| Mission: |
To advance the quality of teaching and learning by maintaining high
and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be
able to do; providing a national voluntary system certifying teachers
who meet these standards, and; advocating related education reforms to
integrate National Board Certification in American education and to
capitalize on the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers. |
| Governance: |
NBPTS is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan and non-governmental
organization governed by a board of directors, with the majority of its
members being classroom teachers. Other directors include school
administrators, school board leaders, governors and state legislators,
higher education officials, representatives from teachers’ unions and
disciplinary organizations, and business and community
leaders. |
| History: |
Created in 1987 in response to the 1983 President’s Commission on
Excellence in Education report, A Nation
At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, and the Carnegie Forum
on Education and the Economy’s Task
Force on Teaching as a Profession report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers
for the 21st Century.
|
|
National Board Certification®
- National Board Certification is a symbol of professional
teaching excellence. It was created so that teachers, like professionals
in other fields, can achieve distinction by demonstrating through a
demanding performance assessment that they meet high and rigorous
standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do.
- Based on core propositions and standards describing what teachers
should know and be able to do, the process of National Board Certification
is a forceful professional development experience. Teachers are
strengthened in their practice and the beneficiaries of their improvement
are the students in their classrooms.
- Teachers must demonstrate their knowledge and skills through a series
of performance-based assessments that include student work samples,
videotapes, and rigorous analyses of their classroom teaching and student
learning.
- Written exercises probe the depth of their subject-matter knowledge
and their understanding of how to teach those subjects to their students.
- It is offered to teachers on a voluntary basis. While state licensing
systems set requirements to teach in each state, National Board
Certification establishes high and rigorous advanced standards for
experienced teachers to demonstrate accomplished practice. A National
Board Certificate is valid for 10 years.
- It is available to all teachers who hold a baccalaureate degree, have
taught for a minimum of three years, whether in a public or private
school, and have held a valid state teaching license for those three
years.
National Board Certified Teachers®
The first 86 National Board Certified Teachers were named in January
1995. In November 2004, the National Board awarded National Board
Certification to over 8,000 teachers, bringing the total number of
National Board Certified Teachers to over 40,200.
Available Certificates
• Early and Middle Childhood/Art
• Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/Art
• Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/Career and Technical Education
• Early Adolescence/English Language Arts
• Adolescence and Young Adulthood/English Language Arts
• Early and Middle Childhood/English as a New Language
• Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/English as a New Language
• Early Childhood through Young Adulthood/Exceptional Needs
• Early Childhood/Generalist
• Middle Childhood/Generalist
• Early Childhood through Young Adulthood/Library Media
• Early Adolescence/Mathematics
• Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Mathematics
• Early and Middle Childhood/Music
• Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/Music
• Early Adolescence/Science
• Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Science
• Early Adolescence/Social Studies-–History
• Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Social Studies-–History
• Early and Middle Childhood/Physical Education
• Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/Physical Education
• Early Childhood through Young Adulthood/School Counseling
• Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/ World Languages Other than
English
• Early and Middle Childhood/Literacy: Reading-Language Arts
Progress Report
• The number of candidates seeking National Board Certification has grown
dramatically since this system of advanced certification became available in
1993/1994. As of September 2005, there are almost 20,000 candidates seeking
certification in 2004/2005.
• The 24 certificates available in 2003/2004 are applicable to nearly 95% of
the eligible teaching population. Teachers who deliver instruction in both
English and Spanish may seek National Board Certification in the majority of
certificate areas.
National, State and Local Support and Incentives
• Strong support for this system of National Board Certification comes
from Democratic and Republican governors and legislators, state and local
school boards, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, teacher educators,
education organizations, and classroom teachers.
• Incentives for National Board Certification are provided at the local
level in more than 500 school districts or through statewide programs funded
by other sources, including the District of Columbia.
• Currently, 50 states offer regulatory or legislative support for National
Board Certification and several of those states, following the leadership of
former Governor Jim Hunt (NC) and former Governor Voinovich (OH), offer
multiple incentives that provide financial support and use National Board
Certification to permit greater inter-state mobility for accomplished
teachers.
• The work of the National Board has received the endorsement of the former
Presidents of the United States, George Bush and Bill Clinton. Former U.S.
Secretaries of Education Lamar Alexander and Richard Riley strongly
supported the work of the Board.
• NBPTS receives support from a wide range of associations, including the
American Federation of Teachers, Council for American Private Education,
Council of Great City Schools, National Alliance of Black School Educators,
National Conference of State Legislatures, National Education Association,
and the National School Boards Association.
• This project is funded in part with grants from the U.S. Department of
Education and the National Science Foundation. Through September 2004, NBPTS
has been appropriated federal funds of $139.2 million, representing
approximately 35 percent of the National Board Certification project. More
than $237 million (65 percent) of the project’s cost will be financed by
nongovernmental sources, including:
Current & Former NBPTS Contributors
A & E Television
Apple
The Atlantic Philanthropies
AT&T
Donnell-Kay Foundation
The Paul G. Allen Virtual Education Foundation
American Express
ARA Services
BellSouth
Boeing
Carnegie Corporation of
New York
Charlson Research Foundation
The Chase Manhattan Foundation
Chevron Corporation
The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
The Coca-Cola Foundation
DaimlerChrysler
Dewitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund
E.I. du Pont de Nemours
ExxonMobil Foundation
Ford Foundation
Ford Motor Company
The Ford Family Foundation
General Electric
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation
Getty Center for Education in the Arts
Georgia-Pacific
GlaxoSmithKline
The Grable Foundation
IBM
Johnson & Johnson
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Lilly Endowment, Inc.
Kodak Company
McGregor Fund
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Nabisco
New York Times Company
The Pew Charitable Trusts
Pfizer
Philip Morris Companies
The Pittsburgh Foundation
Procter & Gamble Fund
Oracle
The Rockefeller Foundation
Rose Community Foundation
Sears, Roebuck and Company
The Spencer Foundation
State Farm Insurance Companies Foundation
W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation
Stuart Foundation
Union Carbide
The UPS Foundation
Walt Disney Co.
Washington Mutual Foundation
Xerox Corporation
Contact Information
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
1525 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22209
703-465-2700 www.nbpts.org
|
