I am in no way keen on the "research" produced by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) but I have to admit that they have raised an important issue in their latest report that merits attention--that is, if you can stomach the rhetoric it's clothed in. The report is about international recruitment of teachers into the U.S. Of course, their unsurprising angle here is that public school systems have been "unwilling or unable to address the root causes of a growing teacher shortage" so they've started to import teachers. (Forget that the whole teacher shortage idea is suspect at best.) They go on to say that these teachers "are ripe for exploitation by for-profit recruiters who have found yet another way to extract private profit from a public system." Oh, boy, here we go. Then, they gather a smattering of sensationalist news coverage from around the country that contends, in part, that these teachers are housed in "dormitories" with "bunk beds" and then asks (drum roll please): "How much are these teachers being charged to sleep in bunk beds????" (Extra three question marks are mine.) Alas, it is not my aim to rip apart these anecdotes; I am sure that some of the tales of "visa fraud," "alien smuggling," [and] "indentured servitude" are likely true. (Jay Mathews thinks the unscrupulous practices are one "reason why we should celebrate groups like Teach for America that are working hard to persuade more Americans to consider teaching in those districts that have the greatest shortages.")
But the larger point that this report raises for me is the need for better data. The report estimates that nearly 19,000 teachers were working in the U.S. on temporary visas in 2007, mostly in high need schools (if true, that's not that high, considering we have nearly 4 million teachers). Closer to home, however, it also estimates that nearly 600 imported teachers from the Philippines are now working in Baltimore schools (roughly 10% of their teaching workforce). The problem is that we really can't be sure how accurate these numbers are. AFT states, "One of the biggest obstacles to understanding and affecting teacher migration is a lack of comprehensive and accurate data." Apparently the data are complicated, not readily available and must be cobbled together from disparate data sources. Surely data on work visas and exchange visas are ripe ammunition for those looking to plug them for their own ideas about immigration reform.
But the motives of the education community are simpler. Namely, we'd like to know exactly how many of these teachers there are and where they teach; how they are trained (is the training better or worse than our own?) and what we might learn from it; how building leaders, parents, and students perceive the work of internationally trained teachers; and importantly, how they perform in relation to teachers trained in America (do teachers from certain countries outperform others?). I'm no expert on international teacher recruitment but I do know that we don't know enough about it. Maybe some of this information is out there. Do let me know.
Me and the AFT need it.
