Teacher Advantage is a pilot program specialized in recruiting, selecting, training, and placement of highly qualified foreign-trained teachers for the U.S. K-12 public school market.
We work directly with school district HR professionals to identify ‘critical shortage’ teaching positions and develop profiles of ideal candidates for each position. We present districts a pool of the most qualified candidates to fill these positions, screening for the highest levels of English language fluency.
Currently, our primary market for recruitment is Central and Eastern Europe. These countries have highly educated and skilled professionals, including teachers, many of which are under-employed due to the latent history of economic underdevelopment from the era of Soviet domination. We have a network of prominent educators throughout the region, very well qualified by training and experience in the English language and American culture to recruit ideal candidates.
Our clients gain the benefits of contracting with a full-service company. Candidates complete a thorough pre-screening, including interview, reference and credentials checks, and testing. We also special candidate training, assistance with the visa process, and relocation assistance.
In addition to teacher recruitment and placement, we also provide substitute teachers for school districts, both on a short- and long-term contract basis.
Significant shortages of qualified teachers in key fields such as math, science, foreign languages and special education are contributing to an educational crisis in many urban school districts across the United States, according to a recent study, titled “The Urban Teacher Challenge.”
Specifically, 97.5 percent of urban districts responding to a survey indicated an immediate need for special educators and science teachers, and 95 percent indicated immediate demand for mathematics teachers.
“The shortages in math and science are desperate in all but the wealthiest districts,” said U.S. Senator Charles Shumer of New York recently. “So of the 40,000 math or science teachers we needed last year, only 3,000 had the necessary math or science training.”
Referring to the teacher shortage in a recent speech, the U.S. secretary of education, Richard Riley, said, “It’s gotten so bad that some schools have been forced to put any warm body in front of the classroom.”
Substitute teachers are also in great demand. Nearly three-quarters (72.5 percent) of responding districts reported grappling with a critical shortage of substitute teachers, with scarcely a day passing when replacements for dozens of absent teachers are nowhere to be found.
There is a direct link between the dearth of math and science teachers and the fact that American students lag behind other countries in these fields, according to Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. Shortages force districts to increase class sizes and to use under-qualified teachers.
The shortage “may get worse before it gets better,” Casserly warned. “Recruiting becomes an extreme challenge,” said the principal of one Detroit school.
One new response to growing teacher shortages is recruiting teachers overseas. The New York City school system pioneered such an effort in 1998, hiring 31 math and science teachers from Austria, each of whom is working on a temporary individual visa. The program was so successful that an additional 24 teachers were hired this year.
This past December, Chicago Public Schools obtained approval from the federal government to grant up to 50 special six-year visas to foreigners to teach math, science, and foreign languages, for the first time putting educators in the same class as computer programmers and other high-tech workers. The national quota for the special critical-need work visas is 115,000 a year, raised from 65,000 annually largely because of a shortage of workers in the high-technology industry.
Under the agreement negotiated by Chicago Public Schools, the U.S. Labour Department certifies a bloc of positions, then the Immigration and Natural Service (INS) grants the special visas individually. This speeds up the approval process for visas by months and in some cases, even a year or more. Normally, employers are required to get approval on a case-by-case basis.
The school district will be the official sponsor for the participating teachers, and will decide after their first, fourth, and fifth years of service whether to continue sponsorship. At the end of the six-year period, the district can sponsor the teachers for permanent visas.
Chicago is currently recruiting teachers – who must speak English fluently – over the Internet, through advertisements in foreign newspapers, and by direct contact with top universities.
This new federal program opens up a tremendous new market opportunity for firms specializing in recruiting qualified teachers from overseas markets, particularly underdeveloped countries with well-educated citizens, such as those of Central and Eastern Europe. Relocation to the United States, where the average salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree is $35,048 plus benefits, offers qualified foreign teachers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to better their standard of living.
