IT’S TIME FOR AN ELEVATION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

Michelle Kelly

INTRODUCTION

Education is one of the most highly discussed civic issues in the nation, appearing often in the

media and politics due to the massive influence that the matter has on the future of the United States.

Conversations about education constantly run rampant, especially in this age of rapidly developing

technology. However, one aspect of this topic often remains in the shadows: special education. Many

people are unaware that there are over seven million students currently receiving special education

services, making up over 15% of the population of students between ages 3 and 21 in public schools1.

This number has doubled over the past 45 years2, mostly due to structure provided by the Individuals with

Disabilities Act (IDEA), which was signed into law by president Gerald Ford in 19753. This allows

students with a variety of disabilities to receive free public education and services that meet their specific

needs.

However, since 1975, very little has been accomplished in the field of special education, leading

to a massive lack of quantity and quality of resources in today’s public schools. As education legislation

largely varies from state to state, focusing on Pennsylvania allows us to dive into the specifics and

downfalls of current practices where we currently live and learn. Special education programs have grown

in many school districts throughout the state to accommodate a higher demand of a variety of students

with unique needs, but the resources currently in place are unable to fully support students in all

1
National Center for Education Statistics, "Students with Disabilities," 2023,
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg/students-with-disabilities.
2
Eesha Pendharkar, "The Number of Students in Special Education Has Doubled in the Past 45 Years," July 31,
2023,
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-number-of-students-in-special-education-has-doubled-in-the-past-45-
years/2023/07.
3
Michelle R. Davis, "Ford’s Legacy Includes a Special Education Law He Signed Despite Worries," January 4,
2007,
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/fords-legacy-includes-a-special-education-law-he-signed-despite-worries/20
07/01.
capacities. One particular restraint is that Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) do not continue past

receiving a “regular high school diploma” or aging out of the program at the age of 224. This means that

some students are unable to continue receiving the specialized resources, yet are unable to jump to a

typical post-secondary program like a 4-year college, which leaves so many students without viable

options. However, the most glaring issue is the number of special education teachers, which has

perpetually faced a shortage and continues to become more extreme. In fact, even before the pandemic,

over 98% of school districts reported an insufficient number of special education teachers5. During and

after COVID, attrition rose exponentially, which intensely affected special education. This inadequacy,

particularly within public school systems, poses a significant challenge to ensuring equitable access and

quality education for students with diverse needs. Recruiting and maintaining more qualified staff, and

allotting more funding for teachers, programs, and technology within special education are necessary to

help every student get a fair and comprehensive education. For the sake of students and the right to a

federally guaranteed free appropriate public education (FAPE), policy must be adapted to better support

them and everyone else involved in their education.

SIGNIFICANCE AND STAKEHOLDERS

THE BROADER TEACHER SHORTAGE

During the 1990-91 school year, the Department of Education began

collecting data on teacher shortages, categorized by subject area and state6.

Around 2016, states started to report shortages at a significantly higher rate

than before, and vacancies continued to rise faster than ever. When the

pandemic arrived, the number of vacancies in the public, especially special, Figure 1

education sector rose incredibly rapidly, and there simply were not enough trained professionals to hire to

4
"Graduation Requirements for Students with Disabilities,"
https://www.education.pa.gov/Policy-Funding/BECS/Purdons/Pages/GradReqDisabilities.aspx.
5
U.S. Department of Education, "Teacher Shortage Areas," 2020, https://tsa.ed.gov/#/reports.
6
John Schmitt and Katherine deCourcy, "The Pandemic Has Exacerbated a Long-Standing National Shortage of
Teachers," Economic Policy Institute, December 6, 2022, https://www.epi.org/publication/shortage-of-teachers/.
make up for that deficit, as shown in Figure 1. This was due to a variety of factors, especially the rapid

increase in layoffs at the very beginning of the pandemic.

