Board Certified Teachers Get Better Results

Teachers who earn national board certification are more effective than other teachers, both at the high school and elementary levels

By Celeste FordAugust 4, 2015

Professional Learning for Educators

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), runs the board certification program and has been a grantee since 1987 when Carnegie Corporation founded the organization.

Two different studies reach the same conclusion: teachers who earn national board certification are more effective than other teachers, both at the high school and elementary levels. This is good news for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the group runs the certification program and has been a grantee since 1987 when Carnegie Corporation founded the organization.

As reported in Education Week, the first study funded by NBPTS and conducted by CNA Analysis and Solutions focused on the link between teachers and the scores of thousands of Chicago and Kentucky high school students between 2000 and 2012. “It found that board certification served as an effective ‘signal’ of teacher quality, with students taught by those teachers doing better than students not taught by them, controlling for a variety of background characteristics.”

The EdWeek story continues, “A second report released last month, by James Cowan and Dan Goldhaber, both of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington Bothell, looked at the test scores of students taught by elementary and middle school teachers in Washington state; it found similar results to those of the CNA study.”

According to NBPTS, more than 110,000 teachers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have achieved National Board Certification. It is a voluntary advanced professional certification for preK-12 educators that develops teaching expertise through performance-based, peer-reviewed assessments. Read more about the certification process.