As you say, yes - most schools are only concerned with putting a white face on the fliers, however, we really care about the education of our students. In a school where the majority of our student recruiting is from our current students and their friends, our reputation is extremely important to us. We have teachers who are not white working at our schools, but they are all from native English speaking countries.

It is very difficult to require our teachers to have degrees:
1. Those teachers with degrees tend to go to countries that pay higher wages like Japan and Korea.
2. Many degrees here are easily photoshopped or forged. Unless you contact their school registrar there really is no way to tell authenticity now.
3. Many of our teachers don't have degrees, and are phenomenal teachers. How does a degree in something like Physical Education, Philosophy or Math help you to teach English? I would choose the "un-educated" camp counselor, children's festival volunteer or youth group leader rather than the person with a great degree but no experience.

As well, yes - trial lessons would be ideal. However, I feel very responsible to the teacher if I bring them over to China. I could not turn them away after only one lesson.

It is very difficult for a school to find good teachers through only email or the telephone. You never know who you are going to get. I also think it should be mandatory for any teacher in any country to have a security back ground check done before they are given their work permit. I don't even want to think about some of the people who come to work here and what happens that we don't know about.

Everyone on this board is so concerned with how they are getting screwed by the schools, they should realize that it works vice-versa as well.