The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards announced today that Travis J. Bristol, PhD, has been elected Chairman of the NBPTS Board of Directors, succeeding Dr. Terry Holliday who served in the role since 2015. Dr. Bristol, whose term will begin in November 2021, comes to the Board with 17 years of experience in classroom teaching and education leadership, including most recently as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education.
“I am deeply grateful to Dr. Terry Holliday for his partnership, mentorship, guidance, insight and his unwavering support and commitment to the National Board’s mission. His six-year leadership has been invaluable and the Board and staff will miss him,” said Peggy Brookins, a National Board Certified Teacher and President and CEO of National Board. “Travis Bristol will become the first African American to serve as Board chair. He brings an approach that will prove to be both timely and timeless. I know he will help steer us into the future with an important perspective that is critical for today’s education landscape.”
Prior to his role as a professor of education at UC Berkeley, Dr. Bristol served as a Peter Paul Assistant Professor at Boston University’s School of Education; a Research and Policy Fellow at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education; a Clinical Teacher Educator with the Boston Teacher Residency program; and as an English teacher in New York City public schools. Over the course of his career, Bristol has received a multitude of awards for his work in education and research. These include the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award (Division-K), American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Teacher Diversity Research Award, and dissertation and postdoctoral fellowships from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bristol has also had his work published in a range of peer-reviewed journals, including the Harvard Educational Review, the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Teacher Education, Urban Education, and more. He is particularly passionate about three areas of research: the role of educational policies in shaping teacher workplace experiences and retention; district and school-based professional learning communities; and the role of race and gender in educational settings.
Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute and the head of Presidents-Elect Obama and Biden’s education transition teams said, "Travis Bristol exemplifies the work of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He is an expert educator and teacher educator whose work is grounded in a commitment to equity and to accomplished practice. He has deepened the nation’s understanding of the importance of a diverse teaching workforce and has promoted policies and practices that can enable that goal to be realized. His expertise and dedication to the profession of teaching will help assure the National Board continues to support the growth and development of a diverse cadre of accomplished educators across the country.”
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About the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (www.nbpts.org):
The founding mission of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is to advance the quality of teaching and learning by: maintaining high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do; providing a national voluntary system certifying teachers who meet these standards, and advocating related education reforms to integrate National Board Certification in American education and to capitalize on the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers. Recognized as the “gold standard” in teacher certification, the National Board believes higher standards for teachers mean better learning for students.