When I first heard about National Board Certification for teachers, I was elated. I thought, Finally! Something is coming for teachers like me who often move from state to state and have to deal with problems of compensation and certification.
The more I have read, however, the more I realize that national certification is not going to help me with these problems, nor is it beneficial to the teaching profession as a whole, despite Mary-Dean Barringer's report, “How the National Board Builds Professionalism” (Educational Leadership, March 1993).
- two levels of certification: initial and advanced;
- a unified system of assessment;
- separation of state and national authority;
- assessment on the job;
- voluntary certification; and
- unlimited time for completion.
I see several problems with the proposed national certification system, the development of which is expected to cost $50 million (Watkins 1989).
In the first place, from the teacher's point of view, Guidelines 3 and 5 dilute the advantages of national certification. Guideline 3 means that states will retain their authority to issue licenses, and local districts will retain their authority over employment (Kowalski 1988). In other words, states and school districts can still make and bend their own rules.
Second, voluntary national certification (Guideline 5) probably won't work the way it is expected to work. The thinking behind voluntary national certification is that teachers will seek it because districts will pay more to teachers who are certified as truly professional. My experience does not support this proposition. In practice, many districts save money by hiring inexperienced recent graduates who are only eligible for starting salaries. When experienced teachers relocate, they often have difficulty finding new jobs.
Two other hurdles pop up frequently: compensation and certification. Many districts have salary caps, so that a teacher who has taught 10 years will only get credit for 5. In many cases, the mobile educator may also lose tenure and retirement. Then, in some states, teachers cannot be hired until their certification paperwork is complete in their new state. In one state, this process took me a year. Who wants to waste a whole year?
Many teachers put in this position do what I did—approach the private school system. The salary scales are generally lower, but for me, teaching in private school was a more professionally fulfilling experience than substituting in the public schools. Many colleagues facing this choice have left teaching to go into areas like civil service, where position and salary levels transfer more easily. I fear that we have lost many gifted educators as a result of a certification system that excludes experienced mobile educators.
In the meantime, some districts grant temporary certificates for a set amount of time, until certification is complete. Others use mobile teachers as substitutes while the teachers await state certification. Some districts hire substitutes without degrees, even letting them teach as substitutes for a whole school year in one classroom. Often substitutes who have no intention of becoming full-time teachers teach until they decide what they really want to do, or until a job opens up in their profession. Thus the community ends up with many teachers with little or no understanding of educational theories or practices.
These problems are not addressed in the plan for national certification, but they should be. Why not make basic certification truly national? If the university from which a teacher graduated is nationally certified, why can't the teacher be granted basic national certification? Then, after three years of successful teaching, permanent certification could be granted. Should states have unique teaching needs, they could provide inservice for incoming teachers.
Another big problem with national certification is the way that educators are using it to try prove that they are professionals. Many seem enamored with board certification because it is similar to the board certification used in the medical profession. But trying to gain professional respect by likening teachers to doctors is not going to work; the practicing conditions and expectations in teaching and medicine are very different. In 1986, Martin Haberman, a University of Wisconsin professor, summed the differences up beautifully: When teachers are able to incorporate, earn unlimited annual incomes, decide whom they will treat, deal only with those who voluntarily seek their help, work with clients one at a time, bill insurance companies for their services, be evaluated in terms of process rather than outcomes, choose whether to practice independently or with others, and hire lawyers to protect them from malpractice suits—only then will medicine be the most appropriate model for the teaching profession.Educators do not have to look to medicine to know that selecting better students, improving the training of those students, and having graduates practice in up-to-date situations as professional decision makers will improve the teaching profession and its image.
If we want professionalism in teaching, it has to come from inside. We need to take charge of our own profession instead of letting people outside the profession dictate our responsibilities. If we don't come up with answers of our own, we will continue to be led by others.
We also need to treat teachers as respected professionals who are empowered to make professional decisions. The millions that we are currently investing in national certification would be more wisely spent on retaining and rewarding the true professionals that we have. Salary steps, for example, should transfer. Why not be creative and sensitive to the professional needs of mobile teachers and count their experience as an asset that has expanded their knowledge and professional growth?
In short, national certification is not the answer that I hoped it would be. It has too many flaws to be worth $50 million, and it will not give us the results that we need.
