How can we outsource politicians ?
47
The US has always done well with an under educated underclass.
9
What does it say about America that a foundational profession is treated like a job at MacDonald's? Could it be the dregs of sexism? After all public education for years was considered "women's work" and thus not worth much.
25
The wheels in the bus go round and round and THUMP THUMP.
What’s that sound ?
School kids thrown under the bus !!
20
Maybe I missed it in the article, but won't it be cheaper and quicker to screen immigrants at the Mexican border as they try to enter the U.S. rather than deal with prospective teachers in the Philippines?
4
So Arizona, hot bed of the conservative anti immigration movement, is teaching other anti tax red states how to rely on indentured servant immigrants to teach their children? Do they not understand the “you get what you pay for” concept?
30
How did the U.S. become a country that glorifies its military at ever chance it gets while outsourcing the education of its children to the lowest paid migrant workers it can find.
33
Local elections have consequences. Public school funding and staffing are the result of local, state, and BOE voting. If the current arrangement works for the district, that’s fine. If it doesn’t, they should get out and vote.
5
Pay teachers what they deserve and they will continue to work their hearts out. UNION UNION. We don’t need or want foreigners teaching our kids.
14
We need to make this illegal. Pay a living wage already
18
Where are the president's tweets about these low-wage foreigners taking jobs from Americans? Oh, they're not auto workers or steel workers, so they don't matter. Got it.
24
The GOP will do less than enough to make sure things get even worse.
Their goal is to show public education doesn't work in their push to privatize it and save the wealthy even more in taxes.
As long as it's not their kids getting the shaft, what do they care?
Vote them OUT.
15
Scabs, strike breakers. Bring them in when you won’t pay a living wage. I assume the GOP is gone with this.
9
Strike breaking, union busting scabs, imported to help compensate for the 37% cut in Public Ed i n Arizona, used to fund more Tax Cuts For The Rich.
18
Have a Koch and a smile, or was it Pepsi? No matter, turn the lights off on your way out.
11
This is just so vile. Republicans, for the past 38 years, have been hellbent on destroying this country, and they are finally succeeding.
18
The conservatives who are always railing about foreign workers coming in and taking American jobs are OK with this. Of course they are, such hypocrisy.
15
Oh, my God, this is shameful. And, correct me if I'm wrong, it's only being done in Red states. Gotta love those Republicans.
And the irony is that the powers that be say they are doing it because of their respect for diversity. I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or spit.
12
Let's see....I've got a degree in math, I have great communication skills, management ability, and great enthusiasm for beginning my career....hmmmm what should I do? YES...I'll get terrorist and firearm training, work for $35k/year and have a bunch of creationist parents yelling at me that I'm Satan's agent...Are you wondering why we're falling behind China in technical primacy?
39
More socialism from the NY Times. Teachers work nine months they have more holidays off due to diversity than years ago. They can get a summer job or work 9-5 like the rest of us who do not get their benefits, pensions and everything else. The kids are learning less, cannot read, write or do math and the teacher complain through their socialist democratic unions. They have ruined education. Stop killing the U.S. taxpayer. It is a 9 month job.
6
I've moved internationally several times. It takes a good 6 months to get used to the new culture. If a foreign teacher on a J1 teaches for 3 years and the teacher is only fully up to speed at the end of their first year, then the students are at a disadvantage for about a quarter of their time in school.
In the mean time, the American middle-class is being hollowed out as formerly middle-class jobs become low-paying job.
10
This conflicts directly with the "Jobs for Americans" mantra. Does Trump know about this?
6
Without intent to insult the unfortunate Filipino teachers, on the very naked face of it, this is simply the very old and crude tactic of using low-paid "scabs" to avoid paying employees a decent wage.
It extorts and victimizes Filipino workers.
It destroys any notion of value in teaching for Americans.
And American public education, already a joke in the developed world, is degraded even further.
It seems as though people have lost any sense that what obtains in the United States is what we permit, what we settle for, what we abdicate.
26
People of America:
When will we begin to understand that we went from a Royalty Class and No-property-peasant Class to No-Royalty-big-property-owner Class and others-who-had-a-chance with the founding of America.
The unions were a totally new thing that Samuel Gompers and others created to build a Middle Class of vital flux. With unions came levels of professionalism. Many southerners yearn for the days of deadly coal mining as they were still treated better than freed black people. Some even want to return to slavery so uneducated whites could just be the overseers of the slaves. The pre-Civil War South had no schools/education for this overseer class.
Now, the real fight is not having good teachers, it is about forcing every district across America to pay teachers livable wages. The GOP knows that will mean recognizing unions and that is the last thing that their masters, the big donors, will allow.
The real enemy of good US education is the powerful groups wanting to kill unions. Educated union members are the worse kind of people to this powerful group, THE ABSOLUTE WORSE! They have the ability to THINK and to totally educate young minds to think beyond becoming new slaves.
If you don't want your child to become an economic slave, you will force good pay for teachers, they are our first line of defense against economic slavery. I see daily economic slavery here in SE Asia that is worse than Philippines, it is rapidly being exported to America, thanks to the GOP.
8
If the pay is so low that there are no applicants, the answer is clear -- the salary must be raised. It is despicable that a school board would instead import workers from a third world country. Shameful that this country has a trillion dollar military budget with billions going into the hands of crooked military contractors , while the future of our nation rests on a generation to be educated by migrant workers.
17
The teacher shortage problem in Arizona, as well as in many other areas of the country, is fundamentally based on a contempt for education.
14
The same teachers now protesting their low wages and inadequate school funding voted for the people against whom they are protesting. The ballot box solves the problem quite quickly. Hopefully they have learned that lesson, or are will they continue to be the fools that they have been for the past years voting for Republicans?
11
So you're just saying it plainly: immigrants are doing the jobs Americans won't do-- at slave wages. Plenty of qualified Americans would be happy to teach if they could afford to do it!
It's basically a form of union busting. Or it IS union busting. This is criminal, putting Americans out of work because they want/need and DESERVE decent living wages.
15
This is truly enraging. This is the more insidious type of common corruption among politicians, government administrators, and public policy decision makers. Chronically underpay teachers, undermine the profession, deny students even basic resources, then import non-citizens from overseas and foreign cultures to then engage in the most fundamental of activities for forming and building the American citizenry, the American sensibility and values, and American civic life, the educational public school system. I'm sickened. This is a tight, clear example of globalization as a destructive force in American life. And the tyranny of identity politics and multiculturalism is used as the rationale for these corrupt practices, all while American citizens from their 20's to retirees are desperate for sustainable incomes for themselves and their families following a world wide depression less than 10 years ago that still have left millions suffering in its wake. Disgusting.
11
Higher pay for teachers is important but equally important is the social capital that teachers have - or rather, don’t have. Teachers are not respected in the US. The Filipino teachers describes how his students fell silent when he walked into his classroom in Manila but not in Arisona. Simply raising wages won’t change the pervasive anti-intellectualism of American culture. If you want good teachers, tell parents to shut up and listen when the teacher tells them that their son or daughter is stupid or lazy. Tell students to behave or risk expulsion. Take disruptive children out of the classroom, no matter their skin color, socio-economic status or disability. Stop wasting money on athletics. And finally, what’s wrong with immigrant teachers? I’d rather have a foreign-born with degrees in philosophy, physics and theology teaching my kids than some homegrown ignoramus who has never been outside his state in his entire life.
15
Wow, I never thought that teachers could be outsourced. The drastic difference in American living standard and that in other parts of the world are going to gradually destroy what middle class is left in this country. Unless regulations are put in place. Otherwise, I wonder when the revolution is going to come.
12
(Dateline Shenzhen) Many good teachers from the States & Canada have left to teach in Asia's international schools (where motivated full-pay students are preparing for colleges abroad). The salaries are decent, with benefits (like private health insurance and housing allowances that pay for year-round accommodation); and students and parents appreciate their teachers' efforts. The sense of adventure is high, as is the sense that teachers are helping to reform education--promoting critical thinking, creativity and innovation. Today's international students will be tomorrow's global leaders.
What the U.S. education system needs to do is to train teachers well, and then value them. It also needs to trust them--not by enforcing stultifying standards and multi-page rubrics--but by reducing class size dramatically and allowing teachers to pay attention to individual students (for instance, assigning weekly writing and returning it in a timely way).
15
So, the same political party that thinks immigration and outsourcing is stealing American workers' jobs is now importing cheap labor instead of paying Americans a living wage. I hope people can now see what tax cuts and the resulting budget cuts can ultimately lead to.
13
Teaching is underpaid and not well respected in the US because it relied on amazing women who were unable to get jobs elsewhere. Women have been able to work elsewhere for 70 years and teaching salaries have been in decline ever since. Sure there is a small number of great teachers who would teach regardless of salary, but most people just don't have that luxury. You want better teachers, pay more, a lot more. Quit axing the school budget to make up for a completely unreasonable tax structure. You want no abortion then you really need to support the children.
