Essay: The National Board

The National Board is an independent, non profit, non government organization which creates standards which are written by teachers who have been nationally selected as being experts in their field. This gives teachers the confidence and belief that the standards provide an in depth representation of their knowledge and skills. Compared to the standards created in the schools these standards are much more rigorous and demanding. Assessment of teacher performance is conducted by trained peer teachers in the field of teaching, for example, science teachers evaluate only science teachers. This removes the doubts teachers may have about fairness of the evaluation. Teachers in the Australian “Level 3 Classroom Teacher Classification” program were concerned about their evaluation as the assessors taught in different field and at different level to the teacher being assessed (Ingvarson, Kleinhenz & Wilkinson, 2007).

A study to investigate the effect of Board certification process suggested teachers became more confident about their teaching abilities, it improved their teaching skills, it caused them to consider their instructional strategies and focus on student learning and also provided them with increased opportunities to exercise leadership roles in their districts, states and profession (Carmon, n.d.).

Ingvarson, Kleinhenz & Wilkinson, (2007) present research results of a study done by Anagnostopoulos and Sykes which suggests that  unlike the earlier performance pay schemes, standard based pay schemes for assessing teacher performance and providing certification does not have “negative and divisive effects” on staff relationships.