Outsourced Again: Looking Abroad for Quality Teachers?

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One would think that teaching is one job that can’t be exported. But apparently, it can be imported. In this time of job loss and a more down economy than many of us have ever seen, many school districts are recruiting new teachers from places like the Philippines and other foreign countries.
 
Certainly there is a disconnect here. Urban and rural schools in particular continue to struggle to find qualified (and quality) teachers for their students. So districts feel they need to look abroad to meet their needs? With unemployment rates the highest in decades, why is teaching not a high priority job of the future then? The emphasis seems to be on re-tooling our workforce for “green jobs” while ignoring such basic needs as teachers.
 
What’s more, there are high dollars involved in the process of hiring foreign teachers. Recruiters are paid, visas are purchased and application fees are committed by the foreign born teacher without the guarantee of job placement. This money might be better spent domestically to train and incentivize young professionals to teach here.
 
Programs like New York’s Teaching Fellows, which encourages professionals to enter teaching, and Teach For America, which actively recruits new college graduates from multiple disciplines, are models to follow. We need more programs like this and need for them to be well funded.
 
Of course, better wage structures to entice people to enter the field wouldn't hurt either. While the idea that teachers are “underpaid” is largely a myth (the average salary for traditional public school teachers increased 4.5 percent in 2006-07 to $51,009 according to an American Federation of Teachers review last year), their ceiling is lower than other career fields. And certainly there is less glamour involved in the career choice.
 
This teacher shortage is a foreseen problem, not something that has crept up on us. Yet policy has failed to address this need. Although No Child Left Behind recognized the problem--the act required every child to have a "qualified teacher"--it has done little to effectively meet this goal.
 
It is time for economic reform to incorporate this unmet need for quality teachers.