Learning Forward 2026 Annual Conference

What if your principals were your district’s most powerful professional learning community (PLC), driving instructional improvement together instead of working in isolation? Explore research on high-impact leadership, effective team architecture, and the conditions that spark collective efficacy, then step into a simulated principal PLC to experience a collaborative inquiry framework and practical, evidence-based protocols. Hear one district’s story and leave with a clear plan to launch principal PLCs.

Participants will:

• Analyze research on high-impact leadership, effective team design, and conditions that build collective efficacy, explicitly linked to the Standards for Professional Learning;
• Experience a simulated principal PLC to learn a collaborative inquiry framework and apply clear, standards-aligned protocols to site-based evidence;
• Examine how a job-alike principal PLC strengthened instructional leadership and aligned with expectations for sustained, job-embedded, collaborative professional learning; and
• Design a practical, standards-aligned plan to start or strengthen principal PLCs and collaborative inquiry in your system, including structures, routines, and evidence of impact.

Examine why traditional and standards-based grading practices often fall short in preparing students for learning beyond school. Engage with a practical framework that supports educators and systems in progressing toward competency-based grading through intentional, additive practices. Apply tools and learning designs that strengthen student agency, improve instructional decision-making, and support sustainable grading change within classrooms, schools, and districts.

Participants will:

• Analyze grading and assessment practices along a continuum from traditional to standards-based to competency-based, identifying leverage points for improving instructional coherence and student learning;
• Apply a progression framework to examine discrete, additive grading practices and participate in learning activities that model how educators and teams can advance competency-based grading within their own contexts;
• Design next-step strategies that support teachers and school leaders in implementing and sustaining grading practices that promote student agency, transfer of learning, and confidence beyond the classroom; and
• Identify how professional learning structures such as professional learning communities, collaborative inquiry, and shared tools can support consistent, system-level implementation.