The stipends provide a paycheck boost for the 10-year life of the certificate. Beaufort County School District teachers who earn the national board certification receive an additional $7,500 from the state and $2,000 from the district each year. The state also pays the $2,300 application fee for certification if the applicant is successful.
South Carolina has 3,225 teachers with the certification, the third highest number in the nation.
But as budget time approaches, the state and the district are considering cutting back next year on the program -- a program they both have touted by providing annual updates on the growing number of nationally certified teachers.
Gov. Mark Sanford's $5.1 billion budget plan for next year proposes a moratorium on teachers entering the program, beginning in December, until there is research available that shows it improves student achievement, said Jim Foster, spokes-man for the state Department of Education. The moratorium does not apply to teachers already receiving the stipend.
In the governor's budget plan for next year, $36.5 million is allocated for the teacher stipends, said John Cooley, the state's director of budget development. But it doesn't include funds to reimburse teachers for the certification's $2,300 application fee, he said.
The state will spend $36.8 million on stipends and application fees this year, Cooley said.
The Beaufort County School District will spend $146,000 this year for stipends for 73 teachers, said Donna Altman, assistant superintendent for fiscal affairs. Four of the district's new teachers this year came with national board certification, said Cyndi Pride, instructional technology supervisor for the district.
Some school board members are considering cutting the district's certification bonus from next year's budget.
"Everything is on the table," said Al Stern, who represents Sun City Hilton Head on the school board and is chairman of the board's Finance Committee.
"I think the training they get is outstanding," Stern said. "But there is not a single study that exists that validates that that additional training makes them perform better in terms of their students doing better."
Stern said teachers who have earned the certificate already or who are working toward it wouldn't lose the local stipend if it's cut.
A move to drop the bonus for all teachers met with resistance in 2002. The school district, facing budget problems for the 2002-03 school year, considered cutting the $2,000 district stipend. The board ended up keeping the bonuses, after a number of community members and board-certified teachers complained.
Edna Crews, the district's deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction, said some school board members see cutting the stipends as a possibility. But, she said, "district administrators haven't proposed that as an area to be cut."
The board probably will address whether to cut the stipends at its second budget planning session on March 23 or third session on April 6, she said.
"Teachers tell me it's the best professional development they have ever had," Crews said.
The district is looking for ways "to see if teachers who are national board certified are having a positive impact on student achievement," Crews said.
Janice Poda, senior director of the division of teacher quality at the state Department of Education, said the department is in the middle of a $90,000 study on the effectiveness of nationally certified teachers. The study, scheduled to be released by October, looks at how students of nationally certified teachers in third through eighth grades fare on the English and math portions of the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test.
There are at least seven other studies under way nationwide on the impact of the certification on student achievement, said Ann Byrd, director of the S.C. Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement.
Foster said the state's research will be completed by October, two months before the governor's moratorium is set to begin. If the research shows the certification has a positive impact on student achievement, there won't be a moratorium, he said.
That will be good news to teachers undergoing the certification process.
Crews has called the process rigorous. It takes one to three years to complete and requires teachers to take a close look at what they are doing in the classroom.
Teachers must prepare a portfolio with videotapes of classroom teaching, lesson plans, student work samples and reflective essays. They also must demonstrate mastery of the subject matter they teach and how to teach it.
Barbara Streitenberger, art teacher at Michael C. Riley Elementary School, is one of 18 district teachers who earned the certification this school year. She said everything a teacher does to earn the certification is about student achievement.
"With everything you do, you ask yourself how it will help students," she said.
Streitenberger said she and her husband, Jeff Streitenberger, a music teacher at Hilton Head Middle and Elementary schools who earned the certification last year, will use the stipend to pay for graduate-level course work in the education field. She said she knows of several other teachers who plan to use the money in the same way.
No decision on the program has been made by the school board, but the district's bonus has support.
"It's one of the best tools we have to improve our teaching staff," said Dale Friedman, board member from Beaufort and Port Royal. "I would like to keep (the stipend) if at all possible. It's a huge amount of work, and (teachers) certainly should make more money when they complete it."