14
As a Filipina-American, I think this is appalling. Instead of paying teachers their worth, schools/districts are outsourcing learning?! The Philippines seems to be ripe for the U.S.A. and other countries to exploit its people to make up for labor shortages such as teaching and nursing but for half the cost. Filipinos are being dreadfully used but have no choice because the pay in the United States is still almost 10x as much as in the Philippines. Teachers in the U.S. deserve so much respect and better pay. It is a slap to the face to import cheap labor to take their place or fill in the shortage.
10
Your article ignores the other side of this equation: it is incredibly hard for Filipino people with American family members to get a visa to immigrate to join their family here in the US. The unmarried child of an American citizen must have applied back in 2006. A married child in 1995. As a result, there are strong pressures to use any immigration programs that by pass that process and allow reunification.
3
This is yet another example of Americans betraying one another for an expedient solution. It’s just like shopping at Walmart to buy cheap imports instead of supporting the American workforce. It will continue until the only business opportunity remaining is to pay $50k to open a “Dooty Calls” franchise. But don’t worry, INS will probably authorize J-1 visas so you can hire cheap workers.
4
America First, huh? I guess that excludes all Americans who were counting on the education that so many of their elders have taken for granted and squandered in the name of solipsistic individual preference.
I’m sure it’s quite vindicating that the President still “talks like us,” though.
9
If a society wants the best education possible for its future generation, it should be willing to pay as much as this requires, and this means paying teachers what they deserve, not a pittance. In the US, education nowadays doesn't seem to be a priority anymore. Schools seem to be churning out more dimwits than ever before, and one of the reasons seems to be the limited resources available to schools and ultimately to teachers, who lack proper remuneration and recognition. The resultant lack of critical thinking among so many voters was probably one of the key reasons why so many were taken in by the fuzzy ideas propagated by the man who now populates the White House.
7
There was a time when the Philippine household would hire Chinese help from Hong Kong now the term maid in HK is ‘Filipino.’ We have only to wait for the day when hired ‘Teacher’ in Asia becomes ‘Yank,’ or its equivalent, as now seems to be occurring.
And things made elsewhere are assembled in the low wage market of the U.S.A.
2
I think it’s reasonable and possibly very good for a teacher if they are qualified and vetted. Lord knows Americans jump through enough hoops to get their credentials. I’d hate to think this is just a race to the bottom.
1
Not paying teachers a living wage? I hope every teacher in an under paid district strikes. In my experience as a 25 year NYC public school teacher, most foreign teachers barely spoke English and were not good teachers.. Not all, but most.
8
I'm single and I've been teaching for 18 years. I could handle the salary in my area of the country, but I've been physically assaulted multiple times and I no longer have the energy to spend every evening and weekend doing hours of work. I'm looking for a second career.
16
The fact that alludes some is that we all have "freedom of contract". If the teachers are not satisfied with the wage and cannot negotiate better terms, they should seek other employment options. This is the world over 95% of us live in. Guaranteed pensions, healthcare, vacations, and tenured employment do not exist for us. We work in employment at will states. We don't receive guaranteed raises, vacations or free/subsidized medical. It's time civil servants started to live in the real world with the rest of us. After decades of perks and guarantees, the coffers are bare and there is just not enough to continue giving more. Many states are coming to terms with pension cost that are unfundable. How much more do you tax individuals to benefit a select few? If you push the tax burden on the 1%ers, they move. The old equation is broken. The liberal left's view of just pay them more is unsupportable. Essentially, if you don't like the pay, quit and move on.
6
Because politicians find it easy to cut funds to schools and education by casting them as elitist, even though they arrive to their campaigns in Cadillacs.
Because voters are ok with cutting pay to teachers and education.
If voters put as much spotlight on education as guns and abortion, this country would have a world class educated populace in a generation.
7
This issue is just surfacing but it's about ten years of reduced benefits hidden under pay statistics that remained stagnant but not initially reduced. There were also pension changes. Finally, actual pay reductions were made. It didn't happen overnight; teachers--all across the country--have been putting up with this for ten years. Are school districts under such ridiculous financial pressure that they have been hiding all of this to look better under penalty of funding cuts? No one has been speaking up. The reality is drastically out of sync, and time to stop blaming unions for everything and get on the problem.
5
Anyone want to talk about the underpaid college-level adjunct faculty members, who are also low paid, not allowed to get unemployment during the summers off (unlike theater ushers, e.g.), may or may not have medical benefits?
I don't know what the starting salaries in the Phoenix area are. I don't know why people don't want to live there. I don't know what the requirements for teachers are in terms of previous education and testing. I do know that in many places it is very difficult to get a permanent teaching job. BTW the Times needs to report teachers' income much more accurately as they tend to go up annually (unionism) and be adjusted upwards for de grees and extra credits. My cousin after 30 years in the school system of a suburb near Columbus, OH.. with a BA received 59K a year in retirement- equivalent to her last three years's salaries averagedd. Had she had an MS Ed she would have received at least 10K a year more. Had she worked 10 years less.. it would have been less.
4
Not to dis these teachers or their qualifications but it sounds like what has happened in the nursing industry. In So Cal if you go into an assisted living or rehab facility, the nurses mainly come from the Philippines. They are willing to work for less so they get the job.
Although their efforts and skills are appreciated, what does that say about how we value these professions-that due to costs we outsource the education of our young and the care of our elderly?
8
I read multiple articles on this paper that affirmed time and time again that immigration don’t cause the lowering of wages. I’ve not studied the matter so I want to believe the experts, since that is was I think is the right think to do, but then I read articles like this and I can’t stop myself for thinking that they do in some ways reduce the increase in wages. The same thing I see in my personal experience here in Italy for certain jobs (like waiters in hotel that I know for working in the field). I would like some articles that explain the research that find that immigration don’t stop the increase in wages so that we can believe it more, not just as an act of faith in the expert but actually believe
4
Out here in "crazy housing market land," a $75K salary with housing built by the School District might work. Otherwise a 1 bedroom apartment or studio costs north of $1500 a month if you can find it.
They would have to live "somewhere" else and commute an hour plus each way in crowded freeways. Or double up, or live in sketchy and/or tough neighborhoods, or have spouses earning enough to allow the teacher to do the job he/she loves - teaching.
This is in California with the Governorship and both State Houses controlled by the Democrats and seemingly "progressive" leadership in most big cities.
I admire and back the teachers in States who took a stand and said, "no more." I support them, I just wish they had done it a decade or more ago.
Importing teachers for lower wages is a GOP solution. Cut taxes to the bone and bring in workers from outside the country to replace recalcitrant teachers. "Insourcing" as opposed to outsourcing.
Then you have a demagogue like Trump saying it is all a problem created by "someone else," while shoveling more money to people who don't really need it. If this model continues why do we need Governments? We could just dial back a few hundred years before civilized society in America and it is every man and woman for themselves. Or we will have a nation of owners and serfs.
6
A New York Times reporter should now travel to the Philippines and talk to the US teachers working at the International School of Manila or Brent International School and ask them why they left working in US public schools to teach overseas like I have. After reading this article it is clear to me that public school salaries are not high enough to attract qualified teachers to teach in public schools in either the US or the Philippines. At some point taxpayers in both countries need to tell local politicians that teacher salaries should be the same as salaries for professionals with similar university degrees if the taxpayers want quality public schools.
4
I quit as an elementary music teacher in Illinois and then went international. I was BARELY surviving on the money I got while teaching in Illinois. ONE year out of 20 years of work I was able to save $50.
My first Illinois music job lasted 12 years. Then a referendum didn't pass and I was to be assigned to a 4th grade classroom. Because of budget cuts there was no planning time. I couldn't stand the thought of teaching all new subjects and not having any planning time so I quit and found other music positions.
I went through 4 more districts and never got tenure. I had a master's degree and graduate hours so was considered high on the pay scale. Districts, in order to save money, were hiring music people and then firing them so they'd never have to pay any higher on the pay scale. I couldn't stand the stress of looking for a new job every 1-2 years and found out about international schools.
I worked at the Santa Cruz Co-operatieve School in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for two years. Then I was accepted at the International School of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. In KL I received a good salary. It was high enough that I was sending home money each month and now use that to help with my retirement. I also was given EXCELLENT health insurance which cost me nothing. There was a savings plan required by workers in Malaysia. I used that money, which was sent to me after completing my teaching, as a down payment on my condo.
5
Teachers make a fortune in suburban New York, driving property taxes through the roof and forcing older folks and middle class families to flee. Hard to sympathize much here.
2
i am a new yorker who do taxes for filipino teachers in nyc and from other several states including maryland, arizona, new mexico, colorado, etc. while i am happy for the nyc teachers who are paid from $80K's to $100K's , some even just in their 40's w/ no ma's nor phd's, i pity those from arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, esp. because of their low pays of $30K to 35K, even those with MA's. A couple of clients with MA's have to have 2nd job teaching evening classes at a college just to reach a salary in the $40K's. Knowing how other northeast states pay their teachers, our conversation usually leads and ends with the plan to apply for teaching jobs in either maryland and new york. So as soon as these filipino teachers have the proper visas or green card, they go to these northeastern states. the 2 clients i am talking about here and several others w/o advanced degrees, are now in prince george, baltimore and other cities in Maryland. So, unless Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, etc., increase their pay, these same recruited filipino teachers will leave Arizona, and the situation of a lack of teachers continues .
