WHEN ROBIN AND STEPHEN KILEY met with their daughter's second-grade teacher in February to discuss her progress at Willamette Primary School, a fourth person was in the room: their daughter Caity. In fact, Caity did most of the talking. She read her parents the fable she'd written, Cat and Dog Are Best Friends, and explained the steps she'd taken—rough draft, peer editing, rewriting, and illustrating—to complete it. She demonstrated addition, subtraction, and early multiplication processes by coloring in squares on grid paper. She showed a graph she'd done of temperatures in cities around the country. She expressed pride in attaining goals she'd set earlier in the year—learning to read "chapter books" and keeping her desk more organized and her work neater.

For Caity and her parents, who recently moved to Oregon's West Linn-Wilsonville School District from the Midwest, this was their first student-led parent conference, a schoolwide practice that starts in kindergarten. Student-led conferences are a natural outgrowth of the school's commitment to giving students "choices and voice" in classroom management and instruction, says Gail Aldridge, Willamette Primary's instructional coordinator.

"Night and day" is the way Robin Kiley describes the contrast between the traditional parent-teacher conferences she was used to and the student-directed conference. At Caity's former school, she says, conferences emphasized how students stacked up against each other and against grade-level norms. They stressed deficits instead of accomplishments. At Willamette, on the other hand, the conference was individualized, solution oriented, and informative.

"My daughter was very connected to her process and truly seemed to understand the work she had accomplished," says Robin Kiley. "We were amazed at how well she was able to describe her work. She was also able to self-critique."

Willamette's student-centered approach restored Caity's self-esteem after it had been beaten down at her other school, her mother says. "Her self-confidence about her learning ability has come back up," she relates. "She sees herself as a competent, capable student. The student-led conference had a lot to do with it."

ike the Kileys, many parents are discovering the advantages that student-led conferences have over the traditional parent-teacher model. For them, it's a time to find out what and how their child is learning. For students, it's an opportunity to reflect on and speak about their learning and to practice presentation skills. For teachers, it's a way to educate parents about the complexity of learning and to remove the aura of secrecy surrounding the assessment process.

"Student-led parent conferences may be the biggest breakthrough in communicating about student achievement in the last four decades," says Dr. Richard Stiggins, head of the Assessment Training Institute based in Portland. "The level of responsibility it brings to the student and the pride in accomplishment that can engender when they succeed is unprecedented."

At McLoughlin Middle School in Vancouver, Washington, parent Mary Sears and two other panelists—-another parent and a district resource coordinator—-listen as her seventh-grade son Jeff presents his portfolio. An earnest, gangly basketball player, wearing a new shirt for the occasion and sitting straight in his chair, Jeff speaks haltingly, choosing his words with care. With his teacher's coaching fresh in his mind, he is careful to use complete sentences and to avoid interrupting panelists when they ask a question.

"You seem so confident and not nervous," comments one of the panelists. "Is that true?"

"I'm as nervous as I could ever be," Jeff confesses.

Among the items in his portfolio are a children's book he wrote titled,What's Up? ("What's up in the sky after it rains? A rainbow. What's up in a tree that chirps? A bird."); a drawing of an invention—self-cleaning gutters—for which he won a social studies prize; and a photograph of a model castle he and a friend spent more than 13 hours building at home. Handing the photograph across the table, he asks politely, "Would you like to look at it?"

He describes the requirements, processes, difficulties, and successes of the various projects.

After the conference, Jeff's smiling mother says she is surprised by her son's enthusiasm for his work and proud that he focused on his efforts rather than on grades and scores.

MCLOUGHLIN MIDDLE SCHOOL'S 1,100 sixth- through eighth-grade students are divided into six houses, two at each grade level. Each house has its own core teachers. Portfolios demonstrating students' achievement of Washington State's Essential Learnings are done schoolwide. Teachers in one seventh-grade house decided to require a student-led portfolio conference as well. It would be good preparation, they reasoned, for the Vancouver School District's mandatory research project and presentation for high school seniors.

Begun as a pilot project with 20 students, portfolio conferences expanded to one seventh-grade house two years ago. This year, the other seventh-grade house will make the switch. In addition, sixth-graders will give portfolio presentations to panels of eighth-graders—a dry run for the real conference they will lead in seventh-grade.

The seventh-graders present to their parents and two other panelists, who may be school staff members, district personnel, other parents, local business people, or other community members. Kathleen Wolfley, a seventh-grade language arts teacher and team leader, manages the logistics of recruiting panelists and scheduling the conferences, which take place eight at a time in the school's spacious media center.

To prepare for the conference, students role play and watch videotapes of previous conferences. They focus on speech, manners, posture, breathing, eye contact, appropriate vocabulary, and appearance. At the beginning of the year, many students hoped to transfer to the other seventh-grade house in order to avoid the presentation. But once the ordeal was over, says language arts teacher Carol Grammer, many pronounced it "easy."

In addition to giving students practice in presentation skills, the conference can be a powerful motivator, changing students' perception of education from something that's inflicted on them to something in which they actively partake, says Wolfley.

One seventh-grader acknowledged that the anticipated conference affected her behavior over the school year. "I was trying to do better and work harder so I'd have lots of stuff to show," she said after her presentation.

The conferences also increase the school's communication with parents in a way that reflects well on the school.

"This is the first level of education where the parents feel more excluded," says Grammer. Children at this age are pulling away from their parents, she notes. Because middle school coincides with the onset of adolescence, many parents blame the school for difficult changes in the child, she says.

Mary Sears, for instance, remembers that when she first toured McLoughlin, she was distressed to see some eighth-grade students kissing in the halls. She was reluctant to send her son there. Now, however, she is pleased with the school because she sees Jeff putting great effort into his work. And she far prefers the student-led conference to the traditional parent-teacher conferences. "This conveys what Jeff thinks and what he does," she says. "It brings their ideas more to you and how they think they're doing in school."

