Special education educators jobs increasing in vacancies nationwide

Special education is for students who need more accessibility and attention than others. And it can take different forms.

“It can look like providing some counseling or social skills instruction for a kid who struggles to kind of make friends or has anger issues. It can look like helping kids sort of look at job transition skills,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Special Education Dr. Kimber Wilkerson said. “So sometimes it’s in general education classrooms alongside peers with the general education teacher. Sometimes it is pulled out into a separate classroom or a separate space.”

But the number of those working in special education has started to dwindle.

“But right now, in our current environment, generally nationwide, less young people are choosing education careers. So less young people are going into special education as well as other kinds of education,” Dr. Wilkerson said.

In a recent study, 51 percent of U.S. schools had a high vacancy rate of special education jobs.

Dr. Wilkerson says reasons include education being seen as a less desirable career.

And some educators indicated that a lack of support from the schools could factor in as well.

“The things that they report are things related to paperwork, burdens or administrative tasks they’re related to maybe student behavior, feeling like they don’t have enough support or knowledge for how to kind of handle challenging situations that happen in the school,” Dr. Wilkerson said.

So what is the solution?

“I think that one thing that school districts can do is treat those new educators and their existing educators as really a precious resource because if they stay, you know, and grow into more experienced educators, it just benefits the whole school community,” Dr. Wilkerson said.