5
This is truly enraging. This is the more insidious type of common corruption among politicians, government administrators, and public policy decision makers. Chronically underpay teachers, undermine the profession, deny students even basic resources, then import non-citizens from overseas and foreign cultures to then engage in the most fundamental of activities for forming and building the American citizenry, the American sensibility and values, and American civic life, the educational public school system. I'm sickened. This is a tight, clear example of globalization as a destructive force in American life. And the tyranny of identity politics and multi multiculturalism is used as the rationale for these corrupt practices, all while American citizens from their 20's to retirees are desperate for sustainable incomes for themselves and their families following a world wide depression less than 10 years ago that still have left millions suffering in its wake. Disgusting.
2
Amazing how many more jobs uncovered that Americans don't want to do--for less than a living wage without living like sardines.
5
As a former educational administrator, we tried to find physics teachers after the state where I worked decided that all 9th grade students would be tested in physics, so the labor pool for qualified physics teachers was very tight. We interviewed two qualified teachers one from Istanbul, another from Hawaii!
1
No unions, no pension, no social safety net. These are Trump's stated goals. Let the teachers starve, soon we will all be. When millions die there will be still more money for Trump & friends...
3
No teacher should be forced to work 2 other jobs just to pay rent and feed their family. What other profession that demands a Master’s degree to preform this most important job treats people and students this way.
9
I may want to hire an accountant for my company at minimum wage or $22,800 a year. Even though there are thousands of accountants out there looking for work, like teachers, I'll I find no takers. Instead of getting a permit to import a migrant accountant without permanent work status willing to take the job at a fraction of the going salary, the government will tell me to pony up the going rate and hire a legal worker.
The same should apply to employers who happen to be local school boards. There are thousands and thousands of out of work teachers in the us. The local school board must simply come up with a competitive salary. Instead, we have Mariposa County AZ, where this took place doling out tax subsidies and other public monies given to private companies, including Wal-Mart, to the tune of about $35 million. How many teachers would that cover?
20
Can't you just find somebody good at math to take those accounting jobs, though? Why do you need all those fancy credentials? Eyeroll. That's the argument of many posters on this article about teachers.
5
and I forgot to add...this is Sheriff Joe's county! That's right, the immigrant-haters are apparently also phonies with conflicting views when it's convenient. The Philippino teacher could pass as Mexican. Just wait until he gets stopped by the sheriffs boys and that learn that he's their kids teacher?
3
When I started teaching I was lucky enough to work on the East Coast where we were paid a decent wage and had a solid pension guarantee.
Things have changed vastly since then and I'm so glad I left. Not only have wages stagnated, in some places they have effectively gone down. State governments routinely omit contributing to their teachers' pension systems. The crucible of testing, testing, testing kills the joy of learning and steals time from in-depth learning. In Philadelphia public schools we were told to *abandon* helping our weak students but focus instead on stronger students so our school might score higher on state tests. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to see the growing crises. I'm so glad I left --it's painful to see kids and their teachers struggling to make something special without the tools or time they need to succeed.
11
I think a lot of non-teachers are put off by the fact that it appears teachers work only nine months out of the year and get quite a few holidays.
My solution would be go to $75 K starting salary and benefits but restrict summer vacation to three weeks. Then teachers get something of value and pay something in return.
4
You're right. Most people work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, 48 - 50 weeks a year. That's 240 - 250 days, 1900 - 2000 hours. Teachers work 180 days, and even if they work 8 hours a day, which they don't, that's only 1440 hours a year. I believe teachers in many places like Arizona are drastically underpaid, usually republican states. But teachers in Westchester, where I'm from, and other suburban school districts in the notheast are drastically overpaid.
2
After a successful 20 year biz career, I left my executive position to answer my heart's call & became a teacher. I remember looking at median teacher pay in NE & thinking, "Not bad for 9 months." Now I know better! 1st, it's 9.5 months. 2nd, I worked a helluva lot of unpaid overtime. Teachers who care work the std 2080 hrs/yr (fulltime, year-round), but do it in 9.5 months. My 1st year (95-96) was a .7 position, not full time, & I worked 14-hour days - for $14,000! For the remaining 21 yrs, I worked at least 9 hrs/day, the vast majority of days were 10-11 hrs/day. I regularly worked on weekends. For the 1st 10 yrs or so, my pay was so low I taught an extra class period, taught evening workshops or taught summer school.
I can compare teaching with business. In my 1st career, I worked with a team so we could share an unexpected workload surge. I had great IT support & the equipment/supplies I needed. As an executive, I could transfer my calls and focus on a big project in a quiet office. I was rewarded for excellence and productivity improvements.
A teacher is simultaneously: a front-line customer serv rep w/125+ clients; a manager planning & directing, & responsible for results; R&D creating innovative products to meet customer needs; facilities & supplies manager to equip the classroom; & personnel director for 125+ students. All this in shared, noisy workspace with no high performance pay. I NEEDED time off to recharge. I loved what I did for kids but it was very hard.
5
I think a lot of non-teachers really do believe teachers work nine months of the year and get a lot of holidays.
Their lack of education is showing.
7
Taxpayers don't get it. if you want your community's children to receive a good education then you have to be willing to pay for it. It's like anything else.
So go ahead and outsource education to the Philippines. while I'm sure they produce excellent teachers something tells me you won't be satisfied with the results, unless of course the only thing that matters to you is that you didn't pay much for what you got.
16
We should recruit overseas for qualified doctors and other health care professionals, put them to work subject to oversight and testing. That would go a long way in addressing the cost crisis in health care.
3
maybe we should go off shore to recruit politicians who will get something done!
4
I think you probably do. Certainly Canada has many international docs and nurses.
1
What a great idea! Outsource teachers! Why not just do away with brick and mortar schools altogether and let kids log onto an online classroom without having to get out of bed? No more need for all that staff. No more need to worry about mass shootings. The teacher could be in Manila or Bangalore or Mexico City and we can pay that lucky stiff a quarter of what we have to pay a teacher here and they'll be thankful. Facebook will provide the platform. They can insert ads onto the lesson plans so school can be free. Let the free market rule! You think I'm kidding? This is where Trump and Betsy DeVos are taking us.
93
I don't see how importing teachers is any different than importing H1-B visas or importing Mexicans to pick fruit and vegetables.
To use a popular liberal phrase "No US Citizens are willing to teach, and we must import workers". Isn't this the same reason Dems love unchecked immigration? The US must import roofers and lettuce pickers because American's aren't willing to do the hard labor.
10
Except that the problem here isn't that Americans aren't willing to be teachers, it's that tight- fisted and ignorant taxpayers aren't willing to pay good teachers a good salary and provide them the resources they need to educate their children. So no, teachers aren't like lettuce pickers.
39
Gee, maybe the difference between a teacher and a fruit picker is: a teacher is required to obtain a four year bachelors degree, and a masters degree within a certain number of years of beginning teaching (often 5 years), pass a state certification exam, and after obtaining initial certification, most teachers are required to complete some yearly continuing education to stay certified. I am willing to guess a fruit picker is required to have non of these qualifications.
25
Disagree with a portion of that, Mr. Dunlap. Re: Roofers, Carpenters, Tile Setters, Laborers, the trades. I don't know many tradesmen, that have not been negatively impacted by illegal immigration, although they don't use those trades as examples for H2A and H1B workers needing to be brought in. Americans are ready, willing and able to build a house. But.......while those American workers, who were making $25-$30/hour (Union scale), plus workers comp, medical, vacation, retirement, etc., in the 90s, there was a great influx of undocumented workers, which continues now, and people discovered these guys that would work for $12/hour, you don't have to pay workers comp, vacation, medical, retirement, really the perfect employee. They don't gripe, they always show up, they do pretty good work, some really outstanding craftsmen coming here, but there is a whole group of middle class Americans, whose livelihood was stepped on, unless they wanted to make about 1/3 of what they did in the 90s, their entire lifestyle was upended. No more ski boats were sold. No more 3/4 ton trucks....you get the idea.
Americans are willing to work.
2
It is painfully obvious that many state legislators view compensating teachers as a cost center, not as an investment. Investments are expected to return multiples of their initial cost over time, wow cost centers are not expected to return tangible values in most business accounting systems.
A policeman may provide protection, but does not generally return multiples of value to the state except in times of high crime rates and such. Likewise a state senator. A good teacher, on the other hand, invests the states' time and money in training young citizens, many of whom go on to return enormous yield on investment.
I cast this criticism in the harsh language of business, because I wish to point out to the bean counters that their inability to accurately measure this return on investment does not mean it is not there, only that if you use the wrong tools or measure the wrong things your model is worthless.
From Socrates in Athens to the many great teachers who fed my mind, I know that the value of learning and of imagination is beyond our present mathematics. Our society depends on its best citizens every bit as much as they depended on their great teachers to make them into those best citizens.
26
Arizona in 2015 was spending $7489 per student. A teacher with 20 students is drawing $150,000 in revenue. With 25 students, $190,000. With 30 students, $225,000. If a teacher is paid $40,000 plus $20,000 in benefits, where is the other $90,000, $130,000 or $165,000 going. Perhaps if the number of administrators and athletic directors were reduced, there would be more money for teachers.
