Hiring and retaining special education teachers is one of the biggest challenges facing K-12 districts, and the problem isn’t going away as schools head into the 2024–2025 academic year.
While many school districts have resorted to offering higher salaries to attract and retain special ed teachers, an in-depth analysis by DATIA K-12 of several recent reports finds some districts are exploring other strategies. There’s a good reason school districts are trying different approaches — most are feeling the pain. Fifty-one percent of public K-12 schools nationwide say they have open positions for special education teachers, according to the March 2024 data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Non salary-related retention strategies, including paying for degrees, developing internal staff, providing housing help, and increasing time off, alleviate some district staffing problems.
Increasing salaries
One of the first steps states and school districts take — not surprisingly — is to offer higher salaries. Conventional wisdom holds that high salaries attract and retain staff.
Special education teachers are already paid slightly more than other K-12 educators. The median salary for special ed teachers, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is $65,910 a year. High school teachers are paid $65,220, and kindergarten and elementary school teachers make $63,670, according to the BLS.
But some school districts around the country feel it’s not enough.
Almost 70% of Texas school districts offer special education teachers stipends ranging from $200 to $14,000, according to a May 30, 2024, report from the Texas Association of School Boards.
The pay is often seen as a way to offset the challenges facing special ed teachers.
“[W]orking conditions are often more challenging for special educators because school-wide systems and interventions are often designed without consideration for their impacts on students with disabilities and special educators,” noted a September 2023 Brookings Institute study.
“For example,” Brookings continued, “many states adopted teacher evaluation systems that are misaligned with the best available evidence on effective instruction for students with disabilities, and that do not reflect key aspects of special educators’ roles. Consequently, special educators score significantly lower on these systems than on evaluation systems that are better aligned with effective instruction in special education. Thus, the feedback they obtain through evaluation processes may be less useful for improving their practice. Collectively, these issues leave special educators navigating more challenging responsibilities, with less support.”
Paying incentives and stipends
However, in some cases, higher pay and financial incentives have been less effective than they appear — especially when it comes to drawing in new talent.
Hawaii introduced pay incentives for hard-to-fill positions before the 2019-2020 school year, according to a National Public Radio report, specifically adding a $10,000 bonus to special education teacher salaries. The immediate result was a 15% reduction in special ed positions that were vacant or filled by an unlicensed teacher — a definite win in the recruitment column.
A deeper exploration of the data revealed that most of the teachers filling these positions were already certified in special education and were teaching in general education positions. While the financial incentive did fill positions, it didn’t necessarily attract new people to the field.
Using emergency waivers
It’s not uncommon to find special ed teachers working in regular ed classrooms. According to an analysis by The 74 at the start of the 2023-2024 school year, there were more than 500 vacant special education positions. Yet there were also more than 1,500 special education teachers working in regular education classrooms — the result of administrators placing bodies to fill vacancies based on the staff they have on hand.
On the other hand, The 74 reported in January 2024 that the schools in some states are trying to fill special ed vacancies by seeking emergency waivers for licensed general education teachers and non-licensed professionals, allowing those recruits to teach special ed students either in resource rooms or in inclusive classrooms.
Not all states allow these types of waivers. Furthermore, the practice has its distractors.
Growing their own
In an interview with Niceta Thomas, director of student services in the Roseville Area School District in Minnesota, Thomas told DATIA K12 that this flip-flopping of roles contributes to burnout around the country. Teachers who need to gain the specialized skills to work with special education students often burn out quickly, thus contributing to high turnover rates.
Roseville is trying a new approach that Thomas calls, “Growing our own teachers.” With a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education, Roseville pays for educators to complete their special education licensure.
“We’ll pay for them to do the program, and they have to sign on with us to teach for three years. If they feel like the district values them enough to pay for their degree, our hope is they will stay,” Thomas says.
The next phase of the program includes paying for four-year special education teaching degrees for those without a bachelor’s degree, thus enabling the district to produce 20 new special education teachers who will then work in its school system.
Helping with housing
In addition to education benefits, some districts are helping with housing.
According to a May 2022 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), a research and policy group, Boston Public Schools and the New York City Department of Education have helped special education teachers with housing. Boston has provided payment for moving expenses. New York City has given $5,000 housing stipends for educators who agree to take on special education assignments.
Granting more time off
In the same report, NCTQ also noted that some districts are offering special education teachers more time off. It said the Davis School District in Utah has offered two additional days of release time. Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland give them at least five days a year to do paperwork and Individualized Education Program (IEP) compliance tasks.