Now, years after the pandemic disrupted schools everywhere, many districts are still struggling to

find qualified and willing teachers to hire, especially in more unique

subject areas like foreign languages. Across all public schools, 45% still

have teaching vacancies, while 56% of schools in high-poverty

neighborhoods reported vacancies in January 20227. One major reason that

these schools are facing such difficulty is the decreasing number of college

graduates receiving degrees in education: from the 2000-01 school year to

2019-20, the number of bachelor’s degrees in education in the United

States dropped 19%, making up 4% of total degrees awarded in 2020 as

opposed to the 8% of total degrees awarded 20 years ago (Figure 2)8. If you

look at the specifics by gender, about 36% of all women received

undergraduate degrees in education in 1970, while the number has since Figure 2

dropped to 6%. With the empowerment of women in STEM and other movements to motivate women to

pursue other fields, they are less likely to become educators, which has vastly changed the job market for

teachers everywhere.

The largest reason for the decrease in teachers is arguably the massive decline in educators’

salaries as compared to similarly educated individuals (those with an undergraduate degree). While in

1996, teachers earned 93.9 cents on the dollar compared to other professionals, they only made 73.6 cents

per dollar in 20229. This is a massive pay discrepancy, which only dissuades people further from pursuing

a career in education, as they may be able to better support themselves financially through other jobs. One
7
Ibid.
8
Katherine Schaeffer, "A Dwindling Number of New U.S. College Graduates Have a Degree in Education,"
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/27/a-dwindling-number-of-new-u-s-college-graduates-have-a-deg
ree-in-education/#:~:text=NTPS%20data%20includes%20both%20full.
9
Sylvia Allegretto, "Teacher Pay Penalty Still Looms Large: Trends in Teacher Wages and Compensation through
2022," September 29, 2023, https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-in-2022/.
of the only ways to combat the dwindling number of teachers is to allocate more funding from local and

state governments towards teacher pay. Mobilizing teacher unions can help push this change forward by

advocating for better resources and rewards for their work.

SPECIAL EDUCATION STAFF SHORTAGE

While the teacher shortage becomes more severe, the case is even worse for special education

teachers. The unique attributes of these teachers makes them more rare than others, an alarming fact when

compared to the rising number of students requiring special education services. This is demonstrated by

the teacher-to-student ratio for special education compared to that of all students: “For the 2015-16 school

year, which offers the most up-to-date data, there was one special education teacher for every 17 students

with disabilities. That’s more special education students per special educator than the overall

teacher-student ratio, which has held steady at about 1 to 16 for the past decade.”10 This issue is glaring,

as special education students require more dedicated attention from their teachers to help meet their

unique and diverse needs. Without the number of teachers required, students are often unable to make

efficient use of their time in the classroom, waiting for teachers who must split their time between

students, each needing a different approach to their education. This is harmful to students, and certainly

does not align with the nation’s promise of a FAPE.

Beyond the lacking number of special education teachers, many of them are not up to industry

standards, and may not meet typical requirements for their positions, like a graduate degree. Previous

Kansas director of special education Colleen Riley confirmed that only 70% of special education

instructors in the state were identified as “highly qualified.” Schools are scrambling for any staff to fill the

vacant positions, so students may not even be receiving the bare minimum of services when teachers

come in with no background in special education or students with disabilities. This must be rectified in

order to meet educational standards for students with special needs.

10
Christina A. Samuels and Alex Harwin, "Shortage of Special Educators Adds to Classroom Pressures," Education
Week, December 5, 2018, sec. Recruitment & Retention,
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/shortage-of-special-educators-adds-to-classroom-pressures/2018/12.
ACHIEVING EQUITABLE EDUCATION

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

To combat the current inadequacy in Pennsylvania’s special education systems, the first course of

action is to work on building a staff of qualified and enthusiastic teachers. The most prominent hurdle is

unreasonable pay, along with the consequences that come as a result, like unmanageable workloads and

insufficient training and/or support. Local and state governments must begin by attracting more

individuals to the field of special education, which can be done in a variety of ways.

