As urban and suburban school districts experience annual recruitment pangs, the numbers of overseas teachers recruited to teach hard-to-fill subjects is on the rise.
Attracted by better pay than they get back home, more Filipino teachers than ever before are flocking into the United States, according to this article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.This week, 93 teachers who will teach math, science and special education landed in Washington en route to Prince George’s County in Maryland. They followed a batch of 115 teachers that arrived in July to teach in the county.
Other districts also have offered jobs to potential recruits from the Philippines, including Jefferson County, La., which offered jobs to 60 teachers from the island nation for the 2008-09 school year.
An average of 73 Filipino teachers per year arrived on America’s shores from 1992 to 1999, and that number doubled to more than 221 teachers per year from 2000 to 2004. More than 10,000 foreign teachers are recruited annually to fill the United States’ demand for teachers in hard-to-fill subjects.