Teachers’ new status earns them raises

More than 900 Washington teachers will get pay raises of $5,000 or $10,000 a year because they’ve passed a rigorous national certification process designed to produce better educators.

Only two states – Florida and North Carolina – saw more teachers gain certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards when annual results were released on Tuesday. Like Washington, those states offer big financial incentives to teachers who go through the process: pay raises of anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent.

By comparison, Idaho offers $2,000 annually for five years. The state has eight newly certified teachers.

“Don’t tell me money doesn’t make a difference,” Terry Bergeson, Washington’s lame-duck superintendent of public instruction, said during her final “state of education” speech last month. At the time, she was predicting 700 Washington teachers would achieve national certification this year.

Nationwide, about half the teachers who attempt to become nationally certified in any given year meet all the requirements. It is a yearlong process that requires hundreds of hours and costs $2,500. Washington and Idaho offer scholarships to cover half that cost.

National certification “builds confidence in our teaching corps as well as the students and families our teachers serve,” Gov. Chris Gregoire said in a press release. “Parents in our state will tell you that National Board certified teachers make a difference in students’ lives.”

But some teachers acknowledge that the opportunity for a pay increase was what motivated them.

“My sigh of relief doesn’t come from knowing I’m a better teacher. It comes from having the thing done,” said Joe Kelleher, who teaches English at Riverside High School, and is the first in his district to earn certification. “There wasn’t one class period or one day that I didn’t have to think about … how am I going to get this done.”

The bonuses – $5,000 a year for any teacher and an additional $5,000 for those who work at “challenging” schools – were approved by the Legislature last year. Previously, certification brought a $3,500 pay increase.

As a result, the state last year saw a twofold increase in the applicants for the $1,250 scholarships.

In all, 2,718 Washington teachers have achieved certification over the years. That amounts to 5.3 percent of teachers in the state’s public schools, placing Washington seventh among states.

Bellevue School District, a community where housing is notoriously expensive, has 242 nationally certified teachers – twice as many as any other district. Seattle, the state’s largest school district, has 116 nationally certified teachers, and Spokane has 78.

About half of Washington’s nationally certified teachers work in Title I schools, those where a good share of the students qualify for subsidized lunches, one indication of an impoverished neighborhood.

Under state law, high schools with more than half of students qualifying for subsidized lunches are deemed “challenging,” qualifying nationally certified teachers for the maximum $10,000 pay increase. Middle schools are “challenging” if 60 percent qualify for subsidized lunches, while at elementary schools, the threshold is 70 percent.

In the Spokane school district, “challenging” schools include Rogers High School, and Havermale and Bancroft alternative schools; Garry and Shaw middle schools; and 11 elementary schools.

In Idaho, 347 teachers are nationally certified, including 11 in the Coeur d’Alene School District; two each in the Post Falls, Lakeland and St. Maries districts; and one each in the Boundary County and Wallace districts.

Nationwide, 74,000 teachers are nationally certified. According to the national board Web site, “virtually every state” and about a quarter of all school districts offer financial incentives for teachers to achieve national board certification.

Teachers cannot go through the process until they’ve been in the classroom at least three years. The national certification lasts 10 years, and can be renewed (failing to renew costs Washington teachers their pay increases).

“It was tiring and it was frustrating and it was also very rewarding in that I was able to reflect deeply on what I was teaching,” said Michele Nelson, a newly certified teacher.

Nelson, who teaches Spanish and math to middle- and highschool students, is the first nationally certified teacher at the Columbia School District in Hunters, Wash.

Students compared the process to “a WASL for teachers,” Nelson said. That’s a fitting comparison since Nelson completed the process in spring but had to wait until November to learn whether she’d passed – a wait that’s similar to what students endure to receive their WASL results.

“All summer long, I was wondering, did I pass or did I not,” Nelson said.