A Test for Teachers
The sixth-graders here ponder Shakespeare, the Iraqi weapons inspection dispute and whether to eat chocolate M & Ms or fruit roll-ups at snack time. They use words such as “meticulous,” refer to their desk pods as “nation-states” and dramatize poems on the classroom stage.
In Claire Ratfield’s class at Lincoln Elementary, most of the students may be 11-year-olds, but they are treated like sophisticated young scholars--reflecting a change in philosophy that Ratfield developed after preparing for two rigorous national teaching exams several years ago.
Ratfield is the only “double-certified” teacher in the country, so anointed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the categories of early and middle childhood education.
“It has changed my life,” she said. “It makes you critical of how you teach. It forces you to push the envelope every day in the classroom. This is the answer to break from mediocrity in education. . . . This is the ticket to stop the homogenization of American education.”
Promising rhetoric like that was in the air a decade ago when a Carnegie Corp. report inspired creation of the national board. It was seen as a way not only to improve classroom instruction but also to give teachers the same status and credibility--the same professionalism--as doctors or lawyers.
Since then, no less a figure than President Clinton has championed the program, saying he hopes to see 100,000 teachers board-certified by 2006.
So why is Ratfield still so unusual?
To date, only 912 teachers in 41 states have passed the board’s tests--only 69 in all of California and only one in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
As debate continues over the caliber of California’s teaching corps, Ratfield has joined the ranks of educators who contend that one way to determine where teachers need improvement is to evaluate more of them on a national scale.
That’s the mission of the National Board, a Michigan-based nonprofit organization that offers certification in 30 specialties--from elementary English to art--for teachers who demonstrate their knowledge and skills by completing about a dozen teaching assignments and getting evaluated by a 63-member panel.
In Ratfield’s case, the grueling process--particularly her research on the brain and child development and having to analyze her teaching methods--prompted her to change her classroom practices, searching for ways to present complex material in a simple manner.
But changing what happens in her own classroom proved easier than changing what happens beyond it.
Trying to convince other educators of the value of the National Board has often stirred hostility and cynicism, Ratfield said. “At first there was resentment because there was a lack of knowledge,” she said. “Whenever I talked about the National Board, people treated me like I was trying to be better than them.”
What’s more, other teachers have little practical incentive to undergo the scrutiny and take an exam for which they must pay $2,000. For that, they buy the privilege of having to create innovative curricula and implement them in the classroom. They then must show the National Board their results through essays, videotapes and samples of students’ work. And the final task is an eight-hour written and oral exam. Only 30% of the teachers pass.
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As intimidating as that can be, there is another reason for the low participation rate--few states offer support to those who get certification. A handful, including Mississippi, Ohio and Connecticut, have enacted laws giving raises to board-certified teachers. In California, a proposal to cover part of the exam fee has stalled in the Legislature amid disagreement over what it should authorize.
While the state had the second-largest number of board-certified teachers in the nation last year, with 69, it has begun falling behind. This year, it gained just one--and lost another to Alaska. Meanwhile, Ohio added 101, bringing its total to 147, the second-highest in the nation.
The leader, with 207, is North Carolina, whose governor, James B. Hunt, helped found the National Board. His state pays the exam fee, gives teachers three days off to prepare for the tests and awards a 12% raise to those who earn certification.
“Our teachers’ accomplishments have certainly helped our reputation,” said Karen Garr, teacher advisor to Hunt.
In January, the California Assembly will again consider a bill (AB 858) to pay half the $2,000 test fee for 100 teachers. It also would make it easier for out-of-state teachers with board certification to obtain California teaching credentials.
At many school districts, administrators shy away from giving bonuses to board-certified teachers because they fear that such a move would add to the controversy over how to award merit pay and would create a caste system among teachers.
Los Alamitos Unified School District has two of Orange County’s 10 board-certified teachers, but does not intend to reward them.
“Decisions on salary schedules require collective bargaining with the teachers union,” Assistant Supt. Lorene Gonia said. “And merit pay has never been well received.”
But there is some momentum for the certification process.
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In Los Angeles, the teachers union last month won approval from the school board to give 15% raises to board-certified teachers. Although only one Los Angeles Unified teacher has been board-certified--Myra LeBendig of the Foshay Learning Center near USC--the pay incentive has prompted 150 others to inquire about the process, according to Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles.
“This is a major victory for Los Angeles teachers and students,” Higuchi said.
Pepperdine University this year began offering a master’s program that prepares teachers for certification. “We looked to the National Board because it is based on the notion of relevant practice,” said Linda Polin, director of the Pepperdine program. “Teachers are expected to make connections between theory and practice.”
In addition to her sixth-grade teaching duties, Ratfield will be an instructor at Pepperdine--all while she continues to promote national certification. This year, she created a nonprofit foundation to help teachers pay for the exams and preparation materials.
She has collected only $15,000 so far, but hopes to raise $12 million in private donations in the next year to operate the Community Incentives for Teaching Excellence foundation. She also hopes eventually to get state support.
“I believe in this so much,” she said. “It’s like knowing what the cure for cancer is, but I have to jump through all these hoops so I can tell everyone about it.”
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National Board Certification of Teachers
Who does it: The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in Southfield, Mich.
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What it is: A private, nonprofit organization governed by a 63-member board composed of teachers, school administrators, school board trustees, state legislators and businesspeople from across the country. Funded by federal grants and private sponsors, such as the Ford Foundation.
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Why: Established in 1987 with a $50-million Carnegie Corp. grant after a national report urged education reform in the U.S. to enhance the notion that teaching is a true profession, like law and medicine. It was thought that school districts would seek out board-certified teachers to give them greater status, much as hospitals boast that their physicians have achieved certification in various specialties.
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The process: Becoming board-certified is voluntary. Teachers pay $2,000 fee for an exam in their specialty, complete about a dozen teaching assignments and take an eight-hour oral and written exam. Certification is issued to those who meet the National Board’s standards.
How Many: 912 teachers nationwide have board certification, 69 of them in California but only one in the Los Angeles Unified School District. North Carolina has 207, the most in the nation.
A Test for Teachers
Among the exercises for teachers seeking to become board-certified as generalists for students 7-12 years is one requiring them to demonstrate--for a panel of expert teachers--how they would design a series of lessons that connect history and social studies topics with art.
What is being tested: The teacher’s capacity to choose resources and plan instruction using a range of instructional materials and incorporating several different ways of learning.
Materials: Potential instructional materials mailed to the teacher candidate, with instructions to choose among them, included:
* Three artworks, such as paintings, drawings or sculpture;
* Three literary works, such as short stories or poems;
* Three contemporaneous artifacts, such as newspaper articles, political cartoons, photos, excerpts from journals or letters.
The task: Teachers are instructed to choose four resources from those provided and directed to design lessons to build students’ understanding of how the arts provide insight into the social studies or history topic.