The Participants
While many United States personnel companies are recruiting foreign workers for employment in information technology and other high-tech industries, no firm currently specializes in recruiting teachers for the K-12 schooling market, particularly from Central and Eastern Europe. This market is so new that it offers a tremendous opportunity for a start-up program such as Teacher Advantage to establish a viable and even dominant market presence in a very short period of time.
Trends
Estimates are that the national teacher shortage will climb to 700,000 unfilled jobs within the next decade as the nation as a whole will need to recruit 2 million teachers during this time.
Many factors are contributing to the prediction of a growing teacher shortage:
· Teacher retirements are beginning to accelerate across the nation due to the advancing length of service of many in the profession. Also, many school districts are offering attractive early-retirement packages in an effort to cut their payroll costs. In New York City, more than 14,000 of the system’s 78,000 teachers are “seriously considering” retiring in the next two years, whereas in recent years about 2,600 educators on average have retired annually.
· Teachers’ pay continues to lag behind that of other college-educated professionals – by an average of $8,000 a year at the start of their careers and by almost $24,000 a year by the time they reach 50. With the economy near full-employment and knowledge workers in great demand, more teachers are taking jobs that offer higher pay and fewer headaches. Average salaries for master’s degree recipients outside teaching increased $17,505 form 1994 to 1998, compared to less than $200 for teachers.
· Student enrolment continues to increases, pushing already over-crowded classrooms to their limits. By 2006, America will educate nearly 3 million more children than today, an increase of almost 6 percent.
· There is a mismatch between the specialties of educators coming out of teacher-preparation programs and types of jobs that need to be filled. Elementary education and social studies are the two most popular areas among students at schools of education, but they were also among those in the least demand in K-12 schools.
· The federal and state governments are increasingly targeting new education resources for reducing class sizes, which is increasing the demand for teachers.
Each of these trends is not likely to abate for quite some time, meaning the teacher shortage is likely to get worse long before it gets better.
Moreover, teacher quality is emerging as one of the foremost concerns of school and university educators, parents, professional organizations, foundations, state education officials, business leaders, and legislators across the country. According to a 1998 national poll, roughly nine out of ten Americans believe that the best way to raise student achievement is to provide a qualified teacher for every classroom.
With many of the nation’s most disadvantaged children, including a majority of the nation’s children of colour, educated within urban school systems, it has become politically crucial that the quality of the teacher force in urban schools is addressed.
As the demand for qualified teachers increases, it is more likely that American policymakers will seek to “expand the pipeline” for qualified teachers beyond that supplied currently by colleges and universities.
An effort is currently underway in the U.S. Congress to increase the number of special, critical-need temporary visas awarded annually from 115,000 to 205,000. Leading Republican Presidential candidates George W. Bush and John McCain have already taken strong positions in support of raising the temporary visa cap. It is likely that immigration reform to increase the number of professional workers who can enter the country on temporary and permanent visas, will be a key policy issue in the next Congress.
· A large pool of exceptionally well qualified teaching candidates, particularly in critical shortage positions, such as math, science, and languages.
· Pre-testing of all candidates for English language proficiency (speaking, reading, and writing), knowledge of pedagogy and subject matter, and teaching and classroom management skills
· Credentials (academic and professional), reference and criminal background checking of all prospective candidates
· Interviewing of all candidates by veteran educators with teaching experience in the United States
· Special candidate training to expedite transitioning to American social, political and economic culture
· Certification equivalency checking of and follow-up assistance to all candidates
· Technical assistance with the immigration / visa process
· Supplemental candidate training in American educational theory and processes (pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, special education, etc.)
· Relocation assistance to candidates, including transportation, housing, short-term loans, and cultural acclimation
We offer clients two hiring options:
· A trial period option allows employers to hire candidates on a temporary basis for 90 days, providing time for both the candidate and the employer to evaluate their fit before any permanent commitment is made.
· Direct placement, whereby the candidate is placed on the employer’s payroll immediately.
In addition to teacher recruitment and placement, we also provide substitute teachers for school districts, both on a short- and long-term contract basis. This service relieves schools of the administrative burden of recruiting, screening, hiring, training, scheduling, and retaining qualified substitute teachers.