Importing Teachers

Let’s review what is going on right now in America –

We have an economic crisis because no one seems to understand complex finance and Wall Street got greedy. Last night on CNBC, one of the Wall Streeters actually said to the camera – “we wouldn’t be in this mess if you didn’t take out a mortgage you could never pay back”. Wow – he actually said that part of our economic mess is that Americans are too stupid. Sadly he is on target. We cannot be a financial super power if people earning $50,000 a year take out a mortgages on a $500,000 home. It is no wonder we can only place 24th on the international math exams.

A big part of the problem is that we do not have enough math teachers.

The solution for many states – during tough economic times when an additional 32,000 people hit the unemployment lines this week alone – is to import math teachers from other countries. We brought in over 15,000 teachers from other countries last year because we don’t have enough people to fill our classrooms.

So we are weak in math and science AND we don’t have enough math and science teachers but rather than improve certification rules to let experts in our own country to inspire the next Bill Gates, we bring them in from overseas.

Brilliant.

We are going through the H1B visas for teachers and ABCTE is going to hit hard on every state that is importing teachers. It is just sad that we have people who want to teach but these states think it is somehow easier or better to import a teacher for a few years.