NBPTS to Launch Webcast Releasing “Student Learning, Student Achievement” Report

Arlington, Va. – The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) later today will formally release a report, Student Learning, Student Achievement: How Do Teachers Measure Up? during an interactive webcast later today from 6:00-7:00 p.m. EST. Advance copies of the full report and executive summary are available by visiting www.nbpts.org/studentlearning.

As part of the webcast, speakers will describe the report’s focus on teacher evaluation and how to fairly and accurately ground it into student learning. The report–developed by an independent, expert task force convened by NBPTS–reflects the quality of the individuals who came together to share their collective knowledge about teacher evaluation and how to fairly and accurately ground it in student learning.

From a policy perspective, the report fills in the gaps where expert advice is much needed regarding the policies that inform and support effective teaching practice. In addition to exploring how teachers should be assessed in areas of school improvement, the report provides principles for selecting and using large-scale assessments to evaluate instruction. The report also offers recommendations about how the National Board Certification process can be used more effectively to measure accomplished teachers’ contributions to student learning and how those lessons can be shared with the field.

Members of the task force included Robert Linn (chair), professor emeritus, University of Colorado at Boulder; Lloyd Bond, professor emeritus, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and senior scholar emeritus, the Carnegie Foundation; Peggy Carr, associate commissioner, assessment division, National Center for Education Statistics; Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun professor of education, Stanford University; Douglas Harris, associate professor of educational policy studies, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Frederick Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies, American Enterprise Institute for public policy research; and Lee Shulman, president emeritus, the Carnegie Foundation, and professor emeritus, Stanford University.

In the most rigorous and comprehensive study to date about National Board Certification, the National Research Council found that students taught by National Board Certified Teachers make higher gains on achievement tests than students taught by teachers who have not applied and those who did not achieve certification.