National Board for Professional Teaching Standards

I chose to write about this press release as I’m working for SREB as a consultant in their work with the national Board for professional teaching standards (NBPTS). NBPTS is in the process of developing and field testing a national principal certification program similar to their very successful national teaching certification.

The notion of providing a national standard for teachers is appealing as a way of standardizing teaching quality without penalizing teachers. It rewards those who wish to go out of their way to improve their practice and hopefully in the future might make it easier for teachers to move from state to state without encountering the barriers of state licensure. This issue is somewhat dear to my heart; in the moving from Texas to Georgia I had to jump through a few hoops in order to get even a provisional license.

From their initial research on the principal licensure, it appears that NBPTS create assessment with the goal of encouraging participants to reflect on their practices and incorporate best practices as much as possible.

It is interesting that so many states have’s mentioned the certification in their proposals for Race to the Top funds, and it will be interesting to continue to follow the results of the implementation.