My name is Jonathan Butcher. I am the Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

The number of teachers trained to serve children with special needs is growing. Yet the number and share of children identified as eligible for special education services is already large and also expanding—creating a challenge for families, educators, and policymakers alike. The population of students with special needs is simply outpacing the number of special education personnel available to educate them. Parents and public officials who are seeking answers should look to state-level solutions, including the education choice options that, fortunately for all these stakeholders, are also increasing in kind and number nationwide. Furthermore, federal lawmakers can update the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by giving families more choices over the private services they can use to help their students—relieving some of the pressure on public school administrators to find more educators for children with special needs. This testimony will review the data on children with special needs and the educators trained to teach them and propose solutions for helping students and their families.

First, this commission is appropriately considering the issue of educator supply for special needs students. Federal law deems the topic a civil rights issue in IDEA: It is “in the national interest” that lawmakers have a “supporting role in assisting state and local efforts” to educate children with physical and intellectual needs.REF Lawmakers have recognized there are federal, state, and local responsibilities for establishing and safeguarding “equal protection of the law” for these young people.REF

Second, the population of children with special needs is diverse, and the spectrum of needs necessitates skilled, dedicated educators for students along with a variety of learning options from which families can choose. In North Carolina, I spoke with the mother of a young girl who has beta-propeller protein-associated neurodegeneration (BPAN), a condition so rare that medical researchers had only documented 70 cases when we spoke in 2019.REF The young lady was thriving in a private school that was able to meet her needs with a one-on-one specialist. There are children on the autism spectrum learning to speak for the first time in Arizona and students with Down syndrome in Mississippi receiving critical one-on-one attention.REF No matter the obstacle, dedicated parents and their resilient children should have opportunities to succeed in school and in life.

The families I spoke with are using private school scholarships, education savings accounts, or account-style options to choose from a wide range of education products and services. Families seek such alternatives to assigned schools because special education is arguably the most litigious sector in K–12 education.REF For decades, families have struggled with local district officials to procure treatments and interventions for children with special needs. The problem persists today. A recent survey of school district special education directors found that nearly half of respondents said that “their district is experiencing an increase in conflicts that can’t be resolved through IEP team meetings.”REF

Third, survey evidence demonstrates that school officials are looking for more special education educators. One survey conducted in the 2023–2024 school year found that “more than half of districts and 80 percent of states” reported a shortage of teachers for children with special needs.REF In another survey conducted in May 2023, among respondents representing public schools, 45 percent said they had vacancies for special education teachers, and 78 percent of respondents said it was “difficult” to hire staff to help children with special needs.REF Research finds that “there are proportionally more job openings in special education, that they take longer to get filled, and the gap between special education and general elementary positions only grows as the school year goes on.”REF

School administrators are looking for more teachers for children with special needs because the student population of children with needs is growing—and fast. Approximately 15 percent of students in the U.S. participate in IDEA, Part B, the primary federal law governing education for children in special education.REF In raw numbers, this figure represents some 7.5 million students. The figure also represents a nearly 20 percent increase in children served under IDEA since the 2000–2001 school year.REF

Still, the growth in the share of teachers for children with special needs has been remarkable. As reporter Chad Aldeman has documented, the percentage change in special education teachers increased by 59 percent between 1999–2000 and 2020–2021, outpacing the growth in K–12 students overall, non-special education teachers, instructional aids, and even special education students.REF Still, Aldeman reports that “46,000 special education teachers leave public schools every year, while teacher preparation programs are training fewer than 30,000 new ones to replace them,” and that special education teachers are more likely to change jobs or leave the profession than general education teachers.REF Speaking with PBS in January 2024, a group of teachers explained how stressful the misalignment between the student population growth and the teacher supply has become. One teacher said, “The staffing shortage makes me question if I want to spend the rest of my career in this setting.”REF The combination of a weak supply line, challenging work requirements, and a sizeable, and growing, population of children with special needs are all contributing to the teaching vacancies. While research helps demonstrate the imbalance between children with special needs and the number of professionals available to serve them, researchers do not have a conclusive explanation for the increase in children with special needs. The increase may be due to better identification of students with needs or that the sheer volume of children with needs as a proportion of total enrollment is increasing.REF

Finally, any review of the data on school employment would be incomplete without recognizing the disproportionate levels of non-instructional staff in K–12 public schools. Using data from the U.S. Department of Education, my colleague Lindsey Burke reports that, since 2000, the number of principals and assistant principals has increased 37 percent, and the number of district administrative staff has increased 88 percent, all while the increase in overall teaching staff was only 8 percent.REF The increase in non-instructional staff between 1992 and 2015 was more than two and a half times the increase in all K–12 students during this period.REF While the increase in special education teachers has not kept up with special education enrollment, the increase in administrators has far outpaced all student enrollment.

