Long-Term Trends in the National Demand, Supply, and Shortage of Special Education Teachers

Abstract

With a focus on both teacher quality and quantity at the national level, this research examined longterm trends in the demand, supply, and shortage of special education teachers for 16 school years, from 1987/1988 through 2002/2003. These trends were based on data published in annual reports to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by the Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. Rapid growth in teacher demand for students with disabilities aged 3-5 years was found, whereas the growth in teacher demand for students aged 6-21 years was more gradual and paralleled the rate of growth in teacher demand in general education. Although teacher demand was mostly satisfied by growth in the supply of fully certified teachers, the shortage of fully certified teachers for students with disabilities aged 6-21 years has been chronic since 1987/1988

Variability in Demand for Special Education Teachers: Indicators, Explanations, and Impacts

“…Indicators, Explanations, and Impacts For well over two decades as the demand for special education teachers (SETs) was increasing in response to rapid growth in the numbers of students with disabilities (SWD), the field struggled to address shortages of qualified teachers to satisfy this demand (Boe, 2006). 2 The…”

“…Analyses of these trend data from OSEP and from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) by Boe and colleagues (e.g., Boe, 2006;Boe & Cook, 2006;Boe, Cook, & Sunderland, 2007; have demonstrated that increases in demand outstripped the supply of qualified SETs resulting in acute and chronic shortages-shortages that persisted in spite of OSEP's longstanding commitment to and investment in personnel preparation (West & Whitby, 2008).…”

“…To be precise, the number of funded, but vacant, teaching positions (once a school year commences) should be added to the number of SETs employed to compute total demand. Fortunately, only about one percent of SET positions have been vacant, as indicated by evidence from national databases during the 1990s (Boe, 2006). This percent of vacant positions was considered to be so negligible that the collection of such vacancy data was discontinued.…”

“…As widely recognized, there has been a chronic shortage in the supply of qualified individuals to fill increasing numbers of teaching positions in special education (Boe, 2006;Boe & Cook, 2006). With the current decline in demand for SETs, it is expected that the size and character of the supply of SETs will be quite different from that seen in prior years (Boe, Cook, Kaufman, & Danielson, 1996; Tables 3-2 at www.ideadata.org).…”

Special Education

“…Both exist to train preservice teachers. Within the United States, shortages in special educators over the past two decades (Boe, 2006) have led to the development of AC programs. Questions have been raised about the quality of these forms of training programs.…”