More than Meets the Eye? Using Text Analytic Techniques to Unpack School Mission Statements

Schools develop mission statements in part to communicate their purposes of schooling to internal and external audiences. The goal of this study is to employ text analytic techniques to analyze school mission statements. Focusing on Arizona and New Jersey's schools, we seek to understand: 1) what themes (topics) emerge from their mission statements, 2) whether local context (politics) and institutional factors (being a charter) mediate topic prevalence, and 3) how similar school mission statements are to one another overall and across select factors. Using structural topic modeling we find that five topics emerge as particularly prevalent, and they address key purposes within the US context related to social, academic, and civic development with an emphasis on a safe environment and a sense of community. Local political leanings have a minor impact on the prevalence of topics but being a charter has a distinct influence. Compared to regular schools, charters are more likely to include themes related to preparing for college, academic approaches, and character and family ties, but they place lower emphasis on community and citizenship themes. School missions display moderate levels of similarity, indicating that a common set vocabulary has permeated schools' missions, though differences remain, including between states. Overall, this study deepens our understanding of the varieties of schools' missions and reveals text analytic techniques are well suited for uncovering them. Schools develop mission statements in part to communicate their purposes of schooling to internal and external audiences. In a novel application, the goal of this study is to employ text analytic techniques to analyze school mission statements. Focusing on Arizona and New Jersey schools, we seek to understand what themes (topics) emerge from their mission statements, whether local context (politics) and institutional factors (being a charter) mediate topic prevalence, and how similar school mission statements are to one another overall and across select factors. Employing structural topic modeling, five themes emerge as most prevalent. The themes broadly address key purposes within the US context related to social, academic, and civic development with an emphasis on a safe environment and a sense of community. Local political leanings have a minor impact on the prevalence of topics but being a charter has a distinct influence. Compared to regular schools, charters are more likely to include themes related to preparing for college, academic approaches, and character and family ties, but they place lower emphasis on community and citizenship themes. School missions display moderate levels of similarity, indicating that a common set vocabulary has permeated, though differences remain, including between states. One limitation of the study is the focus on two states; however, preliminary analyses of a small national sample suggest comparable vocabularies. Overall, this study reveals school mission statements present meaningful variations in the purposes of schools. Schools are communicating interpretable goals and text data mining techniques are well suited for uncovering them.