The Signaling, Screening, and Professional Development Effects of National Board Certification: Evidence From Chicago

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Professional Development for Teacher Quality and Motivation

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how participating in the National Board (NB) certification process can improve teaching quality. First, we examine the signaling and screening effects, and we find that NB certified teachers outperform other teachers as well as teachers who applied but did not get certified. These findings suggest that the NB process is good for identifying high quality teachers. We also identify the professional development effects of participating in the nearly two-year application process. Mixed results suggest that there are professional development effects for some but not all teachers. The longitudinal data we use in this paper come from Chicago Public Schools high schools, which expands the current literature to include urban high school settings.

Authors

• Lauren Sartain, Consortium on Chicago School Research At The University of Chicago

• Lisa Barrow, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago