Notification letter - local

Local Notification Letter

[Date]

[Name]

[Position]

[Street Address]

[City, state, zip]

Dear [ ]:

We are writing to inform you of an important study sponsored by the Policy and Program Studies Service of the U.S. Department of Education focused on the equitable distribution of high-quality teachers in schools. This letter outlines the purpose and activities of this study and ask for your cooperation and support.

The Equitable Distribution of Effective Teachers: State and Local Responses to Federal Initiatives study (“EDET”) will conduct interviews of district officials in 75 leading edge districts. (By “leading edge” we mean districts states will nominate as being advanced in their contention with and addressing of teacher equity issues.) This study is intended to document state and district efforts to measure teacher quality, examine data on the distribution of teacher quality, and act to improve teacher quality for disadvantaged students. This study will also provide feedback to the states and districts to help in their required activities under Title I, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, and other federal programs, and to identify successes under their teacher equity plans.

Staff from our contractors at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) will conduct interviews with district officials beginning in August 2011. AIR will contact you by phone soon for a preliminary conversation to discuss the study, identify the appropriate respondents in your district, and determine the status of documents that AIR should review prior to the interviews.

Please know that the research team is concerned with maintaining the confidentiality and security of its records and will protect the confidentiality of the data to the extent possible through a variety of means, including disassociating the data from respondent names, using a password-protected computer network, and destroying files at the conclusion of the study. Participation in this study is expected as a condition of receiving Title II subgrant funds.

Should you have any questions or if you would like to discuss this project, please feel free to contact the project director, Andrew Wayne, of the American Institutes for Research at 202-403- 5483 or awayne@air.org. You may also contact the project officer, Elizabeth Eisner of the U.S. Department of Education at 202-260-1109 (Elizabeth.Eisner@ed.gov) or Andrew Abrams at 202-401-1232 (Andrew.Abrams@ed.gov).

We thank you in advance for your cooperation. We trust that this project will provide a useful source of information for other policymakers and educators.

Sincerely,

Stuart Kerachsky

Director, Policy and Program Studies Service

Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development

cc: Chief State School Officer

Enclosure

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