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I. Introduction
Education research has failed to reach a consensus over which, if any, readily identifiable teacher characteristics are associated with students' learning gains, and it remains an open question as to whether it is even possible to judge teachers' effectiveness using measures other than direct observations of their teaching. From a policy perspective this is extremely problematic: statelevel policymakers lack the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about teacher
licensure, and local policymakers lack information that might be useful in hiring teachers and determining compensation. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) offers the potential to address some of these issues through the creation of a voluntary certification process whereby teachers who are considered to be highly effective can demonstrate, and gain recognition for, their knowledge and teaching skills.1
In both its scope and expense, NBPTS is arguably the most significant national development in teacher policy in the last two decades. Participation in the NBPTS program has grown dramatically over a relatively short period of time: the National Board certified fewer than 200 teachers in 1993-94, but by November, 2005, this figure had climbed to more than 47,500.2 The program is supported by substantial investments from all levels of government as well as private sources including a substantial number of teachers themselves. NBPTS currently reports federal ($149.1 million) and private ($261 million) funding of $410.1 million.3 In addition to this, NBPTS receives a fee ($2300 in 2005) for every application, which is paid for either by teachers or, in many cases, by states and localities. Based on an estimated 100,928 applicants (from 1993-94 through 2004-05), this is an additional investment of $227.3 million, putting the total investment in the NBP TS program at upwards of $637 million.4
In addition to this direct support of the National Board program, some states and localities offer salary supplements to National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs).5 In North Carolina, for instance, NBCTs receive a 12 percent increase in their base pay. In California NBCTs who opt to teach in a "high-priority" school for four years are eligible to receive a $20,000 merit award.6 While these examples certainly represent the more generous of the direct financial incentives provided to NBCTs, many districts provide other types of incentives (e.g., release time or preparation assistance) that are also costly but more difficult to quantify.
NBPTS offers the potential to address long-standing concerns about teacher quality in at least two ways. First, NBPTS certification may serve as a signal of effectiveness that schools or districts may use to identify skilled teachers for leadership roles or critical teaching positions.
The recognition, and often rewards, that accompany the NBPTS credential may also encourage more effective teachers to remain in the teaching profession longer than they otherwise would. Second, the NBPTS certification process itself, which requires applicants to engage in "intense self-reflection and analysis" of their own teaching, may serve as a catalyst for effective teaching by helping to build the human capital of teachers.7
While many advocates of NBPTS embrace both the "signal" and "catalyst" hypotheses about the program's benefits, critics argue that there is little evidence to support either view and question the significant investments that have been made in the program (Finn 2003). Because there is surprisingly little quantitative evidence to inform the debate about the program's effects, it certainly remains an open question as to whether policymakers should consider NBPTS as a
good signal of teacher quality or a productive way to build the human capital of teachers.
In this paper we hope to inform the debate by presenting the results of the first large-scale study of the program and its relationship to student achievement. Using a unique data set from North Carolina, we explore both the "signal" and "catalyst" hypotheses about the program's effects. In short, we consistently find that NBPTS certification is successfully identifying effective teachers: NBPTS-certified teachers are more effective than unsuccessful NBPTS
applicants and generally more effective than teachers who never applied to the program. The statistical significance and magnitude of the "NBPTS effect," however, differs significantly by grade level and student type. We do not, however, find evidence that the NBPTS certification process itself increases teacher effectiveness.
The paper is laid out as follows: Section II provides some background information on NBPTS, as well as a brief overview of the research literature on the relationship between various teacher characteristics and student outcomes. Section III describes the data and analytic methods we used in the study, and Section IV presents our results. Section V offers policy implications of our findings and some conclusions.
Notes from this section of the report
1 Specifically, NBPTS was founded in 1987 with a threefold mission: (1) to establish high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do; (2) to develop and operate a national voluntary system to assess and certify teachers who meet these standards; and (3) to advance related education reforms to capitalize on the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) (http://www.nbpts.org).
2 http://www.nbpts.org/pdf/quickfacts.pdf, accessed 11/22/05.
3 Through September 2005. NBPTS states that a portion of these federal funds have provided subsidies to candidates to fund a portion of their respective candidate fees. (http://www.nbpts.org/pdf/quickfacts.pdf, accessed 11/22/05).
4 Due to variations across years in the available data, this estimate was calculated in several steps. The application fee was originally $1,800 (through 1998), and increased to $2,300 beginning in 1999. Since the actual number of NBPTS applicants prior to 1999 is not available due to problems with the data, we estimate the number of applicants from 1993-98 by multiplying the number of NBCTs (http://www.nbpts.org/nbct/nbctdir_byyear.cfm) in those years by 2 (according to ETS officials, the average first-time pass rate is roughly 50 percent). This gives us an estimated 9,612 applicants for the pre-99 years, which we multiply by $1,800, for a total estimated cost of $17.3 million for the first six years of the program. We then multiplied the actual number of applicants for 1999-2004 (91,316, according to an e-mail to the author from Anika Sandy-Hanson of NBPTS on 11/22/05) by $2,300 for a total actual cost of $210 million for 1999-2004. Adding these two amounts together gives us our total estimated application fees of $227.3 million.
5 As of September 2005, legislative and policy action creating incentives and recognition for National Board Certification has been enacted in all 50 states and in approximately 544 local school districts, including the District of Columbia; many of these offer at least one type of financial incentive (bonus or salary supplement) for teachers to become NBPTS-certified (http://www.nbpts.org/about/state.cfm, accessed 11/2/05).
6 See http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/sr/nb/faqs.asp for more information on this NBPTS incentive.
7 For information on the NBPTS process as professional development, see
http://www.nbpts.org/standards/nbcert.cfm. For a detailed description of the assessment see
http://www.nbpts.org/standards/dev.cfm.
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
