Over the past ten years the Klein Independent School District has had leaders attend professional development through Solution Tree. Early on, Klein High School (KHS) created PLC collaborative teams, however well intentioned, these teams became planning groups rather than truly implementing the four questions of PLC and utilizing data to inform instruction.

While the planning groups did a good job maintaining the long standing tradition of excellence in the community, the tradition of being an excellent teaching organization needed to make a shift in order to best meet the needs of every student. This shift began in earnest approximately three years ago under the leadership of Principal Brandon Baker. As a large 6A suburban high school, Klein High School had to determine a pathway that would ensure the ability to respect the longstanding community traditions while shifting to that of a learning organization in order to fulfill our district vision of “every student entering with a promise and exiting with a purpose.”

This targeted shift from a teaching organization to a learning organization began by creating the systems and expectations necessary for data informed collaborative teams to meet and make targeted instructional decisions as a collective PLC. KHS leadership teams received a refresh in foundational knowledge of the PLC process through professional development opportunities. Prioritizing this collaborative effort included structuring the master schedule to build in time for collaborative team meetings during the day for all STAAR EOC core content areas and a weekly designated collaborative time for non STAAR EOC tested content areas across the campus. 

Additionally, an embedded intervention/extension period, which has gone through several iterations since inception, is in the master schedule. Our most successful iteration to date of this intervention time is now called “InKlein”. When the pandemic hit Klein, Texas our collaborative teams shifted their PLC processes into the digital environment. Teams dug into guaranteeing essential outcomes and learning targets, always maintaining a deep commitment to continuous improvement regardless of the continuous challenges faced during uncertain times. The continued focus on learning was a key indicator that we were on track to fully embracing the true collaborative intentions of a PLC.

Moving through the challenges of the pandemic KHS doubled down on efforts to ensure high quality instruction for every child, creating shared norms and identifying targeted focus areas through shared communication outlined in “What’s Tight at KHS”. These collective commitments by the faculty and staff include proactive parent partnerships, authentic student engagement, high quality collaborative teams that utilize the PLC process, and upholding expectations of ourselves and our students during our embedded intervention period InKlein. 

In addition to high quality instruction, embedded intervention, and dedication to continuous improvement, KHS has earned distinct recognition as a National School of Character. Students receive character education, delivered through our InKlein period, surrounding our “Klein 5” campus core values which include empathy, gratitude, integrity, perseverance, and service. Our goal is to create well rounded students that graduate from Klein High prepared to take the next steps in fulfilling their purpose.

In order to ensure this happens, Klein High has created systems for our faculty, staff, and students. Collaborative teams have shared agendas which allow team members to contribute through conversation, creation of resources, presentations on best practices, working together to vertically align in and out of PLC’s, and have a shared common goal of what we want KHS students to be able to accomplish at the conclusion of one year’s worth of high quality instruction. All teams have created a backwards design plan, beginning with the end in mind, to drive the direction we want to go using the data we collect to inform our decisions. All faculty and staff are involved with this process and there is frequent and clear communication of expectations along with accountability measures for all. These systems have extended benefits to our students through intentionally designed intervention/extension, SAT/ACT/TSI prep, and CCMR readiness. 

The KHS Administrators work alongside the collaborative teams providing support and coaching. Administrators must spend a minimum of 240 minutes per week in classrooms in addition to participating during collaborative PLC designated times. This commitment to instructional leadership holds everyone accountable to the goals we have set as a campus to guide our improvement.

As a campus, KHS has created a culture of setting “the blue and gold standard”. The blue and gold standard is the mindset that this school has the best teachers, students, and community to help guide the work that we do and motivates us to give our best daily. We have dedicated ourselves to continuous improvement and have collectively committed to systems that focus on ensuring student growth, developing strong character, and to set standards of professional behavior and student outcomes that others wish to emulate.

At KHS we have always looked for ways to support students through continuous improvement goals and action steps. These include building websites for student support, creating a meets to masters hub, organizing and preparing materials for InKlein intervention, STAAR Blitz tutorial sessions, creating student data sheets (by question and TEKS) and student data trackers with videos and supports. The conducting of 1:1 goal setting conversations surrounding performance outcomes with students has also been a tool in supporting student improvement on campus. 

To facilitate this culture of continuous improvement we have instructional leaders including Administrators, Instructional Specialists, and teachers to offer professional development opportunities at both the campus and at the district level. We realize that not only administrators, specialists, and teachers should be involved in PLC planning therefore we also include our paraprofessional staff in the PLC subject they are assigned to. This has allowed the vertical alignment of all who interact with our students on an academic level daily to have an understanding of our common goals of improvement. KHS departments complete book studies, deliver targeted PD surrounding data driven instruction to each other, and offer weekly campus wide PD through the “BearKat Boost” to build the capacity of our faculty and staff on a systematic basis.

