Debates over the efficacy of tenure are longstanding but tenure reform is now more prominent in the public eye given recent high-profile legislative battles in states like Ohio and Wisconsin. This focus on tenure also is a natural outgrowth of the large body of research showing that differences between individual teachers can have profound effects…

In this paper, we use a unique data set that includes a panel of all teachers in North Carolina over a 4-year period (1996-1997 through 1999-2000) to describe the distribution of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) across classrooms, schools, and districts. The sorting of National Board Certified…