Best policy
Keep DACA teachers in Texas schools.
Imagine a child’s surprise on the first day of school when she is greeted by her new teacher, a robot with a smile painted on its metallic face. Texas’ teacher shortage isn’t severe enough to hire robots — not yet. But it is so acute that some rural districts are livestreaming educators from other districts.
There’s one glaringly obvious way to help remedy the shortage. We have tens of thousands of teachers who are not only afraid they are going to lose their jobs but are afraid they are going to be forced out of the country. President Trump should allow undocumented teachers, who qualify under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to stay in classrooms.
Nationwide there are about 20,000 DACA-eligible teachers who could be deported if DACA is phased out, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Teach for America, a highly competitive program for new teachers, has 100 “DACA-mented” educators serving about 10,000 students in 11 states, according to a report in USA Today.
Kicking out the teachers who are dreamers is bad education policy. It will worsen the state’s brain drain and hurt Texas students as well as our future workforce. Public schools are already short by about 327,000 educators, according to a report this month by the Economic Policy Institute, a D.C.-based think tank.
The shortage hits remote areas hardest. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath formed a rural school district task force in October to explore some of their problems attracting instructors. “We’re starting to hear now — and this is a new problem for the state — where rural districts will post a job and not get a single application,” Morath told The Dallas Morning News.
Texas lacks teachers in six subject areas statewide including bilingual/English as a second language. This is another reason it’s absurd to kick the dreamers out. They have the much-needed bilingual skills. Most are Hispanic like those sitting in front of them.
The policy also doesn’t make fiscal sense. Most DACA teachers were educated in public schools on the taxpayer’s dime. The existing policy would eject them once they’re part of American workforce and poised to start paying taxes.
It’s no mystery why teachers are leaving the profession. They’re blamed for the poor performance of their students even when they’re not given the tools to get the job done. Yet these DACA teachers still want to serve. Congress should grant their dream and let them educate students in the country they call home.