Support Candidates

NBCTs are vital to expanding the influence of National Board Certification by recruiting and supporting candidates through the multiple phases of the process: First-time candidates, and Advanced/Retake candidates. The NBRC offers online training materials to support NBCTs to coach and facilitate candidates through the NBPTS process.

Materials to Support Candidates

NBCT leaders developed these materials as they worked with candidates. The NBRC offers podcasts, working agendas, handouts, and links to help you as you plan your coaching and facilitation activities. These materials are not meant to be standardized and are intended to be adapted to fit the unique contexts and needs of your candidates. The NBRC continuously updates support for NBCTs to guide candidates to the NBPTS documents and coach candidates using the language of the NBPTS documents. The materials will help to support candidates at all stages of the process. These materials can be made available upon request.

Training for NBCTs to Support Candidates

By achieving National Board Certification, you showed evidence that you met the standards for accomplished teaching of students in the content area of your certificate. Coaching adults through the NBPTS summative assessment, however, requires different knowledge and skills. The series of trainings were designed to support NBCTs to understand how to use the NBPTS documents to coach, mentor and facilitate individual candidates or groups of candidates to use the NBPTS process as a lever to improve their teaching.

Incentives Offered by Districts for Certification

Last Updated July 5, 2023 – Subject to Change - Please check with your District’s current contract, with your administrator, school board member, workplace representative or human resources department to obtain details of the incentive. You can review the latest quarterly report on incentives for National Board Certification offered by district and facility for detailed information about your district's offered incentive.

The National Board Resource Center gathers incentive data on a quarterly basis. As of July 5, 2023 there are 272 districts and facilities in Illinois that offer several types of incentives for National Board Certification. The NBRC has defined nine (9) broad categories for incentive types. Districts and facilities in Illinois offer annual stipend/salary increase for the duration of certification, one- or two-time stipend/salary increases, all or some funding for National Board Certification, lane changes, hours of credit towards salary schedule advancement, graduate credit, miscellaneous/other incentives, or a choice between the aforementioned incentives. Additionally, some districts offer multiple incentives for National Board Certification.