Dear Families,

This year marks our third year of Advance, New York City's teacher development and evaluation system. We believe that students learn to think for themselves when teachers continuously learn and develop their classroom practices. Advance engages teachers in reflecting on both student learning data and meaningful feedback from school leaders, so they can learn, grow, and thrive as professionals. Understanding how students are performing is a crucial step toward recognizing outstanding teaching and encouraging meaningful improvements in teaching and learning. For this reason student growth, or Measures of Student Learning, is included as part of each teacher's Advance rating.                                                                ·

This fall, as part of Advance, teachers may ·administer brief baseline assessments to better understand their students' strengths and how best to support their growth. Teachers will use the  results from this assessment to plan their instruction and design comprehensive strategies for supporting students' academic development throughout the year.

In the next few weeks, your children may have questions or concerns about the assessments they take in school. As always, we encourage you to" speak with your children about working hard and doing their best. If you have questions about these assessments or Advance, please contact Crisa lgnatiadis, our Parent Coordinator.

This is an excitirig time for our schools, teachers and students. We are confident that these assessments will be a powerful tool for improving teaching and learning across our city and that Advance will help our teachers prepare students for success in college and career.

Sincerely,