Arizona Teachers recruited from India

Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 10:16 AM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Arizona educators traveled to New Delhi to hire H-1B teachers. They
could have saved a lot of money by driving to Scottsdale, Arizona where
teachers are losing their jobs.

Arizona teachers that lose their jobs won't find it easy to find
another job. Their labor market is being flooded with H-1Bs while at
the same time there is a glut of teachers. According a recent Arizona
University study, the supply of teachers is slightly above demand, with
1.2 available for every job opening through 2010. "Conventional wisdom
has been that there's a dire teacher shortage," said Rob Melnick,
director of Morrison Institute for Public Policy. Instead, the study
showed demand for the 6,880 new teachers needed each year would fall by
almost 1,000 after 2006.

This article has a cheap appeal to political correctness and diversity
with a story of an Indian teacher who won the affection and hugs of one
of her African-American kids. Nothing was said about the hundreds of
American teachers who are getting nothing more than an unemployment
check from the state of Arizona.

Replacing American teachers with H-1Bs has much more to do with cost
cutting than with diversity. Arizona teacher union President Penny
Kotterman is under the illusion that these H-1B teachers will
eventually move to higher paying jobs in suburban schools. Kotterman
doesn't understand that H-1Bs are indentured to their employer so they
won't be able to move from the rural schools they will be assigned to.
That makes these Indian teachers very desirable to schools who want to
lowball salaries at crummy schools.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0322india22.html

Teachers recruited from India
Arizona rural schools search for educators

Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 22, 2003 12:00 AM

Three educators from rural Arizona have traveled halfway around the
world to New Delhi, India, looking to hire experienced teachers for
math and science classes.

They interviewed scores of teachers, with some candidates riding up to
16 hours on trains, Jack Harmon, Pinal County schools superintendent,
rePORT 66,69,254,99,130,203 h something pretty quick," Dansby said, "and
pretty radical."

International recruiting was nothing new for him. In the corporate
world, the most sought-after position is engineers; in education, it's
teachers.

The district has 27 licensed teachers from the Philippines working out
so well that Dansby's curriculum director spent January interviewing in
India and hired 48 teachers. As the new recruits pour in, the
competition is forcing unlicensed substitutes back to school to keep
their jobs, Dansby said.

Isha Gangopadhaya of New Delhi is finishing her first year as a
third-grade teacher in Texas. In India, she faced a class of 53
students; here, it's a "very comfortable" 17 with few discipline
problems.

She eventually won hugs from her most skeptical African-American kids,
and is impressed with the school's technology, as well as the flowers
and letter cards at the local teacher supply store.

"We had to make those in India," Gangopadhaya said. "You can get
everything here by snapping your fingers."

Global recruiting sounded exotic to local educators, surprising even
Arizona teacher union President Penny Kotterman. She worried that it
won't solve the rural schools' second-biggest problem: keeping the
teachers. Kotterman said she expects the Indian teachers, who are
usually higher educated, will move to higher paying jobs in suburban
schools, "unless some of the other problems, such as salaries and
working conditions, are addressed."

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0316scottsdaleschools16.html

175 teachers could lose jobs

Diana Balazs
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 16, 2003 12:00 AM

Faced with budget cuts, the Scottsdale Unified School District on paper
has eliminated 175 teaching positions, but it remains unknown how many
teachers will actually be fired.

"Are we going to have to RIF (reduction in force) some teachers?
Unfortunately, yes. Will it be the total 175, probably not," district
spokeswoman Carol Hughes said Saturday.

By Friday, teachers will know if they have received assignments for the
next school year. Those who do not will be placed on an unassigned
list, Hughes said.

"Teachers are not going to be given notice that they are losing their
jobs," she said.

The unassigned employees could still receive assignments based on a
number of factors. Hughes said that every year, 200 to 220 teachers
leave the district for a variety of reasons, such as moving out of
state or hiring on with a different district.

In addition, teachers who are qualified may opt for a one-time
voluntary early buyout package the Scottsdale School Board will
consider Tuesday.

Like other Arizona school districts, Scottsdale's is faced with
millions of dollars in cost increases because of rising health
insurance, retirement and other costs. At the same time, schools face
state budget cuts as the Legislature wrestles with an expected $1
billion budget deficit for the 2003-04 fiscal year that starts July 1.

Cuts will be less severe in the Scottsdale district because voters
overwhelmingly passed a school budget override Tuesday worth $10
million.

Without the override, as many as 179 additional teachers could have
been eliminated, Hughes said.

