Diversity and Equity in the Distribution of Teachers With Special Education Credentials

Abstract

the annual shortage of special education teachers (SETs) across the United States poses staffing challenges for local school districts (U.S. Department of Education, 2015a) and the education of nearly 6.5 million children with disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2015b). However, efforts to improve the supply of SETs often overlook key concerns about the diversity and distribution of SETs across schools. In special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 2004), students of color represent nearly half of 6-to 21-year-olds enrolled in classrooms (Snyder & Dillow, 2015), yet teachers of color represent only 17% of SETs (Schools and Staffing Survey, 2011). 1 These trends have led some to argue that cultural mismatch between teachers and students may contribute to racial disparities in special education and poor academic outcomes for students with disabilities (Tyler, Yzquierdo, Lopez-Reyna, & Flippin, 2004). In acknowledging the needs of students of color who will make up more than half of the total student population by 2024, the U.S. Department of Education (2016b) recently released a report emphasizing the need for racial diversity in a profession that remains majority White. Yet despite current and past calls for recruiting more teachers of color overall (Patton, Williams, Floyd, & Cobb, 2003), there is little research on whether this has improved in special education. A concern closely related to students' access to racially diverse SETs is the availability of SETs with appropriate

Special Education Teacher Shortage: Differences Between High and Low Shortage States

“…Although this 20% discrepancy was not statistically significant, it suggests an important and unfortunate disparity in the allocation of highly qualified SETs, disadvantaging students of color. This finding is consistent with those of previous researchers who have found that the distribution of teachers with special education credentials is driven by geography, school poverty, student achievement, and racial composition (Cooc & Yang, 2016; Dee & Goldhaber, 2017; Mason-Williams, 2015).…”

Addressing Teacher Shortages in the COVID-19 Landscape: Viewing Teacher Candidates as Assets

“…Historically, supplying all schools and classrooms with fully prepared, qualified special education teachers has been a considerable challenge. Ample evidence suggests critical shortages, especially in schools serving students from low-income areas, schools primarily serving students of color, and in rural schools (Croc & Yang, 2016;Mason-Williams, 2015;Sindelar et al, 2018). Moreover, preparation appears to matter for retention and avoiding burnout, indicating how essential it may be to maintain clinical practice activities so novice special educators feel adequately prepared for their role (Billingsley & Bettini, 2019;Ondrasek et al, 2020).…”

Special Education Preservice Teachers, Intersectional Diversity, and the Privileging of Emerging Professional Identities

“…The authors concluded, “recruiting and retaining culturally and linguistically diverse teachers in special education remains a challenge to the whole of education, particularly to special education teacher education” (p. 299). This statement remains true today, but recent findings indicate that, in the past decade, progress has been made (Cooc & Yang, 2016). In an analysis of California data sets between 1997 and 2014, Cooc and Yang found a substantial rate of increase of teachers of color in special education in comparison with their general education counterparts.…”

“…State and federal efforts to recruit racially and ethnically diverse teachers have begun to bear some fruits and “minorities have entered teaching at higher rates than whites in recent decades” (Ingersoll et al, 2014, p. 18). This is evident within special education, for example, in California where the proportion of teachers of color with special education credentials increased at 2 times the rate compared with those in general education (Cooc & Yang, 2016). In this study, we turn to intersectionality as a lens for conceptualizing diversity and equity (Collins, 1990; Crenshaw, 1989) to examine how markers of difference —or minoritized categories of race, gender identity, linguistic origin, age, socioeconomic status (SES), class, ethnicity, dis/ability, religion, sexuality, nationality, or citizenship—simultaneously intersect within the P-12 school context.…”