2009 RA Sights & Sounds--Anthony Mullen, Teacher of the Year

"America's teachers and education support professionals live in very challenging and stressful times. Incredibly, many of the nation's economic problems are now directed at unions. We have become easy targets for some misguided government officials, economists, and media talking heads who believe it is time for us to give back and to share the pain. Well, teachers and education support professionals have burdened the pain of being underpaid and overworked for too long.

And since we have been given very little, we have nothing to give back. Teachers did not leave their classrooms and abandon children when the best deal in town was to work in the financial services sector. We did not join the legions of people that became wealthy by sitting in front of a computer and selling stocks and managing hedge funds. We did not envy friends and neighbors who prospered during the 1980s and 1990s and bought McMansions and took trips to Bali. No, we stayed with our students because we believe that education and our nation's children are too valuable to be abandoned for a new sports car. So we accepted our meager raises. We worked harder to narrow the achievement gap and did more with less to help our nation prosper. And now, some of the very same people who once asked me how I could live on a teacher's salary, are now asking me what I can do to help the economy. What my union is going to do to help the economy.

And I tell these people two things: One, teachers did not crash the economy. Greed and corruption by people entrusted with our country's financial health collapsed the economy.

And two, unions are helping to recover the economy by protecting the rights of their members. Unions are making sure that what has made our country great, the middle class, will not be sacrificed for the decadence of Wall Street."--Anthony Mullen, 2009 National Teacher of the Year

2009 RA Sights & Sounds--Linda Darling-Hammond, NEA Friend of Education

"We need federal education policies that support educators in doing the challenging work they have committed to do, that supports schools to improve, that supports students in and out of school with adequate health care, with housing, with community supports. You know, when you go to high-achieving nations around the world, they don't have children who are homeless. They don't have children without health care. They have a safety net that enables every child to come to school ready to learn that day and to take advantage of what the school has to offer, as well as well-qualified teachers, counselors, principals and plentiful, high-quality learning materials. We need to meet international standards by treating education and teaching in this country the way they are treated in high-achieving nations around the world."--Linda Darling-Hammond, 2009 NEA Friend of Education

National Board Certification Facts

Here are the facts about National Board Certification:

1) National Board Certification is part of a growing education reform movement reshaping America’s schools by developing, recognizing and retaining many of the nation’s best teachers. Like board-certified doctors and accountants, teachers who achieve National Board Certification have met rigorous standards through a performance-based assessment that takes one to three years to complete. NBCTs have demonstrated deep knowledge of content and teaching practices to support diverse learners.

2) NBCTs improve student achievement. National Board Certification has a positive impact on student achievement, according to a congressionally-mandated report by the National Research Council released in June 2008. The NRC report states: “The evidence is clear that National Board Certification distinguishes more effective teachers…with respect to student achievement.”

3) National Board Certification is a widely accepted form of performance-based pay. National Board Certification is a model of pay-for-performance that is supported by teachers and administrators nationwide. More than two-thirds of the states provide salary incentives and cover the costs for teachers who pursue and/or achieve this advanced credential.

4) NBCTs offer students the skills necessary to thrive in school and in the workplace – essential factors for our nation’s success in the 21st century global economy. In the critical areas of math and science, for example, 10,000 math and science teachers have achieved National Board Certification, proving they are among the best teachers in the nation. Nearly 15 percent of all teachers who hold National Board Certification teach math and science.

5) National Board Certification retains teachers. National Board Certification is a proven way of ensuring that the most highly-accomplished teachers remain in the classroom. In Florida, for example, nearly 90 percent of NBCTs remain in teaching – which far exceeds the average 60percent retention rate for all teachers statewide. In Ohio, 52 percent of NBCTs surveyed said they plan to stay in teaching as long as they can as compared to 38 percent of non board-certified teachers in the state. South Carolina had similar results. Many NBCTs mentor new and struggling teachers—those most likely to leave the profession within the first five years of teaching.

6) NBCTs are proven teacher leaders. Research shows that NBCTs serve in significant school-based leadership roles. For example, researcher Gary Sykes (2006) found that NBCTs give input on curricular decisions, chair departments and organize professional development initiatives. A recent survey of NBCTs found that 83 percent mentor new or struggling teachers and 80 percent say that teachers and educators look to them for leadership. Hispanic, African American and Native American NBCTs report the greatest increase in leadership opportunities from National Board Certification.

Alternative Certification

This report isn't surprising. Many quality people enter into the teaching profession unprepared for the rigors of teaching. Ultimately, schools and policy makers must address the needs of teachers for successful retention. The OEA's NBCT summit on staffing high needs schools recommendations includes special training and additional professional development, including offering teachers in high-needs schools five additional days to work on teaching practices needed to teach a diverse population.

Teachers in high-needs schools also need additional time to collaborate and build connections with their peers and to meet these demands.

Growing your own NBCT's should be priority for high-needs schools. Recent data indicates the most effective method for increasing National Board certification is through a local support network of teachers and administrators within the district and at the candidate's school site.

Salary incentives are not the only answer, but are necessary to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers to the high-needs schools. Money alone is not enough to keep them in theses schools, which is why we need to offer non-financial related incentives as well. Lower class sizes, improving building infrastructure to ensure the classrooms are properly heated and cooled, and the necessary resources to teach students must be addressed.

And finally, we need to align the various education programs throughout the state. Colleges and universities can align mentoring efforts with the skills necessary to be Board certified within their master's degree programs.

Alternative Teacher Certification Oversold

Report concludes that programs such as Teach for America lack evidence of demonstrated success

Programs that bypass traditional education training and certification receive good publicity, but there is no consensus from research evidence that they work, according to a new policy brief released by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The policy brief, “Alternative Certification of Teachers,” was written by Gene V Glass, Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University.

Glass writes that alternative certification programs have been driven in part by the need for certain districts—often poor, urban, or both—to quickly find more teachers. But they have also been promoted, according to Glass, by ideological hostility toward traditional teacher education programs and toward government regulation as represented by conventional certification.

The policy brief examines research into various alternative certification programs. These include various local and state programs as well as prominent programs like the New York City Teaching Fellows and Teach for America (TFA). Such programs have “become a prominent part of the teaching profession,” writes Glass, who reports that the number of such alternatively certified teachers working in public or private schools currently exceeds 60,000 in the U.S.

Glass says that the current body of research on the subject is limited, but we do know that teachers participating in alternative programs such as TFA:

*Are clustered in poor, urban schools;

*Are no more likely—and possibly are less likely—to remain teaching after their initial commitment period (two years in the case of TFA) than regularly certified teachers; and

*Have yielded conflicting data as to their effectiveness compared with their fully certified counterparts.

“Investigations that contrast the lived experiences of beginning teachers placed quickly in the classroom are needed,” he writes. “Research must also honor teaching as something more than the production of scores on paper-and-pencil tests.”

Perhaps surprisingly, alternative certification approaches that target graduates who have deep subject matter training but little or no teacher education are unlikely to save money: “College graduates trained in science, mathematics, and technology require significantly higher salaries than the market will bear if they are to enter public school teaching.” But if alternative certification of teachers proves in the end to be merely about cheapening the costs of training teachers, Glass notes, we all will pay a price: “Unlike with some professions, the plane may not crash or the patient may not die when teachers are poorly trained, but a society that demeans teaching and degrades education will in time surely see aspirations and hope atrophy and wither.”

Find Gene V Glass’s policy brief, “Alternative Certification of Teachers” on the web at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org.