By Senator Devlin Robinson and Daniel Kliber
Pennsylvania State Senate | Pittsburgh Public Schools
We grew up in the same neighborhood in Brookline. One of us went into public service. The other went into a classroom. Neither of us would have predicted we’d end up co-authoring a bill together—but here we are, united by a shared conviction: Pennsylvania is leaving one of its most powerful tools for student success sitting on the table.
That tool is National Board Certification for teachers.
Pennsylvania has made real progress getting more people into the teaching profession. The new student teaching stipend is working, but recruiting teachers is only half the equation. The harder challenge is building a profession worth staying in: one that rewards growth, recognizes excellence, and gives good teachers a reason to become great ones. That’s what our legislation does.
National Board Certification is the most respected credential in the teaching profession—a rigorous, peer-reviewed process through which educators demonstrate mastery of their craft, much like board certification in medicine. More than 146,000 teachers nationwide have earned it. More than half of states have already invested in this credential, yet Pennsylvania currently ranks 33rd in the share of its teachers who are Board certified. We are behind.
The research on what it does for students is unambiguous: students taught by National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) gain one to two additional months of learning in a single school year. Kindergartners with an NBCT literacy teacher are 31 percent more likely to reach reading benchmarks. These are not marginal gains—they are the kind of outcomes that change a child’s trajectory.
For one of us, this isn’t an abstraction. It’s personal.
When I went through the National Board Certification process, it was the best professional development of my career—better than any graduate course or district training I’d experienced. It forced me to examine my own teaching with evidence in hand: videos of my classroom, analysis of student work, honest reflection on what was and wasn’t working. It also connected me to a community of accomplished educators across the state and country who share a commitment to continuous growth. That community changed my trajectory. National Board Certification inspired me to take on leadership roles in my school, pursue competitive fellowships, and serve as a Senior Policy Fellow for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
It didn’t just make me a better teacher. It made me a leader.
A teacher who has gone through National Board Certification has done the deep work of analyzing what his or her students know, why some are falling behind, and how to adjust instruction accordingly. As those teachers become coaches and mentors, that practice-embedded growth spreads across entire schools.
And as Pennsylvania faces a serious teacher shortage, National Board Certification directly addresses that attrition crisis. Since 2010, enrollment in teacher preparation programs has dropped from 20,000 to under 7,000 annually—double the national rate of decline. In 2023, the Commonwealth recorded its highest teacher attrition rate ever, with nearly 10,000 educators leaving the classroom.
However, NBCTs leave the profession at one-third the rate of their peers. The process builds expertise, deepens professional identity, and creates community—the things that keep talented people in a demanding job. The student teaching stipend fills the front of the pipeline. Our bill helps keep it from leaking out the back.
We are also working to address Pennsylvania’s literacy crisis directly—and the two priorities reinforce each other. Pennsylvania students are, on average, four months behind in reading following pandemic learning loss. The students who lost the most ground are most likely to be taught by inexperienced teachers. Growing the number of Board-certified teachers in those schools is a direct intervention in that crisis.
Our legislation, co-primed by Senator Vincent Hughes, establishes a competitive grant program that puts $5 million to work over five years in Pennsylvania’s highest-need school districts. Funds cover certification fees, candidate support programs with trained NBCT mentors, and stipends to keep accomplished teachers where they’re needed most. Small and rural districts can apply jointly through consortia.
A teacher who enters the profession with support, develops with rigor, and earns recognition for excellence is a teacher who stays. And a teacher who stays is the most powerful investment a community can make in its children.
We grew up in the same neighborhood. We went different directions. But we’re both here making the same argument: Pennsylvania’s teachers—and the students who depend on them—deserve better. This bill is a great start.