The Relationship of National Board and Non-National Board Certified Teacher Growth Indexes on Standardized Assessments: A Causal Comparative Study

The recent demand for schools to respond to accountability measures challenges teachers to increase their proficiency in the classroom in order to develop the unmastered skills of individual students as well as the whole class. There have been several attempts made to establish whether there is a relationship between student growth and teacher National Board Certification; however, opponents argue that National Board Certification may not be an accurate indicator of teacher growth.The intent of this research was to compare National Board Certified (NBC) and non-NBC teacher mean growth indexes from the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS). The study explored EVAAS data in a large, urban North Carolina county to evaluate mean growth indexes in Grades 3, 4, and 5 in the subject areas of reading and math. Archival data were collected during the 2015-2016 academic school year. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact that NBC teachers have on North Carolina End-of-Grade reading and math student achievement growth in Title I schools as opposed to non-NBC teachers within the ABC School District as reported in EVAAS.This quantitative causal comparative study examined archival data from EVAAS and a group of 89 core elementary teachers from the district. The 89 core elementary teachers were disaggregated into three samples: overall, Title I, and non-Title I schools. The 89 core elementary teachers were grouped by teacher years of experience. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze teacher mean growth indexes. The independent sample t test Levene’s Test for Equality of Variance was used to assess if there was a significant difference between students being taught by NBC and non-NBC teachers. The effect sizes from Levene’s Test for Equality of Variance were interpreted using Cohen d. Results from the overall, Title I, and non-Title I samples indicated there was no significant difference in teacher reading mean growth indexes in Grades 3-5; however, the data indicated higher reading growth-index scores between students being taught by NBC teachers and non-NBC teachers. The reading finding indicated no significant differences between NBC and non-NBC teachers with teaching experiences of 11-20 and 21-30 years. Results from the overall, Title I, and non-Title I samples indicated there was no significant difference in teacher math mean growth indexes in Grade 4. Math results were mixed; in Grade 5, data indicated a significant difference in overall and Title I samples. The math findings showed no significant difference in the Title I and non-Title I samples of the 11-20 years of experience; however, the overall sample showed a significant difference with the 11-20 years of teaching experience. Data presented showed no teacher mean growth-index scores for Grade 3 even though there were 12 NBC teachers in the overall sample.