School boards can take better advantage of NBPTS teachers
By Joetta Sack-Min
01/08 -- In December, 8,491 teachers passed the stringent test to become certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a record-setting number for the 14-year-old professional development program.
But as the program becomes more popular, having certified nearly 64,000 teachers, there are growing concerns that these master teachers are not being used to their full potential.
Many districts are not placing these teachers in leadership or mentoring roles, curriculum development positions, or other places where they could share their superior skills, both supporters and critics of the program say. Despite having completed an exhaustive exercise, many teachers just go back to the same teaching jobs with little recognition.
“These certified teachers are all dressed up with no place to go,” said Joseph Aguerrebere, the president and chief executive officer of NBPTS. “Not enough school districts are taking advantage of the skills they have.”
The certification is lauded by NSBA and other national groups because of its rigor: Teachers must produce extensive portfolios showcasing their teaching skills and pass numerous content-knowledge exams. Less than half the candidates achieve certification on their first try, and only about 70 percent of candidates achieve certification by their third attempt, according to NBPTS.
“The NBPTS test is extremely rigorous. Teachers say this is the most substantial professional development they’ve ever gone through,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant. “This is where school boards can really make a difference -- once people are certified, how can we use them?”
Bryant urges school boards and administrators to nurture those teachers with more challenging roles, pay raises, and other recognition. “The cost of replacing highly qualified teachers is huge,” she said. “These teachers hang around longer, they want to stay in teaching, and they want to be used for leadership jobs.”
Most states and some districts pay bonuses to teachers who attain certification or at least pay for the cost of the certification process.
Those expenditures have prodded NBPTS to show data proving their certified teachers can improve students’ academic achievement -- something the organization has had difficulty producing.
It’s also had to contend with the perception that the majority of teachers who attain certification end up working in wealthier suburban schools, while they might be used more effectively if placed in classrooms with children from low-income families.
Researcher and consultant Julia Koppich was part of a team that evaluated NBPTS-certified teachers as part of a longitudinal study. Her group, which interviewed teachers in six states that had the highest populations of NBPTS-certified staff, found that only a few, about 12 percent, of those teachers were working in high-need, low-performing schools.
She queried other teachers on what incentives would persuade them to work in a low-performing school. The overwhelming response, she said, was “a good principal.”
“I heard that time and again, and I have gone to more schools where the principal didn’t get it, was overwhelmed, and had trouble doing the job,” Koppich said. Second, she added, those teachers wanted “a little more money -- not vast riches, just a little more to acknowledge this is a difficult job.”
Other factors that would lure NBPTS teachers into the neediest schools would be allowing them to go as teams rather than individuals and improving the working conditions in those schools.
The teachers union plays a significant role, Koppich discovered. In districts where teachers were placed in jobs where they could be more effective, those districts often worked closely with union representatives. For example, Cincinnati school officials and the teacher’s union created “lead teacher” positions where the NBPTS-credentialed staff took on some administrative duties.
“In places where the union was actively engaged and wanted to create these opportunities, it was able to communicate with teachers how important this work was,” she said.
School boards, at the least, should also acknowledge the teachers’ newly minted certification through a ceremony or other event, Koppich suggested. Also, school boards should look for policies that encourage principals and administrators to become more aware of the program and how NBPTS-certified teachers can assist them in their jobs.
School boards can look at the structure of the NBPTS program and its strategies and mimic those standards for their own professional development programs, added Nancy Schwartz, an NBPTS regional outreach director.
There’s a strong belief in “power in numbers” -- that teachers who undergo the certification process at the same time as other colleagues have a more enriching experience because they can learn from one another and share experiences, then tackle their schools’ issues together.
Aguerrebere points to Kimberly Oliver, the 2006 National Teacher of the Year, who persuaded several of her colleagues in Montgomery County, Md., to earn certification. After going through the process, the teachers worked together to ask tough questions about why many students weren’t achieving and sought solutions. Such a “critical mass” of NBPTS-certified teachers can turn around a low-performing school, he noted.
Other ways NBPTS-certified teachers can be used include having them serve as curriculum and development specialists, lead teachers, assistant administrators, and trainers or mentors for teachers who are just entering the field. Schwartz said she also sees many NBPTS-certified teachers working part-time in academia.
NBPTS does not know how many of the teachers who have attained certification since the program began in the 1994-95 school year are still classroom teachers or in the education field in different capacities. The group is building a database and contacting its alumni for that information.
Schwartz is seeing a growing awareness among administrators, school board members, and the education field in general about the program, and she believes more districts are looking for ways to take full advantage of NBPTS-certified teachers’ skills.
“The more they learn about it,” she said, “they realize this is a very powerful opportunity.”
A Rigorous Certification Process
A teacher seeking to become certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards must undergo a multistep process:
• Prerequisites -- Each teacher who applies for board certification must hold a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution, have completed three years teaching in grades preK-12, and have held a valid state license for that period.
• Portfolio -- Each candidate must present a four-piece portfolio. Three parts are classroom based, showing evidence of teaching through student work samples and video excerpts from an instructional session, plus a commentary from the candidate that describes, analyzes, and reflects on the sample. The fourth piece must document the candidate’s impact on student learning outside the classroom through interaction with families, community members, and colleagues.
• Content knowledge -- Candidates must pass six computer-based exercises that measure their knowledge of the subject matter of the certificate area they have chosen.
• Evaluation -- Candidates’ submissions are evaluated by a team of at least 12 NBPTS “peer assessors.” These are teachers who have undergone extensive training and look for “clear, consistent, and convincing evidence that the candidate has met the standards specific to his or her certificate field.” Candidates must pass all 10 components of the process, and may retake any portion that they failed within two years.
| Reproduced with permission from School Board News. Copyright © 2008, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |