TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cantrell,Steven
AU  - Fullerton,Jon
AU  - Kane,Thomas J.
AU  - Staiger,Douglas O.
TI  - National Board Certification and Teacher Effectiveness: Evidence from a Random Assignment Experiment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14608
PY  - 2008
Y2  - December 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14608
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14608.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Steven Cantrell
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 
PO Box 23350
Seattle, WA 98102
E-Mail: steven.cantrell@gatesfoundation.org

Jon Fullerton
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Center for Education Policy Research
50 Church Street, 4th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-Mail: jon_fullerton@gse.harvard.edu

Thomas J. Kane
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Center for Education Policy Research
50 Church St., 4th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-4359
E-Mail: kaneto@gse.harvard.edu

Douglas O. Staiger
Dartmouth College
Department of Economics
HB6106, 301 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH 03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2979
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: douglas.staiger@dartmouth.edu
AB  - The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) assesses teaching practice based on videos and essays submitted by teachers.  We compared the performance of classrooms of elementary students in Los Angeles randomly assigned to NBPTS applicants and to comparison teachers.  We used information on whether each applicant achieved certification, along with information on each applicant's NBPTS scaled score and subscores, to test whether the NBPTS score was related to teacher impacts on student achievement.  We found that students randomly assigned to highly-rated applicants performed better than students assigned to comparison teachers, while students assigned to poorly-rated applicants performed worse. Estimates were similar using data on pairs of teachers that were not randomly assigned. Our results suggest a number of changes that would improve the predictive power of the NBPTS process.
ER  -