Letter to Potential Respondents

REL West Needs Assessment Survey Mail/Email Letter

This letter will be mailed and/or emailed to potential respondents

Dear ____________ ,

Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education, WestEd, a non-profit research, development, and service agency headquartered in San Francisco, is conducting a survey to determine the needs of educators in the western region.

Developed for teachers, school and district administrators, and school board members in the western states (Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah), the survey is designed to yield valuable information about school practitioner needs and priorities as they relate to issues of school improvement, educating English learners, quality of teaching, teacher workforce, assessment, student readiness to learn, and secondary school reform.

As an educator or policymaker, your views are critical in shaping research that will then inform the development of policies, programs, and services in these areas—both for WestEd and for education policymakers throughout the region. So, please do take the time to respond.

Completing the survey will take about 20 minutes.

[For MAILED letter, sent first when there is a physical mailing address:]

You will be receiving an email with a link to the survey, or you may go to http://www._(url for survey).

[INSTRUCTIONS FOR LOGGING IN TO COMPLETE THE SURVEY ONLINE WILL APPEAR HERE. Respondents will most likely need to go to a web address and enter a unique id.]

[For EMAILED letter, sent after physical letter when there is a physical mailing address, and repeated weekly until survey is completed or administration window closes:]

Please click on the following link to begin the survey http://www._(url for survey).

If you wish, you may instead call Emily Rosenthal at Berkeley Policy Associates at 1-800-XXX-XXXX and complete the survey over the phone during regular business hours (e.g., 8:30 am to 5:00 pm). The deadline for completing the survey is MONTH DAY, YEAR.

Responses to this survey will be used only for statistical purposes. The reports prepared from this survey will summarize findings across the sample and will not associate responses with a specific school, district, county, or individual. We will not provide information that identifies you or your school, district, or county to anyone outside the survey team, except as required by law.

If you should have questions about this survey, please contact Emily Rosenthal at 1-800-XXX-XXXX at Berkeley Policy Associates, the organization administering the survey for WestEd. For information about WestEd and our programs and services, log on to our website at www.WestEd.org. To learn more about the U.S. Department of Education’s Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Program, under which WestEd heads the REL West and is conducting this survey, please visit http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

Gary Estes

Director, REL West at WestEd