NBPTS Main Site Five Core Propositions

What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do

Developed and revised by practicing educators based on research and practitioner expertise, the National Board Five Core Propositions and Standards describe what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do to have a positive impact on student learning. National Board Certification identifies teachers who meet those standards through a performance-based, peer-reviewed series of assessment components. Get the ebook here.

Five Core Propositions

First published in 1989 and updated in 2016, What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do articulates the National Board’s Five Core Propositions for teaching. The Five Core Propositions — comparable to medicine’s Hippocratic Oath — set forth the profession’s vision for accomplished teaching.

Together, the propositions form the basis of all National Board Standards and the foundation for National Board Certification.

The full text of the Five Core Propositions are available for download as an ebook in English and Spanish.

Proposition 1 Teachers are committed to students and their learning

Proposition 2 Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students

Proposition 3 Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning

Proposition 4 Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience

Proposition 5 Teachers are members of learning communities

[The Five Core Propositions] have become central to everything that I do in my classroom and beyond. I love how intrinsically linked they are; each one linked to the other four. You can’t have one without the other, so to speak. Teachers cannot be committed to students and their learning without being members of learning communities.