Two weeks ago, amid all the discussion and wrangling over the state budget, the Wake County Public School System released an interesting report that received little attention.
Data presented at a May 17th work session of the Wake County School Board showed that significant percentages of Wake County’s high performing teachers have neither an advanced degree or National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification.
Why is this important? For the longest time, educators have held that teachers with additional training –master’s degrees, doctoral degrees or national board teacher certification — are the best teachers and should be compensated accordingly.
Source: Analysis of Relationships of Degree, Certification, and EVAAS Ratings in WCPSS, Evaluation and Research Department, Wake County Public Schools. The definition for High-Performing teacher is that used by the Educational Value Added Assessment Software (EVAAS) system. EVAAS allows teachers to track educational progress of students and is available for use by nearly all WCPSS teachers.
The North Carolina Teacher Salary Schedule provides significant financial incentives for additional training. The 2010-2011 North Carolina Teacher Salary Schedule, provides for a 10 percent salary increase – above bachelor’s pay – for teachers with master’s degrees. Teachers with Doctorate degrees receive an additional $253/month. In addition; teachers with NBPTS certification receive a 12 percent increase over normal pay grade.[1]
Quoted in an article on the subject in the Raleigh News & Observer, Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata highlights the significance of the study’s results: “an important point is we pay extra for board certified teachers and the advance degree teachers receive extra but the high-performing teachers receive nothing.”[2]
The results released by the Office of Evaluation and Research of the Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS) found that in six different areas tracking high performing teachers – as measured by a computer program that tracks student educational progress over time – the percentage of non-credentialed high performing teachers ranged from 35 to 60 percent.
Based on the perceived importance of additional education for developing effective teachers, one would have expected the percentages of credentialed teachers among high-performing teachers to be much higher.
As the state’s largest school district, the WCPSS findings are likely to reignite the debate over teacher pay. The Wake School Board has requested additional information about the study and is expected to return to the issue again later this year.
Several bills at the state level have already been introduced to change the teacher pay schedule. The Senate budget changes salary supplements for teachers who hold both a master’s degree and NBPTS certification. The plan reduces the net pay increase of those who hold both credentials from 23.2 percent to 22 percent.
While education advocates defend the validity of the pay differentials for masters and national board certified teachers, research findings continue to question if the additional training and higher pay actually provides real long-term benefits.
Master’s Degrees. In a famous 1997 study – that has been replicated with similar results – Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington found little connection between a masters degree and teacher effectiveness. In 2002 Goldhaber wrote “Consistent with much of the educational productivity literature (for example, Hanushek 1986, 1997), there is little evidence that a teacher having a master’s degree (or higher) is a signal of teacher effectiveness.”[3]
NBPTS Certification. In addition to master’s degrees, recent research has also raised questions about the value of National Board Certification. Proponents of NBPTS certification point to a 2008 National Research Council (NRC) study which showed students of NBPTS certified teachers seem to learn more than students of non-certified teachers. The results have been widely distributed. However, NBPTS advocates failed to point out that the NRC study stopped far short of saying the difference in learning was attributable to NBPTS certification.
Our review of the research suggests that there is not yet compelling evidence that the existence of the certification program has had significant impact on the field, teachers, students or the educational system.[4]
Other researchers who have also looked at the NRC study suggest the organization stopped short of a solid endorsement of NBPTS because the actual difference on test scores between students of certified versus non-certified teachers in North Carolina came down to only one point on a test with a mean score of about 150.[5]
According to data provided by the Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina has been paying a premium to a significant number of teachers based upon their credentials, regardless of results. Nearly 21,000 have a master’s degree, while another 257 have doctorates. Moreover, roughly 6,300 of these teachers also possess National Board Certification, and another 5,400 with a bachelor’s degree are also certified.
In 2010-2011 North Carolina spent almost $60 million in financial incentives and administration of the NBPTS certification program. Monthly NBPTS pay for teachers with 16 and 1/2 years experience is $531.70. Over a ten month academic year, the NBPTS supplement adds $5,317 to teacher pay. [6]According to the Department of Public Instruction, it costs North Carolina about $162 million annually to provide the 10 percent masters degree salary supplement to teachers and instructional staff.[7]
North Carolina has developed a teacher salary structure which links additional training (i.e. master’s degree or NBPTS certification) with significant financial incentives. Research released by WCPSS suggests the link between good teaching and additional education is tenuous. Such findings underscore the need to rigorously evaluate such incentives and ensure they encourage student learning and reward actual results rather than a resume.
