HPS International

After racking up 14 wins by bringing a total of 14 teachers to Connecticut from Puerto Rico in all of 2022, and having moved on to the Caribbean to establish a teacher pipeline there for next year, Hartford Public Schools is now looking to expand their international reach. 

HPS announced this week a new project is in the works to bring in teachers from foreign countries through an International Teacher Permit.  While stating that she is “passionate” about the recruiting and retention of teachers, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez said that she talked to one candidate from Peru. I think she’s after that $1,500 referral bonus.

Similarly, the Connecticut State Department of Education has “re-established” a project that will bring teachers from India.  To HPS, this is something new, for the rest of the country it’s, “Where have you been?”

Between 2015 and 2021, 19,491 teachers from 114 different countries have come to the United States on J-1 teaching visas.  The top 5 countries of origin are the Philippines, Spain, Jamaica, China, and France.  Over the last 2 years, Baltimore Schools, which make Hartford schools look like West Hartford, have brought in 68 international teachers.  Foreign teachers have been coming to America since Moby Dick was a guppie, as the J-1 visa was authorized in 1961.

While the lure of the money brings few U.S. citizens to Hartford to teach, it has a very strong appeal to those teachers living abroad.  A Filipino teacher in Arizona said U.S. jobs are so much more lucrative.  “You can buy anything here – not like back home…we can eat whatever we want.  We can buy whatever we want...”  Whether they state that it’s the passion for teaching, or the cultural aspect of coming here, the money is the ultimate enticement.

The logical next step, for HPS, is to expand their international outreach to recruiting foreign students, which they are able to do through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Student and exchange Visitor Program (SEVP).  While most foreign students come to the U.S. for a post-secondary education, 49,630 students came to the states in 2021 for a K-12 education program.

One in five entrepreneurs who founded a start-up business in the United states is an immigrant – and 75% of them first came to America as a student.  A Brookings Institute study found that in 2016, 66% of foreign exchange students found U.S. high school classes to be “much easier “compared to their courses at home.  The study also found that foreign students thought that their American friends were “much more” concerned with doing well in sports than they were with math class. 

Other studies have shown that U.S. born students with high exposure to immigrants in their schools, scored better on math and reading tests than similar students with low exposure to immigrants.  And, it was found that disadvantaged Black students were the main benefactors of studying alongside immigrant classmates, as they enjoyed a “bump in performance twice as large as other native-born students.”

Think of the birds you would be killing with this one stone.  Immigrant students bring cultural diversity to the school.  Check.  Immigrant students bring an infectious educational culture to your classrooms.  Check.  Immigrant students bring a positive reputation to your schools.  Check.  And immigrant students bring checks to your school!  Check!