Comments on: Texas School District Solves Immigration Problem

By: rjjrdq

rjjrdq — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:03:57 +0000

Hey roro, the race issue is dead. Obama won. Let it go, let it go…

By: DLS

DLS — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:15:22 +0000

If I commit a crime, can I “amazingly solve” this problem by illegitimately getting a new identity, too? I'd like to evade taxes while I'm at it, and don't forget to register me as often as you like as a Democrat, too!

By: EEllis

EEllis — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:21:27 +0000

One this is Texas, Spanish speakers are not that hard to find. Also they didn't send any of these numbers to the feds. These were placekeeper numbers to use so the teachers could start getting paid while getting their SSN. The TEA has a system in place where they give temp ID numbers to teachers in that situation but for some reasion Dallis decided to go there own way using numbers that could easily be mistaken for SSN's. The problem is the added grief that it tkes later to straighten it out and how it looks not that anyone from the district was trying to issue fake SSN's. Of course Dallas also had teachers that spoke only spanish teaching ESL classes so they have so manny issues this screw up is small time.

By: roro80

roro80 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:04:16 +0000

Bilingual teachers are hard to find; there's a lot that goes into why good teachers often don't take those jobs. First, it's a very weird place to be politically -- when it comes down to it, a lot of people don't like the kids they teach ('if you can't speak english, get outta my country!"), don't necessarily think of them as people deserving of an education. This attitude is from not only the general white public, but often the school boards, principals, and even the other teachers; needless to say, this does not create a cozy work environment, as most bilingual teachers DO think of their students as people deserving of an education. Also, since most of these children come from low-education and low-income households, in many cases with parents who aren't in the country legally, there's rarely enough parental involvement, which translates to poor resources for the students and the teachers -- books, field trips, pencils, etc, seem to be allocated most heavily to those classrooms where parents raise a fuss. For the same reasons, the kids don't have help with their homework, often don't get proper nutrition, come from rough neighborhoods, and likely don't speak English in the home. And now, with NCLB and its only-this-test-counts approach, it's hard to teach your *ss off, getting your kids from barely speaking in sentences to writing full 5-paragraph structured essays in a year, while being told that you're not doing a good job because their test scores are lower than those of the rich, white kids.

(full disclosure: I was a bilingual teacher in a public school)

But falsifying federal documents is a bad answer to this set of problems, of course.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:40:41 +0000

I like your setup–”The solution is so staggeringly simple in concept that most of you will be slapping your heads in one of those “why didn’t I think of that” moments.”

By: lotusflwr

lotusflwr — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:33:26 +0000

Hah! I had hoped that someone had actually solved the immigration problem. Silly me.

By: pacatrue

pacatrue — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:19:31 +0000

I imagine that bilingual teachers are in fact hard to find. Heck, the Spanish teacher in the town I grew up in (we only had one) didn't speak Spanish very well.

That said, issuing fake SSN is perhaps not the best idea.