The National Board has advanced the teaching profession by establishing and maintaining the definitive standards of excellence in teaching and certifying more than 118,000 educators against those standards. Demonstrate your commitment to student learning!
Established in 1987, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is an independent, nonprofit organization working to advance accomplished teaching for all students.
The founding mission of the National Board is to advance the quality of teaching and learning by:
Maintaining high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do;
Providing a national voluntary system certifying teachers who meet these standards;
Advocating related education reforms to integrate National Board Certification in American education and to capitalize on the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers.
What Teachers Should Know and Be Able To Do
Developed and revised by practicing educators based on research and practitioner expertise, the National Board Five Core Propositions and Standards describe what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do to have a positive impact on student learning. National Board Certification identifies teachers who meet those standards through a performance-based, peer-reviewed series of assessment components.
Five Core Propositions
First published in 1989 and updated in 2016, What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do articulates the National Board’s Five Core Propositions for teaching. The Five Core Propositions — comparable to medicine’s Hippocratic Oath — set forth the profession’s vision for accomplished teaching. Together, the propositions form the basis of all National Board Standards and the foundation for National Board Certification.
Proposition 1: Teachers are committed to students and their learning
Proposition 2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students
Proposition 3: Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning
Proposition 4: Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience
Proposition 5: Teachers are members of learning communities
