The International Schools Review Forum

Hi,

I am currently teaching in the US but have four years of international experience in schools that were accredited by US associations (SACS, WASC).

I am beginning research to see if there are any state retirement programs that will give creditable service for international years. I am not referring to DODDS schools... they do get counted. I am referring strictly to international schools that have US accreditation.

I have yet to find any states that offer this in their retirement programs. If anyone knows of a specific state that does indeed give creditable service for international teaching experience, PLEASE post a response.

My plan is to try to get a bill passed for my state (Georiga) so that those of us who have taught abroad can have our experience counted as part of our retirement years. The way it is now, I don't get any credit for my four years overseas and will have to work an additional four years in order to retire. I am 42 years old and not close to retirement but would really like to get this bill passed.

This is something that I never really thought about when I decided to go overseas but my dad warned me about. I wuold not trade my international experience for anything and may very well wind up going overseas again one day. But, I would certainly like to have those years count toward retirement.

If anyone knows of any states that count international experience, please let me know.

Thanks so much!!!

Do you understand how retirement programs work? You pay into them - or, when you work at a school system stateside, it pays into one for you. Then, when you retire, you get the benefits which you have earned. If you work in one state, you cannot transfer the benefits from that state to another as the systems are different, you've paid into one and not the other. Overseas schools allow you to pay into a variety of retirement plans and often have generous matching or exceeding contributions - but they have no connections with states' retirement systems, which are systems for public employees, not private schools.

Well I'm in Illinois and you can't even come close to getting overseas to count. The closest I've come is when interviewing the interviewer asked me how many years I've taught in a position. They did give me some credit for teaching overseas- but not for retirement.

You can buy into retirement though I believe. In other words at some point I can buy retirement years, but it's expensive.

I"m not positive on this though and would certainly check out before making any commitment.

When teaching overseas, I assume I'm creating my own retirement.

As scribe said, this is very naive and makes no sense at all. Why would a state add to your retirement fund when you are overseas? You didn't work for them and didn't pay into the fund as other teacher's did. Why should they give you this additional benefit? As it's been pointed out, many overseas schools offer some kind of pension benefit. That would mean that in essence, you would get a double credit.

I think it's fair to count the experience for pay purposes because that experience benefits the school/state when you work for them just as an overseas school will credit your state experience. What is worth exploring is whether you could buy back the years you have missed but that would possibly mean paying a fair amount of money. Typically, the state pays around 7% of you salary towards pension so 4 years could be a chunk of money with the added interest.