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at The Chicago Public Education Fund
Mike Sanders, Development/Communications Director
(312) 558-4520

Chicago Tribune, April 14, 2005

Top teachers for tough jobs
Chicago Tribune editorial

If education were simple, we would have figured out by now how to ensure that each child gets a good one.

Amid all the disagreement about which approaches are best--increasing school choice or raising teacher salaries, creating independent schools or requiring uniforms, toughening curriculums or cracking down on behavior--there's one surefire technique that virtually everyone in education (and abundant research) agrees works for students who face the greatest challenges.

That technique: putting the very best teachers in the most disadvantaged classrooms.

In the last decade a new program has emerged to identify, develop and certify such cream-of-the-crop teachers. Called the "Cadillac of professional development" for educators, National Board Certification requires teachers to pass a rigorous, yearlong process of assessment and skills development.

They are videotaped and then critiqued on teaching techniques. They reflect on their teaching skills and standards based on their own students' performance.

hey assemble several classroom portfolios of both their teaching materials and their students' work. They must demonstrate how well they work with families and the surrounding school community.

This is a voluntary program that acknowledges already outstanding teachers. But it also can raise the caliber of good teachers to great.

To date, only 40,200 teachers have received National Board Certification since the "master teacher" credential was first awarded in 1994.

The number increases exponentially every year. Still, that's only 40,200 out of 6.2 million teachers nationwide.

Because it's so challenging, the dropout rate is high; in Chicago, between 12 percent and 15 percent of candidates drop out each year. And only half of those who manage to complete the roughly 400-hour process end up passing their first time around.

Most of the teachers who do pass, unfortunately, end up in the more affluent, high-achieving schools, particularly in states that don't provide adequate incentives to lure them to schools that most need their expertise.

Illinois, along with California and New York, has been a proud exception to that rule.

The reason has to do with generous salary incentives for board-certified teachers who work in low-performing or high-poverty schools.

Illinois provides state, local and private money to support teachers to prepare for, apply to sit for and even retake the final exam. Chicago's Public Education Fund, a business-backed non-profit that promotes board certification, this year is providing $2,000 stipends to individual Chicago teachers awarded the certificate. The state kicks in another $3,000 each year for 10 years for those who earn National Board Certification, while Chicago Public Schools gives a one-time $2,500 bonus.

Here in Illinois, those kinds of commitments must be sustained and even expanded as more teachers seek the master teacher credential.

That example over time can't help but show other states that it's a lot less costly to develop and lure the most outstanding teachers to the most disadvantaged schools than it is to pay later for an intractable achievement gap.

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