Both our current and old school have had student-led conferences, but what that actually means seems to depend on the teacher. I really dislike them because I would rather use my 15 minutes to talk to the teacher about how things are ACTUALLY going, not just how my child thinks they're doing. The goals my child set this year are also super-fuzzy, like "Have a great attitude". Ugh. The one time we had goals she really remembered and worked for, it was concrete stuff, like, "Get to level N in the division minute-math sets by June 1"--easily defined, tracked, and measured.

Really, in the best of all worlds, it would be nice to have 10 minutes of student-led stuff, AND 15 minutes to talk face to face to the teacher. But I imagine that's hard to squeeze in when there are 27 other kids in the class to conference with, too.