Observes Wolfley: "Often at this grade level, the only time we conference with parents is for negative reasons." The portfolio conferences, on the other hand, are an overwhelmingly positive experience for most students and parents.

"It's really important for parents to understand the good things we want for their children," says Grammer. She notes that every parent she has encountered has been very proud—and often very emotional—after the conference. "This experience does more communication than a million sent-home letters."

IN SUSANN SWANSON'S third-grade classroom, portfolios contain a form titled "Reflections About Me." On the form, a girl named Malia describes her growth in reading, writing, math, and work habits:

• "Now I read chapter books. At the beginning of third grade, I read picture books."
• "My writing has changed from print to cursive, but I still like to write in print."
• "My division and multiplication have improved a lot."
• "My work is better, but I'm slower."

"She knows herself," comments Swanson, who teaches at Mount Scott Elementary School in Oregon's North Clackamas School District.

The student-led parent conference is not something that can be merely substituted for the parent-teacher conference or used in a vacuum, experts warn. Instead, it must evolve naturally from instructional strategies that develop students' ability to continually reflect on and assess their own learning, that ask them to take responsibility for their learning, and that often involve them in constructing the criteria by which their work will be judged.

"This is not an easy idea to implement," says Stiggins. "It takes careful study and preparation, and an up-front investment in professional development."

Done poorly, student-led conferences can backfire, Stiggins cautions. For instance, if the conference is not truly a student-led event, it can become a forum for the parents and teacher to criticize the child in the child's presence. Or if a child is unprepared and inarticulate about his work, the parents may lose confidence in the school.

At Mount Scott, the student-led presentations emerged from several years of staff training, careful review of assessment options, and a restructuring grant from the Oregon Department of Education. Mount Scott was the first school in the district to use portfolios schoolwide. The staff wanted to make sure that portfolios were teacher facilitated, not teacher directed. A goal-setting conference in the fall and a student-led portfolio presentation in the spring are meant to get students engaged in their learning goals.

This year, the school will conduct its third year of schoolwide student-led portfolio celebrations. Over the next two years, Principal Douglas Miller expects the school to further strengthen the connection between the portfolios and the student-led conference.

Mount Scott's fall goal-setting process sets the stage for students' work during the year and for the student-led presentation in the spring. Goal setting varies from class to class. In Karen Utz's blended class, for instance, first- and second-graders choose one topic they want to study indepth that year. Topics range from waterfalls in the Columbia Gorge to race cars of the Indy 500 to poisonous Mexican frogs. The goal-setting conference clarifies the roles and responsibilities of parents, teacher, and student in researching the topic. Parents of the student researching waterfalls, for example, made a commitment to take a family outing to the Columbia Gorge to view the falls and gather information.

After spending much of the year learning the fine points of research and presentation, all the students do a report on castles for practice. Finally, they apply their skills to the topic they have chosen, producing a report and presenting their report to classmates.

Janice Woodlee's sixth-graders work with their parents to formulate two academic goals, such as learning fractions or reading a certain number of books during the quarter. They also choose one personal goal, such as becoming a better listener or being nicer to a sibling. Then students write a plan outlining how they will accomplish the goals and to whom they will go for help. Some students tape the goal statements on their desk. Goals are reviewed, reworked, and updated monthly. Students reflect in writing on whether they are meeting their goals. They then create plans to overcome problems, and set new goals if the old ones have been met.

At all grade levels, students are learning to set and meet goals, identify resources, reflect on their learning, create criteria, use criteria for looking at their work and that of others, and communicate about their work.

For student-led parent conferences to work, says Stiggins, it's essential that teachers be clear with students about what it takes to succeed. That way, the student can aptly describe that success to her parents. "If the teacher keeps all the secrets of where we're going, it's hard for the child to reflect at the end," says Swanson.

Such ability to reflect does not develop overnight. As with anything, students get better with practice. A student who is new to Mount Scott will be baffled by a question such as, "How do you view yourself as a learner?" says Woodlee. These students, like younger students, will need more prompts and assistance in structuring their student-led presentation.

Utz recalls with distaste the parent-teacher conferences she held at another school. During the conferences, she sat at her desk with a stack of report cards on one side and a schedule of 20-minute appointments on the other. "You would lay the report card out, and you would frantically try to go through this report card and then you would say, 'And do you have any other questions about your child?'"

By the time 10 conferences had gone by, Utz often found herself wondering, "Did I already say this?"

"It's just totally removed from the child," she says of the process.

At schools that have student-led parent conferences, the report card, though not discussed at the conference, holds few surprises for parents or students.

"Usually by the end of a portfolio presentation, anything that's on a report card has been explained over and over again through that presentation," says Woodlee. "Students will show their parents what they can do. Sometimes a parent will say, 'Why isn't such and such in here?' Maybe it's because a student just didn't do that, and then that is evident also. Students can then explain to their parents why that piece isn't there or why their science project didn't get finished."

Some students will never look good on a report card. But at student-led parent conferences, even struggling students can shine. These are the ones who seem to stand out in teachers' minds.

"I just almost want to cry to think about it," says Utz, recalling a learning-disabled first-grader who could not yet read or write but was nonetheless able to make an effective presentation. "It doesn't mean his work is grade-level by any means, but he can talk about it, he can show what he's done. And he's every bit as articulate about it as the TAG student at the next table."

RESOURCE NOTES: Available books on student-led conferences include Changing the View: Student-Led Parent Conferences by Terri Austin (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994) and Student-Led Teacher Parent Conferences by Nancy Little and John Allan (Toronto, Canada: Lugus, 1988).

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