Glancing Over the Research: Florida Lawmakers Need to Deepen Understanding of NBCTs' Impact on Student Achievement

In the January 21st edition of the Palm Beach Post, Christina DeNardo reports that Florida legislators are beginning to question their spending on teachers who earn National Board Certification. Drawing on one Florida State University study that surfaced mixed findings on the effects of National Board Certified Teachers on standardized student achievement scores, some of the state’s lawmakers are questioning whether or not the 10 percent salary bonus paid to NBCTs (and another 10% if they mentor new teachers) is worth the cost.

I can certainly understand the legislators’ interest in ensuring a return on their investment, but I am concerned by the lack of genuine understanding that is present in the analysis of research data concerning NBCTs’ impact on student achievement. This glossing over of research conclusions is present within the Post article itself when it makes the claim that a “study by Florida State University that showed no correlation between the certification and student achievement prompted legislators to take a closer look at the program.” (The article also suffers from some outright inaccuracies, including misleading descriptions of the roles of NBC assessors and the attribution of Florida as home to the most NBCTs nationwide – North Carolina holds that distinction).

The study cited, by scholars Doug Harris and Tim Sass, actually does surface some substantive differences between the performance of NBCTs and non-NBCTs. Granted, Harris and Sass generally found few overall differences in student achievement gains between these two groups of teachers. Importantly, however, when the researchers looked at the FCAT – which is the criterion-referenced test based on the state’s curriculum – as the study’s outcome measure, the students of NBCTs performed consistently better in reading than students of non-NBCTs. In other words, on the test tied most closely to what teachers are expected to teach, students of NBCTs outperformed their non-NBCT counterparts.  Among their findings, Sass and Harris concluded that National Board Certification “provides a positive signal of teacher productivity” – a conclusion that does not seem to be entering into conversations in some quarters of Tallahassee.

This single omission of an important finding is indicative of a larger trend in the analysis of NBCT research data: to conclude that mixed findings within or between research studies equates to “no real differences”  between NBCTs and non-NBCTs, as the Post article summarizes. Instead of glossing over admittedly complicated findings, legislators and all those invested in teaching quality would be better served by seeking to understand the reasons behind the differences in the research. Indeed, as part of Center for Teaching Quality’s “TeacherSolutions” initiative, 11 NBCTs will offer their interpretation of the research on the effects of the certification process on student achievement, after thoroughly studying the evidence and working directly with the scholars themselves. While more sound research on the National Board (and other teaching quality tools) needs to be conducted and while we need more evidence to determine the best path to teaching quality, we also need to listen to NBCTs themselves and draw on their actual experiences to get a full picture of National Board Certification’s potential added value.