Climbing the Certification Ladder
Nobody says it’s easy, but national board certification can be a great way for music teachers to show that they’ve reached the top rung of their profession.
By Mac Randall
For some music educators, becoming a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) is part of a deliberately formulated career plan. It wasn’t quite that way for Steve Eckels, guitar teacher at Flathead High School in Kalispell, Montana, who admits he made the initial decision to pursue certification in a rather offhand manner.
“My wife and I had recently read a book on how to preserve your memory as you age,” he recalls. “The book recommended taking a class or going back to school as a way to exercise the brain. Later my wife noticed on my pay scale that I could earn an extra $100 per month with a national certification. She asked, ‘What is this about?’ I told her, and she replied in a matter-of-fact way, ‘You could do that!’ I said, ‘Okay,’ and that was how it started. I didn’t realize at the time what a life-changing experience it would be.”
It takes at least a year to complete the rigorous, multi-step certification process, and before long Eckels realized that he would also need extensive remediation in a few subjects. But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise: “I joke with my students, ‘Did you ever enjoy studying for a test so much that after the test you just kept on studying?’ That’s what happened to me! I fell in love with music history and world music, and have been feasting on these subjects ever since.”
When he receives his certification this month, Eckels will join a small but growing group of music teachers who have opted to go through a lengthy period of study and self-evaluation in order to raise their professional game, gain a valued credential, and, yes, earn some extra money. In the words of the body that grants these certifications, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), having the initials NBCT after your name is “the highest symbol of professional teaching excellence,” an official recognition that you have reached an advanced level of achievement in your work.
For the past eight years Stephanie Standerfer, assistant professor of music academics at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, has been doing research on the NBCT process and what it means to music teachers. Among many other things, she’s discovered that this certification can also be a great professional development opportunity. “I did a recent online survey of over 800 national board-certified music teachers,” Standerfer says, “in which I asked them if they felt that their experience was a form of positive professional development, and an overwhelming number of them—98.3 percent—felt it was. The National Board literature doesn’t play up this element as much as it could, but it is significant. When you’re asked to do the very in-depth reflection that’s required by the board, you really have to examine why you do everything that you do. Early on, teachers applied for national certification mainly for the financial incentive, but now they’re realizing that they can get more out of it than that.”
How It Works
National board certification for teachers has been around since 1994, but the two current certificates available in music, Early and Middle Childhood (EMC) and Early Adolescent/Young Adult (EAYA), have only been offered since 2001. As of December 2008, the number of U.S. music teachers granted this certification stood at 1,007 for EMC and 780 for EAYA. To apply for certification, teachers must be licensed and have at least three years’ experience teaching PreK-12 in a single specific content area at a public or private school.
As mentioned earlier, the process takes at least a year and can take as many as three to complete. It’s costly—$2,500, one-fifth of which must be paid up front, plus a $65 application fee—though many schools will help pay for it. (Check with your district or state MEA to find out how much assistance you may be eligible for.) It’s also tough. There are no guarantees for successful completion, and although no official figures are available, unofficial estimates suggest that the success rate for music teachers is only about 35 percent, far lower than that in most other content areas. “A lot of music educators aren’t used to structuring their daily teaching with attention to specific musical objectives and an assessment at the end,” Standerfer says. “But if you don’t do that, you’re not going to attain certification.”
Once you’ve applied, there are two main components to the NBCT process. First, you have to present a four-part portfolio to the board containing both lesson plans, video recordings of your classes, and examples of student work. The videos cannot be edited, and you must appear in them. Three of the portfolio entries are classroom-based, while the fourth focuses on your accomplishments outside the classroom, showing how your work with families, colleagues, and the general community affects student learning.
The other part of the process is an assessment, basically a three-hour examination in six half-hour sections, each covering a different area of musical knowledge. Assessments take place at over 300 testing centers across the country. After the portfolio has been submitted and the exam has been taken, a candidate’s complete work is scored by a minimum of 12 teachers who have completed intensive training in NBPTS standards and guidelines. If you don’t receive certification the first time around, you can redo your portfolio and/or assessment twice within a two-year period; however, you will have to pay additional fees for this, and it’s unlikely that they will be covered by the state or your school system.