14
My relative who taught theater and English in Michigan had saved up $5,000 from bake sales for theater production (accumulated over more than 20 years) only to have that taken from her and given to the sports department. You're right!
Once again the invisible hand fails to work for anyone but the already rich.
Once again government fails its people due to its mad commitment to siphon every dollar upward, its refusal to tax capital.
Once again children are left to suffer the consequences.
Now we're reading more and more about jobs going begging for lack of qualified applicants.
Well, you boneheads, what did you think would happen when you cut education spending to the bone and the only people who can put with your constant disrespect and teacher-hate are foreigners who have it even worse at home?
33
Interesting that red states pay teachers so poorly that they have many immigrants—willing to take lower salary—teaching their children.
27
Great reporting. I am a teacher in Las Vegas and this has been going on for years. Especially from places like the Philippines. It’s a symptom of a lack of attraction to the profession due to high stress and often low pay. Instead of making the profession more attractive through increased pay/benefits and small class size, we are just looking to put a bandaid on the problem with this type of recruitment. I’m not arguing the “taking our jobs” position, just stating that there are clear reasons that these measures are being taken.
14
There is no evidence that small class size leads to better outcomes.
1
I guess we will still be getting immigrants after all. Crazy.
4
It seems like a simple concept. The people to whom you entrust your children for learning and personal growth every day should earn an adequate living wage and be able to see themselves as members of the middle class in a reasonable timeframe. Instead, teachers and those who advocate on their behalf, are demonized as layabouts who are seeking to get rich on the public purse. To quote a current leader of your government ‘Sad’.
As long as teachers are not valued for the substantial contributions they make to your society, and its capacity to grow and thrive, you will be doomed to being a second rate, underperforming economy that will regress in its stature and place in the world.
151
We have to ask ourselves; What is it we want from teachers? What are they worth and why is this so difficult?
NYC did this years back - importing teachers from Australia and India I believe. It would be interesting to know how many of them are still in the field or at least made it to the 5 year mark (50% of teachers quit before their 5th year).
For me the bottom line is; you get what you pay for.
4
Betsy DeVos is winning her battle to destroy American public education.Her problem is that her privileged private school background, combined with her fat bank account and enormous and deep political connections placed her in
A position to dismantle public school education and to degrade public school teachers.
The federal and state governments easily followed her push to continue this assault, now forcing school districts to look for teachers from other countries
To take up the enormous burden of teaching our public school students marketable skills for 21st century jobs.
Right now, our own American government,both at the state and federal level, hope that this does not happen, and this wii not happen given the sorry attitude state and federal politicians have toward public school teachers, or anyone connected to public school education!
45
I remember years ago my elementary students asking me if I had seen a particular commercial from television. I told them I didn't watch TV or even have one. Being a young person from Austin, this was a badge of honor for me... The kids gasped and were shocked, then one leaned over to her friend and said, "My mom told me that teachers don't make any money."
These were Title I students.
34
Engineers have been dealing with this sort of thing for years and on a much greater scale so I guess it’s time for the teachers to get their due. Good luck getting any raises when someone making 10% of your salary is willing and able to come over here and do your job and the government is more than willing to let them.
36
When I lived in Buffalo NY, more than 20years ago, I entered a teacher education program. More than half of my classmates were Canadian. Education colleges in Ontario were highly competitive and challenging to get accepted into because teaching in Canada is a good-paying job.
The other day I heard an interview with an Arizona educator, currently in administration. He has 18 years experience and a master’s degree. He said he wasn’t unhappy with his own salary but wanted to advocate for better funding for education overall. His salary? $49K.
I thought about my Canadian classmates and wondered what the average salary for a teacher in Ontario would be today. Around $75k Canadian according to a quick Google search.
“It shouldn’t be a side gig, teaching.” - Bill Maher
56
I've also done side-by-side comparisons of the education system here in MI and over the border in Canada.
The intentional commodification, standards weakening, and teacher scapegoating that has taken place over the past couple decades has led to a previously unthinkable decision.
We've decided to look into driving across the border every day to send our daughter to school in Canada. Not only will she have access to superior standards but an opportunity to learn all subjects in both French and English immersively. It's sad as a descendant of three generations of teachers.
I believe that if more Americans could take their kids out of the failing US systems and had better options state governments would have to respond. Because the corporations who are making money selling their services and importing teachers would lose money with a reduced population.
2
This is not a red issue y'all. Democrats are just as complicit in the privatization of public education through the expansion of for profit charter schools and attacks on teacher unions. We need to hold both parties accountable for their attacks on public education.
27
Why have schools at all. The Amish only educate to 8th
grade. After that, everyone to the farm fields. carpentry shops and the kitchens. Non-Amish (English) can just be released into the streets and the countryside if the crops need to be harvested and the chickens processed in
the factories.
4
I am NOT a teacher. I believe that all american children should receive quality education for their intellectual development and to provide a productive workforce that can compete globally. Good, qualified and motivated teachers have been and are very important for any society to ensure sustainability, continuity and growth. If American citizens fall for the republican agenda and are looking for driving down the salaries of teachers to bargain basement levels with the notion that this is a like any other municipal service this nation has no future. The downward slide of the economy and well being of the nation is in jeopardy. It is a shame that we cannot fund the education of our children adequately. Within a couple of decades we will hit the rock bottom. All the money spent on defense will not lift us from the grave we are digging for ourselves.
54
But in a way this is in the military’s favor. Creating a legion of unthinking drones is exactly what they’d need (note - NOT implying that any current or former military member is that way at all!) just saying as a thought experiment.
5
We have such high thresholds of 'certification' and hiring in the US for teachers. Meanwhile, we increasingly need to hire teachers from abroad where, no doubt, there ain't so much red tape? This stinks. Trust me. There are lots of Americans who would love the middle-class job that is teaching, even if only for a while.
22
The problem is that teaching isn’t a middle class job anymore- it’s a working class job for so many.
21
It’s a living as they say. For me teaching was (thankfully) a second income.
This is all on the heads of the governor of Arizona, former ice cream magnate Doug Ducey, and the John Birch Society-influenced conservative members of the legislature who would much prefer to divert tax dollars to private schools.
Defunding public education is NOT the way to attract 'big business' to the Grand Canyon State.
42
Why do we hire teachers on J-1 visas but not police officers and firefighters? I’m sure it isn’t a matter of supply as I believe there are plenty in the Philippines and elsewhere who would love to make higher salaries in the US. I think the reason we don’t do this is sexism and, to some extent, racism. Firefighters and police officers are often white men and are viewed as more “valuable” to society than teachers, who are more likely women and POC. It’s incredibly sad that I’m 2018 we still do not value educators, who truly hold the future of our nation in their hands.
48
This article struck home. My son has a masters degree in elementary education. He loves his current teaching job, but is now job hunting because he simply can't support himself on the salary. So, Trump doesn't want immigrants coming into the country, but when school districts refuse to pay a living wage, the solution is to bring in guest workers willing to work for a lower wage. When I was going to the public schools in Queens in the nineteen fifties and sixties, teaching was a respected profession. Now teachers in many places are low-wage workers. We can't blame Mr. Soberano. He's got a family to support in the Philippines. What he's doing makes perfect sense. We CAN blame Betsy DeVoss for the continued devaluation of what was once a respected profession in the US.
268
Betsy is new on the scene. Blame a generation of Americans who think paying taxes is inherently wrong. Blame tax cuts for those who don't need it and shifting costs down the economic spectrum. Blame the way schools are funded -by property taxes that ensure some kids get the best of the "level playing field" while others can't even get on the pitch.
The impact of this has been along time coming.
86
Yep, it WAS a respected profession. But, not in the sphere of pay! Only within the past twenty years or so have some States and Districts begun to pay decent wages. However, for the most part it remains undervalued!
19
From the 1st paragraph, my viewpoint is that this is union busting and nothing short of criminal when so many US residents and citizens are struggling to get by on megar salaries already offered.
39
Another glaring problem here is abuse of the J-1 visa program. It's meant for cultural exchange. Not using the H1-B visa program because it's too difficult is a lame excuse. A J-1 visa is exploitative to the incoming teachers, who are grateful to earn a low salary without any assurance of future employment. It's a disgrace.
41
America's biggest and wealthiest employers routinely lobby Congress for two things: 1) Lower taxes, and 2) More H-1B visas, because there aren't enough "highly trained, highly skilled" Americans to fill their jobs. They want to hire the workers that Chinese, Indian, and European taxpayers educate rather than pay their own taxes to educate our next generations. I don't know where all the benefits of the new tax-cuts are going, but they're sure not trickling down to our kids or their schools.
88
While, teacher pay is a definitive factor in shortages. We must also look at teacher preparation programs and certification requirements as a cause for the problems. It is often nonsensical, discouraging people from entering the profession and then what ends up happening is the school system hires people who never went through these programs due to shortages. PATHETIC!
7
For years politicians have derided the teaching profession, increasing demands on teachers and kids. With a better economy, people do not want to enter an occupation with such low esteem. By following the "reform movement", we have allowed good teachers to be driven out.