In January 2021, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs

(OSEP) published various methods to combat the special education teacher shortage as part of their

initiative, Attract, Prepare, Retain: Effective Personnel for All11. Following these guidelines, especially in

the area of attracting new staff, could include implementing alternative routes to certification, funding and

loan forgiveness, and growing local special education programs. Alternative routes to certification are

ways of allowing teachers to earn special education qualifications through local universities or other

organizations while working in a classroom setting, which helps schools begin filling the vacancies in

classrooms sooner. This can be extremely beneficial to provide younger teachers with exposure to special

education classrooms, and is likely the quickest way to handle the massive lack of professionals in the

field. However, these programs come with larger risks, as they place students in classroom settings that

they may have no prior knowledge of or experience with, which could be entirely counterproductive. It’s

important to find a balance between starting teachers in these alternative certification programs to fill

vacancies and finding qualified teachers whose knowledge of special education meets diverse student

needs. These programs could attract more professionals in the field by avoiding the cost of higher

education, but another way to help manage these costs is to allot more government funding for special

education staff. Teachers and aides are significantly underpaid and overworked with the current ratio of

students to staff, so there is very little pull to the field. However, if staff received a higher salary,

11
Kevin Monnin et al., "Why Now Is the Perfect Time to Solve the Special Education Teacher Shortage," Council
for Exceptional Children, June 1, 2021,
https://exceptionalchildren.org/blog/why-now-perfect-time-solve-special-education-teacher-shortage.
proportional to the work they are doing, especially compared to other professionals with similar degrees,

they would be more likely to stay, and those positions would be more attractive to applicants. Finally,

growing local special education programs with parents and volunteers would help grow awareness and

community. This would help schools better understand how to train staff to meet the needs of their

specific students. Implementing these methods would vastly increase the number of teachers joining and

remaining in special education programs, and would in turn massively improve the quality of education

for their students by allowing for more individualized attention.

FUNDING FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION

To generally improve the state of special education as a whole, government funding from the

federal, state, and local levels must be more specifically allocated to special education programs and

professionals in a variety of ways. Currently, federal funding per student is less than 15% of the average

cost of educating a student with an IEP12. This doesn’t even come close to meeting students’ needs.

Federal funding supporting the IDEA must increase, and states must allocate more of the existing funds

toward special education. For teachers, this could include loan forgiveness, increased salaries, and

alternative certification programs. This increase in funding just meets the bare minimum of what these

professionals should currently be earning, especially given the ratio of students to teachers in special

education classrooms.

In addition, funding for special education programs should focus on infrastructure, technology,

and organization that allows students to fulfill their individual needs and their right to a FAPE. Studies

have shown that high-quality professional development and access to well-developed curricula

significantly increase success for students and retainment for staff, so putting funding towards these

structures would be very effective13. Additionally, hiring supportive administrators with backgrounds in

12
Evie Blad, "Why the Feds Still Fall Short on Special Education Funding," Education Week, January 10, 2020,
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-the-feds-still-fall-short-on-special-education-funding/2020/01.

13
Peter Youngs, Nancy Jones, and Michelle Low, "How Beginning General and Special Education Elementary
Education Teachers Negotiate Role Expectations and Access Professional Resources," 1506–1540.
special education would greatly benefit schools in maximizing the ways they can directly impact students,

even in the interim while they face teacher shortages. Funding should also be set aside for assistive

technology, as this category can help teachers work with their students, as well as provide students with

tools to maximize their learning. Even minute increases in a few of these areas would yield significant

results, as there are so many ways in which the funding and infrastructure of special education programs

are currently lacking.

CONCLUSION

The first step towards change is raising awareness. The 7 million students who qualify for special

education programs deserve the same FAPE that every student in the United States is entitled to, but they

won’t receive necessary resources until people advocate for them. By mobilizing teachers’ unions to

advocate for fair pay and better training and conditions, communities could effectively band together to

fight for these changes. The first steps can be completed locally, by learning about current special

education programs and identifying the most drastic needs, whether it be funding for technology, filling

teacher vacancies, or dedicating time to craft unique IEPs for each student and their unique needs. By

drawing attention to these discrepancies, millions of students across the country today and in the future

will be closer to reaching their educational goals and fulfilling their potential.
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