Challenges Facing the Special Education Teacher Workforce: Composition, Distribution, and Effectiveness

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA, 2004) makes a strong public commitment to ensure all students with disabilities experience a free appropriate public education with more than de minimus benefits (Endrew F. v. Douglas Cty. Sch. Dist., 2017). This commitment fundamentally depends on the US educational system’s capacity to develop a special education teacher workforce of sufficient size and skill, equitably distributed across schools, to provide effective services for all students with disabilities. Teachers are the school-based factor with greatest influence on student outcomes (Chetty et al., 2012); without their daily work planning and delivering services, the commitment enshrined in IDEA is hollow (Mason-Williams et al., 2020). Yet, three core problems with the special education workforce currently undermine the US educational system’s capacity to fulfill this commitment: (1) The composition of the workforce is too small and it does not reflect the diversity of students with disabilities (Billingsley et al., 2019; Mueller, 2021); (2) The inequitable distribution of experienced, skilled personnel across schools perpetuates inequities based on socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity (e.g., Cooc & Yang, 2016); and (3) The effectiveness of the current special education workforce is inadequate to promote equitable experiences and outcomes for students with disabilities (e.g., Gilmour et al., 2019). In this chapter, we explore the nature of these challenges and the implications of these challenges for the special education services students with disabilities receive.