Pay attention to the *outcomes* of students with disabilities
Staffing levels are an indicator, but they are not the ultimate goal
Schools struggle to hire and retain teachers to serve students with disabilities.
This is such a banal statement that it’s easy to forget that the number staff that schools employ in those roles represents a series of choices by federal, state, and local policymakers.
In fact, when Education Next asked me to write about the special education teacher labor market, I uncovered a few surprising findings:
Overall, staffing levels in special education have risen much faster than the number of students receiving special education services.
States do not all agree about how many students should be identified for special education services, with Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania identifying 20% of their students for special education services, while schools in Hawaii, Idaho, and Texas identifying only 12% of theirs.
States also do not agree on how these students should be supported, with Hawaii schools employing the equivalent of 11 full-time special education teachers per 100 students, while Indiana schools employed just three.
Do all of these staffing differences lead to better outcomes for kids? Not necessarily. A new Eduonmics Lab analysis by Marguerite Roza, Maggie Cicco, Ash Dhammani, and Laura Anderson looked at state-level staffing decisions versus student results and found only weak relationships. Florida, for instance, has relatively low special education staffing levels but special education students there have higher reading scores than in almost any other state.
In other words, it may be tempting to focus on staffing as an important input, but solid classroom instruction is still the most important factor. Here’s a summary from Beth Hawkins at The 74:
One immediate takeaway is that states that provide sound literacy instruction for all students also post better reading scores for special education students, Roza noted. Case in point: Mississippi, where recent, dramatic gains in literacy have been credited to a 10-year push by state officials to ensure evidence-based reading instruction is taking place in every classroom.
Mississippi is one of two states that dedicated the smallest portion of its education budget — some 8% — to meeting the needs of special education students, yet it is one of four where children with disabilities perform the highest on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
This is a good reminder that staffing levels may be an important input into the quality of services that students with disabilities receive, but the ultimate goal has to be improving the achievement and advancement of the students themselves.