The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and Possible Implications for Gifted Education

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, instituted in the fall of 1987, was formed from a recommendation of the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy through its report, A Nation Prepared. The Board's task is to establish a voluntary certification program for experienced teachers to be certified to a high standard of excellence. This certification process is being undertaken in order to help create a true profession of teaching where the teachers themselves control standards and how teachers are assessed. In this case teachers will be assessed using a wide variety of sources including data from portfolios, attestations, and simulations, as well as more traditional measures. Since both teachers of the gifted and regular classroom teachers who teach gifted students will be voluntarily participating in the certification process, there are implications for the field of gifted education. Among these issues are the determination of the nature of competencies for both teachers of the gifted and classroom teachers serving the gifted in the regular classroom.