Guest writers: Budget crunches shouldn’t put our neediest kids, best teachers last

Great teachers change lives. Hundreds of research studies have shown that high-quality teachers are one of the most important inputs into student achievement. If we want our students to thrive, we must retain and support our best teachers. Educators will tell you the best way to keep teachers in your school is by offering stipends and professional development.

A key piece of professional development is the National Board Certification, a tool our entire K-12 system uses to identify and tap into the leadership potential of talented, motivated teachers. National Board-certified teachers, counselors and librarians (NBCTs) have earned the nation’s highest credential for exemplary, evidence-based teaching. NBCT stipends provide a professional and financial pathway for career advancement that does not require these teachers to leave the classroom. 

For 25 years, Washington state has incentivized this pathway and offset part of the cost of certification with a “base” stipend. An additional “Challenging Schools” stipend has helped to keep NBCTs working where they’re needed most — in high-poverty schools. Currently, there is a proposal to “pause” both incentives, which, if enacted, would cut the pay of these highly effective teachers by up to 10%, directly impacting our students. The Legislature can prevent this.

The board certification process is incredibly valuable. Virtually every NBCT reports that no other experience or degree had as big an impact on their teaching and involvement in professional leadership. Evidence shows students taught by board-certified teachers experience an increase in learning equivalent to an additional one to two months of instruction per year. The benefit is especially pronounced for minority and low-income students.

NBCTs are doing the work and fulfilling their promise. At Mount Baker High School, teaching staff is composed of approximately one-third NBCTs, but they make up two-thirds of the school’s leadership teams. Financial challenges have forced the district to reduce staff by 20% over the past three years. However, under their school improvement teams’ determined leadership, the number of ninth-grade students passing all their classes each semester increased by almost 20% during that same time.

In past decades, through multiple economic downturns and even a recession, previous Legislatures have steadfastly maintained NBCT stipends as a budget priority because they recognized the incredible value NBCTs bring to schools. Proposing that NBCTs be the only state employee group to receive a pay cut is a drastic disincentive applied to the most dedicated, professionally active and thoroughly vetted educators in our teaching force.

Over a third of Washington’s NBCTs, 2,750 teachers, work in high-poverty schools like the Mount Baker School District, where the stipends have been critical for NBCT retention. Many teachers drive 50 miles roundtrip to teach at Kendall Elementary School — one of only two elementary schools in Whatcom County that qualify for the Challenging Schools stipend. On their hourlong commute, they pass multiple other schools where they could bike to work and earn $10,000 more per year.

Mount Baker students and the school-based systems developed to support them rely heavily on the expertise and passion of NBCTs. If the Legislature chooses to eliminate NBCT stipends, even the love these teachers have for their Mount Baker students may not be enough to offset the impact a 10% pay cut would have on them and their families.

NBCTs step into some of the most difficult and complex educator roles in our state. What message does the Legislature think it would send to “reward” those — and only those — educators with a pay cut? It is simply wrong. Washington’s students deserve better, and as any farmer can tell you: Even in times of famine, you don’t eat your seed corn.

Holly Koon is a National Board Certified Teacher at Mount Baker High School and a former member of the Washington State Board of Education. Sharon Shewmake is a state senator from Whatcom County and an economics professor at Western Washington University.