Scottsdale employs more than 1,600 teachers.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/education/0126teacherstudy26.html

Teacher shortage ruled out
State has plenty, ASU study shows

Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 26, 2003 12:00 AM

Arizona's supply of teachers is slightly above demand, with 1.2
available for every job opening through 2010, according to an Arizona
State University study to be released today. "Conventional wisdom has
been that there's a dire teacher shortage," said Rob Melnick, director
of Morrison Institute for Public Policy. Instead, the study showed
demand for the 6,880 new teachers needed each year would fall by almost
1,000 after 2006.

The study is about teacher quantity, Melnick said, not quality. A thin
job market makes it impossible to select the best teachers.

"You show me 1.2 applicants for a job," Melnick said, "and I'll show
you a quality problem."

Teacher supply and demand in Arizona

Highlights from "Is There a Teacher Shortage? Demand and Supply in
Arizona" to be released today by Arizona State University's Morrison
Institute for Public Policy.

There will be 1.2 teachers available for every opening through
2010.

6,880 new teachers will be needed each year through 2006, when the
demand will drop by about 1,000 annually.

The state needs to give incentives to ease a critical shortage of
teachers trained in special education, those who speak Spanish and
those willing to work in growing rural areas and inner-city schools.

The state needs to strengthen its out-of-state recruiting efforts,
train more teachers in its universities, remove or streamline
certification requirements and make teachers feel safer in their
classrooms.

About one-third of the 11,000 trained teachers who are no longer in
the classroom could be enticed to return with higher pay, smaller
classes, less paperwork and tuition reimbursements toward higher
degrees.

Data on teachers kept by universities, the state and school
districts are haphazard, incomplete or do not exist. The state needs to
create a workable and complete database on teacher training,
recruitment and employment.

The full report is available at www.morrisoninstitute.org.

Researchers also discovered a dramatic lack of trained
special-education and Spanish-speaking teachers. Schools in growing
rural areas, such as Yuma and Buckeye, also struggle to fill positions.

The state could be tipped into a critical teacher shortage should the
population grow faster than expected, teachers retire at a faster rate
than usual or lawmakers demand smaller classes. Maintaining the balance
also depends on continuing to attract former teachers back into
classrooms and to graduate teachers from state colleges.

On the other hand, the tight market could be eased if teacher
certification demands were streamlined or removed and a higher number
of former teachers could be enticed back to school, the study said.

"It just takes money and the wherewithal to do it," Melnick said. "It's
not like curing cancer."

Melnick said the study also debunks an "urban myth" that there are tens
of thousands of certified teachers in Arizona who are no longer in the
classroom.

Special-ed shortage

The shortage of special-education teachers has deepened in Arizona over
the past three years, and school districts are hiring more teachers
with emergency credentials, said Lynn Busenbark, a state director of
special-education programs.

Arizona universities offer only a few special-education teaching
programs, and they are hard to get into, Busenbark said. Low pay makes
it difficult to import teachers from other states, but Busenbark said a
new electronic recruiting Web site the state opened last year is
showing promise.

Schools in growing rural areas have a harder time finding teachers, the
study found. To a lesser degree, it's an effort to attract teachers to
inner-city schools.

The study recommended offering more pay and other incentives to
teachers willing to train in special education, speak Spanish or are
willing to work in growing rural or inner-city schools.

"Human nature being what it is, a teacher who has an opportunity to
teach in a nice, stable, middle-class, suburban school for more money
is going to take it," Melnick said.

Money helped Henry Schmitt, superintendent of the growing Buckeye Union
High School District, start the past three years with a full staff of
certified teachers.

Better teachers pay from sales taxes generated from Proposition 301,
new buildings and equipment from state and local bond money and new
progressive learning techniques are helping, said Schmitt, who also
credits being in a friendly town.

"We know the parents, we know the students," Schmitt said, "and it's a
very supportive community."

Drawing teachers back

The study found about 11,000 teachers who are not in the classroom,
most of whom retired or left to raise a family. The Morrison research
includes the first survey of these teachers, showing about one-third of
them could be coaxed back into the classroom, most likely with more
money.

Pay for teachers in Arizona ranks 26th among the 50 states, running
about $4,600 behind the national average. Most professional workers
make less in Arizona than they would in other states, but teacher pay
lags even further.

Aside from pay, teachers said they would return to school if they had
fewer kids in a class, less paperwork and tuition reimbursements toward
higher degrees.

The study was hampered by a severe lack of information about who is
getting trained and who is teaching in Arizona, Melnick said. Education
colleges, the state's teacher certification office and school districts
do not coordinate efforts to track teachers, each keeping haphazard or
incomplete records or none at all.

"It made it a very painful and demanding study," Melnick said.
Researchers used surveys, national research and data and interviews, as
well as sparse state numbers.

The study recommends that Arizona set up a centralized teacher
information database.

To read the report visit www.morrisoninstitute.org.

Reach the reporter at pat.kossan@arizonarepublic.com.

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