Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the President's 2003 budget for programs administered by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services that provide support for the recruitment, preparation, professional development, and retention of one of our country's greatest resources—America's teachers. We know that teachers are key to student achievement and all students, including students with disabilities, deserve a highly qualified, well-prepared teacher. We also know that we will never improve outcomes for students with disabilities by focusing on special education alone. What happens in the regular classroom is vitally important for all children, including those with disabilities. Both regular and special education personnel must be well prepared to meet the challenges of educating students with disabilities in America's schools.

The primary responsibility for providing personnel to serve children with disabilities lies with the States. However, it is our role to support States in responding to their personnel needs and in ensuring that personnel have the skills and knowledge, derived from research-based practices, needed to help children with disabilities succeed. Our Study of Personnel Needs in Special Education (SPeNSE), supported with funds set aside for studies and evaluations under the Grants to States program, is providing a valuable source of information that is assisting us to better understand our personnel needs and to develop strategies to address them. I would like to share some of what we have learned from this study about special education personnel shortages, teacher preparation, and professional development.

Critical Shortages of Personnel

States across America are experiencing a critical shortage of personnel qualified to meet the needs of children with disabilities. While significant teacher shortages exist in some areas of regular education, particularly math and science, the problem is more severe in special education. Although State-reported data suggest that Federal support for preparing personnel to serve children with disabilities has been helpful in meeting State needs, critical shortages still persist. For school year 1999-2000, more than 12,000 openings for special education teachers were left vacant or filled with substitutes throughout the U.S. In addition, we know that many special education teachers are not fully certified for their main teaching assignment. Special education administrators report that the greatest barrier to finding teachers is a shortage of qualified applicants and that insufficient salary and benefits are a major barrier to recruiting qualified applicants. Data also indicate a decrease in the number of individuals earning special education doctorates, producing a shortage of faculty in higher education.

High Turnover

Special education teachers also have the highest turnover rate in the teaching profession. We have learned that the number and types of students with disabilities served, the special education teachers' job responsibilities, manageability of workload, and the extent to which their schools are caring and supportive of students and staff all affect the special education teachers' confidence and intent to stay in the profession. Although the majority of special education teachers are committed to remaining in teaching, too many of them want to leave the profession as soon as possible. Of those who plan to leave, 75 percent report that paperwork interferes with their primary role—teaching—and many also report that their workload is not manageable. Also, one in five special education teachers report that they are undecided as to how long they will stay on the job. Given the difficulties school districts report in hiring new special education teachers, we need to work with States to find research-based strategies for retaining highly qualified teachers.

We must continue to work to find effective ways to increase the supply of new or returning special education teachers, improve recruitment, and reduce attrition. We need to support States in their efforts to develop and implement effective short-term and long-term strategies to increase the supply of highly qualified special education teachers. States need support in developing and expanding high-quality alternative certification programs as an effective strategy for increasing the supply of special education teachers. New and improved recruitment practices are needed to help match highly qualified applicants with appropriate jobs. Differential pay—paying special education teachers and others in high demand more than teachers in fields without shortages—is another promising strategy. We must reduce the amount of paperwork in special education without undermining the important protections and rights of students with disabilities.

Improving Teachers' Skills

Improving educational results for students with disabilities requires not only an adequate supply of special education teachers, but teachers who are highly skilled. Preservice preparation and continuing professional development must be designed to help both special education and regular education teachers acquire the knowledge and skills they need to teach in today's classrooms. Today's teachers must be innovative, adaptive, and prepared to use an array of instructional approaches that meet the wide range of students' needs to achieve improved results.

Preservice Preparation

Teachers must be well prepared for their assigned roles. However, many recently prepared special education teachers report that their preservice programs did not teach the specific knowledge and skills important in successfully teaching students with disabilities. These include supervising paraprofessionals; accommodating culturally and linguistically diverse learners; using professional literature to address issues encountered in teaching; and collaborating with regular education teachers. Our data also indicate that the design of the special education teaching experience (e.g., duration and type of experience) may be an important factor in the quality of the preservice preparation.

We must ensure that preservice training programs adopt research-based teacher preparation practices, including: effective curriculum and instructional strategies; well-integrated coursework that links subject matter and pedagogical knowledge; intensive well-designed clinical experiences; a high degree of professional collaboration; and rigorous teacher assessment built on well-articulated standards.

Professional Development

School districts are spending huge amounts of money on professional development because arriving teachers lack the skills needed to achieve results for children with disabilities. The need for professional development is particularly acute as school systems provide for participation of students with disabilities in the general education curricula aligned with State standards, the placement of most students with disabilities in regular education classrooms, and the inclusion of such students in State and local assessments. Many special education teachers reported that the professional development they received did not reliably incorporate best practices in staff development, such as actively engaging teachers in the learning process or allowing time for planning how to implement newly acquired skills. Also, as in preservice training, little attention in their inservice training is given to accommodating the instructional needs of diverse learners and using scientifically based practices to address problems. Teachers also reported that interpreting the results of standardized tests was not given significant attention in inservice training. These are skills that all teachers will need to meet the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Our research also documents that beginning special education teachers find meetings with other new teachers and informal help from colleagues more beneficial than district-supported staff development programs.

