Across America, many rural schools rely heavily on international teachers to fill needed positions. In some counties, they make up as many as two-thirds of all teachers.
A proposed $100k fee on work visas could effectively stop the flow of these teachers into the country and into these jobs, leaving rural counties that are already struggling with teacher shortages in even more dire straits.
In an America where education is already suffering and teacher pay is stagnating, rural schools won’t be able to survive this.
Why Do Rural Schools Rely So Heavily On International Teachers?
Rural districts often really struggle with recruitment.
Teachers may complain about lower pay and fewer social and cultural opportunities. Housing and travel can be barriers, as can a lack of opportunities to advance their careers, a lack of professional development and collaboration opportunities, and the often close-knit and exclusive communities.
Some school districts say that the move to more international teachers has expanded their horizons. One school superintendent, Madeline Aguillard, of the Kuspuk school district in Alaska, tells Alaska Public Media that reaching out to international applicants made it possible to fill roles that were otherwise finding no applicants at all.
“We went from having zero applicants for positions for a year-long posting to over 100 applicants of extremely qualified people with experience, and they’re wanting to come teach our students.”
It’s not just extreme cases like Alaskan villages that rely on international teachers, though. In my own North Carolina, some counties are raising concerns.
According to EdNC, Halifax County has 156 educators, and 101 of them are here on visas from other countries. At one elementary school, two of the 17 teachers are initially from the United States.
“We’ve tried recruiting locally, and it just has not worked for us,” said Carolyn Mitchell, executive director of human resources in the eastern North Carolina district of about 2,100 students. “Halifax is a rural area, and a lot of people just don’t want to work in rural areas. If they’re not people who are from here and want to return, it’s challenging.”
Florida started their school year in the fall of 2023 with over 7,000 teacher vacancies, Central Florida Public Media reported, and one district responded by filling 40 vacancies (5% of the entire teaching staff) with international teachers.
In fact, across the country, other districts were doing the same, evidenced by the total number of international teachers in the U.S. increasing by nearly 70% from 2015 to 2021.
The H1B Visa Fee Proposal
Proposing a visa fee to encourage employers to hire U.S. workers instead of outsourcing could backfire, as it could block applicants who are actually interested in the jobs offered.
A $100k fee could be double or more than what some of these teaching roles pay in a year, and could prevent schools from hiring these applicants.
If that happens, there won’t suddenly magically be a rush of locals who decide they do want to teach in a small town after all. Instead, these schools will either scramble to make the roles more attractive or they’ll find themselves short-staffed or completely unstaffed.
For international teachers, this is clearly a loss, but it’s not offset by any ‘win’ for local employment-seekers, and there’s undoubtedly no win for students.
Visa Limitations Already Affect Rural Schools
It’s not just the proposed fees that could affect schools’ ability to find qualified workers.
There are different types of visas involved, and each has its limitations that affect hiring. For instance, the Alaskan village mentioned above is already struggling because teachers hired through their J-1 visa exchange program can only stay for a limited number of years. That program is specifically designed for educational and cultural exchange programs, so the great teachers who are coming to join their communities can only stay temporarily and then leave — leaving the community in the same position it was before, with a lack of qualified applicants.
The H-1B visas, which allow teachers (and other workers) to stay for up to 6 years and can be part of a path to permanent residency, are being threatened with a new fee that might prevent schools from bringing in new teachers.
Which Students Will Be Most Affected?
Schools aren’t seeking international teachers in any nefarious design to shut out locals. Instead, it happens when there’s a shortage of candidates for the job, and some jobs are more heavily affected.
Special education is one. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that in rural schools, 41% of special education positions fall into the “very difficult to fill” category, or went unfilled. In fact, only the foreign languages positions were harder to fill, with 57% of those in rural schools falling into the same two categories.
Other educator positions that rural schools struggle to fill include many of their science classes (38% of physical science positions and 35% of biology and life science positions), math classes (35%), and music or art (28%).
That means that if hiring international teachers becomes even more difficult, our kids with developmental disabilities or delays could have an even harder time accessing the education they deserve, and an education that includes foreign languages, math, and science could be even more challenging to access for all our kids.
What Are Some Possible Outcomes Here?
Since the visa fee hasn’t been formalized yet, there are several possibilities.
Some education advocates are lobbying for simple exceptions. This could mean that J-1 visas, which allow some educators to enter the country temporarily, could be modified to permit teachers to remain and continue in their roles, and that a proposed fee for H-1B visas could include an exception for teachers.
Other advocates would like the government to reconsider the proposed new visa restrictions and make it simpler to hire and retain international workers.
If they go forward as proposed, the result could be some rural schools shutting down, and kids being bused to the nearest available schools. This could mean overcrowding, longer school days with lengthy commutes, and yet another blow to the public education system.