Dallas Independent School District

Making IB Manageable at Scale: Dallas ISD's ManageBac+ Playbook

Jennifer Cunningham didn't arrive in Dallas ISD guessing how to make IB work in a big public district—she brought a tested playbook from years of refining her practice in San Antonio. Today, her work at Dallas shows what "using ManageBac+ well" looks like when you have multiple campuses, district systems, and IB requirements all in the mix.

What follows is a practical guide to how Jennifer sequences and leverages ManageBac+ in a large US public district and why. Here we share Dallas ISD's practical framework using ManageBac+ to support a thriving IB Programme.

1. Start with Reporting & Progress Monitoring, Not "Everything at Once"

Practice: Use ManageBac+ first where IB is uniquely complex: criteria-based summative assessment and progress reporting.

In both districts, Jennifer draws a hard line between what lives in the district required systems and what lives in ManageBac+:

• District gradebook: homework, quizzes, classwork, and other formative checks
• ManageBac+: only IB MYP summative assessments aligned to criteria A–D

She had high school DP and MYP campuses adopt ManageBac+ to:

• Record summative tasks by criterion
• Generate IB-style report cards
• Produce a progress monitoring grade each quarter that advisors can use in student conferences

On top of that, she worked with the district to create a conversion chart from 0–8 task scores to the familiar 100% scale. That way, ManageBac+ reports and SIS grades tell a coherent story in parent meetings.

Takeaway for other districts:
Don't try to move everything into ManageBac+ on day one. Start with IB summatives and quarterly progress monitoring, and build a simple, shared translation between IB 1–8 and your district's 100% scale.

2. Make DP and MYP Projects Non-Negotiable Use Cases

Practice: Treat Personal/Community Project, Service as Action, CAS and Extended Essay as "must-have" workflows in ManageBac+, not nice-to-haves.

From her San Antonio experience, Jennifer knew that core IB experiences are where programmes often fall apart if they aren't well tracked. So when she thinks about how Dallas ISD will grow its IB continua, she's clear about the minimum scope:

Her refined practice:

• Personal/Community Project: 9th graders begin to record their topic ideas, potential product/learning goals, ATL skill foci and global context along with a potential supervisor in ManageBac+. As 10th graders, they pick it back up, with supervisors and coordinators monitoring milestones and feedback in one place.
• Service as Action / CAS: Students log activities, hours, reflections and learning outcomes. Coordinators can run reports by student or cohort to see who's on track.

This is the blueprint she intends to roll out as Dallas builds MYP continuums on ManageBac+.

Takeaway for other districts:
Even if you start with "just DP," plan early for MYP culminating projects and reflections of service as action/community engagement opportunities. When those workflows are centralized in ManageBac+ from the beginning, you avoid a tangle of separate spreadsheets, Google Forms, and binders later.

3. Use Unit Planners to Unlock ATLs & Collaboration Analytics

Practice: Require unit planning in ManageBac+ so ATL and Learner Profile analytics are automatic, not an extra task.

In her pre-ManageBac+ days, Jennifer had teachers filling in ATL coverage on separate templates—extra work everyone resented. With ManageBac+, she flipped the script: if teachers do their unit planners in the platform, the reporting takes care of itself.

In Dallas today, that means:

• Teachers tag Approaches to Learning (ATLs) and Learner Profile attributes in their pre-build IB focused unit plans.
• ManageBac+ automatically generates ATL and Learner Profile coverage reports.
• Jennifer uses those visuals in leadership conversations—for example, when a school has said "communication" is a focus.

Takeaway for other districts:
Tie unit-planning compliance to something leaders care about—like communication, collaboration, or self-management. Then, ManageBac+'s Curriculum Analytics gives you the evidence to back up those goals. And the continued unit analytics work throughout the academic year, and year over year, helps you be prepared for IB programme evaluations every 5 years.

4. Build a Culture of Reflection & Feedback Inside the Platform

Practice: Use ManageBac+ as the "home base" for IB reflection and teacher feedback, especially for projects.

Jennifer has had to convince plenty of teachers who feel like ManageBac+ is "one more system." Her argument is grounded in IB's core:

In both districts, she's used the platform to:

• Give students structured places to write reflections.
• Let teachers comment directly on student work and reflections.
• Monitor, as a coordinator, whether supervisors are actually giving feedback.

For Personal Project, that visibility has been critical:

Takeaway for other districts:
Don't limit ManageBac+ to grades and reports. Use it to normalize reflection and feedback loops; then use the comment history and reports to coach teachers and supervisors on the quality and timeliness of their feedback.

5. Turn Report Cards into a Script for Parent Conversations

Practice: Use ManageBac+ reports live in conferences to explain IB criteria in plain language and show "the mesh" with district grades.

Once she moved from paper to digital reporting, Jennifer began using ManageBac+ reports as the central artifact in parent meetings. Teachers pull up a student's report and walk through the criteria:

• Which objectives they're doing well on.
• Where they need to grow.
• Which ATLs they've been working on.

Because she's already set up the 0–8 → 100% conversion, the same report supports both "IB language" and "district language" in the same conversation.

Takeaway for other districts:
Train teachers to use ManageBac+ reports in conferences. Role-play how to explain a criterion level descriptor in parent-friendly language, then connect it to the 100% grade they already understand.

6. Invest Early in Integrations & Vendor Compliance

Practice: For big districts, prioritize available SIS integrations and keep an eye on RFP/vendor status so the tool doesn't get derailed by logistics.

Jennifer's earlier experience in San Antonio—pulling CSVs, uploading manually, dealing with duplicates—taught her what not to do at scale. In Dallas, she pushed for ManageBac+'s Clever SSO with User Provisioning integration and clear data-privacy alignment.

Takeaway for other districts:
If you're in a large system, involve IT and procurement early. Confirm how ManageBac+ will integrate with your SIS/IDP, how student data is protected, and when your next vendor review or RFP is due.

7. Supporting Teacher Adoption: Show the Payoff, Not Just the Task

Practice: Acknowledge that ManageBac+ may feel like "one more system," but then show teachers how it actually saves work and time when used fully.

Jennifer doesn't pretend teachers aren't overburdened—she quotes their objections directly:

The turning point, in her experience, is when teachers see:

• How easy it is to use editable rubrics.
• How they can utilize state standards in the system as well and tie them to IB objectives and criteria.
• How feedback and reporting flow from the unit planner and task setup they've already done.

Takeaway for other districts:
Design PD that walks teachers through a full cycle: plan a unit → build a task → grade with a rubric → send feedback → see the report. When they see how the pieces connect, resistance tends to drop.

The Net Effect: A Refined, Repeatable Model for Large IB Districts

Jennifer's journey—from building her own spreadsheets and stuffing envelopes for hours on end in San Antonio to running a district-level ManageBac+ implementation in Dallas—has given her a simple bottom line:

For US public districts operating IB programmes, her practice suggests a concrete sequence:

1. Start with summatives and progress monitoring in ManageBac+.
2. Add Personal/Community Projects, Service as Action and CAS as non-negotiables.
3. Require unit planners in ManageBac+ to unlock ATLs and Learner Profile analytics.
4. Use the platform deliberately for reflection and feedback.
5. Train teachers to use report cards in parent conferences.
6. Secure integrations and vendor status early for long-term stability.

If you're trying to figure out not just how to adopt ManageBac+, but how to use it well in a large US public IB district, we would love to support you in that process. Current customers can connect with support@managebac.com