Learning Forward Conference

Hear how York High School (IL) is in its third year of not ending each semester with final exams. Discover how our assessment and relearning days have shifted discussions from grades to learning, but the road hasn't been smooth. Learn about the origin of the decision, our growth, and the impact on student learning.

Consider how campus principals possess incredible ability to create positive shifts in teaching and learning and student outcomes. Learn how Friendswood ISD (TX) in partnership with Learning Forward is maximizing capacity and engagement of their campus principals and assistant principals through a focus on using Standards for Professional Learning, cycles of continuous improvement, logic models, and adult learning theory to affect change. Learn how to collect evidence on the impact of engaged campus leadership.

Learn how Michigan's fifth-largest public school district shifted from a one-size-fits-all system of professional development to a more personalized professional learning model by leveraging lessons learned over the past few years. Discover ways they supported instructional staff to develop professional development resources by providing the tools, support, and space to share with one another. Walk away with practical examples of how you might shift your building or district to a more collaborative, job-embedded, and customized professional learning system.

Consider how, over the last 20 years, the role of educators as lead learners and the focus and delivery methods for their own professional learning have evolved significantly. Explore how the pandemic influenced shifts in professional learning to support virtual learning while reducing much of the reflective and personal focus that was present pre-pandemic. Investigate how professional learning leadership roles and structures have changed over time and the influence the pandemic has had on the way adults learn together.

Learn how Miami Dade College and Miami-Dade County Public Schools' Teacher Candidate Residency Model is an innovative approach to prepare teacher candidates during internship while addressing the teacher shortage by embedding internship clinical hours in full-time teaching positions. Explore a coherent framework for designing, implementing, and continuously improving the recruitment, development, and retention of high-quality teachers. Leave with strategies for growing a teacher candidate residency model that meets the needs of your school community.

Examine the internal obstacles to ensuring high levels of learning for every student. Explore tools to identify and defeat the enemy of equity. Discover the many subtle and seductive forms this enemy takes and the mindset and practices required to defeat it. Learn to deliver on the promise of equity, excellence, and achievement for all students, regardless of background.

Consider the research that shows students benefit when they have access to diverse teachers, yet teachers of color leave schools at a higher rate than white teachers. Learn lessons gleaned from six school districts across the country that have designed and implemented strategies for improving the recruitment, support, and retention of teachers of color. Gain effective strategies at the school and district level to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers of color.

Learn how networks support continuous learning and improvement for equity and address systemic challenges and problems. Explore how learning teams design and implement professional learning interventions using continuous improvement concepts and disciplined inquiry to lead to improved educator practice. Discover how Learning Forward’s networks are grounded in Standards for Professional Learning. Speak with Learning Forward staff about how to learn more about leading a learning network in your district or school.

Consider what it takes to build a system of schools where there is equity in access to optimal learning and high-quality instruction for students. Learn the processes used to build leadership capacity through intentional strategies including a research partnership project, a professional learning strategy, and a school/leadership support process. Take home insights and resources to apply in your context.

Discover how Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is one of the few large urban school systems providing high-quality curriculum that centers culturally responsive and sustaining educational practices in all grades and subjects. Learn how CPS is using the Elements of Curriculum-based Professional Learning to provide system- and classroom-level supports that drive instructional and student learning improvement. Experience how Co-Labs, professional learning communities grounded in anchor protocols focused on unit, lesson, and data study, drive school-level improvement.

Review how crucial it is for assistant principals to have intentional, coordinated professional development that grows their leadership skills. Learn how principals can develop a framework for mentoring and modeling their assistant principals and how the district can create the just-right learning opportunities that complement and build upon the principal’s mentorship. Leave with a plan for synergizing local school and systemwide efforts to increase the skills of assistant principals.

Discover how hope neuroscience is a cutting-edge strategy to improve staff and student resilience, achievement, and happiness. Examine a process to measure and strengthen hope to help positively change the brain, supporting student achievement and improving school cultures to support staff retention. Explore make-it-take-it tools and strategies to immediately start improving hope so every person at school can thrive.

