In this commentary, we revisit “NCLB and the Demand for Highly Qualified Teachers: Challenges and Solutions for Rural Schools,” an article we published in this journal in 2005. We consider the predictions we made then about the impact of the Highly Qualified Teacher mandate on special education teacher (SET) shortages in rural states and regions, acknowledging that we overlooked the diversity of rural areas and their differentiated needs in our original article. We then update strategies and programs for preparing, recruiting, and retaining SETs in rural schools and discuss the implications of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which has replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, for special education in rural areas. We note with optimism the resilience that rural areas have exhibited in the face of teacher shortages and see hope in recent technology applications and other context-based strategies.

In this study, using Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) personnel data from 2006 to 2014, we identified seven states with consistently low shortages of highly qualified special education teachers and seven states with persistently high shortages. We employed Guarino et al.’s framework to guide our assumptions and selection of demographic, supply, and demand variables and compared two groups in this descriptive analysis. We found significant differences across supply and demand variables. Low shortage states make greater investments in per pupil expenditures; have higher teacher salaries, generally; have greater preparation capacity; and produce more special education graduates. Taken together, our findings suggest that special education teaching is a relatively better job in low shortage states than in high shortage states. We situate the discussion of our findings within policy recommendations that states may use to address shortages. Limitations of our analysis are addressed, and implications for future research are proposed.

With vetted data from state department of education websites, the authors undertook to update previous studies of special education licensure. They organized state licensure structures by the presence or absence of (a) grade bands and (b) differentiations (by category or severity). They assessed the impact of structure on student outcomes and special education teacher (SET) shortage, and sought commonalities in structures of effective states. They found that almost all states differentiate licensure for preschool teachers and teachers of students with visual or hearing impairments. Most states also offer a generic license. Currently, fewer states use other disability categories than was true in the past, and more states now use grade and severity distinctions. Structure was unrelated to student outcomes and SET shortage, and the authors found only two commonalities among effective states. As a unit of analysis, state may be too coarse, and the authors argue for within-state time series analysis as an alternative.

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Special education teacher employment began to decline in 2006, concurrent with increased paraprofessional employment. At the same time, the prevalence of students with disabilities in several categories changed substantially, and the proportion of students being served in general education settings increased as well. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the decline in special education teacher employment was related to increased paraprofessional employment, and if the increase in paraprofessional employment was related to shifts in the composition of students with disabilities, educational placements, or more general state-level factors. We created a panel dataset for 2006–2015 and analyzed these relationships using a two-way fixed effects model. We found that, although changes in paraprofessional employment were unrelated to changes in special educator employment, they were related to changes in the prevalence of students with autism spectrum disorder. In addition, states with larger populations and higher K12 expenditures employed more paraprofessionals.