VPerspective

Solving the grades 7-12 special ed teachers shortage

Mar 13, 2008 4:57 PM

Just four years ago, the State Education Department’s Board of Regents put in place new certification requirements that it hoped would give special educators the content expertise to teach to the standard at the middle school and high school levels. Its solution: create 45 separate certification titles, in place of just one, to ensure that special education teachers were highly qualified in content areas. Big mistake! Few people applied for the special certification and fewer schools offered it. It’s like they threw a party and nobody came.

Now the department wants to say “never mind,” precisely because the change only made the shortage of special educators in middle schools and high schools worse.

The UFT told them it wouldn’t work.

And how could it work? If prospective teachers earn a master’s in physics, for example, they won’t likely go into special education; they’d go into teaching physics.

The upshot: Self-contained classes are disappearing at the middle and high school levels. While just under half of all students with disabilities are in grades 7-12, less than 20 percent of new special education teachers are certified in grades 5-9 or 7-12, according to the SED.

Now, the Regents understands that schools still need to satisfy both NCLB and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requirements that self-contained classes be taught by teachers who are highly qualified in both special education and core content areas. But it won’t be fixed by simply revising the certificate structure alone. Or again.

What it will take is revising the state’s continuum of services for students with disabilities, especially if the Regents wants to do it as early as fall 2009, as projected. It will also take what the Regents calls “traditional route teacher preparation programs.”

That means creating and adding a team-teaching option for special classes to the continuum of services and making sure that districts follow through. While districts may be free to implement them now, it won’t happen absent explicit legal authority and enabling regulations. More to the point, it won’t happen absent appropriate funding.

It also means developing options that encourage and assist general educators who wish to be certified in special education and helping special educators who wish to be certified in general education content areas. Doing this means setting up intensive teacher institutes and distance-learning programs, introducing incentives such as reduced or no-cost tuition and providing on-site support for participating teachers. Lunchroom chats over tuna sandwiches with colleagues can’t be the main on-site support vehicle for new teachers.

The state will also have to press colleges to establish approved programs leading to the new credential at the bachelor’s degree level. The last time the SED changed its certification requirements, colleges voted with their feet by not offering programs leading to the new certifications. The impact of the colleges’ reactions to the 2004 changes on preparing teachers of students with speech and language disabilities was particularly devastating. Only two metropolitan-area schools elected to offer programs to meet the new requirements at the bachelor’s level. Unless education schools are fully committed to the new policy, and unless the SED makes it happen, no major increase in the supply of certified special educators is possible.

There is, however, some good news to report.

The city is extending to March 21 the deadline for teachers to use the HOUSSE (High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation) in order to demonstrate they are already highly qualified to teach core academic subjects at the middle and high school levels. Certified or licensed special educators can complete the online evaluation tool, which enables them to demonstrate subject-matter competence through using a variety of skills, classroom learning, credentials, work experiences and professional development.

HOUSSE is a good way for current educators to become rated “highly qualified,” thus closing the credentials gap, and allowing students access to self-contained classes. Don’t miss the March 21 deadline.

For more information, go to the UFT Special Education site at www.uft.org. To take the HOUSSE evaluation online, go to: www.nycenet.edu/offices/dhr/housse/.