District Recruitment Letter

APPENDIX F
DISTRICT RECRUITMENT LETTER

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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION SCIENCES
National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance

[DATE]
[Superintendent- Prefix] [Superintendent - First Name] [Superintendent – Last Name]
[Superintendent - Title]
[District Name]
[District Address 1]
[District Address 2]
[City], [State] [ZIP]
Dear [Superintendent - Prefix] [Superintendent – Last Name]:
I am writing to tell you about an important opportunity for elementary school teachers in your district to
receive free individualized feedback and coaching aimed at helping them improve their performance in the
classroom. Effective teachers are critical to student learning, but teachers who are early in their careers typically
need more practice and guidance than their more experienced peers.
I would like to invite your district to consider participating in a study that will produce much-needed
information about a promising approach to help novice and early career teachers improve their teaching
practices. As part of the study, teachers in grades 4 and 5 offered the opportunity to participate in the program
will receive individualized feedback and coaching based on video recordings of 5 or 10 sessions of their
classroom teaching during the year. This would supplement your district’s existing ways of evaluating and
supporting teachers. We are reaching out to you because we believe your district may have many early career
teachers who could benefit from such a program. We have engaged Mathematica Policy Research, and their
partner organizations, to conduct the study. Additional details about the study and the general plan for video
recording and providing individualized teacher feedback and coaching are provided in the enclosures.
A member of the research team will call you in the next few days to tell you more about the proposed
teacher feedback and coaching program and the study, and to discuss your district’s potential participation. To
determine if your district would be a good fit for this study, we will be especially interested to learn about the
professional development and support your district currently provides, or plans to provide next year, to grade 4
and 5 teachers in their first four years of teaching. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the study,
please contact the study director, Susanne James-Burdumy, at 609-275-2248 or sjames-burdumy@mathematicampr.com.
Sincerely,

Elizabeth Warner
Federal Project Officer

F.3

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