Welcome to our "Transforming Systems through Standards-Based Learning" summer conference! Our conference is sponsored by Des Moines Public Schools and Drake University. DMPS has a story to tell in its courageous adventures into district-wide standards-referenced grading (SRG) learning and practices, within a large urban district. Drake University is their perfect partner, since for many summers, Drake has been sponsoring terrific symposia and workshops allowing hundreds of educators to come together to learn from renowned speakers operating in a workshop setting.
This conference has an emphasis on secondary education, although there will be some elementary application. The breakouts are facilitated largely by DMPS teachers and leaders, as they lead learning over how the Des Moines schools have implemented standards-referenced learning, including grading and reporting, over a large district. However, there are also breakouts with specific learning for administrators, others facilitated by small schools in Iowa, some on how to get student information systems (SIS) to cooperate with standards-based learning, and everything in between. We invite you to listen to our stories, tell your own, shape new ideas and possibilities, and come away with plans to better study and implement standards-based learning in your own school and district, particularly at the secondary level.
We open at 8:30 with a keynote from Noelle Tichy, Executive Director of Teaching and Learning for the Des Moines Public Schools. Participants will go on to two breakouts of their own choosing (no pre-selection); then lunch on site at 12:00, followed by three DMPS Teacher Highlights; then two more breakouts before we end the day at 3:45.
Feel free to tweet about your learning and experiences at the conference: #dmps-drakeSBL
Finally--we invite your feedback after each session, through the use of this Sched app.