12
While it's likely true that 'a modest increase in teacher salaries and school funding won't be enough to persuade more local candidates to enter the profession' do you really think Americans are at all interested in participating in the elite's efforts to lower the level of academic challenge offered in the Nation's schools? People are voting with their feet, even risking prison, to get the academics their child needs; the NYT has another article today showing how that is working in NYC, one of the few places with some school choice.
Up the salaries a bit and decrease the retirement slightly, and open the profession to laid off tech workers and you'll have all the math and science people required...if you up the academics so that students who need the equivalent of A levels get that, and those that need O levels get that. And don't say these people can't teach..they are doing just what Sal Khan is doing, teaching all the relatives who are stuck in districts that don't offer sufficient academics. Or they are offering courses online. We have the talent, if we can get the Board to budget for it. Maybe share a few bus routes?
9
"..open the profession to laid off tech workers & you'll have all the math & science people required..And don't say these people can't teach.."
No one is stopping them from applying. Licensing takes about a year. However, they may know their subject but not know how to teach it effectively. It's called Pedagogy. And that is what I see often in your suggested scenario.
I've worked w/plenty of people over the years; biologists, chemists, mathematicians who come into middle school & get eaten alive by 12 year olds. Just because you know your subject does not mean you know how to;
1. break it down in multiple ways as per Gardner's Multiple Intelligences 2. keep it engaging so your students are not tuning you out
3. keep taking classes to stay abreast in your subject area at your expense
4. and most importantly, dealing with a multitude of student disruptions aka "classroom management"
The last one is usually the hardest. Add any lack of cultural awareness by the adults & your all set for a year of struggle & angst.
Teaching is an art that requires many skills; being able to provoke thought, simplification of an idea, mediation between groups, acting, multitasking, parenting et cetera. We need to accept that no other career can prepare you for this one.
Khan is a great tool. However, doing something online is not equal to engaging on a personal level to ask more complex questions for deeper understanding. All the Khan kids are aceing SATs but can't explain it back to you.
15
Thank you for your reply. There appears to be a widespread belief that one can just walk into a classroom and teach effectively by virtue of.....having attended school? Being intelligent? Simply not the case.
3
It's an old, nasty path trod by many many corporations, and now, sadly, the states: Pay poor wages, create poor working conditions to the point that we drive American talent away, then claim we have to stock jobs with cheap foreign labor.
We should ask every single elected official where he/she stands on this before giving them our votes. Corporations and the politicians in their pocket are squarely to blame for taking jobs from their American customers and taxpayers in the name of saving a dollar. We should boycott their goods and vote vote vote them out.
33
So what do all the anti-immigrant "Make America Great Again"-ers think about this? If ever there were a story to raise the hackles of the right wing, it's this one... Except solving it might mean a)raising taxes and b) being in alignment with the teachers unions...such cognitive dissonance.. Heads exploding... Red hat shreds flying.... For what it's worth, I'm not anti-immigrant, but the idea that we're unwilling to find the money to pay Americans a living wage to educate our own kids is just all kinds of wrong.
53
Any moron could tell you why Americans don't want to go into teaching. Why would anyone want a low paying, difficult job that has little social status or respect. You can make more as a truck driver, have less stress and not be blamed for the terrible state of education in this country. The anti-public education extremists are succeeding wonderfully well at destroying what is the most important job of any society, to educate the young.
79
A travesty redolent of hypocrisy. Arizona, where anti-immigrant mania runs high, is happy to import indentured servants to teach its children. I’m a product of California public schools, from K to grad school. I remember when we idolized, adored and emulated our K-12 teachers who were, by and large, members of our community. Teaching was valued, and to end up teaching in the very classrooms in which we were educated was deemed a triumph and a debt repaid. No more. This is additional evidence of the rot of our country.
33
Disgraceful. Not the foreigners, by any means. But the people in our government who will not direct our tax dollar to pay a decent wage to the countless educators already here in our country who would gladly teach if it didn't mean they live a step or two away from poverty. The only people I know personally who are teachers all have masters degrees and still can only afford to teach because their spouse's are lawyers and engineers.
28
What a perfect model for our country! Cut teacher salaries to the point that no Americans can afford to live on it, then exploit people from the Philippines for a tidy profit for profiteers, and call it a win for everybody! I can't wait until this is the model for all labor-intensive sectors of the economy. #RedforEd has their work cut out for them.
23
This is the business model of the Make America Great Again oligarchs. They get millions from the tax cuts, deplete the state and local budgets so that education is prioritized below public safety programs, then divert more education funds to private school voucher programs which pay their teachers even less! Way to go, Trump supporters, who don't even care that Mar-A-Lago (AKA Tub of Lardo) hires foreign workers because the Trump Organization doesn't want to pay salaries that attract American workers.
2
This is what I experienced in the 1990's as a journeyman press operator in the printing industry. I looked up one day and realized I was surrounded by Mexican immigrants actively recruited by my employer working for half of the pay. Although it is true that there was more going on in the industry than just cheap labor. There are still highly profitable printing companies out there, I still have a friend that works for one, that uses this practice of depressing wages to this day. I've never blamed the immigrant for doing what he or she does to survive. Who I do blame are cynical and hypocrite owners and managers for waving the American flag on one hand and using the other hand to economically stab their fellow Americans in the back and laughing all the way to the bank.
70
School districts are simply following Trump's lead: he has used the H1b visa program to hire workers at Mar a lago.
What's good for the gander isn't good for the goose?
11
Hiring foreign teachers is a disservice to the students.
Any child with an auditory processing issue, or even just ADD/ADHD, will have trouble focusing on the lesson because of difficulties with accents; that is a baseline expectation that will need to be considered in the effective teaching of your child.
An interesting factor is the difference in classroom control. A teacher with a background in an authoritarian style classroom (prevalent in countries which had a British presence) will have issues integrating his/her lesson plans with the US class, with a lot of conflict in achieving the sort of classroom control that is the norm in US schools. Expect pain: frustration, throwing things, slamming doors (based on my children's experience) and that just from the foreign teacher. Expect a sudden emphasis on rote learning and busy work rather than dynamic classroom demonstrations and discussions.
Do not be surprised to find that the foreign teacher pulls lesson plans off the internet, plans which may not be grade-level appropriate. To be fair, many teachers now just copy lesson plans from the internet - there are quite a few available, hopefully customized by the teacher to each current class...
Also, expect that if your child ends up with a foreign teacher who rings all the bells described above your child's standardized test scores will drop. One of my children saw his drop almost two grades (down to the average for his grade level, but distressing).
Complain loudly!
10
Thank you. This was an excellent analysis from the inside. And from a family with teachers I can affirm your analysis.
2
I agree that foreign-born teachers who never shed their extremely thick accents (may they be French, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, whatever - even if they're STEM or music/arts geniuses) can be quite challenging for any US-born & bred pupil.
To be fair, though, there are US-born and bred teachers who have pretty thick accents and regional dialects of their own too (Brooklyn, Boston, Appalachian, Texan, whatever).
Quite frankly, too, some US-born and bred teachers have serious issues too in their own spelling, grammar, and Math, among other things. This in part explains why too many US high school graduates need a ton of remedial English and Math work too, once in college or skilled trades schools.
Part of the issue here is that US culture apparently thinks that "those who can't, teach," so teaching as a profession is so woefully underpaid and disrespected here, unlike most of the world.
It's also not fair that teachers have to be social workers & de facto parents too, when US parents don't parent!
As long as mainstream American culture discourages its own home-grown teaching talent w/ high student loans, non-living wage pay, and overall disrespect for their hard work, public school districts will have to reluctantly turn to hopefully neutral/tolerably-accented and highly competent, experienced foreign-born, English-speaking teachers (who will humbly put up w/ the stress, knowing they'll go home w/ modest $ savings) to pick up the slack.
1
Xenophobia much? If your kid cannot cope with a foreign accent, how will he cope with being part of the global marketplace? In any high-tech company today you’ll hear more accents than in a UN session. If your kid has neurological or psychological issues and is disruptive, in my opinion, he should not be in a regular classroom. One of the reasons American schools are so terrible is the lack of proper discipline. My kids went to a private international school and benefited immensely from being exposed to a multicultural environment. And finally, if your child’s test scores drop, your first impulse is to blame the teacher? Seriously? This is exhibit A as to why if my kids were school age today, I’d never let them attend an American public school, filled with disruptive and ignorant kids shielded from actual education by their ignorant and entitled parents.
2
The author focused on one state, Arizona. Colorado only recruited 23 teachers, 20 of whom were granted a visa that leads to permanent residency, most of whom teach foreign language—hardly objectionable. (Or does “bilingual” mean immersion? Because that makes foreign recruitment even more understandable.) Surely she would have included other states if she really wanted to convince us that it were indeed a national issue. This is a problem for obvious reasons, not least of which is because, instead of an argument against austerity, it can easily be interpreted as validation of anti-immigration hysteria. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it making headlines at Fox News, Breitbart, and other bottom-feeding media outlets by this afternoon.
You may want to investigate more. There are"body shops" contracting to provide teachers, so a simple search for your school district as the employer of record can give misleading results.
3
Public school teachers “another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans.” What professional category is next on the list to require J-1 Visas? It seems that Republican leaders seem fixated on discounting everything that made America great!