Administration and Instructional specialists work with all collaborative teams to ensure students are at the center of our work and that high quality initial instruction is the staple of connecting students with success. Continued collaboration with teams vertically helps KHS make certain we are aligned as a campus and are supporting each other and the students as they grow through each of our departments.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

In 2018, Klein ISD embarked on a complete curriculum overhaul called Curriculum Refresh.  Teachers and Specialists from all campuses came together to create our District Curriculum Guiding Documents.  The district documents consist of a Learning Guide for each course, Unit Overviews, TEKS Clarification Documents, and Playlists. To develop these documents, teams began by identifying Essential TEKS, deconstructing the TEKS standards and clusters, ensuring vertical alignment, and identifying common misconceptions, vocabulary, and learning progressions.  Additionally, sample lessons, test blueprints, and test question banks were created.  

Following the creation of these Refresh documents, the district moved into the second phase of implementing a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Phase two included training all Klein teachers on the use of the guiding documents, as well as encouraging collaboration across campuses. Klein High School teachers have played a vital role in all steps of the curriculum Refresh process, from the initial creation of the curriculum to the continued review of data to inform timely curriculum revisions.

Once the new curriculum was established, Refresh teams continue to meet once per year to review essential standards and content flow.  In addition to the Refresh, campus singleton teachers meet throughout the school year as a collaborative group to work through the four questions of the PLC model and analyze data at a district level to inform decision making on their respective campuses.

KHS keeps these guiding documents at the forefront of backwards design planning.  For example, when Algebra I begins a new unit the team uses the TEKS clarification document to answer the question “What do we want our students to know?”  To answer the question “How will we know they have learned it” the team uses the blueprint and vetted test questions to build assessments.  Finally, the playlists are a great resource for answering the final two PLC questions, as they have both intervention and extension activities for teachers to utilize.

These district curriculum documents and playlists set the tone for what students are expected to learn and offer strategies for how to ensure teachers support students mastering the content. To measure that mastery the district creates an assessment calendar based on the quarterly blueprints. Core content areas have three quarterly assessments along with a STARR EOC aligned Benchmark assessment administered during the Spring semester. These district assessments allow students to practice the test taking strategies needed and serve as a “pulse check” on students working their way towards mastery of the content curriculum. In addition to these district assessments, teacher teams create and administer campus common assessments for every content area. This creates targeted and timely feedback on whether or not what teachers are teaching is translating into learning for the students.

This immediate feedback allows collaborative teams to delve deep into the four questions of PLC and determine action plans around next steps for “what do we do when they have/have not learned it”. Data discussions are based on this frequent and consistent monitoring of student learning, allowing teams to determine how to best move learning forward and understand every student by name, strength, and need.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

All of our collaborative teams have the goal to provide cohesive and comprehensive Tier one initial instruction for each student we serve. While this is our goal, teams also recognize that students achieve mastery at different times so the need for additional support for learning must be planned. PLC teams discuss Tier two interventions and extension activities and create groups within their classrooms so that extension/intervention can be implemented. They also seekout advanced students in on-level courses that can be identified early in the first quarter and encouraged to move into our advanced level courses. In addition to planning and identifying tier one and two instruction within the classroom, KHS has built a system for our Tier three instructional interventions/extensions.

The journey to developing a systemic approach to providing students with additional time and support for learning has gone through several iterations. When Klein ISD introduced the idea of embedded intervention and extension within the school day our campus, along with many others, embraced it and began trying to implement how that would look. We’ve tried several different approaches to providing this support. We have offered this embedded time daily, weekly, designated days of the week, pre-assigned based on need, be that extension or remediation, flexible scheduling at student/teacher request, external and internal programming systems to help with scheduling and requesting students over the past ten years. Through all of this trial and error, what we have discovered is that our most recent iteration and system of intentional supports called “InKlein” is the most successful in supporting our large student body. Our InKlein period occurs between 3rd and 4th period daily and is attached to a student’s third period class on their schedule, allowing for attendance accountability that is visible to all stakeholders.

The first day of the week is set for students to receive character education lessons, conduct grade checks, and deliver campus announcements while the last day of the week is dedicated to independent learning time. Two to three times during the middle of the week students move from their third period class to a data determined intervention/extension class. Students designated for extension go to InKlein to work on targeted areas of enrichment for current courses, SAT/ACT prep, independent learning, and college and career prep. Additionally, teams use data to identify specific students with the potential to accelerate their performance through a "meets to masters" extension InKlein. These Meets to Masters groups receive targeted learning to build on their depth of content area understanding.