Hear what current brain science says about learning and leadership and how to use this information to design more engaging experiences for both K-12 students and professional staff. Consider, for example, how emotions influence a person's ability to learn and work, whether people can multitask, and whether they have learning styles. Learn key ideas that every leader should know about how cognitive and social-emotional learning works in the brain. Leave with strategies you can use right away to create more memorable, meaningful, and motivational experiences for both students and staff.

Discover what feedback teachers find most useful, what information addresses their greatest concerns, and what they consider most helpful to improve their interactions with students and their impact on student learning. Explore five feedback characteristics based on our recent research with multiple K-12 school districts. Uncover feedback that provides meaningful information, focused communication, and clear direction for improving teacher development and student learning.

Dive deeply into rich resources that support implementing Standards for Professional Learning. Learn how to effectively use Innovation Configuration maps and discover the latest tools for standards implementation. Discover how the supplementary resources for standards provide direction for translating standards into the daily work of educators in various roles and with varying responsibilities. Examine all the resources available to get the most from Standards for Professional Learning.

Explore how Anne Arundel County Public Schools (MD) brings its equity policy to life by employing its self, systems, and steps framework to all facets of a large, suburban school district. Learn how the framework can be employed by educators at the classroom, school, and district levels. Apply and use the framework to advance the work of equity in your role as an educator.

Delve into the process of designing inclusive and comprehensive pathways that enable students to grow into careers in teaching or classified roles within your district. Acquire practical tools to align curriculum, assessments, and experiential learning opportunities, ensuring students and alumni are ready for future roles in your district. Gain processes for organizational change including partnering with businesses and community leaders. Learn best practices and exchange valuable insights as we support you with models for success that respect and nurture your school community.

Learn how to leverage your instructional vision to bring academic synergy to your school district. Uncover strategies to engage all stakeholders to develop an inclusive instructional vision and learn how to build a coalition of support by hearing from one district’s journey. Walk away with ready-to-use resources and materials. Uncover innovative ways to build a strong instructional community.

Imagine a school where staff input into important decisions is not only desired, but is encouraged, expected, and implemented in systematic and systemic ways. Explore the research on implementation science, examine a possible structure for engaging staff, and hear about the practical implications of this work in one system. Walk away with a plan for how you will engage all staff in meaningful decision making.

Explore three elements of effective coaching practice: the GROWTH conversational framework, based on an approach first developed in Australia; essential coaching skills; and a coaching way of being. Gain a solid grounding and platform from which to develop more sophisticated skills and understanding of coaching as a way of leading or coaching as a highly effective leadership stance. Consider how coaching as a leader is more nuanced than other forms of coaching. Begin to adopt a coaching way of leading with more confidence.

Uncover how everyday, ground-level activities in our schools and systems can contribute to and ignite movements. Learn about the field of curriculum-based professional learning – a growing effort focused on equipping educators with what they need to engage students in rigorous, student-centered instruction. Explore how you can drive the broader effort forward in your school, system, and well beyond.

Engage in analysis-of-practice using videoclips from the classroom as one teacher implements high-quality instructional materials and from professional learning as study group members analyze that same classroom videoclip. Link this experience to the Elements of Curriculum-based Professional Learning and implications for your setting. Consider leadership roles and responsibilities for putting the Elements into action.

Consider how, just as baseball coaches and managers need to place the right players in the right positions, district leaders need to identify the best leaders in the right positions. Join our team, as we discuss creating pipeline courses for instructional coaches, principals, and administrators that allow districts to not only identify leadership potential in their current rosters, but empower their teacher leaders to explore leadership opportunities and grow in their understanding of essential leadership skills.

Consider how districts build a comprehensive leadership development program to build leadership capacity, from teacher leaders to administrators. Experience how Frederick County Public Schools (MD) implements the Exceptional Leaders Innovating and Transforming Education (ELITE) Leadership Program based on a core set of standards and research-informed practices. Leave with a strategic plan to implement and sustain a comprehensive program to overcome the challenge of recruitment and retention of leaders.

