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Dear Memphis City Schools Family,

Our Teacher Effectiveness Initiative (TEI) is focused on what matters most for our students: their teachers.  As we all know, effective teachers have always been essential to students’ success—and never more so than today, with higher state standards and an increasingly competitive global economy. Many of our students are fortunate to have terrific teachers, and we must strive to ensure that every classroom is led by an effective teacher in order to graduate every student college and/or workforce ready.  

Needless to say, it is thrilling that Memphis City Schools has joined an “Intensive Partnership” with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Memphis City Schools is one of four school systems selected to receive significant, multi-year support from the Foundation focused on empowering effective teaching.  This “Intensive Partnership” provides tremendous financial and non-financial support that will greatly accelerate our Teacher Effectiveness Initiative.  Additionally, our district has obtained and will continue to seek significant local philanthropic support needed to fully implement our TEI. 

Memphis City Schools and the City of Memphis are in the national spotlight and at the forefront of an educational reform effort that is supported by President Barack Obama.  Most important, however, is the fact that Memphis City Schools is committed to doing everything possible to ensure that all of our students benefit from effective teaching.  Therefore, our Teacher Effectiveness Initiative focuses on four main strategies:

1) We will use a common, agreed-upon process to define and measure what we deem to be effective teaching.
2) We will make smarter decisions about who teaches our students.
3) We will better support, utilize, and compensate our teachers.
4) We will improve the surrounding contexts for teachers and students to foster effective teaching. 

I strongly believe that our TEI will make it even more rewarding and enjoyable to be a teacher in Memphis City Schools.  In very real ways, teachers will be newly valued and esteemed.  Thank you, teachers, for your dedication and service to our students. 

To provide comment on the TEI plan, or to volunteer for future planning sessions, please email Tequilla Banks, Executive Director of Teacher Talent and Effectiveness, at bankst@mcsk12.net or Ken Foster, Executive Director of the Memphis Education Association, at kefmea@isdn.net.  Your feedback and ongoing input is much needed.

Respectfully,

Irving Hamer

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