4 Steps to Improve Special Educator Work Life and Raise Student Achievement
Special Educators Are Burning Out And Leaving The Profession
Special educators are critical to supporting SWD, but they are also becoming harder to find, retain and recruit. All 50 states regularly report a shortage of special educators. More than any other type of teacher they are leaving the profession and telling their friends and colleagues not to enter the field. Despite ample vacancies the number of folks enrolling in special education teacher preparation programs is down, some by as much as 50%.
Over the last 20 years, the number of special educators has actually decreased by roughly 20,000. In order to fill the gap, districts have increasingly relied on more lower skilled paraprofessional, who numbers have increased by 160,000 during the same time. This means students with IEPs receive less instruction and support from certified staff because there aren’t enough special education teachers in many schools.
Why all the burn out? There is no one answer (or one silver bullet) but based on conversations with thousands of special educators in 30 states, it’s clear they have one of the hardest, most varied jobs of any educator. Special education teachers are asked to help in reading, math and writing. They are also expected to asses students for disabilities, write IEPs and manage IEP compliance. Additionally, many are part of behavior support teams and all have significant parent interactions. School psychologists have an equally wide range of tasks from IEP assessments, to counseling to behavior plans, to name just a few. And let’s not forget, they all spend hours in meeting each week.
Imagine if high school social studies teachers had to also teach math and art! They wouldn’t. The job description of the typical special educator is longer than most, they are pulled away from working with kids, which is their passion, and sadly, many report feeling less supported by building leadership than their gen ed peers. In short, it’s a hard job and many are deciding it’s not one they want to do for 30 years. Fortunately, 4 strategies can dramatically improve the quality of special educator work life. Best of all, kids benefit too.
Allow Staff To Play To Their Strengths
Special educators are talented, but no one is great at everything. Get of group of special educators in a room, confirm their supervisors aren’t listening and they will open up. Many feel confident teaching reading, but not math. Some express great comfort and pleasure in writing IEPs while others complain that they are slow and find it tedious. A similar group of school psychologists often share that some love supporting students with challenging behaviors while others are a bit scared of it. Some wish they could provide much more counseling, but spend most of the week on IEPs, while others would be thrilled to do nothing but the IEP process from start to finish.
At the end of such a discussion, I ask, “How many of you will spend at least 2 hours tomorrow and every day doing something that you feel undertrained or simply wish you could stop doing altogether?” More than half the hands go up. It’s not surprising that folks who are asked to do things they don’t like or aren’t well trained for decide to find a different job and don’t recommend it to their friends and family.
The solution is deceptively straight forward. Let staff play to their strengths. Sure, we all have some aspects of our jobs we don’t love, but for at least 80% of every day staff should be able to focus on what they enjoy and have the requisite skill and aptitude. The four most common areas of specialization are:
Academic content: Some special educators are well prepared to support student academic learning. Allowing specialization within academics also helps. Some will focus on reading, others math and others writing, for example.
Behavior support: Whether its identifying the root cause of a student’s outbursts, conducting an FBA or helping classroom teachers prevent problematic behavior before it happens, some staff want to focus on addressing behavioral needs of students.
Case management: Managing the IEP process from assessment, to writing the IEP to scheduling meetings and ensuring full compliance is important. Some staff thrive on this part of the job, others not so much.
Pedagogical coaching: A key skill of many special educators is how to modify instruction, design accommodations, scaffold content and other teaching and learning practices. Some staff are well suited to help build the capacity of their general education peers.
The process for allowing staff to play to their strengths usually takes two paths. For existing staff, just ask. If you create a safe environment, they will self-identify their strengths and areas of expertise. Sometimes, there may not be a good balance, such as too many want to do the IEP process and reading, not enough want behavior or math. Over time, through attrition and hiring, a better balance between need and interest occurs.
The second path is through targeted hiring. Rather than post for a special educator or school psychologist, post for a special educator to manage IEPs or a school psychologist to spend 80% of their time counseling. Staff will self-select for the roles they want, the district gets teachers with the appropriate expertise, and turnover diminishes. Interestingly, the number of applicants often increases, because playing to your strength is very appealing.
Streamline Paperwork
Paperwork can’t and shouldn’t go away. But it can be streamlined. Paperwork and meetings consume more than half the week for most special education teachers, related service providers, and nearly all school psychologists. Most entered the teaching profession because they love kids, not paperwork.
Based on a detailed study of over 50,000 staff schedules from nearly 150 districts, it turns out that some folks are much quicker at the paperwork than others. It’s not that they type faster or cut corners. Two factors make some staff 20%, 40% even 70% quicker than their peers.
Tips and tricks: A close review of staff who are quicker at writing IEPs and other paperwork reveals they have amassed a long list of time saving strategies, such as how to copy paste some sections from prior years, how to auto-populate some fields, and how to access a bank of common paragraphs. Most special educators report that they received very little guidance on how to quickly and efficient manage the IEP process. Most training is compliance focused. Allowing the quicker colleagues to share their strategies can help streamline the work.
A different understanding of what’s required: Perhaps an even bigger slow down for some is that many staff, especially those who take the longest to manage the IEP process and related paperwork, is that they believe more is needed than actually is. They think a 3 page background is required when others write a paragraph. They believe lengthy premeeting are always needed rather than in special instances. They believe extensive rewriting and summarizing is required. In all cases, they themselves don’t think these lengthy steps add value, but they mistakenly believe leadership or the state requires them.
Reduce The Number Of Meetings
Just like paperwork, meetings are important, but they can still be trimmed. Ask a few questions about who is in the room for each meeting. Does every one need to be here given the student’s needs? Does every one need to stay for the whole meeting? Often folks are invited just in case they are needed. That doesn’t respect or value their time. A shorter invite list can be a game changer.
Improve Site-Based Management And Leadership
The last method to improve quality of staff work life is to provide more and more effective site based leadership. Many special educators report that in theory they have a school based leader, such as principal, assistant principal or another special educator. They also report that in actuality they feel unsupported. Often principals and APs don’t have the expertise or time to solve their problems and peer leaders often don’t feel like they can speak on behalf of central office. As a result, problems linger, communication is muddled and a sense of abandonment builds.
Having a site based leader who is closely aligned to the central office leadership, who can answer questions with authority, and who can bring front line concerns to central office makes a hard job much more bearable. This role needn’t be full time or even an administrator, but they must want the job and be in synch with district leadership.