Learn how Miami Dade County Public Schools addresses teacher recruitment and retention by establishing partnerships to build teacher capacity, to grow our own from preservice to teacher leadership, and to provide teachers’ career lattice opportunities. Explore ideas, models, and methods such as teacher leadership academy and grow your own pipelines for resource officers, alternative track educators, and paraprofessionals. Experience, firsthand, how these models serve as exemplars to support teacher recruitment and growth and student learning.

Learn how a professional learning service provider for a network of schools aligned their offerings with organizational objectives and teachers' and leaders' standards. Study their robust needs assessment that included surveys, stakeholder focus groups, and school performance data. Follow their journey to increase participation and coherence while identifying the components that make up a strong needs assessment survey and apply them to your context.

Hear how systemic changes in literacy practices require well-informed instructional leaders at the building and district level, given leaders’ impact on student outcomes. Discover changes in language and literacy practices, assessments, teacher training, parent engagement, and use of instructional materials that are aligned with Ohio’s plan to raise literacy achievement and Ohio’s dyslexia support laws. Learn about Ohio’s Literacy Improvement Pathway, additional resources for implementing the science of reading in K-5 buildings, and a plan for implementation of facilitated ongoing professional learning with coaching for building and district leadership.

Discuss how a systematic approach to professional learning that provides multiple entry points fosters equitable outcomes across a network. Learn how Network Improvement Communities, learning walks, and convenings can function as a unified system to build capacity to meet network and school goals. Examine your own learning systems and plan next steps for your context.

Discuss what it means to move from one-size-fits-all learning for all teachers. Learn how one award-winning school created a culture of coaching that led to increased teacher efficacy and accelerated student growth and achievement through individualized coaching, feedback, and professional development. Leave with a roadmap and resources to support a comprehensive coaching model that brings out the greatness in every teacher.

Discuss how district and central office leaders advance equity in participation with teachers and school leaders. Identify the conditions and systems necessary to sustain an equity agenda Examine systems and processes for creating or revisiting your districtwide equity agenda – vision, shared understandings, strategies, monitoring systems – and tools for gathering meaningful data that deepen the district’s common understanding of equity. Learn from our partnerships with over 40 districts across the country.

Hear about a statewide approach to developing the capacity of educators to lead change for English Learners. Understand how Hawaii is supporting educators at the state, district, and site levels with a three-year professional learning plan to cultivate a culture of collaborative inquiry, engage in cycles of continuous improvement, and affect change. Explore the importance of committing to a shared vision of excellence, staying equity-focused, understanding high-quality teaching for English Learners, and employing research-based practices to guide decision-making.

Discuss how schools, systems, and leaders thrive, not just survive, during change. Learn a research-based framework to build and engage collective leadership practices that grow retention, efficacy, and school improvement. Leave with a plan that applies specific strategies to your own school or district’s leadership challenges.

Uncover how coaching as a way of being has the potential to influence the performance of all employees and the entire culture of an organization. Explore how effective coaches reflect on their personal identity, embrace the dynamics of race and gender in interactions with others, and seek opportunities to learn and grow through the role of coach. Consider that a coaching approach offers educators the opportunity for job embedded and personalized learning and the potential for personal transformation.

Unpack a vision of an equity-centered school leader: one who cultivates prosperity and liberation for students and staff, particularly those from historically marginalized populations, by increasing access and inclusion, building trusting relationships, removing barriers, and creating a shared culture of accountability. Explore three core drivers to nurture such leaders: increasing accessibility of pathways to leadership, sustaining aspiring and current principals with transformational coaching, and equity-centered professional learning.

Study the design and implementation of a new approach to professional learning for principals and the district leaders who support them. Explore the evidence that principals are eager to learn from each other as they assist teachers in developing effective practices for raising student performance. See how the artful steps of focusing on the standards, engaging principals in cycles of continuous improvement, and coaching them to success is much like the tango: fast-paced and shifting directions as needed, but never losing sight of the goal—success for all students.

