Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Background: Growing interest in teacher leadership led to an increase in the investment in teacher leaders, with educational agencies and nonprofit organizations increasing resources for the development and support of teacher leaders. Among various pathways available for schools and districts to support, identify and deploy teacher leaders, the National Board Certification (NBC) may be a useful solution for two reasons: (1) National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) combine characteristics expected of teacher leaders, including effectiveness in the classroom and ability to provide instructional leadership to other teachers, and (2) many school districts already have access to NBCTs. However, prior research did not rigorously test the relationship between NBCTs in teacher leadership roles and teacher and student outcomes–a gap in knowledge that the current study aims to address. We conducted the study in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), where novice teachers receive support from teacher leaders, or mentors, including NBCT teacher leaders and non-NBCT teacher leaders.

Purpose: Using a quasi-experimental design, the study addresses two research questions: (1) What is the effect of NBCT mentors on the classroom practice of novice teachers in Grades K–12? (2) What is the effect of NBCT mentors on the achievement of mentored teachers’ students in Grades 4–8? Our sample for the analysis of classroom practice of novice teachers includes 12 teachers mentored by NBCTs and 48 teachers mentored by non-NBCTs. Our sample for the analysis of student achievement includes 116 students of NBCTs-mentored teachers and 57 students of non-NBCTs-mentored teachers.

Findings: We find no statistically significant relationships between the classroom practice of novice teachers mentored by NBCTs and novice teachers mentored by non-NBCTs. However, the effect sizes are meaningful and show that novice teachers mentored by NBCTs experienced a 0.28 standard deviation greater growth than teachers mentored by non-NBCTs in classroom practices related to the emotional support of students and classroom organization. The study did not have sufficient power for the estimates of classroom practices to reach the level of statistical significance. Our results for student achievement, however, suggest that students taught by teachers mentored by NBCTs have a higher level of achievement than students taught by teachers mentored by non-NBCTs. The effect size is 0.18 SDs and the difference is statistically significant.

Significance: The current study is the first to use a rigorous design to directly examine the effect of NBCTs as instructional leaders. While some relationships examined in the study were not statistically significant, all effect sizes are meaningful and larger than what is often found in educational research. We interpret results as encouraging, suggesting that schools and districts may benefit from deploying NBCTs in roles that will position them to provide instructional support to other teachers. The study’s findings also suggest the need for additional rigorous studies to examine the effectiveness of NBCTs as instructional leaders.