From Promise to Practice: Delivering on Your School’s Value

Concerning trends abound. Enrollment patterns are shifting. Tuition pressures are rising. Student needs are intensifying. Teachers’ responsibilities are expanding, and faculty burnout is on the rise. Amid it all, families are increasingly questioning curriculum, purpose, and value.

After nearly two decades of mounting pressures and relentless waves of challenge, many schools now find themselves treading water: pulled in too many directions, relying on surface-level fixes, and lacking the perspective to anticipate and respond to emerging tidal shifts.

Since these challenges will likely persist (and even worsen), strategic leaders need to take an intentional pause to clarify their mission imperatives and align their priorities and resources to truly deliver.

Mission drives priorities, but in today’s competitive landscape most independent school mission statements sound similar, offering promises of nurturing environments, collaborative leadership, global citizenship, etc…. These prevalence of these broad themes can blur rather than define a school’s value, contributing to enrollment and retention challenges—especially as families increasingly base decisions on what they see and experience rather than on what schools say.

This is where NAIS’s Jobs to Be Done research offers some clarity and direction. Based on thousands of interviews with parents across the country, NAIS found that families aren’t just choosing a school—they’re hiring it to do a specific job in their child’s life.

Specifically, NAIS identified four core “jobs” families trust independent schools to do:

• Help my child develop strong values and character

• Help my child find a strong peer community where they belong

• Help my child excel academically and access top-tier colleges

• Help my child rediscover a love of learning in a supportive environment

Their research shows that these “jobs” are more than preferences: they’re expectations. And they become the lens through which families evaluate whether a school’s mission is being lived out in daily practice.

Realistically, a school can meaningfully deliver on one or two of these core jobs, so it is crucial to clarify which job your school is promising and best positioned to deliver on. Without this clarity, schools risk spreading themselves thin with promises to do all the jobs well, thereby diluting resources, overextending teams, and muddying mission imperatives. Moreover, when promises don’t align with lived experience, community trust erodes and contributes to attrition, disengagement, and growing skepticism about the school’s direction.

The good news? Schools don’t need to reinvent themselves to sharpen their sense of purpose and ensure that their practice reflects and reinforces the “job” families are hiring them to do. 

Here are three key moves to align your practice:

1. Name Your Core Priorities

Identify the one or two “jobs” your school is uniquely positioned to do and committed to doing well. Ensure alignment with your culture and learning outcomes. Revisit these core priorities often; make them visible and actionable.

2. Design Backward from the Student Experience

Collect and reflect on survey data to understand how students perceive your school’s values and priorities in action. Conduct discovery walks on campus: How are your values evident in classrooms, hallways, and student work? Where does your mission and message come alive, and where is there a disconnect? Use these insights to amplify what's aligns and redesign what isn't.

3. Invest in the People Closest to Students

Professional learning is the infrastructure of your mission; the quality of your teaching is the expression of your values. Build collective efficacy by clarifying what excellence looks like at your school and equip faculty with the shared language, tools, and time to pursue excellence together.

The future will favor the schools that act with clarity and purpose. This requires making hard choices about what matters most and aligning programs and practices to reflect those priorities. When a school’s mission and promise are evident in the lived experience of its students, trust grows, outcomes improve, and value becomes undeniable.