Explore a range of initiatives that cultivate more authentic school-family partnerships. Consider how one district deepened school leaders’ and educators’ capacity around forging stronger partnerships with families and ensured more equitable access for traditionally underrepresented families and students. Examine the latest research on family partnership best practices, how to bring those high-leverage strategies to life, and key learnings to apply in your own context.

Experience a curriculum-based professional learning design that shifts practice in the instructional core. Examine a professional learning design for improving teacher practices with curriculum, student connections to content, and relationships between teachers and students. Learn how structures that include building peer collaboration and follow-up coaching are impacting outcomes for students.

Explore national, state, and local data trends that establish the need for strategic teacher leadership. Develop an evidence-focused action plan for implementing a strategic teacher leadership model in your school or district. Identify high-leverage leadership roles, develop selection criteria, and plan to evaluate evidence of impact. Hear from one school that has turned evidence into action by implementing a solutions-focused model to improve new teacher retention.

Learn how a suburban school district developed and implemented a personalized professional learning structure to support the district’s comprehensive plan. Examine key elements of adult learning theory, reflect on your current practices, analyze guiding documents, and address logistical barriers. Begin to develop a plan that increases personalized professional learning within your organization.

Discuss how getting close to the experience of students and families helps educators creatively solve complex problems. Consider the value of taking intentional strategic risks in an inclusive culture in which brainstorming is encouraged and failure is celebrated. Practice design thinking as a framework to solve your most complex challenges: building empathy, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, and testing solutions. Reimagine how your central office innovates in service of students.

Learn how Broward County Public Schools (FL) developed a vision for instructional coaches, teachers, and teacher leaders and established systems to support growth and development over the past five years. Examine the district’s teacher professional learning pipeline for instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and teachers that supports and sustains high levels of teacher practices and student academic achievement. Dive into student and teacher data to understand how our teacher professional learning pathway and support model, EMPOWER, has impacted the success of our schools, particularly some of our most critically challenged schools.

Learn how two districts improved leadership growth and student outcomes by prioritizing high-quality summer learning for staff and students. District Summer Learning Network participants from Newark, NJ, and Tuscaloosa, AL, share the evidence-based improvements that they implemented while leveraging professional learning for future leaders. Consider these issues in terms of your district and leave with a clear set of recommendations, aligned with the PSEL standards, for the cost of a single initiative.

Learn about a continuous improvement process to build instructional leadership capacity for school and district leaders in the Department of Defense Education Activity’s worldwide school system. Explore a plan to ensure leaders experience content-specific leadership professional learning aligned with educator professional learning to improve instruction systemwide. Consider the importance of partnership among content, leadership, and professional learning teams. Gain strategies for reexamining the structures you have in place to provide content-specific leadership professional learning.

Learn how a large school district and their external partner have worked together to launch, implement, and sustain an instructional initiative. Explore the different strategies used to engage teachers and leaders in professional learning and continuous improvement around personalized learning. Reflect and plan for implementation within your own district as you dive into examples of personalized learning in action.

Explore how to support high-quality school leadership and enhance the leadership capacity of principal supervisors. Learn how an urban district has operationalized five essential leadership plays through job-embedded coaching, strategic professional learning, and distributive leadership. Capitalize on existing leadership development programs and systems in your organization to develop a responsive plan for impactful school leadership.

Unpack district leaders’ needs to understand if their investments in professional learning are translating to classroom practice. Learn how Winston-Salem/Forsyth (NC) measures the return on investment of their instructional support and new initiatives. Investigate the power of aligning your data collection tools while responding to the unique professional learning needs of all stakeholders. Create a plan to develop a culture of continuous improvement and execute your programs with fidelity.

Address challenges educators face in teaching sensitive and controversial content in the curriculum. Learn how Loudoun County Public Schools (VA) developed teacher capacity for teaching controversial and sensitive topics through professional learning, policies, regulations, and teacher resources. Engage in small-group dialogue, analyze scenarios, and consider ways of managing sensitive content in your own districts.

