Raising the bar for educators

Just one year after A Nation at Risk was published, the Carnegie Corporation established its Forum on Education and the Economy; its major publication,

A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, reaffirmed the role of the teacher as what it called the "best hope" for ensuring educational excellence in elementary and secondary education.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the body charged with setting high standards for teachers and certifying those who meet these standards, was a direct outgrowth of the Carnegie report.

Two years before the birth of NBPTS, former AFT president Albert Shanker had called for a new national examination for teachers, administered by an "independent, nongovernmental board of professional educators." Shanker was a founding member of NBPTS.

"Most educators and an increasing number of political leaders agree that teaching should be a profession, by which they mean that teachers should be well paid and have high status," Shanker wrote in a "Where We Stand" column that appeared in the November 1986 issue of American Teacher. "But the high pay and status of the most highly respected professions do not come through mere exhortation, but mainly as a result of long and difficult training and the acquisition of expertise."

Former North Carolina governor James B. Hunt Jr. chaired the planning group charged with establishing a national board that would set standards for teachers and certify those who met those standards.

One of the key objectives of the NBPTS, Hunt said in a recent interview with American Teacher, is "to identify good teachers who can mentor and lead their fellow teachers."

NBPTS certification, a voluntary process, is achieved through a rigorous performance-based assessment that takes nearly a year to complete. In 1993, approximately 30 educators received NBPTS certification. As of November 2002, there were almost 24,000 NBPTS-certified teachers in schools across the United States.

Board certification "is probably the most important professional development tool that has come along in the last century," says Sharon Draper, one of the first classroom teachers to receive NBPTS certification. A former member of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, Draper, who became 1997 National Teacher of the Year, thanks in no small part to having board certification on her list of credentials, says that being board certified doesn't merely mean you have another piece of paper on the wall or an extra $10 in your paycheck. "It has to do with professional validation, with knowing who the highly qualified teachers are and having them identified and recognized."

Hunt believes the NBPTS has accomplished many of its goals, including drawing attention to the value of quality teaching. "Since 1987, a lot of other groups and leaders have focused on teachers and their critical importance to student achievement."

Back to:  A Nation at Risk--Work in Progress

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