4 O.C. Teachers Pass Prestigious National Exam

Claudia Ross tensed with excitement when the long-awaited package arrived at her doorstep.

The news it brought was good. She and three other Orange County teachers had passed a grueling test aimed at recognizing the nation’s best teachers.

Ross, who will teach science at Oak Middle School, became one of only 56 California teachers to win the national honor.

The other recipients were Beatrice Tamos, who teaches at Lee Elementary School in Los Alamitos; Kathleen Palmer, of Irvine Unified School District’s Turtle Rock Elementary; and Claire Ratfield of Abraham Lincoln Elementary in Newport-Mesa Unified.

“I’m so proud of myself and my students,” said Ross, formerly a fourth-grade teacher at Rossmoor Elementary.

Much as doctors become board-certified, educators now may earn a similar status by passing the tough exam administered by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a nonprofit organization based in Michigan.

When the certification was first offered in 1994, it was hailed by educators as a landmark event.

“One of the toughest things we are confronted with in education is the objective assessment of teacher performance,” said Newport-Mesa Supt. Mac Bernd. “The national exam has become a national mark of excellence.”

California is second in the nation with its 56 teachers who have passed the two-day exam, which involves oral interviews, written tests, portfolios of students’ work essays and videotaped displays of classroom methods.

Several teachers estimated that it took about five months and 300 hours to prepare the portfolios and videotapes required for the exam.

“These portfolios are about 300 to 400 pages long,” Ratfield said. “They are as extensive as master’s theses.”

Ratfield, who was first certified in 1994, is the first teacher in the country to be certified twice.

“It made teaching more effective for me,” she said. “Before I took the exam, I was like this human being with post-it notes attached all over my body. Taking the test consolidated all those ideas into one document.”

Half of the eight Orange County teachers who took the exam during the 1994-95 school year passed.