How will you know if your state is making progress toward having a qualified teacher in every classroom? One indicator of progress in Goals for Education relates to licensure and certification: "Licensure and certification focus on performance and lead to sufficient numbers of teachers with content knowledge and proven teaching skills to improve student achievement." A measure of this indicator is the number of teachers in SREB states who have certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which has high standards for teachers' knowledge and skills. As of December 2003, more than 32,000 teachers nationwide had earned this certification; nearly 22,000 of those were in SREB states. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards commissioned a study called The Certification System of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards: A Construct and Consequential Study through the Center for Research and Evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This study, which was released in October 2000, was based on 65 teachers from Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia who had attempted to earn NBPTS certification. Of these teachers, 31 earned the credential. The study concluded that teachers with certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards outperformed teachers without such certification on 13 measures of effective teaching. These measures included knowledge of the subject matter taught; ability to adapt and improvise instruction; ability to monitor student learning in order to offer beneficial feedback; and skills in articulating high expectations and developing activities that challenge everyone.