Gary Sykes

Does NBPTS Certification Affect the Number of Colleagues a Teacher Helps with Instructional Matters

In addition to identifying and developing superior classroom teaching, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification process is intended to identify and cultivate teachers who are more engaged in their schools. Here the authors ask, “Does NBPTS certification affect the number of colleagues a teacher helps with instructional matters?” If so, this could enhance the influence of NBPTS-certified teachers and their contributions to their professional communities. Using sociometric data within 47 elementary schools from two states, the authors find that NBPTS-certified teachers were nominated more as providing help with instruction than non-NBPTS-certified teachers. From analyses using propensity score weighting, the authors then infer that NBPTS certification affects the number of colleagues a teacher helps with instructional matters. The authors then quantify the robustness of their inference in terms of internal and external validity, finding, for example, that any omitted confounding variable would have to have an impact six times larger than that of their strongest covariate to invalidate their inference. Therefore, the potential value added by NBPTS-certified teachers as help providers has policy and practice implications in an era when teacher leadership has risen to the fore as a critical force for school improvement.

How Choice Changes the Education System: A Michigan Case Study

In countries around the world policy makers propose that parents should exercise more control over the choice of schools that their children attend. This paper considers the ways in which the introduction of new opportunities for school choice changes the education system. It argues that choice affects the education system as a whole by introducing new actors into the system, by changing the terms of relationships among existing actors, and by creating new pressures within the system that require new responses. The nature, magnitude, and consequences of these effects cannot be predicted in advance, as they depend on a number of factors including the social and economic context. The empirical basis for this paper derives from a case study of the implementation of choice policies in the state of Michigan in the US, but the conceptual issues raised have important implications for the study of school choice wherever such policies are adopted.

Reckoning with the Spectre

Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. Ravitch, Diane (1983). The troubled crusade. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Reisman, D. & Jencks, C. (1966). The academic revolution. New York: Doubleday. Roth, J. A. (1974). Professionalism: The sociologists decoy. Sociology of Work and Occupations, 1, 6-51. Rothman, D. (1980). Conscience and convenience: The asylum and its alternatives in progressive America. Boston: Little, Brown. Rothstein, W. G. (1972). American physicians in the nineteenth century: from sects to science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Rudolph, F. (1985, February 13). Integrity in the college curriculum, Assocation of American Colleges. Chronical of Higher Education. Slaughter, S. (1980, March). The danger zone: Academic freedom and civil liberties. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 448, 46-61.

Dollars, Distinction, or Duty? The Meaning of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards for Teachers’ Work and Collegial Relations

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is the most prominent contemporary effort to professionalize teaching. Along with identifying exceptional teachers, the NBPTS seeks to alter teachers’ work by establishing a cadre of expert teachers capable of and obligated to leading school improvement efforts. This article reports findings from a mixed methods study of teachers’ responses to the NBPTS in four urban elementary schools. Drawing on institutional theory, the authors find that whether and how the NBPTS enters teachers’ work depends on the interplay of professional logics, district and state policy, occupational sentiments, and local school organization.

Exploring the Influence of National Board Certified Teachers in Their Schools and beyond.

Purpose: This article explores the relative influence over schoolwide policy and leadership activities of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Interest centers on teacher leadership activities and perceived influence over schoolwide policy and decision making. In particular, the study asks whether National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) are engaged in leadership and influence that may be attributable to board certification. Method: Data come from a survey of the entire teaching faculties in 47 elementary schools in two states (N = 1,282). Teacher perceived influence over schoolwide policy and participation in leadership activities were regressed on NBCT status, demographic and assignment characteristics, and inclination toward teacher leadership, controlling for schools with fixed effects. Findings: NBCTs engage in more leadership activities at both the school and district levels than their non-board certified peers. Yet, NBCTs do not report greater influence over schoolwide policy than their colleagues. Implications: The effect of NBCT status on opportunities for teacher leadership is complex, with NBCTs having the most effect on domains and activities closest to the classroom. The data also point to a potential paradox about the nature of teacher leadership as greater engagement in leadership activities does not lead to enhanced influence over schoolwide policy.

Book Reviews: Present Views of Teachers Past

I n 1986, under the auspices of the American Educational Research Associations Division F (History and Historiography), work began on the volume under review. The stimulus for a historical reprise on the teaching profession was the educational reform movement of the 1980s, more particularly, the centrality of teaching to that movement. The prominent educational historians involved in planning the project judged that the time was ripe for a historical treatment of issues currently receiving sustained attention in educational policy. These included the recruitment and retention of capable teachers, their preparation, their wages and working conditions, the construction of career and work incentives, and the establishment of standards for teaching. The covering term for this collection of concerns, a form of which appears in this volumes subtitle, has come to be professionalism.