To help children with special needs, federal lawmakers should use their platforms to promote state activities that have helped fill vacancies.

• In Indiana, state officials created the Indiana Special Education Assisted Licensure (I-SEAL) program, which “streamlines the required coursework for teachers to earn full special education licensure.”REF The program provides taxpayer spending to currently licensed teachers who want to enter a graduate program and earn a special education teaching license. I-SEAL also allows a small number of unlicensed teachers to enroll in a “Transition 2 Teaching” program that, again, accelerates the processes of earning a teaching certificate to work with children with special needs.REF Indiana policymakers also adopted an alternative licensure program (called ASSET) that helps aspiring special education teachers prepare for licensure tests. Tennessee lawmakers have adopted a similar program.REF Attempts at reducing paperwork and circumventing bureaucratic systems are welcome. Policymakers should redirect spending from ineffective programs and administrative positions to implement these initiatives instead of requiring new taxpayer spending.
• In Hawaii, state officials offered a $10,000 stipend for educators willing to work with children with special needs. Research finds that the bonus pay program “reduced the proportion of vacant teaching positions by 32 percent, or 1.2 percentage points.”REF Again, state officials should demonstrate fiscal responsibility by eliminating ineffective programs and cutting administrative overhead to focus taxpayer resources on instruction as they provide these bonuses.
• In states such as Arizona, Florida, and Mississippi, lawmakers adopted education savings accounts for children with special needs (in Arizona and Florida, lawmakers have since expanded the eligibility for the accounts to include all students). Families can use a portion of their child’s education spending from the state education budget that is deposited in a private bank-style account to purchase education products and services for their students.REF Parents can pay for education therapies, personal tutoring, private school tuition, online classes, and more. Research finds that following the inception of these accounts, educators began creating new private learning opportunities for children with special needs.REF In my research investigating how families used the accounts in Arizona and North Carolina, I found that a nontrivial number of families purchased more than one product or service simultaneously, customizing their child’s learning experience. Sixty-four percent of participating families in North Carolina used an account to buy one or more education product or service.REF More than one-third of participating Arizona and Florida families did the same.REF The flexible spending options are crucial for children with special needs because parents can find the learning services unique to their children, services that often exist outside the four walls of a classroom. Today, 19 states have some form of account-style private education scholarship option for students, some exclusively for children with special needs and others with eligibility provisions that include children with special needs.REF Crucially, these private accounts cost less per student than the taxpayer spending at assigned schools for children with unique needs and afford parents more education alternatives for families than just a single school.

Federal officials can also empower parents to find help for their children with special needs outside the assigned school system:

• Congress should consider updating IDEA so that participating families can use their child’s portion of the funding formula at providers of their choice.REF By making IDEA “portable,” families could purchase services from education therapists, private school tuition, or other education products that fit their child’s needs. This policy would help alleviate the pressure on public school officials to find special education personnel while also giving families private education choices when frustrating legal battles with school districts prevent students from receiving the services they require.

Providing quality learning opportunities for children with special needs is a civil rights issue.

The current practices of trying to fill special education teacher vacancies through traditional means—recruiting educators from colleges of education—and hiring more administrators than instructional staff are not meeting the needs of families or students. Federal lawmakers should resist the urge to expand the federal bureaucracy to intervene and, instead, promote innovative state policy activity. Lawmakers from Indiana, Tennessee, and Hawaii all offer examples that simplify the often bureaucratic process of earning a special education license. Furthermore, and even more innovative, state officials in nearly two dozen states have created account-style private learning opportunities for students. With these accounts, parents can customize their child’s learning experience, purchasing materials and services uniquely suited to help children with special needs. Federal officials can update IDEA and allow participating families similar choices between public and private providers. If policymakers and education officials are to keep pace with the growing segment of special education students, they will need to consider these education choice-based learning solutions.