Successful candidates generally receive extra compensation from their schools as a reward for their efforts, but the amount varies from state to state. Depending on where they’re located, NBCTs get either extra money in every paycheck, a lump-sum award, or a biannual bonus. In many cases, they also become eligible for a portable teaching license, which allows them to work in other states without meeting those states’ additional education or testing requirements. National certificates are valid for 10 years; if you wish to renew yours, you need to complete the NBPTS Profile of Professional Growth (essentially another portfolio but much smaller than your original one, demonstrating the evolution of your teaching) before your current certificate expires.
“I’m just starting to think about renewing now,” says Debra K. Lindsay, a music teacher at Crestwood Elementary School in Springfield, Virginia, who is not only an NBCT in early and middle childhood music (certified in 2004) but has also worked as an assessor for the NBPTS and mentored other teachers through the certification process. “What the board is looking for more than anything is the development of mentoring skills, to show that you haven’t slacked off in the past 10 years. You need to be willing to work with large groups of students and to teach teachers if you want to renew.”
Challenges and Rewards
The whole NBCT process is designed to be a challenge, but depending on your personality and inclinations, some parts will naturally be tougher than others. Kathleen McCullough, director of orchestras at Blue Valley Northwest High School and Harmony Middle School in Overland Park, Kansas, became an NBCT in 2005; for her, “the most difficult part was not knowing what to study for the assessment portion. The categories were so broad, e.g., world music. Also, the theory portion was only composition, and on paper, without use of a computer—the dark ages!” (That’s correct, the exams are not computerized.)
Christina M. Ammirati, an elementary band director at three elementary schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, who received her certification in 2007, says that the stress of the actual assessment was the roughest part of getting certified. “I was prepared for the types of questions that would be asked,” she says, “but I found it stressful to complete each question in 30 minutes. After furiously writing to complete the first exercise after the 10-minute warning from the proctor, I was able to better pace myself for the rest of the five exercises.”
Other teachers were more challenged by the writing and video portions of the portfolio. “At first, it was difficult to watch myself on tape teaching,” remembers Cassandra Strange, orchestra director at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia, the first high school orchestra teacher in her state to become an NBCT (she got her certification in 2008). “It really gives you an honest take on how you’re currently teaching the students. That is one of the best parts, though. You evaluate yourself and look at how you can make your teaching and assessments better so your students can succeed.”
There was a downside to all this self-evaluation: “Since there was so much work involved, I basically ate, slept, and breathed the NBCT process for a year. I woke in the middle of the night with pages of my portfolio floating in front of my eyes and dreaming about how I can make my lesson plans better.” Luckily, Strange got great support from her family, fellow teachers, and students, something that Debra Lindsay says is “absolutely necessary” to succeed in the pursuit of certification.
Because there are still so few NBCTs in music, it can be difficult for certification candidates to find mentors who both have music experience and can help them through the process. “Many teachers end up working with non-music-teacher mentors,” Stephanie Standerfer reports. “They do find it helpful, especially when it comes to writing in a more ‘educational’ style for the portfolio. But there still can be frustration when you’re dealing with the specifics of the subject.”
All the same, for most teachers who do make it through, the rewards are worth the struggle. “I am now so much more aligned with national standards, more aware of learning styles, and more organized,” says Kathleen McCullough. “Overall, this experience remade me as a teacher.”
Looking to the Future
Will national board certification eventually become as important as—or even more important than—state certification? At this point, it’s hard to say. Going by the past record of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the answer may be yes. The Chicago public schools, which Duncan ran before coming to Washington this year, have more NBCTs than any other urban school system in the country. This would seem to imply that Duncan, and by extension the Obama administration, supports the effort to nationally certify more teachers in all subjects.
However, recent comments by Duncan suggest that “quality of instruction”—however that’s measured—rather than earned credentials like NBCT may become the benchmark for rewarding teachers in the future. And the Department of Education’s terminology appears to be shifting, as so often happens in new administrations; “effective” is now the adjective of choice for teachers rather than “qualified,” but what this means is still unclear.
Still, those who are currently mulling whether or not to apply for national board certification shouldn’t be put off by vague questions about its possible future place in the educational system. “I don’t foresee any large-scale changes being made to national board certification during this administration,” Stephanie Standerfer says. “Other organizations may come up with new ways of defining advanced teaching, but because of the way the National Board process has been designed, it’s going to remain a strong presence.”
“If you’re confident about your teaching, you should apply,” Debra Lindsay says. “In a year without raises, it’s a good idea.”
For more information, go to nbpts.org.
--Mac Randall, November 2009, © MENC: The National Association for Music Education. This article originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Teaching Music magazine.