Thread: BS- Editorial: DREAM Act more urgent than ever

Editorial: DREAM Act more urgent than ever
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, September 19, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A16
Comments (25)|

Like nine other states, California allows students who attend high school in the state for three years and graduate to pay in-state tuition at public universities.

Yet a group of out-of-state parents doesn't like the law. The gripe? AB 540 allows kids whose parents entered the state illegally to pay in-state tuition. So they filed a lawsuit in Yolo Superior Court.

Lawmakers passed AB 540 because they want kids who were brought to California through no decision of their own and who have little or no connection with their parents' country to be educated, productive members of society.

The Superior Court upheld the state law. But the California Court of Appeal, 3rd District, overturned it on Monday.

At issue is a September 1996 federal law that says students "not lawfully present in the United States" shall not be eligible, "based on residency," for any postsecondary education benefit unless U.S. citizens also are eligible for the benefit.

California's AB 540 is explicit that in-state tuition for all persons is based on attendance and graduation from a California high school, not residence. But the three appeals court justices didn't see that.

The public universities and colleges will have to appeal to the California Supreme Court.

In the meantime, the justices have suggested a way that lawmakers can fix the state law. Another federal law says a state can provide benefits to noncitizens if it specifically enacts a state law "which affirmatively provides for such eligibility." As Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, has said, lawmakers thought they did that with AB 540.

Yet the justices want a few words added to AB 540 to explicitly say that the state is carving out an exception for noncitizens. Cedillo believes they're wrong on this. But the changes should be easy to do.

The bottom line is that this convoluted court decision is yet another reason for Congress to fix the mess. Pass the federal DREAM Act. This country is better off if these kids are educated than if they're not.




http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/1248732.html

The bottom line is that this convoluted court decision is yet another reason for Congress to fix the mess. Pass the federal DREAM Act. This country is better off if these kids are educated than if they're not.

Pay for it like every other foreign student does. Like just about everyone knows.....this isn't about going to college.....it's about finding a way to work into getting it for free. They let them go here and they no more let them that they weren't whining about federal grants because they're poor and demanding "must speak Spanish" professors because they can't speak English.

At issue is a September 1996 federal law that says students "not lawfully present in the United States" shall not be eligible, "based on residency," for any postsecondary education benefit unless U.S. citizens also are eligible for the benefit.

California's AB 540 is explicit that in-state tuition for all persons is based on attendance and graduation from a California high school, not residence. But the three appeals court justices didn't see that.

Too bad, so sad, it's a FEDERAL matter, Cedillo - get over it!

Any one who backs the "Dream Act" and it's intent to put even More American's out of work , is No friend of mine nor do i even think of them as American ! The dream act imo is a cheap way to displace White Collar American workers . We have seen the damage to blue collar bought on by Illegals .

NO MORE HANDOUTS!

I hope this whole "Dream Act" will just die out. No illegal alien should be given in-state tuition rate, or even receive a education past high school. If I were in charge, PRE-SCHOOL, ELEMENTARY, SECONDARY, HIGH SCHOOL, WHATEVER, WOULD BE BANNED TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS !

Like nine other states, California allows students who attend high school in the state for three years and graduate to pay in-state tuition at public universities.

Lawmakers passed AB 540 because they want kids who were brought to California through no decision of their own....

It seems to me then, that out of state American citizen students could/should qualify for in-state tuition by arguing that they were unable to attend high school for 3 years in California...through no decision of thier own. After all it wasn't their fault that their parents made them attend high school in, say, Iowa.

Originally Posted by FedUpinFarmersBranch

Lawmakers passed AB 540 because they want kids who were brought to California through no decision of their own and who have little or no connection with their parents' country to be educated, productive members of society.

More OBL BS, no connection to their parent's country? These kids were out marching on May Day with foreign flags!!

Originally Posted by butterbean

NO MORE HANDOUTS!

I hope this whole "Dream Act" will just die out. No illegal alien should be given in-state tuition rate, or even receive a education past high school. If I were in charge, PRE-SCHOOL, ELEMENTARY, SECONDARY, HIGH SCHOOL, WHATEVER, WOULD BE BANNED TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS !

I agree. Now we have a "teacher shortage" due to baby boomers retiring? Would we have a teacher shortage if we didn't have so many children of illegals here taking up space in our schools, needing to be taught the basic basics (such as how to speak English)? Now we need to hire people from other countries, who may know how to speak English, but anyone who has had to call customer service for anything lately, Cricket cell phones for example, knows that speaking English and speaking English correctly are two different things. Do these teachers have such command of the language that they can spell words that sound the same but have different meanings? Do they use the word "two" instead of "too" or "to"? Do they put words in the right order when writing or speaking a sentence? Do they know the difference between "he", "she", "they", "us" and "we"?
Do they understand punctuation? These were important things to learn when I was in school, but now, with all these ESL students, the teachers we have don't have the time to teach our kids the basics, our kids suffer, and their (illegals) kids get a free ride to college, still barely speaking the language or not speaking the language correctly, while everyone says how wonderful it is that so-and-so is the first generation to go to college, and look how "hard" he or she must have worked! My neighbor's kids still ask me to help with their homework (in other words, "Can you do my homework for me?") and I see that again, this year, the teachers still give them big "A"s and comments like "Good job!" when they construct a sentence such as this one: "I like going to store's with my sister. He by's me stuff." Put an apostrophe before every "s" that comes at the end of a word and teacher tells you "Good job!". That will teach them! Call your sister "he", and that earns an "A". This girl is 9, not 6. My teachers would have had their red pencil out, ready to make corrections, but today, it's "good enough".
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26691720/
States hire foreign teachers to ease shortages
Baby boomers retiring are behind a dearth of math and science teachers

John David Mercer / ASSOCIATED PRESS

updated 5:41 p.m. MT, Sat., Sept. 13, 2008
BAY MINETTE, Ala. - The school system in coastal Baldwin County — 60 miles by 25 miles of Alabama farmland framed on two sides by waterfront towns — was short on teachers, especially in courses such as math and science.

