A growing number of students in public schools—currently, about 15% of them—qualify for special education services. These services include instruction specifically designed for students with autism, learning or physical disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries. But entering the current school year, more than half of US public schools expect to be short-staffed in special education. Kimber Wilkerson, special education professor and department chair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains why there is a shortage and what needs to be done to close the gap.
The conversation has teamed up with SciLine to bring you the highlights of the interview, edited for brevity and clarity.
Which students receive special education services?
Students with a disability label receive special education services. They need these extra services and sometimes instruction in school so they can access the curriculum and succeed like their peers.
What about special education workers?
Since special education became a thing in the ’70s, there have been challenges in filling all special education positions.
In the last 10 years before the COVID-19 pandemic, those challenges began to increase. There were more open positions in special education at the beginning of each school year than in previous decades. For the 2023-24 school year, 42 states and the District of Columbia reported special education teacher shortages.
What causes this lack?
First, few young people choose teaching as a major in college and as a career. And special education is affected by these standards less than other types of education.
And, there’s more attrition—people who leave their teaching jobs sooner than you’d expect—not because they’re retiring, but because they’re tired of the job.
They want to do something different. They want to go back to school. Sometimes it’s health conditions, but the number of people leaving work before retirement age has increased. And in my state, Wisconsin, about 35% of all teachers leave the field before they reach their fifth year.
That number is even greater for special educators. About half of special education teachers leave the profession within five years.
Why do special education teachers leave the profession?
There is no national study that talks about that reason. There are some localized courses, and people report things like a lot of paperwork or a lot of administrative work associated with the job. Sometimes they report behavioral challenges for students. Sometimes it’s a feeling of isolation, or a lack of support at school.
How are students with disabilities affected if their school does not have enough special education teachers?
In a school with one special education teacher, other special education teachers should take that responsibility. Instead of having 12 students in their cases, maybe now they have 20. Therefore, the amount of individual attention given to each student with a disability decreases.
Also, when experienced teachers leave the profession, they leave behind a small group of teachers. This means that students lose the benefit of those years of wisdom and knowledge.
What are some strategies for recruiting and retaining special education teachers?
There are a variety of strategies that different universities, states and school districts have adopted, such as residential programs.
In these programs a student teacher, referred to as a teaching intern, works with a mentor teacher throughout the school year, and they are paid for doing so. They are not a writing teacher, but they are learning and being paid, and they are in that school community.
Can you tell us about your recent research to support new special education teachers?
Another thing that makes a big difference is that the teachers in our study, which is now being reviewed, are now able to find a mentor and a group of their peers. We called this developed peer group of teachers a “community of practice.” Every other week, on Zoom, we would get these new special education teachers from different school districts together, along with experienced teachers. And they would do some kind of work on the problems, bring up the challenges, and work on possible solutions as a team.
We also used Zoom to conduct one-on-one coaching. And what people liked about it was that they could talk to the wrong person in their building and in their district who would be uncomfortable and vulnerable.
Sometimes, special educators can be singled out because they are not part of a grade group. They work with children in many classrooms. This gave them a chance to have their own kind of community, and that made a difference.
We also assessed their level of burnout and how good they felt about the work they did. We then surveyed special education teachers who were not participating in our community of practice.
At the end of the year, those people who had that training and community of practice felt more exhausted, and they felt more effective in the area of classroom management. And that’s important, because burnout is one of the main reasons people leave this job.
So if we can make people feel like they’re better equipped to deal with this challenging situation, that’s one strategy to increase the number of people who want to stay in their job year after year.
Watch the full interview to hear more.
SciLine is a free service based on the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit organization that helps journalists incorporate scientific and expert evidence into their stories.
Kimber Wilkerson is a professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the first article.
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