[1] See: Highlights of the North Carolina Public School Budget, February 2011. Page. 17. Published by Information Analysis, Division of School Business, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Available at: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/fbs/resources/data/highlights/2011highlights.pdf
[2] “Questioning paying more for national board certification and advanced degrees” Keung Hui, Raleigh News & Observer, May 18, 2011.
[3] For a more comprehensive review of the research on master’s degrees and their influence on student achievement see: “Master’s Degrees” Marc Holley, Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Available at: http://www.mackinac.org/9592
[4] See Report: Assessing Accomplished Teaching: Advanced Level Certification Programs, 2008, National Research Council. A
[5] For information on how researchers interpreted the NRC study see National Board Teachers Found to be Effective. Education Week, June 11, 2008. Available at: www.edweek.org. Subscription required.
[6] See Highlights of the North Carolina Public School Budget February 2011, page 17 Available at: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/fbs/resources/data/highlights/2011highlights.pdf
[7] From Department of Public Instruction correspondence, June, 2, 2011
The only thing certifications prove is some people are really good at memorization and test taking. Passion for teaching and the love of doing so, cannot be taught or learned from a book.
This country has become degree crazy. Most of the higher education in this country has been dumbed down to allow for idiots to compete and to jack up wages for even simple jobs that should require no degree. We waste money paying a person based on their (supposed) qualifications instead of paying for their actual performance and output; the main reason most jobs go overseas – where you can still hire someone to assemble parts and not have to pay for everything else they think they should be compensated for. Most of the better teachers that I know have no higher education, but have common sense and a desire and ability to teach. Money will no solve our education problems, and privatization of education is only a partial cure. We can never move ahead until we get rid of the notion that by lowering standards so more will graduate we are better educated. You can’t teach every dog to roll over, some cannot learn!
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE EACH TEACHER HAD, WHAT TYPE OF SCHOOL THEY TAUGHT IN (HIGH PERFORMING VS LOW PERFORMING OR HIGH SES VS LOW SES. I’D THINK THERE WERE A LOT MORE VARIABLES THAT SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED BEFOR YOU MAKE A STATEMENT LIKE THOSE ABOVE.
Degrees, shmegrees! The best performers on any job are those who like what they do, WANT to do their very best and LEARN as they progress in that career. Degrees are handed out to college grads based on what? In too many cases having their minds twisted by liberal “professors”. It’s the dedicated person who wants to positively influence a child’s life and create the surroundings for that child to learn.
Oh, and tenure? I never had that on my job. I had to perform well and produce results or I WAS OUT THE DOOR. That’s how it should be with teachers….of all professions!
Tenure should definitely be done away with. If a teacher doesn’t get results, they should not be teaching, BUT, learning starts at home with the parents doing their job.
The study is flawed. The sample size is too small to yield accurate results (17 teachers used for the study – really?). The average is 49% of high performing teachers do not have advanced degrees. My guess would be many of these teachers have been working on average longer. Too many variables not investigated here..
OK – so let’s take this idea to the next logical phase. Can we please do away with the credentialing process completely? I am certain that you will find that teachers who have taken no education school courses at all can be effective. I teach chemistry. Some of my students could teach the subject better than some of my my colleagues. So, would the author and NCCivitas be willing to pay a 16-year-old to teach classes so long as he/she proves to be effective? (By the way, I have a BS and and MS in Chemistry – as distantly related to a degree in education as shopping for hamburger is to hunting for food.) I thin that an EVAAS analysis of teachers with vs. teachers without a Master’s degree in chemistry would show a similarly ambiguous difference in effectiveness but if the average citizen could see how cheesy the end-of-course tests are, how bogus the testing conditions are, etc. they would be shocked. In other words, if we gave the American Chemical Society’s high school Chemistry exam with no re-takes possible, then we would have some real data to work with. EVAAS results from garbage exams pretty much mean nothing (in my opinion).