March 28, 2001
John Q. Education

I read the most disturbing thing the other day about George W. Bush's latest specious campaign promise... and later that day I was alarmed to find out about something even MORE despicable: The article below was published on CNN.com on March 26, 2001, and was titled, "New York turns to Europe in wake of teacher shortage":

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York City Board of Education is recruiting teachers from Europe to help solve the shortage of math and science teachers in city schools. The New York Post reports that qualified teachers have been recruited from Austria since 1998, and the board has now decided to broaden its search to Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The newspaper says more than 100 teachers from Austria have already participated in the program, staying one to three years on a scholarship visa. The board's director of recruitment says the school system will take all the qualified teachers it can get. The Post reports there are currently 12-thousand uncertified teachers in the schools. The president of the United Federation of Teachers says she does not object to the program but adds it will not solve the teacher crisis.

Is this how nonchalantly the UFT [United Federation of Teachers] responds to this alarming crisis? Has the UFT met the Board of Education's appalling solution to the teacher-shortage crisis by checking its vertebrate at the door?

Admittedly, the UFT web site talks a mean game plan. They have an article posted which vehemently objects to the Board of Education's money and resource allocations as follows:

"There has been none of the usual give and take," Weingarten said. "Obviously, the board believes its $8 million ad campaign [to recruit teachers] is more important than the negotiating process. But actions at the table speak a whole lot louder than the rhetoric of a TV ad campaign."

The UFT goes on to enumerate the specifics of the shortage:

"Thousands of our senior teaches are ready to retire. Entry and mid-career teachers are being recruited by the suburbs where salaries are 20 to 30 percent higher than ours. Last year the board hired fewer certified teachers than it did the year before, despite the importance of hiring the most qualified teachers to help our kids reach the new and demanding academic standards."

And their web site quotes a New York State Supreme Court Justice who hits the proverbial nail right on the head [albeit a little loquaciously]:

"In January New York State Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse, finding for the plaintiffs in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, said the city's lack of sufficient qualified teachers 'is in large measure a function of its lack of competitiveness in the relevant labor market.' "

Lets say that in PLAIN ENGLISH [with diminished loquaciousness]: "Teachers in New York City are not paid enough".

With all that lip service given to teachers' salaries, why the spineless response to the Board of Education's recruiting-solution to the teacher shortage?

The president of the UFT should have included another small piece of information in her sullied authorization of the above mentioned program; she should have said that there would be no need to import slave-wage teachers from impoverished European countries if they just paid the teachers HERE appropriately. Now, thanks to the Board of Education's program, American teachers can hope to find themselves competing for jobs against a veritable swarm of vacationing European teachers looking for their big break in America. And make no mistake, these new teachers from abroad WILL work for CHEAP for the opportunity to come here, oh yes they will.

As for the Board of Education: for an organization that, time and time again, claims to be beyond reproach in their shirking off of the opportunity to implement business model solutions that might benefit teachers and students [e.g. merit pay and testing] its acceptance of a short term labor-economy solution to the teacher shortage problem reveals an underlying hypocrisy of staggering proportions.

This short-sighted solution [and the word "solution" is used with some license] represents a sad truth about what teachers can expect from the high-powered bureaucracy that claims to represent them [In case there's any confusion, this reference is to the Board of Education]: for the ones who stuck with teaching and eschewed the quick easy money of the blossoming internet economy [of which Math and Science majors were the majority] in favor of the moral high ground rooted in the romantic notion that individuals can make a difference in the lives of young children in this country, the Board of Education says, "thanks for your help, we have some nice parting gifts".

If teachers did it just for the money, there would be NO teachers at all! And the current teacher shortage is a real-world response to the fact that even for morally upright people who want[ed] to be teachers, MONEY DOES MATTER.

Go to the UFT web site, and tell them that you're pissed off! And tell them who sent you!

http://www.uft.org/

And when you're done there, send some spam to the Board of Education, and tell them they suck!

http://www.nycenet.edu/

And then when you're done with that, go hug a teacher and thank them for hanging in there while times are tough!

Repeat after me: "Save the teachers!"

Louder now: "Save the teachers!"

One more time: "Save the teachers!"