Top of their game: teachers with National Board Certification
Earning National Board Certification is an intensive process that takes more than a year, requiring the submission of portfolios and undergoing extra observations by fellow educators. I learned more about it researching my Sunday story about Katya Denisova. (Katya will answer your questions on this blog this week, so post your comment today.)
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which administers the certification program, sent me a neat little spreadsheet listing how many teachers have earned the credential in each of Maryland's 24 school systems. I've compiled some interesting tidbits.
Maryland school district with the most nationally board certified teachers: Montgomery County (300)
Second place: Anne Arundel (87)
Maryland school district with the fewest nationally board certified teachers: Garrett County (1)
Somewhere in between: Harford County (14), Carroll County (22), Howard County (23), Baltimore City (24), Baltimore County (62)
Total number of nationally board certified teachers in Maryland: 822
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
I enjoyed the article and LOVE the T-shirt she was wearing in the pics. (The description of the shirt in the article didn't include the funny part.) Her efforts to tie the lessons to the students' real-life situations are commendable.
In my experience it's very frustrating trying to get North Avenue to sign off on some professional development sessions, even when the cost to the system is zero.
I'd be curious to know whether Montgomery or Anne Arundel County offers anything along the lines of tuition remission to help teachers achieve that level of certification, or if they offer a pay differential to certificate holders.
Posted by: Claude Call | October 22, 2007 12:33 PM
National Board certification should be considered as part of the equation, but deserve some healthy skepticism. The results on actual student learning have been mixed (see Comparison of the Effects of NBPTS Certified Teachers with Other Teachers on the Rate of Academic Progress http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/d3/09.pdf)
And yet many systems are spending millions of dollars on "bonuses" for having the certification alone - instead of on whether a teacher is actually producing results with students.
This is not to entirely dismiss NBPTS, but it should not be used as the only measure of a teacher's skill.
Posted by: angie | October 22, 2007 3:15 PM