There has been much excitement over the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards; especially with regard to improving student achievement. Are Nationally Board Certified Teachers (NBCT) performing better than their non board certified counterparts? Does achieving National Board Certification mean that a teacher is "highly qualified?" What are the tangible effects on the achievement levels of students of Nationally Board Certified teachers? Much research has been conducted in the past few years to try to answer these questions. Currently, the results of much of this research are ambiguous at best. Most studies report little in the way of significant impact on student achievement by NBCTs. However, many studies show teachers self-reporting a strong positive impact on their own teaching and their feelings of efficacy. The state of Florida and the federal government have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade in pursuit of expanding the NBPTS as a means of ensuring highly qualified teachers for every student. This study aims to discover whether or not there is any definitive association between teachers who attain the national certification and higher student achievement on standardized tests specifically the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) in a local central Florida school district. The researcher attempted to determine if students assigned to classrooms of nationally board certified teachers outperformed students of comparable backgrounds that were assigned to classrooms of teachers that were not nationally certified. To accomplish this, the researcher looked at reading and math test scores of third grade students in nationally board certified teachers' classrooms and compared them with those of students assigned to non-nationally board certified teachers to determine if the gains made by one group were statistically significantly different from the other. Recommendations were made for further exploration of the link between NBCTs and student achievement.

Teacher attrition and retention has become a major issue facing education policymakers and practioners as our nation's school age population continues to grow, but the teaching workforce does not. This study seeks to examine the impact of certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) on burnout levels in educators. The potential benefits to teachers who pursue NBPTS certification include a sense of professional pride, new leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers, recognition of outstanding teaching practice, and higher salaries (Shapiro, 1995). Some of these potential rewards seem to address a number of the factors that are related to the onset burnout, and therefore may reduce teacher attrition. The study utilized the Maslach-Leiter conceptual framework to examine burnout, which breaks the burnout construct into three separate dimensions; emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. The research questions sought to determine if there was a difference between National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) and their non-certified peers in each of these dimensions of burnout. The research sample consisted of the NBCTs and a comparable random sample of their non-certified peers from a large urban school district in the Central Florida area. The Maslach Burnout Inventory Educators Survey was used a basis of comparison of the burnout levels. The two groups were compared utilizing an independent samples t-test. The instrument utilized in this study also included demographic questions, as well as questions that were designed to measure the various elements of the Maslach-Leiter theoretical model of burnout. These questions and the independent variable NBPTS certification were included in a multiple regression analysis in order to determine if the differences noted between the groups using the independent samples t-tests were in fact a result of NBPTS certification, and not the theoretical model itself. The instruments were mailed in the fall of 2006, and were returned to the researcher anonymously. A total of 476 surveys were returned, for a response rate of 52%. The independent samples t-tests revealed significant differences between NBCTs and their non-certified peers on all three dimensions of burnout. An examination of the individual scores for each group revealed that in each of the dimensions showed that the NBCTs demonstrated lower levels of experienced burnout in each dimension. The multiple regression analyses that were conducted to confirm that NBPTS certification was in fact a significant factor in the development of each burnout dimension revealed mixed results. Emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment were both found to have a significant negative relationship with NBPTS certification, which indicates that the NBCTs are significantly less burned out then their non-certified peers. Despite the initial finding of significance in the independent samples t-test, NBPTS certification was not found to be a significant factor in the onset of the depersonalization dimension of burnout. This relationship needs further exploration in future studies. The significant difference between the research and control groups in this study suggests that NBPTS certification may reduce burnout levels in at least two dimensions. Legislators and policymakers at the state and federal levels have provided millions of dollars to support NBPTS certification. These findings seem to indicate that this financial support has impacted burnout levels in educators, and may therefore warrant examination as a strategy to address the issue of teacher attrition.

Professional development is used by teachers to improve their teaching to enhance student learning, and research indicates that the National Board Certification (NBC) process contains high-quality professional development characteristics. Engagement in the NBC process can lead to professional growth by changing teachers’ knowledge, instructional practices, and students’ learning. This quantitative study investigated the extent to which characteristics of the NBC process influenced National Board Certified Teachers’ (NBCTs) professional growth. Using an online survey, the study collected responses from 119 NBCTs who participated in a specific NBC support program. Key findings included that all 20 high-quality professional development characteristics investigated had a perceived positive influence on professional growth, with some notable differences. The characteristics involving individual analysis of student work and teaching videos along with reflection were perceived to be most important, while those centering on collaboration with other candidates were perceived as less important. Second, characteristics that had the greatest perceived impact were those that focused on changing pedagogy rather than increasing content knowledge. Furthermore, a significant relationship was found between the perceived importance of duration in the experience and the length of time the candidate was in the process: NBCTs who achieved in one year, as compared to NBCTs who achieved in two or three years, had statistically significant lower ratings on the influence that the duration had on their professional growth. Additionally, those who engaged in the process for financial reasons, as compared to professional growth, had a lower rating of perceived importance when all characteristics were combined.