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FW: Los Angeles hires 115 foreign teachers to fill shortages
- To: d_wotproductions@hotmail.com, ca-resisters@interversity.org
- Subject: FW: Los Angeles hires 115 foreign teachers to fill shortages
- From: "anna g" <aclarag@hotmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:37:36 -0400
Why doesn't America look at improving the job conditions? This article, like
so many others in this vein is making a red herring. Americans have a
reasonable expectation of a tolerable work environment and competitive pay.
Urban teaching is hard and often thankless. Most of my students (college)
expect salaries that well exceed any offered to first year teachers. This
means the job draws young do-gooders who are often completely burned out by
the end of their first year and either leave or look at going back to school
for administration degrees. This is largely why so many teachers (50%) leave
the field in 3 years. The solution always seems to come back around to
outsourcing to countries with a significantly lower standard of living.
From: Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: ca-resisters@interversity.org
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: [ca-resisters] Los Angeles hires 115 foreign teachers to fill
shortages
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:58:20 -0700
<http://www.dailynews.com/ci_6666051>http://www.dailynews.com/ci_6666051
Foreign teachers fill a need at LAUSD
<mailto:naush.boghossian@dailynews.com?subject=LA Daily News: Foreign
teachers fill a need at LAUSD>BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 08/19/2007 11:57:01 PM PDT
Four hours after arriving at her Los Angeles hotel from the Philippines, a
jet-lagged Lolita Magno was thrown into a nonstop schedule of
orientations, training sessions, paperwork and getting documents both for
her new life in America and her new job teaching science at a Los Angeles
Unified school.
Despite pangs of homesickness and the uncertainties of a foreign
environment, Magno knows she's begun a three-year journey that will offer
her invaluable experience and knowledge she'll take back to her students
in the Philippines.
She thought it an ideal match: She'd bring her degree in science where
it's needed and gather experience working with a diverse student
population to help achieve her goal of advocating for multicultural
education at home.
"It's mutually beneficial. It's a symbiotic relationship. We share our
knowledge, a little of our positive culture, and they share a little bit
of their culture," Magno, 36, said. "And we make students academically,
globally and socially focused. It makes sense, doesn't it."
Magno is one of 115 teachers recruited by the LAUSD from abroad for
hard-to-fill positions of math, science and special education - comprising
about one-seventh of the new
hires for the 2007-08 school year.
While LAUSD has recruited from other countries for well over 20 years,
this year's is the largest group ever from abroad, fueled by a national
shortage in qualified teachers in the three subject areas.
Aggressive national recruiting, efforts to lure professionals from
business and industry to enter the teaching force and working with local
colleges and universities to attempt to produce more teachers, have not
been enough to fill the district's vacancies.
And with districtwide initiatives to reduce class sizes and offer more
rigorous, college-preparatory classes, LAUSD is looking anywhere it can to
find qualified math and science teachers.
"We are like Baltimore, New York City, Atlanta, Chicago and other large
districts who recruit out-of-country because there are not enough
qualified American teachers who have gone to school to become math,
science and special education teachers," said Deborah Ignagni, who
oversees the recruitment, selection, placement and credentialing of
teachers at LAUSD.
Ignagni doesn't see the district's reliance on foreign teachers subsiding
anytime soon, but she hopes efforts to recruit highly qualified teachers
will translate into lower turnover, reducing the need to recruit from
abroad.
But in addition to the 100 teachers from the Philippines - about the same
number hired from the country last year - LAUSD had to turn to India this
year to fill the need, hiring 15 teachers.
Another 10 teachers came from Spain as well as a handful from Canada, she
said.
The trend of looking abroad for teachers is not likely to ease anytime
soon, said B.J. Bryant, executive director of the American Association for
Employment in Education.
As baby boomers continue to retire, high turnover compared to years when
teaching was a lifelong career, and the 25-year shortage of math, science
and special education teachers persisting, the problem will not go away
soon, Bryant said.
"We see nothing on the horizon that says it will not continue," she said.