20
Same reason that hospitals hire Phillipino nurses. They work hard , do not complain and can be paid less (at least initially).
13
Trump opposes immigration because it will take away American jobs. Here we have a program designed to take away American jobs. I don't get it.
176
I don't think the program is designed to take away American jobs; it is meant to provide America with individuals who are willing to do jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. It's unfortunate that teaching has joined this category of employment.
2
Trump did not invent this program.
2
It is my understanding that AZ pushes charter schools thereby depleting public schools of teachers and resources. Does anyone know the results of these "reforms"?
11
The incredibly frustrating aspect of this story that states with the poorest educational systems always vote against their own interests. Arizona is redder than red. The mantra of tax cuts and "liberty" mean that they lose what they don't even realize is at risk. Will they change their tune when their public schools face collapse? I doubt it.
13
So, while loudly demanding "the wall," our government allows this fraud to take place. There is no shortage of qualified teachers; they just simply can't compete with the imported cheap labor.
18
We have our priorities straight, “trust me”.
Increase spending on the military and Mexico walls, but let our kids’ education suffer because teachers can’t make a living wage. We could give them weapons training though, in case one of their students brings an arsenal in for show and tell.
Don’t worry, Don and Betsy are all over it.
How does this all work out?
“We’ll see”.
16
i'm not sure it is lack of qualified candidates as much as qualified people who don't desire to get paid poorly. So look outside the U.S., exploit differences in exchange rates and cost of living - stranglehold them with a visa so if they don't work hard and do everything the district wants they are shipped back - and you are once again just patching up the educational system here.
5
These teachers are hired from countries that have a dearth of good teachers to begin with. This practice hurts qualified professionals from the US and the communities where the foreign teachers are recruited from.
16
Nearly 40 years into the Reagan tax cut addiction we can't pay to educate our college students and then can't pay them enough to pay off their college debt if they want to teach. We're still building primo h.s. gyms and fronting good football teams, though, so something must be working.
24
Wow, another opportunity to try to pay people less. Perhaps privatized K-12 education can get the teachers' pay down to minimum wage.
5
Betsy DeVos is working hard to make that happen. An uneducated population is good for the Trump Administration, which relies on lazy thinkers and/or ignorance and apathy to achieve the far right agenda.
3
The American education system has to realize that everything starts with having well-paid, well-respected educators. You attract great people to the job and set up the next generation for success.
7
Arizona is one of those states that grossly underpays its teachers, so districts bring in Filipino teachers who probably know very little about American history, politics, geography, culture, economy, teenagers etc. How would they? If you value educational achievement, this is not the way to go. Perhaps a variety of international teachers well versed in things American from different places, if you believe in education to live in a global society, but otherwise why not target English speaking teachers from Mexico who know more and the US through family connections?
3
It is not necessarily that the temporary immigrant teachers are not qualified to teach in their fields, it is that the school districts exploit both the U.S. born teachers and the immigrant teachers, to the detriment of the students and the entire educational system.
126
It's not exploitation, it's capitalism. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's what it is, as horrible as it is.
Agreed. Sounds like the "consultant" recruiters like Ms. Avenida and the Alliance Abroad Group are the ones making the big money in this game. I wonder what they make per year. After all it isn't the school district that pays - it's the recruited teachers.
1
Why wouldn't they recruit from Teach For America? Pay teacher's a living wage, so that you don't HAVE to recruit outside of the U.S.A. Why isn't that money going to American teachers?? Fund their schools, so they don't HAVE to dig into their pockets for supplies and they have the nerve to claim on their taxes and NOT get reimbursed.
7
"“We embrace diversity" Now there is a politically correct slogan conveniently turned on its head. A teacher is not an au pair, has no American education that fills in the oxygen level of teaching and probably speaks English with broken accent and grammar. Wonderful. We definitely need open immigration to raise the quality of life in American society.
11
What should we call a country that pays peanuts to those who with patience, skill, and dedication inspire children to become responsible, competent citizens, but grants largesse bordering upon obscene, as well as heroic stature, to those who have mastered....throwing a ball?
199
A country who is certainly not “#1”
8
Same process has been in place over the last decade in healthcare. These days a RN can go anywhere and get a job. Most nurses are compensated pretty well in urban areas but I suspect it is not true in rural ones. Most hospitals have an active recruitment program in other countries where they can identify nurses who will come to work here for less money. The underlying issue has not been analyzed, only the surface layer. As a former educator who left teaching after 23 years, I can only substantiate what others have already said. The work is insanely difficult, the responsibility for teaching subject matter, decision-making, behavior modification, all in an atmosphere which is focused on test results has driven teachers out of the field. Add the threat of violence to the mix and we have the formula as to why young people seek careers in other fields.
27
Totally agree after 37 years in the teaching profession.
5
I believe this is what was known at one point as strike breaking.
If an employed, educated US professional (which teachers are) cannot afford to put a roof over their head or feed themselves without food stamps or living with relatives, the answer cannot be to employ cheap foreign labor, however grateful that labor may be.
57
The unstated thing to note in Talbot's comment is that it's only a problem worth stopping if it's an educated professional getting impoverished. The unspoken dark side of our professional-class belief in meritocracy is that we semi-consciously think that unskilled American laborers should have to compete with insourced competition that forces them to collect food stamps and live with relatives.
5
Indeed we now have the de facto Walmart school of compensation in education.
The mega-wealthy are now our country’s largest criminal element.
2
Excellent point about class bias. What would it take to convince you to vote Democrat?
Five years of college are required for a teaching credential in California. In addition to the lower than average pay teachers are required to purchase their own supplies. When teachers are given the respect they deserve and politicians stop using them as political footballs we will have more people willing to go into the profession.
28
Teachers are not required to buy supplies; they choose to do so. It is also tax deductible. In my opinion, it should be illegal for teachers to purchase ANY school supplies out of their own pockets!
8
Tax deductible is not the same as reimbursed. It is, or ought to be, the responsibility of the school district to include teacher supplies in their budgets (and we won't even touch on what teachers buy for their students).
9
Tax-deductible is not the same as a tax credit. The teacher is still spending out-of-pocket if they have to buy supplies due to inadequate funding. I have seen teachers set up GoFundMe accounts because they cannot get the money to do their art or science programs. Students are being shortchanged and teachers are burned out from fundraising campaigns.
6
This kind of situation turns capitalism on its head. Scarcity is supposed to make wages rise. When employers scout abroad, where the cost of living is much lower than anywhere in the US, it means an unfair disadvantage to workers. I'm sure these foreign teachers are fine, but this practice undermines our system of public education. Who would want to become a teacher for bargain-basement wages driven down by teachers from the developing world? It has happened in many industries, but public education is a public good and should be paid for through properly set taxes.
70
for a certain subset of the right, the whole point is to undermine public education. In my state, we have had a billionaire couple devote huge sums for decades, to bring about privatizing the educational system, denying any attempt at accountability for the private systems, and running down public education-- the woman is now our secretary of education
22
I'm sure you're right. I guess these states want to pay for more mass incarceration and drug abuse epidemics. When you lose civilizing institutions, you end up with serious social problems. But right wing zealots don't care. Their kids go to private schools.
8
It's wrong to bring in "scabs" to do teaching...but perfectly OK to bring in massive numbers of illegal aliens to do meatpacking ... which literally destroyed the US meatpacking unions and drove down wages by 60-70%. When we talk about that, lefty libs scream we are "racist xenophobic bigots!" for not wanting illegal immigration.
4
This is an absolute lie. There is no shortage of teachers in general. It is harder to hire math and science teachers, and harder to retain them. That is due to failure of districts to nurture the CRAFT of teaching (classroom control, teaching style). But there is simply NO LACK OF TEACHERS. This is the Big Lie of cheap labor. Plus, another factor is the fun juncket factor: If you hire from the Phillipines, the School Board can organize a tax-payer funded trip to the Phillipines to interview candidates. Wow!!! Such a deal!!!
76
There's a shortage of teachers willing to earn the low salary AZ wants to pay them.
21
George, you are not in Arizona. We are short a reported 2000 teachers state-wide. Tucson alone has a shortage of 216 teachers. This is a direct result of low pay (43rd in the Nation), and poor public education funding. To make up for the shortage, we have enlarged classes, put teachers without teaching credentials in the classroom. Though not an educator, I have been very active in advocating to restore education funding, and I have had the privilege of working with teachers and educators across the State, they are dedicated to giving our children the best education they can in spite of a lack of adequate state funding
91
There are literally millions of Americans -- with college degrees -- who could and would teach, but they are prevented from even substitute teaching or TUTORING due to not have a TEACHING CERTIFICATE, which is restricted by the unions to keep pay artificially high. Shortages benefit unions, so they can terrorize taxpayers.
1
I don't fault anyone who wants to come here and teach. But what's the difference between this situation and one where a company brings in scabs?
And who can say sincerely that our society values its children and its future? We choose leaders who give the lion's share of our resources to a very specific demographic and the rest of us can go eat grass: they see us as bovine herbivores.
