[Caught between the irregular recruiting practices of Prince George County school district and an adverse ruling against the district to reimburse Filipino teachers hired on H1B visas. These teachers were hired for their STEM qualifications and now face deportation because the school district no longer needs them. This comes in the heels of a similar case of hiring irregularities at a Louisiana school district]

Failure of the system: who the real victims are when foreign teachers are recruited
In the middle of the budget crisis a few years ago, school districts especially in the Maryland and Baltimore went on a recruiting binge to fill teaching position that were made vacant due to the economic downturn. Rather than re-hire laid off teachers, recruits mostly from the Philippines were brought in by school districts arranged through labor recruitment agencies with sponsored H1B visas. As H1B visa holders these teacher are classified as highly skilled, similar to tech workers that Silicon Valley recruits, although their stay is contingent on continuous sponsored employment. The pressure to hire foreign teachers is the response of schools to fulfill the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) mandate but using non-union, lower paid teachers. What they thought would be a big win, has now turned into a big financial nightmare. US Department of Labor investigation showed that the schools violated labor regulations, short changed the teachers by unfair compensation, and ordered wages paid back. Fees levied on the schools amounted to millions and left the foreign teachers in a lurch because their employment cannot be renewed. This story is narrated in detail by Mr. Suganob, a teacher of children with disabilities.
What this amounts to is a classic failure in school leadership and their inability to think through a problem beyond the short term solutions they may have considered. It also bespeaks of a mindset, common enough, in capitalist thinking, that labor is interchangeable, like replacing broken parts of a machinery with a new one. It simply is a lack of understanding what education is all about and a view that schooling is, following the factory model, a matter of replacing parts of teacher knowledge with another, in a effort to fulfill the unsustainable demands of high stakes testing that the NCLB requires. A wise and systems thinking leader would have seen through this, but often times, as history has shown quick fixes were the norm when it comes to school reform and solving its problems. Labor recruiters are complicit and I won’t be surprised if some illegal practice, like withholding passports and visas, were enforced and some pockets lined to facilitate processing. The Philippine government is only too happy to shed unemployed skilled labor to benefit from their future remittances and turns a blind eye to irregularities. The ultimate victim is the school child, and in the more poignant case of Mr. Suganob, children with disabilities who need every attention to marshall them into becoming fulfilled individuals. All they will know is that someone who cares enough for them will be gone and may not return.