Nearly 1 in 5 US public schools short on special education teachers, lawmakers to hold hearings

WASHINGTON — Many schools around the country don’t have enough special education teachers, and it’s a struggle for them to hire enough as the need for special education teachers continues to grow.

Channel 2 Washington Correspondent Nicole D’Antonio learned that lawmakers are worried about the shortage and plan to hold a hearing about it this week on how to address the issue, and its potential impacts on students with disabilities.

A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics reported that almost 20% of public schools were not fully staffed when it came to special education classrooms.

More than 7.5 million students registered as needing special education services in the last school year and experts say multiple factors re adding to the increase, including disruptions from the pandemic.

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“Those who are really struggling are our kids with special needs. We need to be pouring more resources into giving them the individualized differentiated learning that they’ve been promised. Since before the pandemic,” Dr. A. Jordan Wright, at Parallel Learning, told Channel 2 Action News.

Wright works to help improve special education services to children across the United States. He said there are many ways to incentivize teachers to go into special education.

“We also just need to incentivize teachers to go into special education teaching. We need to find ways to pay them to make it more attractive to become a special education teacher, and we need more adult bodies for our specifically trained in those classrooms,” he said.

Later this week, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will look at the federal response to the special education teacher shortage. They’ll hear from educators, researchers nd local superintendents of schools.

Then the bipartisan agency will share its findings and recommendations with the president and U.S. Congress.

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