Board-Certified Teachers Boost Student Performance

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By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 6/16/2008 2:05:00 PM

Students taught by teachers certified through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) make greater gains on achievement tests, says a new report. However, it’s still unclear whether certification itself leads to higher-quality teaching.

"Earning NBPTS certification is a useful 'signal' that a teacher is effective in the classroom," says Milton Hakel, chair of the committee that wrote the report and Ohio Board of Regents' Eminent Scholar in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Bowling Green State University. "But we don't know whether the certification process itself makes teachers more effective—as they become familiar with the standards and complete the assessment—or if high-quality teachers are attracted to the certification process."

The report, by the National Research Council, a nonprofit institution that provides science, technology, and health policy advice, recommends further research to explore that question and to determine whether NBPTS certification has a broader impact beyond the classrooms. Studies so far suggest that many school systems don’t support or make the best use of their board-certified teachers.

Although the report says kids taught by board-certified teachers make larger gains on achievement tests, they differ by state and by subject. Most research on reading and math scores has taken place in Florida and North Carolina—states with high NBPTS participation rates. Students taught by teachers who had attempted to earn certification but failed made smaller gains than students taught by board-certified teachers or by those teachers who had not tried to get certification, the report says.

Created in 1987, the nonprofit National Board for Professional Teaching Standards developed standards for what effective teachers should know and be able to do, along with a process to evaluate whether individual teachers meet these criteria. To earn certification, a teacher must complete six computer-based exercises and assemble a portfolio that shows how his teaching meets the standards.  

From 1993 through 2007, 99,300 teachers applied for NBPTS certification, and 63,800 earned the credential. That means that there are three board-certified teachers for every five schools in the U.S., though participation rates vary widely by district and state. Not surprisingly, states that provide incentives to board-certified teachers have higher numbers of teachers who pursue certification.