Recovery Act and Take One! (April 21, 2009)

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (Recovery Act) offers you an unprecedented opportunity to initiate or expand National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) professional development programs in your jurisdiction. In addition to the opportunities for teachers to become National Board Certification candidates, you can also offer the opportunity for your entire school or district to participate in the NBPTS professional development offering, Take One!.

Many schools and districts across the country are already using Title I funds to transform their schools through Take One!.

Take One! is based on National Board Certification standards and can be used by an entire faculty in a whole-school professional development initiative or by teachers as an initial step in pursuing National Board candidacy.  Like National Board Certification, Take One! is an allowable program for Title I funding—including the $5 billion recently allotted by the U.S. Department of Education through Title I Recovery Act funds.

• As with National Board Certification, Take One! aligns with Recovery Act goals—e.g., advancing student achievement through teacher effectiveness and intervention strategies for lowest performing schools.
• Both programs are part of a system, as defined by the Department, “for identifying and training highly effective teachers to serve as instructional leaders in Title I school-wide programs and modifying the school schedule to allow for collaboration among the instructional staff.”

In just its third year, more than 100 schools or districts sponsored Take One! for a cohort of their teachers.

Here are few examples of schools who have used Take One!:

• In Georgia, Stonewall Tell Elementary School, a Title I school, signed up its entire faculty for Take One! – seventy-one teachers, the principal and two assistant principals. School faculty members report positive changes in the learning culture among students and teachers, as well as stronger linkages between teaching practice and student learning.  Test scores are improving.  Forty of the teachers who successfully completed Take One! have now become full candidates for National Board Certification.  Read more.  
• In California, Julius Corsini Elementary School, a Title I school, enrolled its entire faculty in either Take One! or full candidacy for National Board Certification. Seventeen of the veteran teachers opted to go for full National Board candidacy and the remainder of the faculty started with Take One! The principal, a National Board Certified teacher herself, reports that the experience brought the teachers closer together as a staff in a professional learning community sharing best practices.  The school reports that test scores are improving. Read more.  
• In Virginia, nearly the entire faculty at Hampton High School completed or is currently enrolled in Take One!—and many are first- or second-year teachers.  The school, 85 percent minority and 43 percent on free and reduced lunch, launched Take One! with the intent of improving teaching practice—especially in terms of providing higher expectations and greater challenges regarding student outcomes.  Hampton’s principal reports that the Take One!  process has broken down barriers and has changed the culture of the school.  Read more. 

Visit Take One! to learn more about the Take One! process.

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