
TEACHERS RECRUITED FROM INDIA
Arizona rural schools search for educators
By Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 22, 2003
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, reported in an e-mail earlier this week.
"We've met some outstanding educators,"
wrote Harmon, who was due home Friday. USA Employment, a 2-year-old
Houston company, is paying for Harmon's trip, and for the trips
of two school officials from Yavapai and Gila counties. Jay Kumar,
a Houston businessman, started the company when he saw a national
shortage coming, and has placed 75 teachers from India in 15 school
districts in Texas, Indiana and Connecticut.
Kumar said the teachers, mostly women, have left
behind classes of 50 students, pay that is the equivalent of $2,000
a month and a tight job market where up to 1,000 teachers vie for
one job at a good school.
The teachers, who have at least five years' experience,
pay their moving expenses and a $6,000 fee to USA Employment, which
helps them through U.S. immigration. The school districts hire the
teachers and help them obtain certification in their state.
Six months ago, Edgar Dansby moved from head hunting
for corporations to recruiting teachers for Texas' North Forest
Independent School District in the Houston area. The North Forest
district, which has 10,000 students from predominantly poor and
minority families, had 100 unlicensed long-term substitutes on staff
and was losing licensed teachers to nearby districts that paid better.
"I had to come up with 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."
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