[Download] "Great Expectations: The Impact of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (Feature)" by Education Next * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Great Expectations: The Impact of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (Feature)
Author : Education Next
Release Date : January 22, 2006
Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
Pages : * pages
Size : 196 KB

Description

As the largest and most highly publicized initiative to improve teaching in American schools, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has raised great expectations. It has created rigorous standards for teaching and a system to assess and certify teachers meeting these standards; it has promoted financial incentives to reward National Board-certified teachers (NBCTs) and pushed for their use to leverage improvement in education. In its 18 years of existence, with nearly $400 million in support from government, corporate, and foundation grants, plus candidate fees, the NBPTS has certified more than 40,200 teachers (see Figure 1), about 1 percent of the U.S. teaching force. In the urgency of today's ethos of accountability and "No Child Left Behind," what has been the impact of this high-profile venture on improving American public education? Has it made its effects felt beyond the 1 percent of board-certified teachers? Is it the most cost-effective way to improve teaching? And is it raising the standards and performance of the teaching profession and the achievement of students? Or is it, as some critics have argued, a costly and largely misguided and ineffective effort to improve teaching and student achievement? The answers to these important policy questions are strongly disputed by both supporters and critics of the NBPTS. Considering the opportunity costs of the millions of dollars spent on the NBPTS and with research documenting that the quality of teaching is the most important within-school variable determining student success, the stakes involved could hardly be higher. In this article, we consider these questions in light of published material and research on the NBPTS and telephone interviews we conducted with prominent stakeholders, leaders of the NBPTS, and policy analysts and researchers holding varied views, pro and con, on the topic.