Last week a New York Times article revealed how many urban districts have given up on recruiting American teachers for high needs schools. Instead, foreign teachers, many of whom are not fluent in English or do not have a cultural understanding of U.S. students, are filling vacancies because of school districts' inability or unwillingness to offer the salary and working conditions needed to staff our nation’s most challenging schools. Drawing on a powerful, data-filled report from the American Federation of Teachers, we learn that about 19,000 teachers are now working in the United States on temporary visas and that for-profit recruiting practices are almost entirely unregulated. Abuses include forcing teachers to pay recruiters 25 percent of their salaries and to take out loans with an annual interest rate of 60 percent, while placing them in overcrowded, unfinished housing.
There is so much wrong with this story. Granted, not all foreign recruiters are abusive — and clearly American students can benefit from the international experiences their teachers have had. And some can speak English fluently — and have been trained as teachers back in their home countries. But many have not. In addition, these urban school districts are not hiring foreign nationals to bring a global perspective to their curriculum. They are taking short-cuts — letting policymakers off the hook for making the tough decisions needed to transform America’s dysfunctional teacher development system. They are short-changing students by denying them the teachers and teaching they deserve.
The AFT report offered a new take on the matter. Previous reports of teachers hired from overseas--at least those I had encountered--suggested that they were a boon to the system. They were portrayed as inherently smarter than their U.S. peers.
Posted by: Claus | September 23, 2009 at 05:03 PM