National Board Certification in North Carolina: Five Motivators for Pursuit

What is National Board Certification?

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) was created in 1987 following the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy’s Task Force on Teaching as a Profession released A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21^st Century (1986), a report that highlighted the crucial role teachers play in the education of youth and focused on the pressing need to revive the teaching profession. Members of the task force set forth a plan designed to develop, retain, and reward accomplished teachers through a system of advanced certification. The NBPTS was developed from the framework of these ideas.

In 1989, the National Board published What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do. This document elucidated the National Board’s Five Core Propositions for Teaching (NBPTS, 1989). The Five Core Propositions set forth the profession's vision for accomplished teaching and emphasize the accomplished teacher’s commitment to advancing student achievement (NBPTS, 2014a). These propositions lay the foundation of all National Board Standards and those of National Board Certification (NBPTS, 2014a) and are as follows:

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  Proposition 1: Teachers are committed to students and their learning.

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  Proposition 2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.

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  Proposition 3: Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.

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  Proposition 4: Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.

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  Proposition 5: Teachers are members of learning communities.

National Board Certification (NBC) is voluntary and consists of four components: 1) content knowledge, 2) differentiation in instruction, 3) teaching practice and learning environment, and 4) effective and reflective practitioner (NBPTS, 2014b). These components are demonstrated through a rigorous, performance-based portfolio process in which teachers evidence their accomplishments through reflection and analysis of their own instruction, including student work samples, video recorded lessons, and their own contributions for establishing a connection between the profession and the community. Candidates’ content knowledge is also evaluated at assessment centers across the United States, where they construct responses to prompts in a computer-based format. To begin the NBC process, candidates must hold a baccalaureate degree, a valid state teaching license for at least three years, and have taught in a public or private school for at least three years.