Regular education teachers play an important role in educating children with disabilities and have the potential to make significant contributions to the educational outcomes of students with disabilities if they have the appropriate skills and supports. About 75 percent of students with disabilities spend 40 percent or more of their day in regular education classrooms, and regular education teachers have an average of 3.5 special education students assigned to their classes. Adapting instruction for students with disabilities, managing the behavior of students with and without disabilities, and collaborating with special education teachers are important skills for regular educators. Unfortunately, many of our teachers completed their professional preparation at a time when few students with disabilities were taught in regular classrooms and they have not acquired these skills. Even among teachers who were more recently prepared, training gaps, particularly with respect to research-based instructional practices, remain.

We must continue to improve teacher quality for both regular education and special education teachers, recognizing that certified does not mean qualified. Under the IDEA, we must examine our National Activities programs to determine what changes need to be made to dramatically improve the training provided to aspiring teachers. We must also examine professional development programs to ensure that they only use rigorous research to help teachers gain the skills they need to improve results for children with disabilities.

Supporting States

Funds available through our Personnel Preparation, State Improvement grants, and the Part B, Grants to States programs play an important role in helping States meet their personnel needs. The fiscal year 2003 request would provide $90 million for awards under the Personnel Preparation program to assist States in meeting the demand for highly qualified personnel to serve children with disabilities. This program also supports projects to prepare personnel to serve children with low- and high-incidence disabilities, to train leadership personnel, and to fund projects of national significance. To serve children with low-incidence disabilities, we provide grants to support preservice programs that might not otherwise exist. Because the number of personnel needed to serve these children is small, the expense of maintaining these specialized programs does not typically justify local or State support. These grants also provide financial aid to students to encourage and support them in pursuing careers in special education, related services, and early intervention in order to appropriately serve children with low-incidence disabilities.

Awards to prepare personnel to serve children with high-incidence disabilities emphasize implementation of research-based model practices, training para-educators, and training personnel to address chronic shortages in particular geographic and content areas. Model practices are derived from a wide range of sources, including our projects of national significance, as well as research and demonstration findings resulting from our Research and Innovation program.

Awards to prepare special education leadership personnel support institutions of higher education in their efforts to meet the ongoing demand for research and teaching faculty and for State and local administrative personnel. These awards focus on improving results for students with disabilities by ensuring that educational leaders have the skills and training required to help students with disabilities achieve to high standards. Projects of national significance address national issues in personnel preparation and develop research-based model personnel preparation programs that can be implemented throughout the country. Funds also support grants to minority institutions and a variety of other national activities, such as the Center on Personnel Studies in Special Education; the Center for Early Intervention Professionals in Hearing Impairment, Including Deafness; and the Early Intervention Training Center for Infants and Toddlers Who Have Visual Impairments.

The State Improvement grants (SIG) program provides grants to assist State educational agencies in partnership with universities, parents, and others, to reform and improve their systems for providing services to improve results for children with disabilities, including their systems for personnel development, technical assistance, and dissemination. SIG funds are a critical source of funding to ensure that all special education and regular education personnel have the skills and knowledge necessary to meet the diverse needs of children with disabilities. States are required to use at least 75 percent of the funds that they receive under this program for professional development. The $51.7 million request for fiscal year 2003 would support awards to about 48 States.

SIG grants are addressing special education staff shortages through a variety of innovative approaches. For example, Iowa is implementing a career ladder for para-educators to increase the supply of teachers in high-need areas. In Missouri, tuition reimbursements will be available for para-educators and regular educators seeking certification in special education. States are also addressing their systemic needs for high-quality professional development by using SIG funds in conjunction with funding from other Federal education programs to provide a coordinated program of professional development that addresses the needs of both regular and special educators. For example, Alabama has instituted a statewide initiative to train special educators and regular educators to implement research-based reading and school-wide positive behavior supports leading to improved student achievement and a decrease in behavior problems.

Finally, funds available through the Part B, Grants to States program under IDEA can also be used to address personnel shortages, including professional development. We are requesting $8.53 billion for this program, an increase of $1 billion over the 2002 level. This level of funding would provide an estimated $1,300 for each of the approximately 6.5 million children with disabilities in 2003.

Most of the funds provided to States through this program must be passed on to local educational agencies (LEAs). However, a portion of the funds may be used for State-level activities including helping LEAs address personnel shortages. In addition, LEAs may use their pass-through funds to support personnel training, recruitment, and other activities designed to improve the quality and increase the quantity of personnel, building their capacity to serve and improve results for students with disabilities.

Conclusion

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we believe that the fiscal year 2003 budget request is an important step forward in our continuing efforts to improve the education of children with disabilities so that no child is left behind. We must continue to work together to provide the teachers with the skills to enable children with disabilities to obtain a higher quality education that leads to meaningful work and independent lives. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

This page last modified—August 2, 2006.