Kansas schools gain highly qualified teachers

Over 86 percent of educators mentored through a program at Emporia State University in 2006-07 achieved the highest honor of the teaching profession. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards released results Tuesday, Dec. 4for teachers who worked for the national certification during the 2006-07 school year, with 34 Kansas educators achieving the certification.

“Teachers who pursue National Board Certification are committed to daily reflection about their effectiveness as teachers,” said Dr. Tes Mehring, Dean of The Teachers College at ESU. “They strive to document student learning that occurs as a result of teaching. They are willing to provide evidence that they meet the highest standards in the profession. Emporia State University and The Teachers College congratulate the teachers who have met this benchmark of excellence!”

The process a teacher goes through to gain the certification is one of the main ways the teaching profession recognizes excellence among its ranks. Roger Caswell, director of Emporia State University’s Great Plains Center for National Teacher Certification in the Jones Institute for Educational Excellence (JIEE), guides teachers through the year-long process.

“Teachers who ultimately receive a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certificate demonstrate they have met high and rigorous professional standards through peer review,” said Caswell.

With the new national board certified teachers, Kansas now has a total of 268 national board certified teachers in the state’s schools. In Kansas, 86% of the teachers who received assistance from the ESU program in 2005-06 attained the certification in their first year of attempting it. This 86% initial certification rate is 40 points above what is generally the initial certification rate nationally.

National Board Certification is the highest credential in the teaching profession. A voluntary process established by NBPTS, certification is achieved through a rigorous performance-based assessment that takes between one and three years to complete and measures what accomplished teachers and school counselors should know and be able to do.

The program for providing professional support for the certification has been available at ESU since 1993.

Nationwide, 8,491 teachers attained their national board certification in 2007, bringing the total number of national board certified teachers to 63,821.

Kansas 2007 New National Board Certified Teachers:

Blue Valley (USD 229) – Janet Fansher, Jennifer Gessley, Debra Hotujac, Teresa Lindberg, Donna Szymkowski, Alyson Young

Clay Center – Paula Lane

Emporia – Heather Caswell

Garnett – Garie Brownrigg

Hays – Suzanne Leikam

Jefferson West – Mary Naumann

Lawrence – Terri Durgan

Manhattan-Ogden – Kimberley Liotta, Dawn Quintanar, Tara Thomas

Olathe – Angela Hedges, Gayle Ross, Michelle Thrower

Parsons – Tiffany Hicks, Michell Piva

Perry – Patricia Zimmerman

Shawnee Heights – Kelly Deters

Topeka – Kari Ritter

Wamego – John Ritchie

Wichita – Tanya Belcher, Karen Burrell, Gaye Coburn, Kelly Frederick, Jefferey Freund, Tennele Hankins, Amber Jones, Barbara Williams, Rebekah Winter, Shanna Zimmerman

The Impact of National Board Certification

Recent studies confirm the effectiveness of NBCTs:

• Research by The CNA Corporation (Nov. 2004) found students of NBCTs did a measurably better job than other ninth and tenth graders on year-end math tests in Miami-Dade County (Fla.) Public Schools. All else being equal, teachers who had achieved National Board Certification helped their students achieve larger testing gains than did colleagues without the certification.
• Research by Arizona State University (Sept. 2004) found that students of NBCTs outperformed students of non-NBCTs on the Stanford-9 Achievement Test, with learning gains equivalent on average to spending more than an extra month in school each year.
• Research by the University of Washington and the Urban Institute (March 2004) found that students of NBCTs experienced year-end testing improvements that averaged 7 percent to 15 percent more than peers whose teachers were not NBCTs.

Details regarding these and other studies are available on the NBPTS Web site at www.nbpts.org.

 

Last Updated February 4, 2008>