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<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1905 -- 8/20/2008 >>>>>

RiShawn Biddle's article on H-1B teachers gets off to a good start.
Unfortunately it devolves into shortage shouting and dubious assertions.
According to Biddle, our schools are lousy because there just aren't enough
American teachers that can teach arithmetic, and of course he blames the
lack of good teachers for a shortage of scientists and engineers. Once you
swallow that, Biddle would have you believe that if we imported more
foreign teachers our school system could be saved, and our corporations
would have a new wave of well educated Americans to employ.

Biddle is quite correct that there is almost no discussion of the fact that
school districts hire immense numbers of foreign teachers. Even teachers
and their unions are mostly silent on the H-1B issue, mainly because some
of them mindlessly support it while most others are oblivious. Over the
years this newsletter has reported extensively on the use of foreign
teachers, and the use of the Filipino bodyshops that exploit them, but I
wouldn't expect Biddle to know that. I also wouldn't expect him to know
that many school teachers from Mexico come here on TN (Trade NAFTA) visas
because they are easy to get and there is no limit on the number of visas.

Of all the things Biddle said, this one seemed the easiest to disprove:

THESE HARD-WORKING teachers likely don't cross the minds of
immigration opponents at the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, professional guilds such as the American
Engineering Association, or the editorial board of National
Review.

It's funny he would mention the board of National Review, which are mostly
pro-business cheap labor advocates. Of course they wouldn't mention H-1B
teachers -- they prefer the public is kept in the dark. LOL!

I set out to disprove Biddle about FAIR by searching the website of FAIRUS
for writings on H-1B teachers. Much to my utter astonishment, there was
nothing there! Same for the AEA. Biddle's comment seemed to be well
researched and justified.

http://www.fairus.org/

Keep in mind that FAIR is a large organization and only a portion of the
writings of their board is on the website. I would almost wager money that
many of FAIR's board members have published articles on H-1B teachers but
they weren't put on the website. Still, I find it surprising that an
organization with FAIR's credentials hasn't officially discussed this very
important issue. I asked Jack Martin at FAIR for an explanation, and this
was his reply:

There is nothing on FAIRs website that specifically refers to the
use of the H-1B program to bring in foreign teachers to take jobs
that could be filled by American teachers, but our concern about
and commentary on the weaknesses and abuses in the H-1B program
apply across the board without regard to what sector of the U.S.
workforce is being impacted. We certainly are aware of the issue of
H-1B visas to bring in foreign teachers and continue to look for
opportunities to publicly express our concerns through media
contacts, public speaking or testimony.

-- Jack Martin, Special Projects Director

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13678

H-1B Education

By RiShawn Biddle
Published 8/12/2008 12:08:02 AM

You would expect high tech giants such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and
the U.S. division of India's tech support powerhouse, Infosys, to be among
the biggest users of H-1B skilled-labor visas. The same holds true for
universities such as Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan and Purdue
-- the world's training ground for skilled workers and
research-and-development.

But some of the largest users of H-1B visas aren't tech firms or major
research universities. Rather, these unlikely users are the nation's public
school systems. Thirteen hundred seventy-four H-1B visas were issued to
public schools during the 2006-07 school year, according to the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.

This includes some of the nation's biggest school districts, including
Baltimore's -- the 38th largest user of the program, with 196 visas issued
to teachers in that same period -- and the New York City Department of
Education, with 171 visas issued to its foreign-born teachers.

Smaller districts are also seeking high-skill labor visas for their own
foreign-born staffers. Fifteen visas were issued to teachers in the
4,800-student school district in dusty Espanola, New Mexico, near Santa Fe,
while 11 more are employed on the North Carolina coast by Bertie County
Schools.

Emigrant teachers can even be found in crime-riddled New Orleans. Eighteen
H-1B visas were issued to teachers working in the Recovery School District,
the state-run school system.

THE SINGLE-BIGGEST user of H-1B visas among school districts is located
right in the suburbs outside the Beltway, in the Prince George's County
school system in Maryland.

Two hundred thirty-seven visas were issued to teachers in the district in
2006-07, a number that put it ahead of banking giant J.P. Morgan Chase,
slumping cell-phone-maker Motorola, and healthcare outsourcing outfit
Marlabs. The district's experience mirrors that of other school districts.

