Case Study: Clear Creek Independent School District
“Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We do a lot of work around building the capacity within kids to want to do the learning.”
JEPSEY KIMBLE, PRINCIPAL AT CLEAR LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, CLEAR CREEK ISD
Located south of Houston, Clear Creek Independent School District serves more than 41,000 students. In 2015, as members of the district leadership team recognized several academic and non-academic challenges across campuses. Despite consistently high averages on state test scores, the district found some Clear Creek students had persistent achievement gaps. They also found a majority of the students lacked the motivation and ownership needed to drive their own learning.
With CA Group’s design and implementation support, Clear Creek transitioned away from their traditional model and began to pilot student-centered blended learning. Clear Creek’s Year One pilot at Clear Lake City Elementary School targeted these issues through personalized station rotations and competency-based progression pathways using student-friendly “I Can” statements. The Clear Creek team soon expanded the pilot to include two additional elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school, allowing the program to impact all grades in the district.
The new blended learning approach builds on the district’s foundation of rigor and differentiation and focuses on personalized instruction, supported by technology, as a core strategy for improving student agency and academic performance. The new instructional model focuses on providing students with personalized small-group instruction tailored to address specific areas of need as determined by multiple high-quality assessments. Students drive their own learning by choosing specific stations they need and track progress toward their individual goals using data. The use of data also drives the goal setting process and teachers meet at least every other week to check in with students on their goals.