So short, in fact, that district officials went around the world last year, with expenses paid by a teacher recruiting firm, and brought back Michel Olalo of Manila and 11 other Filipinos to teach along the shores of the Gulf Coast and Mobile Bay and in the communities in between.

That raised some eyebrows in Baldwin County, where nine out of 10 people are white, just one in 50 is foreign-born and, as the county's teacher recruiter Tom Sisk noted recently, "Many of our children will never travel outside the United States."

Yet school administrators throughout the U.S. are plucking from an abundance of skilled international teachers, a burgeoning import that critics call shortsighted but educators here and abroad say meets the needs of students and qualified candidates.

"All my friends were applying," said Olalo, hired through San Mateo, Calif.-based Avenida International Consultants to teach physics. "I thought, why don't I try it? Luckily, when I was lined up for an interview, it was people from Baldwin County."

Dearth of math and science teachers
The U.S. Department of Education doesn't monitor how many foreigners are working in American classrooms, spokeswoman Elissa Leonard said, but a federal survey released in May confirmed the dearth of math and science teachers, chiefly due to retirement by baby boomers.

As far back as five years ago, the National Education Association estimated that up to 10,000 foreigners already were teaching U.S. students in primary and secondary schools, mainly to fill vacancies in math, science, foreign languages and special education.

The largest single sponsor of foreign teachers, according to the NEA, is Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Visiting International Faculty, which claims it has 1,500 teachers from more than 55 countries in districts in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and California. The firm has placed teachers mostly in the South as it branches out from its Chapel Hill base, spokeswoman Leslie Maxwell said.

Critics view the international teacher market as a quick fix that can frustrate students and foreign hires alike.

If foreign teachers "are recruited into schools and communities lacking the kinds of support that all new teachers need, they may not stay," said David Haselkorn, policy research director at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, N.J., which recruits recent college graduates with education degrees and professionals from certain fields to teach in low-income communities.

Communication gap
Janet Lipscomb, president of the Parent Teacher Organization at Foley High in Baldwin County, said the students liked the Filipino teachers but some experienced a "communication gap," particularly when students used slang.

"The students cut up a lot. Some of that may have been misinterpreted by the teachers," said Lipscomb, a substitute teacher at the high school.

But Chris Fredrick, an 11-year-old at Cedar Grove Middle School in Decatur, Ga., enjoys the earth science class taught by Uzma Masood, who was recruited by Georgia-based In-talage Inc. to come from Hyderabad, India.

"I like her. I like what we do in class. We're active in the class. We're not just sitting there all day," he said.

On a recent school day, students were highly responsive to Masood as she constantly walked around the classroom and encouraged students instead of just lecturing them.

"I like her class because sometimes if we don't understand something she'll break it down for us," said Pedruna Adams, also 11.

Masood, 32, wearing black pin-stripe pants, a turquoise Indian tunic and a black hijab on her head, spoke with an accent as she conducted activities that got students up out of their seats in the classroom, which looked typical for 6th grade. Big block letters cut out of blue construction paper were across the front, above the white board: EXPLORE THE WORLD THROUGH SCIENCE.

"I always introduce myself on the first day and tell them I'm from a different country and explain that I have an accent and they can ask me if they don't understand something. Usually within two or three days they get used to it and don't have any problems," Masood said.

"She is a wonderful teacher," said Agnes Flanagan, principal of the school. "I don't understand some people's philosophy of not wanting visiting teachers. I wouldn't mind having a building full of them. She's very dynamic and the kids love her."

Teachers proficient in English
Philippine Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the Philippine teachers hired for U.S. classrooms are those most proficient in English and who look at America as "a second home ... it's not like a strange place."

"These teachers, they all grew up reading American books," he said.

Proponents note that international teachers typically have a higher level of subject expertise in the classroom and can expose young students to a new culture.

Also, the pool of candidates overseas is much bigger than locally.

"We interviewed 180 applicants in five days" in Manila, Sisk said. In the U.S., he did not meet that many candidates on visits to 20 or 30 colleges.

Immigration officials say the temporary work visas used to hire foreign teachers create no path by themselves to permanent U.S. residency, and teachers have no advantage over any other group seeking the visas.

For foreign teachers, the U.S. job market offers much better pay than at home. Lapus said the starting monthly salary for a public school teacher there is about $300 a month. In Alabama, the starting salary set by state law is about 10 times more — a minimum $36,144 for a teacher with a bachelor's degree and no experience.

"This is the global rule of the game now," Lapus said in an interview in Manila.

He said the hiring of Filipinos for U.S. jobs is a testament to their competence and is a loss, but not a large one, to the Philippine education system, which has 500,000 public school teachers and some 30,000 new ones taking the licensing exam each year.

"We cannot even absorb all those who pass," he said.