Just 57 percent of the freshmen who made up PGC's Class of 2005, actually
made it to graduation, making it one of the worst-performing school systems
in the nation. To turn that performance around -- and meet the federal No
Child Left Behind Act's provision that every one of its teachers is
"highly-qualified" and knowledgeable in their respective subjects -- the
district must improve the quality of its teaching corps.

At the same time, it must fill positions of teachers who have either
retired, left for more-affluent school districts, or skipped out on
teaching altogether. Some 1,064 teachers -- 11 percent of its teaching
corps -- left its employ during the 2004-05 school year alone, according to
the Maryland Department of Education.

So Prince George's has posted "help wanted" signs in exotic locales. Since
2004, the school system has hired some 400 teachers from the Philippines.

These teachers, having grown up in a nation with strong ties to the United
States, have strong English language skills and advanced degrees. Many have
spent more than a decade in classroom instruction, with classroom sizes of
40 or more students. Even better: They don't quit. Just 11 of the Filipinos
have left the district over the past four years.

"They are determined to make this work," said Robert Gaskin, Prince
George's human resources director, to the Washington Post Magazine. "You
ask them, 'What are you doing this weekend?' They'll say, 'I'm preparing
lessons.'"

THESE HARD-WORKING teachers likely don't cross the minds of immigration
opponents at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, professional
guilds such as the American Engineering Association, or the editorial board
of National Review.

They successfully filibustered recent efforts by President George W. Bush
and Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy to (among other things) expand the
number of H-1B visas available for high-skilled labor beyond the 105,000
statutory limit. Their critiques vary but they have in common the spectre
of evil corporations trying to benefit the bottom line at the expense of
American labor.

Yet restrictionists fail to realize that the underlying reason behind
Corporate America's global talent search is America's woeful public
schools. And those schools are also struggling to recruit and retain
highly-skilled workers, for the good of future American workers.

The development of value-added assessment, a statistical technique through
which the effects of instruction on student performance are measured, have
yielded new information to educational researchers. Evidence overwhelmingly
suggests that a teacher with strong subject matter competency and strong
instructional skills may have as much influence on the academic performance
of a student as his socioeconomic background. These findings have resulted
in mandates to improve teacher quality set down in No Child and other
school accountability laws.

Exacerbating the need for teachers are class-size reduction initiatives,
which haven't helped much and are about to make matters a whole lot worse.
The upcoming retirement of the Baby Boomers from the teaching ranks --
100,000 in California alone -- will force more school districts to look far
and wide for replacements.

The traditional system of teacher compensation, under which teachers earn
income based on seniority and number of graduate degrees acquired, makes
the profession less attractive to math and science collegians.

So the most-critical shortages will continue to be in the courses that
students badly need in order to advance in the global economy, unless
something drastic is done.

BUT SCHOOL DISTRICTS can't count on help from the nation's schools of
education. Just 13 percent of 77 education schools surveyed by the National
Council on Teacher Quality had high quality math instruction programs.

Arthur Levine, the former president of Columbia University's Teachers
College, concluded in a 2006 study that 54 percent of the nation's teachers
are taught at colleges with low admission requirements.

This lack of high-quality instruction helps the nation's annual teacher
attrition rate of 8 percent. It's even higher among instructors with less
than three years of experience, despite the fact that most teachers can
easily attain tenure -- and near-permanent job security -- within
two-to-three years of service.

Alternative teaching programs such as Teach For America -- which supplies
aspiring teachers to school districts in 27 cities -- may help with the
shortages. But school systems must look at other ways of getting teachers
into the classroom. That means competing with other industrialized nations
for highly-talented instructors, especially those from Third World
countries in which teaching remains one of the few ways the poor can move
into the middle class.

Some 10,000 emigre teachers were employed by the nation's school districts
in 2003, according to the National Education Association. That number has
since swelled. School districts have followed the path blazed by districts
such as Prince George's County and the Clark County school district in Las
Vegas, which lured 51 Filipino English and math teachers to its schools in
2005.

More could be brought in, especially as foreign teachers have gotten hip to
the relatively high wages compared to those in their homelands, but efforts
to improve U.S. schools will eventually run up against the statutory limits
of H-1B visas. Maybe that could help teach our politicians a lesson about
the need to reform the current Byzantine and bothersome immigration system.

RiShawn Biddle is co-author of a report on the role of state policymaking
in collective bargaining in school districts. He is the editor of Free
Trade Nation and Dropout Nation.

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