Science Teacher Certification

The cost-effectiveness of NBPTS teacher certification.

A cost-effectiveness analysis of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) program suggests that Board certification is less cost-effective than a range of alternative approaches for raising student achievement, including comprehensive school reform, class size reduction, a 10% increase in per pupil expenditure, the use of value-added statistical methods to identify effecti...

Science Teacher Education

Curriculum materials are a crucial tool with which teachers engage in teaching practice. For preservice teachers to learn to use science curriculum materials in productive ways, they must develop a conception of themselves as elementary teachers in which the use of science curriculum materials is a valued dimension of science-teaching practice. We define those dimensions of teachers’ profession...

38 The Science Teacher Students

The effect of certification and preparation on teacher quality.

To improve the quality of the teacher workforce, some states have tightened teacher preparation and certification requirements while others have eased requirements and introduced "alternative" ways of being certified to attract more people to teaching. Donald Boyd, Daniel Goldhaber, Hamilton Lankford, and James Wyckoff evaluate these seemingly contradictory strategies by examining how preparati...

National Board Certification and Teacher Effectiveness: Evidence from Washington

We study the effectiveness of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in Washington State, which has one of the largest populations of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in the nation. Based on value-added models in math and reading, we find that NBPTS certified teachers are about 0.01-0.05 student standard deviations more effective than non-N...