HomeAbout District 365UMission Statement

 

Vision

Valley View sets an environment where students, teachers, administrators, support staff, parents, and the larger Valley View School District community, holds high expectations for all learning. This is accomplished through strengthening the rigor of academic offerings and supporting effective instructional and assessment practices, to meet the needs of all students. Our students must be challenged to meet their full potential, and the learning community provides the support, resources, and commitment to do so. Our students will respond to higher expectations, if our entire community BELIEVES that ALL students are capable of meeting high standards, and accept nothing less from our students, parents, teachers, administrators and the community at large.

Mission

Our mission is to ensure that ALL students are prepared for college, and a successful life, academically, socially, and emotionally, as well as equipped with the necessary tools to have options and make decisions about their long-term goals. This will be accomplished by believing and working towards ALL students learning through rigorous curricula and meaningful, effective instruction; consequently demonstrating mastery on high-quality assessments, with all stakeholders being held accountable throughout the process.

BELIEFS

The belief that every student has the capacity to learn and to achieve his/her full potential is the foundation on which our efforts rest. We hold high expectations and provide supports to ensure academic success for ALL students in Valley View School District, regardless of race, gender, income, geography, disability, or native language. This will be accomplished through:

• Enhancing cultural competency
• Broadening inclusion of students with disabilities in the regular education setting
• Focusing resources to support schools with high proportions of at-risk students with sound strategies to ensure that all students will be successful
• Developing the knowledge and life skills necessary to be productive members of the community
• Establishing learning environments characterized by a genuine empathy for ALL students and in which their cultural and linguistic diversities are celebrated, embraced and utilized when designing and delivering lessons

RIGOR

With the belief that every student has the capacity to learn and to achieve his/her full potential, students will be challenged individually through the use of rigorous, research-based curricula and differentiated instruction. Academic rigor calls for more demanding content that pushes students to higher levels of thinking and application to prepare them for post-secondary life. While we acknowledge that students have unique capabilities and learn at different rates, all students are expected to perform at a proficient level or above. This will be accomplished through:

• Ensuring clear and explicit academic requirements are in place, in alignment with Common Core State Standards and College and Career Readiness Standards
• Ensuring that vertical and horizontal alignment of curricula is in place
• Maintaining strong K-12 literacy and mathematics programs through a continuous improvement process
• Ensuring that the curricula are taught with integrity to ALL students and with consistency across classrooms, schools and programs of instruction

INSTRUCTION

With the belief that every student has the capacity to learn and to achieve his/her full potential, students will consistently be provided with high-quality, researched-based, instruction that is tailored to each student's specific learning styles as well as academic, literacy and skills development needs, but without negotiating the rigor of the curricula or learning outcomes. This will be accomplished through:

• Differentiating instruction based on students' learning styles and needs
• Establishing a common language of universal instructional expectations that are aligned with research-based best practices
• Implementing consistent instructional practices that are of high quality and promote higher order thinking skills
• Integrating strategies and resources that promote differentiation to meet the needs of ALL learners
• Supporting collaborative decision making teams focused on best instructional practices, whose decisions translate in effective adjustments to instruction at the classroom level

ASSESSMENT

With the belief that every student has the capacity to learn and to achieve his/her full potential, we will implement a balanced and holistic assessment system that ensures we provide targeted instruction and interventions that deliver accurate information throughout the learning process to ensure proficiency is met. This will be accomplished through:

• Embedding ongoing formative assessment into the curriculum delivery system to drive instruction
• Measuring student achievement based on the student's individual level of mastery, as defined by the academic standard
• Providing consistent, common measures for gauging teacher, administrator, and student progress.
• Basing all instructional decisions, at every level, on data when appropriate.
• Providing staff with high quality professional development in assessment and data analysis and usage

ACCOUNTABILITY

With the belief that every student has the capacity to learn and to achieve his/her full potential, the shared expectation of accountability to ensure this goal is met includes all stakeholders, to include: community, Board of Education, administration, faculty, staff, parents, and students. However, in the absence of accountability from external stakeholders, the school system will ultimately hold itself accountable for student outcomes. This will be accomplished through:

• Implementing a network of community outreach efforts
• Partnering with a diverse consortium of community partners
• Including measures of student achievement over a defined period of time to determine administrator and teacher effectiveness
• Monitoring and evaluating curricula and instructional programs through appropriate data collection and analysis
• Creating a culture and a structure that ensures that student advancement is based on proficiency at the critical transition points of third, eighth, and twelfth grades