54
This arrangement would be cool if it were a true exchange with American teachers going abroad and sharing our culture with youth elsewhere. But I find it disturbing that because as a society we don't have the courage to fund our education system, great teachers from poorer countries can be poached at bargain rates. We keep our fecklessness in place while students in poor, struggling countries get shortchanged. In poor countries only a tiny fraction of the population can attend and finish college. And we rob them from the country! Bravo, America!
27
It's the same situation with nurses from the Philippines.
3
What's wrong with Americans? If American teachers would be willing to share an apartment with six other teachers and ride a hundred miles to work in a van, they could easily afford live on Arizona teaching salaries.
(Note: You may use this to test your snark detector)
93
Jim S. in Cleveland, Keep the snark coming. It may be our last weapon against the imbecility that has overtaken our society.
15
Arizona teachers make $50,000 a year for a six hour day and 180 days a year -- all Federal holidays -- 11 weeks in summer off with pay -- 3 weeks at Christmas -- 10 days at Easter -- unlimited sick leave -- automatic tenure after 3 years -- retirement after 30 years (age 52) with 90% of final salary. And you think they are "living in apartments with six roommates"???? You are delusional. Also: I live near Cleveland, so I know about Cleveland -- a blue blue union town -- and their failing schools, with a 40% dropout rate and kids graduating who can't read, while the teachers earn an average of $90,000 a year.
5
Scabs! The hiring of non-union teachers and breaking up the teacher's organization is the end goal here with this.
Next up nurses. Let's start replacing the lawyers and doctors while we're at it. This is the insourcing of people for jobs that used to be non-exportable.
This is the trend here in the US. Watch out because your job could be next.
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Teachers are just going to have to strike and strike and strike, fighting for bargaining rights and against "right to work" laws.
13
"Next up nurses. Let's start replacing the lawyers and doctors while we're at it. "
Take a look and you'll see that this has happened already. Americans need to wake up.
13
Why shouldn't we replace the politicians and C-level executives? I'm sure there are plenty of politicos from Asia eager to come to America and make laws for much less money than our do-nothing Congress. And probably plenty of African entrepeneurs who would gladly run an American corporation into the ground for only hundreds of thousands of dollars a year!
1
When I started teaching in 1987 I entered the "profession" as starry-eyed and idealistic as anyone. My wife started teaching around the same time. Now, after one of our children has completed college and our son is set to go, we give him the same encouragement as we gave our daughter: Do what you love and we will help you as much as we can for whatever school you want to go to... as long as it is NOT to become a teacher.
I'm not going to rehash the frustrations, the mind-numbing stupidity, the humiliations that so often attend this job. People know by now what they are. But let me just say this: Not once has anything that has changed my view of this work over the last three decades stemmed from the kids I teach. And EVERYTHING that has kept me in this job stems from those kids. I teach in an urban, underfunded school with many spirited young folk who are increasingly spirited as the days warm up and the end of the year comes closer. Yesterday one young lady asked me if was having a bad day during a raucous moment in the classroom; I must had "that look." I told her "Kids don't make anymore noise than they did 30 years ago, but I'm 58 now and I hear more noise. But I never get tired of hearing it." It's the noise outside the classroom that is so draining.
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"It's the noise outside the classroom that is so draining." It is not only draining teachers, it is draining our society and culture. A values void.
21
Thanks for teaching, with energy (as much as you could muster on any given day) and passion, all these years. We need to respect teachers once again. I am afraid to say, its part and parcel of whats been happening in society these last forty years or so: we don't respect anyone anymore. Money reigns, morals go wanting. Thanks once again for holding a candle to the darkness for so many years.
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I never thought of it but of course it's the next step in the dismantling of the public service sector of the once-democratic, now plutocratic US of A. You 63 million Trumpist "rebels," do you see the effects of electing a lying, cold-blooded billionaire whose sole, shiny victory is a steep tax cut for his billionaire buds? We'll get to pay for that with slashed Social Security, private municipal roads and airports and, here we have already, foreign public school teachers who are only too happy to make 10 times the $333 a month they were making back home.
You people have cut your own throats, and ours with 'em, and you think you're making America great again?
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Whoever Who Remembers America, Trump and those who voted for him are not the Cause, they are the Symptom. I don't know what America you "remember" - perhaps under a mushroom cloud. It ceased to exist long before the last election.
1
This trend has been going on for decades. You blame Trump and the people that voted for him, but can you honestly say you think Hillary would have done anything to fix this or any of the numerous other problems facing the country and especially the working and middle class.
6
The poor can always pay more: when you are paying for your childrens education in private tuition, and getting nickled and dimed driving on the roads and bridges paying tolls and fees to private companies every twenty miles, and your taxes don't go down, what do you call that? Does it matter whether its called a tax increase or tuition or fees or whatever? No, no it doesn't. Better it be taxes, then the public can assert some control (if they can wrest control from the billionaire class, which is questionable).
2
I'm a high school teacher. We've had a 138% in non-teaching staff since 1970, for an 8% increase in students. The problem isn't school funding. The problem is administrators who get paid a lot more than teachers, while interfering with teaching.
Source: https://www.heritage.org/education/report/how-escalating-education-spend...
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http://educationnext.org/edstat-informed-teachers-current-salaries-36-pu...
Raising teacher pay and education spending is not nearly as popular as many contend.
8
That makes sense. I'm a teacher with 9 years of experience. I am moving my family to Asia this summer so that I can teach at an international school. I may actually be able to afford things like music lessons for my child there on a teacher's salary. And she won't have any lockdown drills.
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Good luck.
I worked long enough in Illinois to get a minimal retirement plan...20 years. Then I went to work for two years in Santa Cruz, Bolivia at the Santa Cruz Co-operative School and then on to the International School of Kuala Lumpur. In KL I made a decent salary and was finally able to save money for my retirement. All 20 years that I worked in Illinois I was able to save $50 ONE year. I had a Master's degree in music education and grad hours to boost my salary.
I was a single parent and when I'd occasionally take my young daughter out to McDonald's, I couldn't afford to buy myself a meal.
17
My initial thought was this is really bad, but for most people its almost normal now to work with offshore teams, foreign workers, why not teachers as well? I know one of the biggest complaints in the North East is high property taxes, perhaps adopting strategies like this will help with that pressure.
6
Perhaps paying American teachers a living wage might solve the staffing problems.
But that would require an investment in American workers, America's unions, America's future and America's children...and that idea is considered an obscenity to America's right-wing Republican psychopaths.
Investments in millionaires and billionaires will solve everything.
RIP America: 1776 - 2016
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Socrates, to blame all the current problems on "America's right-wing Republican psychopaths" is too simplistic to consider intelligent.
3
RIP America: 1776 - 1980
17
I disagree. If we accept that most of our current problems are due to bad economic policy and a transition from something like a democracy to something like an oligarchy or corporatocracy then I think that we can indeed put the blame on Republicans.
5
Union busting, in a word. The J1 visa teachers are scabs, helping to degrade the teaching profession. American teachers have families to support, education bills to pay off, and can't just jam themselves into apartments with roomies as the foreign teachers must. The whole setup is corrupt and exploitative, abetted by the cheap taxpayers and lazy parents who acquiesce to this nonsense from their elected school boards. If people want a good education for their children, they need to pony up and pay for it. And states need to tax businesses and corporations to help pay fir adequate funding for qualified teachers and school supplies, and stop expecting the already underpaid teachers to spend their own meager resources to do so.
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" .. abetted by the cheap taxpayers and lazy parents who acquiesce to this nonsense from their elected school boards .."
Wow, just like an HRC speech from 2016. How'd that turn out?
3
Truth is truth, whether people want to recognize it as such or not.
21
This is a shocking story. As a society we value teachers so little that qualified people are unwilling to take the job for such low pay. And as teachers strike, not so much for better salaries, but for more financial support from state governments for education, Devos seeks to further dismantle the public education system in this country. Another canary drops dead.
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I am a state-certified Spanish-medium bilingual K-12 and ESL-certified bilingual teacher with two Master's degrees, and I have spent 4 years looking for a job here in the United States. If these districts in Arizona would like to recruit me, please send me an email: [email protected]
Because I also have PhD candidacy in linguistics and four peer-reviewed publications and have spent many years abroad, many districts think I am too exotic to hire. I have been through countless interviews, and am currently doing minimum wage physical industrial day labor in order to pay the bills. If I do not get a salary offer for next year I am returning to life as an English professor abroad. It is not just that there are not teachers to hire. It is also that systems shy away from the highly-qualified people that are indeed available, and I am not alone in this problem. There are many like me. Many are stuck in limbo with new certification requirements that they cannot afford or because they have transferred to a new location from another state with different certification requirements.
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As with a lot of other areas in the work place today, totally buying the "need" for ever more certification and degrees, we have created our own mess.
While your credentials are no doubt impressive and certainly suitable to college level teaching, the notion that an elementary school teacher, for example needs one or two Master's is an academic conceit with little basis in the real world - the classroom. The number of PhD's in Education has reached an insane level. Indeed, in some places have added degrees for higher pay was simply put in place at the behest of the teachers' unions - not because it actually made teachers better, or that the kids learned more, but because it was at least a means of getting a higher salary. That in and of itself is not a bad thing, but it created a false notion that the "need" existed, which has spread.