Learn how curriculum-based professional learning is being leveraged to deepen teachers’ and leaders' content knowledge and impact student literacy as evidenced by benchmark data. Explore a model that centers students’ instructional experience, teachers' content knowledge, and the related leadership moves needed to implement and sustain these practices. Leave with a template for engaging a district and school coalition to create a vision and identify resources for curriculum-based professional learning.

Learn about Placer County (CA) Office of Education’s countywide approach to building capacity, scaling up, and sustaining UDL implementation to ensure inclusion and equitable access for all learners. Explore successes, challenges, and lessons learned along with tangible strategies and resources to support local implementation. Examine how the approach leads to a process of supporting teachers in universally designing learning experiences with a focus on improving academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes for all students.

Begin or enhance your equity journey. Gain an understanding of a performative approach to equity work and why it is not successful or sustainable. Explore an equity-centered framework for strategic planning. Learn to use protocols to meaningfully engage in equity-centered conversations. Walk away with key skills and strategies to move from doing equity to living equity as part of your day-to-day work.

Learn how districts can make sure that new instructional strategies and initiatives are being used consistently throughout the district and measure the depth of the implementation. Discuss how learning walks can provide districts meaningful data to drive future professional learning. Experience the individual feedback instructional coaches provide teaching staff on learning walks. Explore various learning walk tools and how they can easily be altered to collect specific data to support district goals and initiatives.

Consider what happens when you ask people to reconsider everything they've ever believed about schools, learning, and themselves. Learn practical strategies to sustain yourself and your organization during extreme levels of value-based conflicts. Hear one school district's 20-year journey to achieve equity of opportunity for all its students. Develop an understanding of the principles of adaptive, distributive, and transformational leadership theories meticulously applied by one superintendent over two decades, resulting in exemplary academic outcomes for all students.

Discuss how reflection on your practices, processes, and systems can lead to enhanced performance at all levels. Unpack how creating a safe and effective culture of collaborative inquiry starts at the top and results in regular and authentic examination of performance indicators in all areas of district and school systems. Explore how to support informed decision-making, action planning, and learning through inquiry.

Discuss how to support overwhelmed educators, who are constantly struggling to do one more thing. Consider how the constant churn of initiatives, programs, and compliance issues have become a distraction, weakening the foundation of sound educational practice and moving educators away from their primary focus – student learning. Explore the Connected Action Roadmap, a framework that helps instructional leaders build collective efficacy while creating a cycle of continuous school improvement through authentic collaboration and systems thinking.

Learn to connect the right leader with the right school by building a Leadership Tracking System (LTS). Hear how St. Lucie Public Schools (FL) developed a LTS to identify the qualifications of applicants, align professional development needs, share effective leadership preparation programs, and much more. Participants will explore ways to develop and customize a LTS designed to collect information that meets the needs of their district.

Explore the planning, collaboration, and strategies that are leading one district to meaningful, responsive, and systemic changes in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Learn about the responsive steps we took to build community consensus, engage collaborators, communicate rationale, and support diverse educators through professional learning. Hear about our successes, struggles, and near derailments.

Consider the steps a district takes to implement a principal pipeline to ensure a well-prepared cadre of school leaders. Experience how Memphis-Shelby County Schools implements a pipeline that builds aspiring leaders. Hear about the components of the pipeline program including intense support, practical application opportunities, and tailored coaching to prepare fellows for a rigorous principal selection process. Leave with strategies and best practices to implement a leadership pipeline.

Learn about design thinking through a series of design for belonging exercises. Explore the liberatory design mindsets and feel, see, and shape an experiential moment of belonging for your own school, organization, or practice area. Draw on the process to plan a design action to take in your context.

