, resource management, and collaboration:
- Awareness: How can we proactively use data and at-risk indicators to identify struggling students?
- Systemic Conditions: How prepared are our teams to provide what is needed for these students and their families? What do we have, and what is needed?
- Resource Management: How can we manage financial and human resources to analyze the underlying issues and provide what is needed? This includes access to technology, academic tutoring, formative feedback toward content mastery with Tier 1-2-and 3 intervention, and more.
- Collaborations: How are the educators and teams sharing best practices and using data-informed collaboration to set goals and measure success? How do we maintain open and ongoing lines of communication with the teams to support the students identified as low-performing?
Consider the following questions for school leaders: do I identify the
- How do we identify the most vulnerable students?
- Do we have artificial boundaries that facilitate inequity?
- How do we plan to meet and support the nature of their vulnerability?
- How can we leverage school resources to meet the needs of our students?
- What will I do to involve our families?
- How do I set up my class (or school) to provide support for students?
Other questions for school leaders to consider are as follows:
- Do we have aligned visions, missions, and action plans in our departments or grade levels that are cohesive with the school’s vision?
- How can we provide support for teachers to be able to plan and collaborate to improve their practices?
- Do we have a family engagement plan?
Education is a team sport. Vision, missions, and action plans should be guided by a moral compass with a clear understanding of how our jobs as educators are life-changing for all our students. That trust placed on us as educators deserves no less than a strong alignment between clear vision, focus missions, and action plans that, if implemented with fidelity, are conducive to students’ progress.