Students determined in need of additional remediation are designated to specific InKlein+ classes that focus on remediation for those that need either preparation for retaking an EOC exam(s) or for those designated “at risk” of not succeeding on an initial EOC assessment(s) by offering targeted curriculum “previews” of upcoming content to build not only academic knowledge and skill but also students confidence in an academic area they have historically struggled in. 

In an effort to facilitate a learning environment of growth opportunities for our students, our content area Instructional Specialists review data for all of our incoming and current students. Students that require remediation based on HB4545 legislation are assigned that additional support. From there, additional data reviews and conversation amongst the core content area teams determine where to place each student to best personalize the learning they need to reach their goals. 

Collaborative teams, alongside Instructional Specialists and Administration, continuously review student data during their designated PLC time in order to ensure students are making progress and determine which students need to be moved into/out of InKlein/InKlein+ classrooms throughout the school year to receive specific support/extension needed to grow.

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

In the collaborative teams at KHS, teachers work together to make data informed decisions, utilize backward design plans, and make adjustments to tier one and tier two instruction for their students throughout the school year. Five core content PLCs for state tested subjects meet daily during designated collaborative meeting periods while teams in other content areas either meet during a common conference once per week or after school once per week. During any collaborative meeting on campus, there is an expectation of common norms, roles, agenda items centered around the four questions, and time for reflection. Instructional Specialists pull data for any common assessment for every team and share the data with teams during this time. Each report focuses on overall achievement and breakdown of mastery of student learning standards, while containing focused performance data for our three main campus student groups of focus: special education, emergent bilingual, and economically disadvantaged. Reports also track student growth on assessments over time. During the data discussion process, teachers complete a campus level data analysis that alllows us to put names to numbers. This encourages teachers to identify students needing additional assistance or support in order to level up- whether that be to pass a test, meet grade level, or show mastery of content TEKS. Campus teams are able to focus on individual student success and respond not only to the assessment as a whole, but the needs of each individual student.

To ensure that teams meet the needs of every student, each campus team completes a Backward Design document that includes reteach, reassessment, mastery skills, plans for informal assessment, and “must know” goals for each quarter. Prior to planning each unit, the team does a dive into the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) associated with that specific unit. This dive in process involves dissecting the key verbs and nouns within the language of the TEK, setting the expected depth of knowledge (DOK) level of the TEK, and crafting what the exemplar response from the students should be for that TEK.  The teams then look at historical student performance data on state exam questions for each TEK to identify the key knowledge and skills the student requires along with identifying misconceptions based on answer choice distributions from previous assessment questions.  Based on this dive information teams pace their unit and select activities that will address the required knowledge and skills along with how to proactively address misconceptions. As a part of this process to focus on improving student learning, teams discuss student work, bringing work samples to compare students' responses, calibrate scoring, and identify exemplars. This allows teams to work collaboratively in generating solutions and make adjustments to tier one instruction. Incorporating these physical student samples in addition to regular discussions around data allows teachers the opportunity to discuss best teaching practices around learning standards, create vertical alignment and calibration among the team, respond to student learning data with a sense of urgency, and focus on individual student growth throughout the year while building their own instructional capacity.

Achievement Data Files

• tea-campus-report-card_khs.pdf
• hs-eoe-data-khs-xlsx.pdf

Additional Achievement Data

2023 Niche Rankings

Best HS in America Recognition

National School of Character

Spaceforce JROTC designation

86 Scholastic Writing Awards Earned by Klein ISD Students

Images

Files

• khs-data-protocol-2022-2023.pdf
• 22-23-khs-sped-leadership-rolling-agenda_sample.pdf
• plc-process-graphic-organizer-1.pdf
• unit-1-khs-data-discussion_sample.pdf
• campus-norms.pdf
• 2022-2023-klein-high-bell-schedule-1.pdf
• khs-grad-lab-intervention-data--sheet1.pdf
• khs-admin-accountability-tracking-template.pdf
• khs-inklein-schedule.pdf
• klein-high-biology-plc-agenda-template_2022-23.pdf
• klein-high-inklein-student-_-teacher-expectations-two-pager.pdf
• khs-biology-inklein-calendar-example-2022-23.pdf
• khsmissionvisionvalues2017-2018_final-1.pdf
• khs-1_1-student-goal-setting-talking-points_sample.pdf
• khs-algebra-1--plc-agenda-template-2022-2023.pdf
• khs-instructional-leadership-meeting-template-2022-23.pdf
• klein-high-master-schedule-2022-2023--master-all-courses.pdf