ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters, we presented examples of school mission statements from a wide variety of American elementary, middle and high schools. A review of these chapters reveals that the schools in the United States show tremendous diversity with regard to their fundamental philosophies and primary missions. Indeed, the diversity can be so striking that the first question of interest to be addressed in this chapter is whether we see American schools converging in any broad way regarding the primary purposes of their schools. Given that every school represented here is similarly devoted to educating American children between five and eighteen years old, how different are the schools in their stated purposes and missions? In this chapter, we step back and take a broad view of the different themes and patterns we observed across all schools and within the different school types presented in each chapter.
