News from the 2026 COSSBA Conference
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Date PostedMarch 25, 2026
The 2026 COSSBA National Conference took place March 13-15 in Louisville, Kentucky. Eighty-five participants from Illinois joined the event, which included keynote speakers, breakout sessions, exhibits, and more, all focused on impact and innovation.
At the 2026 COSSBA Business Meeting, IASB became the first state member to propose a new advocacy tenet, and it passed by vote of the membership and has been adopted to the COSSBA Advocacy Platform. The Student Achievement Data and Research platform is designed to support school boards nationwide in their work to improve student outcomes using data-driven goals. It includes requests to
- Support federal funding and staffing for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to provide nationally representative and longitudinally comparable national and state-level data to illuminate student performance.
- Support federal funding and requirements that all states administer an annual assessment, maintain an accountability system, and require the disaggregation of annual assessment data for underperforming student groups. COSSBA's position does not advocate for increasing the volume of required testing. Rather, it supports maintaining existing federal assessment and accountability structures to ensure that school boards and communities retain access to consistent, comparable, and transparent data necessary to evaluate student progress and inform governance decisions.
- Support continued funding of evidence-based federal research that provides school boards with the tools needed to increase student achievement and prioritizes the key challenges local school district leaders face in their efforts to improve achievement for all students.
A COSSBA Position Paper is now available on Student Achievement Data and Research.
The national organization’s annual business meeting operates much like IASB’s Delegate Assembly. Delegates representing each member state association voted at the business meeting on March 13. IASB was represented by COSSBA delegate Jeffrey Johnson (Blackhawk) and alternate Lisa Schwartz (Two Rivers).
Presenters at the conference from Illinois included Marianne Anderson, Board President at Mannheim School District 83 and Diego Giraldo, Superintendent at Mannheim SD 83; Jim Batson, Board President at CHSD 128 (Vernon Hills); Lisa Schwartz, Board Member for Payson CUSD 1; and Marc Tepper, Board Member for Kildeer-Countryside CCSD 96; and Mike Lubelfeld, Superintendent, North Shore SD 112 and Nicholas Polyak, Superintendent, Leyden CHSD 212.
Also presenting were Jim Helton, IASB Associate Executive Director of Executive Searches, on Superintendent Selection: The Right Process and the Right Fit; and Justin Caldwell, IASB Director of Outreach and Training, on Fierce Conversations.