I3letter

From TeacherWiki

If your district is from Maine you should download a slightly different letter located here (Copy and Paste this letter into Word)

(PLACE ON DISTRICT LETTERHEAD)

Dear [Insert 'National Science Foundation' for first letter. Insert 'US Department of Education', for the second letter] Grant Reviewers:

This is a letter of commitment from (school district). We are a school district of (XXX) students. [Cite some evidence why you are a needy group by listing you accountability status under AYP and the number of students on IE plans. For the purpose of this grant we want to emphasize on your need: ethnic make up of students, free and reduced lunch, % of students receiving SPED, schools not making AYP.]

This is a letter of commitment to join WPI's grant proposal. We understand that this proposal will allow our district to get support in terms of professional development for using data to drive instruction. We are eager to use ASSISTments to help our schools use formative assessment as a process. We understand that formative assessment is a process by which teachers and students shall quickly, within 24 hours, respond to data regarding what students have and have not learned. ASSISTments is a cognitively diagnostic system tracking over 100 skills in middle school mathematics.

We understand that this grant requires the most rigorous of evaluations to find out what is working and as such we understand that there will be procedures by which we will need to follow in order to help WPI and the federal government evaluate if student learning outcomes have changed.

I would like to close by saying we are excited about this project and are committed to using advancements in technology and student assessment systems to improve teaching and learning in middle school mathematics. If this project results are as effective as we hope they will, be are committed to sustaining these efforts after this grant is over by having our existing teachers train new teachers in our district.

Sincerely,

Mr./Mrs. Superintendent of XXX School District

[Please make this letter fit on one page. If your school has already used ASSISTments then say so (at the beginning of a paragraph, as it indictes you better understand what you are getting into. An ideal situation would be one in which you could say something like this. "All of my school math teachers have already made their accounts have had all their students try out the web site. The students like it and our staff liked the reports they got." The more you can show that your school has already taken steps to try ASSISTments, the strong the letter is. ]