While I am against national standards for classroom qualifications, people need to demand of their local school boards and law makers to justify WHY certain degree or certification requirements are actually needed, and not just because an "academic expert" recommended it! Thus can we bring more rationality to this insane system and allow more dedicated individuals to teach our children.
11
This is a problem in may other fields. I have a PhD in engineering and I can't get interviews for jobs that my BA students get easily.
31
I think that the problem may be that some disciplines (science & math) are desperate for qualified teachers and others (English, history) are saturated with candidates. One of my friends is a high school science supervisor in a well-respected and well-compensated district and said that he dreads losing a science teacher because it's so hard to find a replacement. He said that he's lucky to get 3-5 qualified applicants. On the other hand, he said that an open English position in the same school can easily bring in over 300 applications. It seems that people who have STEM degrees have more better-paying options available to them and fewer choose to teach.
21
I agree...we DO NOT have a teacher shortage. Not paying people what they are worth creates a shortage in any area. "Fewer and fewer skilled individuals are willing to do this work for low pay, poor benefits", and the lack of respect and autonomy that seems to be more the rule than the exception now in the teaching profession.
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Rich people have taken over public education with there money. Chancellors are in charge they don't need an education background but are part of the anti union political groups of rich people. Families' have accepted that students very rarely get a professional teacher but have Teach For America graduates attempting to teach students in a subject matter that they know little about because education was not there major in college. Why in the world would an education major want to work in a school system that doesn't value there professional degree or there abilities? Teachers have lives they want to be appreciated . We can thank Mayor Bloomberg, Klein who was a lawyer was the first education chancellor in NYC running schools like a business, please children are not widgets. There contributions have created this mess and treating teachers like paupers have created this shortage. Keep making money off of education wall street and parents will ensure that there children get an education from home schooling, catholic, private schools, children are the future and those words are real. Parents don't have time to fool around with there little ones education
1
Gosh, if you read some other article in the NYT you would seem to think that a lot of people see no problem with, indeed even desire, ever more "immigrants" to come to America for opportunity and the ever classes, "better life". Saying foreign teachers can't do a good job for American students is, per the going script, xenophobic, racist, hateful, "nation of immigrants" schtick, etc.. Except now that it bumps up against another conflicting reality, and power of the teachers' unions, suddenly this is an outrage and must be stopped.
I think we should pay teachers more money - though that does NOT mean I support unlimited raises in education spending that goes to ever more administrators and superfluous non-classroom personnel rather than what it is sold as taking care of, something a lot of people ignore - and I think we should always give Americans preference in such cases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
27
A typical foreign teacher has a three year term.
As a local school board member described it - the first year they acclimate to the environment, the second year the language improves a lot, the third year they can teach effectively.
Woe to your child if the timing isn't right for his/her class. Huge waste of money for two out of three years.
10
This is remarkable innovation by Pendergast. School districts have very little control over how much money they receive to run their schools, so they are doing what they can to make sure their students still have qualified teachers in their classrooms. Mr. Soberano, a 20-year veteran teacher, views $40,000 as an opportunity, and good for him! The students are better for it.
I have to say, I don't appreciate the NYT's subtle implication that he's being somehow "tricked" into taking this job. Isn't this the perfect example of "Immigrants - we get the job done"? People in the United States have better options than he does, which is why he's willing to sacrifice more than American teachers to accept this. What's the issue here? If you really cared about students, Randi Weingarten, you'd push for more visas so that more professionals like Mr. Soberano from across the globe could contribute to American students' education. That's what you want, isn't it?
1
It certainly seems that Mr. Soberano is well-trained and qualified. He is most likely a good teacher.
This doesn't, however, negate the fact that this labor source will contribute to the ongoing undercutting of American teacher wages.
If we are comfortable as a society saying we no longer want to pay our teachers living wages and we are ok hallowing out the middle class, then by all means let's continue with this system. If not, we need to support our teachers unions. Other professions are next--perhaps yours.
72
The stance you hold is obtuse. The article is highlighting our nation's contempt for teachers. yet you find it appropriate to deflect this into an immigration gotcha question. Nobody is disparaging the immigrants or their visas- in a vacuum. In the real world the increase of J1 teacher visas shows that districts can't get proper funding to pay teachers or for supplies. Is that so unclear to you?
23
Where is the money going? I look at these data sources and I see that spending per pupil has increase by 127% from 1992-2015 while general inflation was only 54% during the same time period.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/econ...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCEPI
Yes, raise teachers' salaries, but taxpayers have a right to expect an effective use of their hard earned dollars. There is money being wasted somewhere in K-12 education.
16
As a former public school teacher, I know that money flows like water into the three Ts: testing, textbooks and technology.
26
The rising cost of healthcare probably contributes a lot to the per pupil spending. I seriously doubt that teachers' salaries alone have been the source of the increase.
6
I am a teacher, and while I know that teachers are underpaid and not respected, I agree with you about transparency of expenses.
My guess is that a lot of the money goes to A) state mandates not funded by the state (that districts have to absorb on their own), B) many more administrators, C) an increasing need for special education teachers and support staff, D) sports (many foreign schools don’t have sports teams; that is done by their communities), E) districts paying charter school and private school tuition for their students, F) many course electives (some of which are “fluff”), G) school breakfasts and lunches (in many overseas schools, kids go home for lunch, and have a bigger social safety net so that free school lunch/breakfasts aren’t needed), and......H) increased security in our gun-obsessed culture.
11
The statement "I also learned to be friends with the students" is incredibly problematic, as any seasoned teacher can tell you. Blurring the lines between a professional adult-child dynamic into "friendship" is both psychologically unhealthy and ethically inappropriate.
21
Really? Your attitude is psychologically unhealthy and ethically inappropriate. Seasoned teacher? I'm 71, headed a school for 19 years and taught most of those years. I was friends with all students and expected my teachers to be friends too. A adult-child dynamic of "friendship" creates real trust, deep respect and fosters a relationship that inspires real learning. This is unambiguously proven by decades of neurobiological and psychological research. Relationships are the primary factor in schools. It is trite to think that "friendship" makes it impossible to be the adult. It is actually the opposite. Aloof, pseudo-adult behavior is seen through by children and they don't respect such teachers at all. They just pretend to, because they know compliance is expected.
8
The teacher sees it that way because he is used to a rigidly hierarchical classroom. I'm sure it does, indeed, feel like friendship to him. For better or worse, the model in U.S. public schools these days de-emphasizes the teacher's authority in the classroom (or at least his or her apparent authority) with flexible seating, etc.
Destruction of the American public school system continues. The motive: to profit and to crush one of the most effective unions. This occurred mostly under Obama, with approval from top Democratic lawmakers. The DNC Democrats are not going to fix this. It will take someone not beholden to hedge funds and billionaires: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the people running as grassroots-funded progressives.
16
Studies to support your suppositions? Please not Fox News.
3
Attempt to keep wages low and working conditions poor. See “Working Conditions in the U.S. Since Reagan”.
25
Book? Article? Where from? I agree with you, it all started in the early 1980s, around the time Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. It was so clear that wealthy people and holders of stock shares would do well under him, and the workers who loved him would suffer.
3
So it begins. Denigrate a profession enough so that people are wary of investing their time and money into preparing for it. Then hire foreigners willing to work for peanuts. Perfect plan by the hedge fund billionaires bent on privatizing and breaking public education.
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Many with college degrees would take up the job when the alternatives pay much less without benefits, but licensing requirements keep them out of the market.
The teaching profession requires advanced graduate studies and those who invest their time and lives to the profession should be compensated accordingly (regardless of national origin). The investment of time and treasure is equivalent to an MBA, a JD, a MS, etc...
When China's 10% cream of the crop graduate this year, they will outnumber our entire student population. In order to compete globally, we need to invest in teachers, not relegate them to the status of migrant workers.
Also, politicians need to focus on governing and improving the economy, rather than meddling in a profession that they don't understand.
110
This should be a wake-up call to the United States. We do not have "teacher shortage" in America. Just because I cannot find someone to sell me a Bentley for $5K doesn't mean we have a "Bentley shortage." Fewer and fewer skilled individuals are willing to do this work for low pay, poor benefits, and being the public target of politicians and news anchors.
We need to pay our teachers more and treat them better. Currently, they are underpaid and under-appreciated. Additionally, we need to treat them with the same respect we give other professionals. Being a teacher is not a "glorified babysitter." It requires years of education and continued training.
425
Could not have said it better! Exactly!
20
"Just because I cannot find someone to sell me a Bentley for $5K doesn't mean we have a "Bentley shortage." "
This should be the protest sign seen by every tax-cutting, service-gutting GOPer who shows up to "work" in Congress and state legislatures—and seen by every low-wage stingy corporate CEO as well.
29
Thank you for your comment. If starting teacher pay were $75K for those who would commit to five years, schools really would have the best teachers.
Teachers would be seen as true professionals instead of the scapegoats they currently are for all of society's ills. Competition for jobs would also improve teacher training. Make no mistake, part of the lack of respect for teachers is based on their poor salaries. I can't tell you the number of students who have told me that teaching must be the worst job in America : "Look at how hard you work! Look at what you have to put up with! and look at what you're PAID! who wants your job?" Ouu of the mouths of babes.
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