Lotsa Nationally Certified Teachers -- Do I Care?

I have to say, I'm not all that into the whole NBCT thing. Is that bad? I mean, I get that it takes a lot of work to get through the process, and that not everyone succeeds. I'm not taking anything away from anyone individually. But as a policy initiative, I'm not so sure so sure it's what I would spend my money on.

It seems like it's really expensive on an individual basis. And I'm not sure that the teachers end up where I'd most like them to be (in teams in schools that really need them). Here, ASBJ says that most NBCTs don't change duties once they complete the certification (Find ways to reward your board-certified teachers)

But perhaps these ideas are outdated, or things are different than I think they are. I remember someone telling me recently that students whose teachers scored high on the NBC tests showed higher gains in achievement than those who scored lower, or who took the test multiple times before passing. (I didn't even know that NBCTs could get different scores -- I thought it was pass-fail.)

Anyway, what do you think? Is it helping kids in ways large enough to justify the time and money going into it? Let us know.

Comments

[Brett]

This is a classic education problem: focusing on inputs (investment in the program, effort required) rather than outputs (improvements in student achievement).

What the body of research on national board certification says, in essence, is that teachers certified by NBPTS are no more effective in producing academic gains in students than are uncertified teachers – and even for the subset of studies that does find an effect, the effect size is extremely small (in the area of 0.1 to 0.2) and can hardly justify the tremendous expense of the certification process and ongoing bonuses paid by the states.

Dig around http://www.caldercenter.org/ for the data.