This interactive session will provide participants with an in-depth exploration of the Standards for Professional Learning (2022), focused on how the standards guide and support high-quality learning systems and provide high-quality professional learning for individuals and teams. Explore new resources and tools that illustrate key concepts of the standards, including equity, curriculum, assessment, instruction, and professional expertise. Engage in collaborative learning activities to apply standards' concepts and resources to a range of roles, responsibilities, and professional contexts. Participants will receive a copy of Standards for Professional Learning.

Learn how the application of key learning science principles can elevate the teaching and learning that occurs every day in your school or district. Seize opportunities to implement the science of learning to develop excellent teachers who are equity focused and evidence informed. Strengthen your school system’s ability to leverage learning science to recruit and retain educators who meet the needs of all students.

Even as our lives become more personalized, whether through custom ads, personal shoppers, or movie and book recommendations, professional learning for educators has not kept pace. Explore innovative practices that empower educators to take ownership of their growth. Apply the personalized learning principles of voice, co-design, social construction, and self-discovery to design a professional learning model for your district or school. Leave with planning tools and models to put a plan into action.

The biggest school and system leadership responsibility is creating conditions where each person can thrive. Achieve clarity on this priority for healthy school, classroom, and work environments. Learn how to better honor dignity in everything we do in order to activate engagement and foster improved achievement, performance, and retention. Experience a framework and improvement process to better serve our students, their families, and each another.

Teaming and collaboration catalyze learning and teaching in schools and systems. Consider how educators engage effectively in teams and turn toward difficult conversations to enhance collaboration. Understand adult developmental theory and how it supports growth and student achievement. Learn about a developmental approach to teaming and engaging difficult conversations. Develop skills for building structures and cultures that support individual and team growth.

Explore the classic film 12 Angry Men and make connections to conflict evident in the film to discuss the five qualities of collaboration that support effective teams. Learn about meaningful team member participation and the importance of open inquiry. Examine techniques of consensus-building among diverse team members. Understand how conflict reveals new ideas and information.

The Standards for Professional Learning are foundational to ensuring our systems are learning systems. Learn that in learning systems, educators value adult learning as much as student learning, thrive through collaborative inquiry, and create conditions that foster high-quality teaching and learning for all. Explore the critical attributes of a learning system, how the Standards for Professional Learning guide learning systems to continuous improvement, the role of change theory, and how to develop a culture of collaborative inquiry.

Keynote speaker Chris Emdin will answer your questions in this special session after the keynote address on Monday.

Keynote facilitator Sharron Helmke and panelists will answer your questions in this special session after the keynote address on Tuesday.

Learn how Pomperaug Regional School District 15 (CT) spearheaded the work of the Middlebury and Southbury Equity and Inclusion Council. Hear the story of how we involved multiple stakeholders and the action steps we took to ensure all feel welcome and included in the schools but also the two towns of Middlebury and Southbury. Explore a set of questions to consider as districts work together with their communities to reach people of all backgrounds.

Explore useful tips and ideas for increasing educator retention in your district or campus. Discuss the role of ensuring early success for novice teachers and administrators as a critical component of increasing educator retention. Engage in dialogue and gain strategies for onboarding, mentoring, and growing educators.

Engage with professional learning designers, researchers, and leaders of an international school network in Qatar as they share their journey to evaluate the impact of professional learning. Discover how the team developed metrics based on theoretical frameworks to evaluate professional learning. Learn how they improved their system of evaluation to impact teacher efficacy, institutional support, and student outcomes.

Explore how principals are redesigning their leadership based on Standards for Professional Learning and the roles they play in leading learning of adults and students. Experience using the cycle of continuous improvement and designing adult learning based on the equity standards and the Culture of Collaborative Inquiry and Learning Designs standards. Examine the new standards from the role of the principal and leave with a plan of action to move forward with authentic implementation in our schools.

Learn about Learning Forward's Academy, a professional learning experience that offers educators an unmatched opportunity to profoundly deepen their expertise and increase their capacity to meet the challenges in the modern educational landscape. Hear from Academy coaches and members about how this 2 and ½-year inquiry-based learning experience has transformed their work.

