First 81 pass an’historic’ exam

27th January 1995, 12:00am

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First 81 pass an’historic’ exam

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/first-81-pass-anhistoric-exam
A small group of teachers have brought national standards closer. Lucy Hodges reports. One more step in the long march towards national standards in schools was taken this month when 81 teachers were awarded a national certificate to say they had passed a stringent year-long assessment of their skills.

The awards ceremony, attended by Education Secretary Richard Riley, was described as an “historic moment” comparable to the adoption of board certification for medical doctors. The hope is that it will enable teachers with this certificate, which is a more rigorous test than any state requires, to move from state to state and district to district without having to undergo cumbersome recertification.

Only 81 of the 289 junior-high or middle-school teachers who took the first-ever national test passed. “It was meant to be tough, and it was, ” said Joanne Kogan Krell, spokeswoman for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

One teacher who received an award, Connie Mitchell from Detroit, who teaches 13-year-olds, said: “Part of the reason that people have not looked at us as a profession is because we have not had standards. Doctors have standards. Lawyers have standards. Now teachers have the same set-up, and that is going to be very important to the profession.”

Those applying for the national certification had to put together portfolios of their work including videos of their lessons. They had to submit lesson plans, student work and analyse how they had helped pupils to learn. Then they visited an assessment centre where they evaluated videos of other teachers and were tested on English, science and history, and devised lesson plans.

Certification does not replace current licensing, but many experts are hoping it will affect it. “It could easily establish some benchmarks that would influence state licensing and state certification and, who knows, it could also send signals to teacher-training programmes,” said Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The education world is hoping also that states and school districts will reward nationally-certified teachers with higher pay and more responsibility. North Carolina has promised a pay rise of 4 per cent and reimbursement of the $975 (Pounds 625) exam fee to those who qualify, and Iowa, New Mexico and Oklahoma have said they will waive state licensing requirements. Other states have said they will accept the award as an alternative to their recertification schemes.

But not everyone expressed unqualified approval. The high exam fee concerns groups which speak for inner cities.

Michael Casserly, of the Council of Great City Schools, worried that it would do nothing for those who were most in need of further training. National certification was a key recommendation of an important report published in 1987. The certificate is the first of 30 geared to different subject and grade levels which are being devised for America’s 2.5 million teachers to be ready by the end of the century.

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