In January 2011, CTQ, in collaboration with National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) from North Carolina, released a set of TeacherSolutions in their collaborative report on how to improve practices and policies for teaching and learning in 21st century schools: Teacher and Teaching Effectiveness: A Bold View from National Board Certified Teachers in North Carolina. This cadre of classroom experts offered their best thinking on some of today’s most complex educational issues: how to define teacher effectiveness, what teachers need to teach effectively, how to utilize NBCTs and spread effective teaching, and what policymakers can do to help. Their advice on developing and leveraging teacher and teaching effectiveness is timely — given North Carolina’s recent Race to the Top award.

The report represents the culmination of a three-year effort to tap into the expertise of one of education's most promising and underused resources – its National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs). Launched in our home state of North Carolina and piloted in Chattanooga (TN), the District of Columbia (DC), San Francisco (CA), and Springfield and southern Illinois (IL), the Return on Investment (ROI) work leveraged CTQ’s cutting-edge technology to spread the expertise of master teachers to underprepared, out-of-field and early-career teachers for the improvement of student learning and the bolstering of teacher retention. In addition, the work allowed CTQ to deploy highly trained NBCT coaches in high-needs districts’ “grow our own” teaching quality efforts by supporting cohorts of National Board and Take One! candidates and providing leadership training and opportunities to expert educators, who too often find their skills and knowledge confined within their own classroom walls. North Carolina coach, Doyle Nicholson, reflected on his experiences in this recent Teacher Magazine essay on the Education Week website.

Our impetus for the Return on Investment project began with statewide summits of NBCTs, in collaboration with the National Education Association (NEA), from August 2005 through August 2007. The six summits engaged some of the nation’s best teachers in identifying policies and practices that can close the student achievement gap by eliminating the teaching quality gap. Summits, which were held in Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington with more than 2,000 NBCTs participating, highlighted the desire of NBCTs to play a larger role in education reform and school improvement, especially in high-needs communities. CTQ prepared a National Strategy Forum cumulative report highlighting themes from all six locations in August 2007. In addition, CTQ President Barnett Berry summarized the views of these and other outstanding educators on how to staff and support high-needs schools in a June 2008 article in Phi Delta KAPPAN magazine.