Explore the importance of alignment. Discuss how students learn and teachers thrive when high-quality instructional materials, effective teaching practices, and authentic assessments are deeply aligned. Engage with scenarios from the field and use a consultancy protocol to workshop instances of misalignment in your own settings in an effort to move toward deeper alignment.

Hear about a suburban district’s journey as they re-establish their Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework and refine practices to be more responsive in a post-COVID world. Explore how Minnetonka Schools (MN) builds on their legacy of high performance by striving for continuous improvement by establishing systemic MTSS processes and practices.

Discuss how frequent, high-quality, asset-based feedback can result in increased trust and high achievement for all scholars. Learn how this process may create some discomfort at first but leaders overcome this reality by building trusting relationships. Hear about the critical role teacher/leadership coaching plays in helping educators overcome their disempowering mindsets, embrace new practices, and improve scholar outcomes.

Unpack a case study on Educate LLC’s work with a school district in New York City that centers best practices for data-driven teacher leadership that fosters equity. Experience a process for equity-centered data analysis with a specific emphasis on driving outcomes for vulnerable populations. Engage processes that support data-based decision making with equity at the core and success for all as both the journey and the destination.

Learn about Learning Forward's Academy, a professional learning experience that offers educators an unmatched opportunity to profoundly deepen their expertise and increase their capacity to meet the challenges in the modern educational landscape. Hear from Academy coaches and members about how this 2 and ½-year inquiry-based learning experience has transformed their work.

Participate in a guided session that explores changes and challenges with classroom and school culture. Address issues you’re facing at your institution and discuss ideas or solutions with other educators. Engage with other educators to problem solve, share ideas, and explore ways to improve and impact classroom culture.

Learn how Lubbock (TX) ISD is on track to exceed its ambitious goal of increasing the percentage of students in A- and B-rated schools from 42% to 80% by 2026. Engage in a discussion about the strategies used by instructional leaders at every level to fuel educator growth and student achievement. Explore three main strategic areas: data practices for informed decision-making; what the district stopped doing to focus on what matters most; and personalizing professional learning.

Unpack how DEI mission-driven work requires team members to be forthcoming about their own assumptions, instructional missteps, student struggles, and hesitancy to adopt change without fear of judgment from their colleagues. Explore the role of psychological safety in building trusting teams. Learn how skillful team leaders make intentional moves to strengthen trust and encourage diverse voices to speak up in ways that lead to shifts in practice and improved student outcomes.

Explore how people react to the introduction of new technologies and how their ways of thinking influence their reactions. Discuss how those who think in binary, either-or, ways, tend to resist and even ban the use of certain technologies, such as ChatGPT. Learn how to help educators engage in slower, more reflective thinking that will help them evaluate and use new technologies more effectively.

What will it take to transform teaching and improve student learning at scale? What do we know from research, how are systems supporting teacher learning with high-quality curriculum, and what policies are needed to create the conditions for effective curriculum implementation? Engage with Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore Public Schools, Heather Hill, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Mike Petrilli, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Stephanie Hirsh, former Executive Director of Learning Forward, to get strategies for improving the field of curriculum-based professional learning.

Comprehensive, aligned principal pipelines have been shown to be feasible, affordable, and effective. Join Mark A. Gooden, professor of education leadership at Columbia University, to learn how the Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) framework can be applied to each of the seven domains of principal pipelines using a new tool with self-guided questions for districts, all with the goal of supporting principals who can advance equitable outcomes for students.

In 1987, Chicago was declared among the most troubled school systems in America. By 2017, it was described as the fastest improving urban system in the U.S. Understand key learnings about how and why this system transformation occurred. Learn how, through an active innovation space, system leaders developed partnerships with new and existing organizations and how a new civic and community architecture emerged to support school and system improvement. Explore the essential roles of recruitment, hiring, beginning teacher and principal support, and professional learning for practicing educators as key drivers of this transformation. Join Al Bertani and Tony Bryk to learn about this story of transformation.