The district turned to international recruitment for the first time in the
1980s from Mexico and Spain, at a time when their elementary schools were
growing, the need for teachers was rising and it was the height of the
bilingual program.
Now, there is a surplus of elementary school teachers and the focus has
shifted to math, science and special education.
The Philippines, India, Spain and Canada are popular targets for LAUSD
because experience has shown that based on the comparable nature of
programs offered in those countries, the teachers will have no trouble
qualifying for California credentials, Ignagni said.
Also, America's relationships with those governments allows them to bring
in teachers on exchange visas, she said.
But in addition to a rigorous application and hiring process, the district
does not offer perks to foreign teachers.
The only recruitment incentive and reimbursement is up to $7,000 to teach
math, science and special education at low-performing schools - a sum
offered to all credentialed teachers.
Foreign teachers also make the same as American teachers make under the
bargaining unit scale.
Imelda Fruto, foreign recruitment specialist for LAUSD, has already gone
to the Philippines twice to interview prospective teachers in the past two
years and is getting ready for her third trip in October.
"I think the program is very effective because we're able to fill the
vacancies that would otherwise be unfilled," Fruto said. "We would prefer
to hire Americans, but it's not generating enough interest to fill those
positions here.
"The international teachers are highly qualified, and it's a long process
for them."
The process includes being assessed by an independent agency to see if
they're qualified to be interviewed for a job; there's a rigorous review
of their transcripts as well as oral interviews; they must have three
years of teaching experience; they must be fluent in English; they must
have a degree and teaching license in their country; and they must pass
the mini-CBEST with the requirement of passing the CBEST here within one
year of employment.
The California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) was developed to meet
requirements of laws relating to credentialing and employment.
Only then could they get jobs and only in math, science and special
education. Other applicants are turned away.
"Most of these people are graduates from UP or the University of the
Philippines, which is the Harvard of the Philippines, and Ateneo, which is
considered the Stanford. They're from the Ivy League of the Philippines,"
Fruto said. "It's not like we're taking any person off the street. These
people are very well educated and they have to meet our requirements."
But foreign recruitment has raised the ire of some American teachers
applying for the high-demand positions, saying the slots are being taken
by their overseas counterparts.
But district officials insist that they are resorting to overseas hiring
because they simply do not get enough qualified applicants from the U.S.
Barbara Burnett, LAUSD's assistant director of special education
certificated employment operations, insists Americans with general
teaching credentials are generally not pursuing those options that will
allow them to teach in math, science and special education.
"People get a little indignant, saying why do you hire teachers from other
countries?
"Unfortunately, it's true, there are many qualified Americans having
trouble finding a teaching job," Burnett said, but they are credentialed
as general subject teachers, which is a saturated field.
The key is that those teachers need to go back to school and get
certificated in the shortage-filled areas, "and they'll easily find a
job," she said.
"So there are options, but obviously Americans are not availing themselves
of those opportunities because there are still vacancies," Burnett said.
Special education teacher Maria Nunag, 33, is about to begin the second
year of the exchange program and shared her experiences with the newcomers
at their orientation at LAUSD headquarters Thursday.
She is hoping to use what she learns at her job at 20th Street Elementary
in South Los Angeles to open her own learning center in the Philippines.
"I would like to gain more knowledge of my craft since special education
is limited in the Philippines," she said.
It is that future payoff in her career that pushed her through the
challenges of adjusting to a new place and a different culture the first
year.
In a culture where family is very important, some of the newcomers found
themselves crying at the orientation. Most foreign teachers live together
to help ease the adjustment to a new country, a different culture,
different people and the pressures of a new job.
As Magno prepared her green "Pilipinas" passport to show officials from
U.S. Social Security Administration Thursday, she said she is focusing on
the big picture - what she'll learn and how she'll be able to take her new
knowledge to benefit her students and her country to make them prepared
for a global economy.
"We're global. We have to go out of our comfort zone, we have to reach
out. It doesn't matter what race you are - once a teacher, always a
teacher. Anywhere," Magno said. "They move lives, they inspire, they
create change."
naush.boghossian@dailynews.com
(818) 713-3722
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