“…The need for these skills has been expressed by current leaders in the field based on their higher education experience in preparing a range of personnel, from classroom teachers to college instructors to university researchers (deBettecourt, Hover, Rude, & Taylor 2016;McLaughlin, West, & Anderson, 2016). The requirement for special educators to be competent in policy and advocacy is essential to ensure they are well equipped to support the students they teach, both in the classroom and at the administrative level (Rock, Spooner, Nagro, Vasquez, Dunn, Leko, Luckner, Bausch, Donehower, & Jones, 2016), especially given the continuing fragile nature of budgets to support special education at all levels (West & Sheperd, 2016;Whitby & Wienke, 2012).…”