National certification and the professionalism of school counselors are becoming more salient, particularly as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act. Archival data were used to examine the relationship between preparation at programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) and national…

Research studies on teacher quality have concluded that students exposed to high quality instruction learn more than other students, but the evidence on teacher quality components is mixed. There is a growing concern that the decline in the quality of public school teachers is attributed to their preservice learning. In this research study, the…

Teachers often are shocked and in disbelief when someone points out that they are not embracing all children and families. For many teachers, digesting the words of "Everything Possible" or encountering their first nontraditional family in the classroom is an "aha" moment, when they realize that they need classroom resources to support these…

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, founded in 1987, serves as a clearinghouse for National Board Teacher Certification whereby individuals must demonstrate competence and professional teaching excellence through a two-part process. Accordingly, this particular advanced level of teacher certification has perpetuated the…

Using a communities-of-practice framework, this qualitative study investigated what eight teachers learned about literacy teaching and learning through participation in the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification process. This article presents two selected teacher cases which suggest that the National Board process created…

This report describes findings from the principal focus group conducted the first year of the AISD REACH program. [For Report 2, see ED628033.]

The national guidelines for school library media programs clearly establish that the goal of the school library media specialist is to provide an instructional program that helps students and faculty become efficient and effective users of information. Along with running the library at a technical level as the program administrator, the school…

Reflecting on one's practice, whether it is a conversation with a single student, a lesson, or a unit plan, is the surest way for a teacher to improve. Going through the process of becoming a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) is a journey of reflective practice. The National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a nonprofit,…

This study examines how mathematics and science teachers' classroom assessment practices were affected by the National Board Certification process. Using a 3-year, longitudinal, comparison group design, evidence of changes in teachers' classroom practice were measured on six dimensions of formative assessment. The National Board candidates began…

Teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards are for the most part no more effective in producing student academic progress than teachers without the special status, a long-awaited study concludes. The research, which draws on one of the largest data sets used so far to examine the credential, was completed well…

This article addresses whether there are enough ASL teacher preparation programs in the country and how prepared are their graduates. It examines six organizations that provide teaching standards: the Education Section of the National Association of the Deaf, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the American Sign Language…

Recent studies of the relationship between teacher preparation pathways and student achievement have resulted in similar statistics but contradictory conclusions. These studies as a group have several limits: they sometimes focus on student-level indicators when many policy decisions are made with indicators at the school-level or above, are…

Approximately 1,200 institutions of higher education in the United States offer a degree in early childhood education, but recent research questions the strength of the relationship between teachers having a degree and benefits to child development and learning. However, there has been little empirical focus on the "quality" of degree programs.…

In this paper, we use a unique data set that includes a panel of all teachers in North Carolina over a 4-year period (1996-1997 through 1999-2000) to describe the distribution of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) across classrooms, schools, and districts. The sorting of National Board Certified…

A middle school technology teacher describes the process of obtaining certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, including documentation of professional development and service; submission of student work samples and videotaped vignettes of teaching and learning; and preparation of an unedited videotape of a lesson.…