Who sees the Big Picture for your school? The Big picture. You remember what that is. Generally, the Big Picture is the school’s Mission Statement. It is the collage of high ground learning outcomes that your school wants all children to achieve in “the best of educational worlds.” Some schools see themselves in terms of their Big Picture and their potential for making their Big Picture a statement of what they are. Big pictures are the work of visionaries, the large achievements to be attained over time. Big pictures are the dreams of teachers and parents related to the qualities that future children might become.

Just as there are Big Pictures there also are little pictures. The little picture, and there are many of them, are not associated with the best of educational worlds but with the reality of educational worlds. A little picture is this year’s graduation rate, or the comparison of this year’s fifth grade reading scores with that cohort’s reading scores last year, or the number of days that children categorized as minority were suspended from school this year compared with the number of suspension days for children categorized as white, English-speaking and not impoverished. Little pictures require school functionaries who are tasked with the management of specific annual outcomes. Little pictures are the annual measures of what happens on a daily and ultimately annual basis in a school.

It is difficult in 2015 to be a keeper of the Big Picture. Visionaries see schools differently than functionaries. This is a statement of truth not of prejudice. In order for schools to succeed in the world of 2015, they need the diligent work of functionaries, leaders who are focused on the little pictures of school accountability. A school that fails to meet its accountability mandates is a school with a limited future and a school without a future fails its community.

But, what if a school neglects its Big Picture? What if school leadership emphasizes the measured scores of little pictures by abandoning its efforts to provide an array of arts and humanities programs? What if the wellness curricula of physical education and health are short-changed? What if college-preparation extension courses of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate are eliminated? What if the only instructed language is English and the only career preparation is high school graduation? The answer to these “what ifs” is that the soul of the school will be lost. While the bones of instruction that support tested curricula will remain, the richness of programming authorized by the Mission Statement that ensures that the school can meet the ambitions of every child will not live in this school.

Achieving the little pictures at the expense of the Big Picture gives in to the pressures of education politics and abandons dreams of a greater future.