For the 2024-2025 school year, 74% of elementary and middle schools and 66% of high schools said they had difficulty filling a special education teaching vacancy with a fully certified teacher. That is according to a survey by the U.S. Department of Education’s Center for Education Statistics.
The School of Education at North Carolina State University (NCCU) is working to alleviate that shortage with its masters of arts in teaching (MAT) degree in special education.
There are currently 120 students enrolled in the master’s program which include students seeking licensure in three area: adaptive curriculum to teach children with more profound disabilities; general curriculum, where graduates assist students with mild to moderate disabilities; a general classroom teacher of students with visual impairments.
“Many of our students are offered jobs even before they complete their program,” said Nigel Pierce, Ph.D., program coordinator.
There are 14 different disabilities that are eligible for free appropriate public education and can range from moderate to severe.
Those are autism, deaf-blindness, deafness, emotional disturbance, hearing impairments, intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairments, other health impairments, specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury, visual impairments including blindness and developmental delay.
Recruiting
Perhaps the biggest challenge is recruiting people into the profession of teaching special education students. North Carolina is one of the lower-paying states, ranked 42nd nationwide for average starting pay in 2024, according to the National Education Association.
“There wasn’t an incentive for people to get master’s degrees,” said Maureen Short, Ph.D., chair of the department of curriculum and instruction.
Pierce has seen improvement in pay rates for those with a master’s degree. Some k-12 districts even offer signing bonuses.
The department has received three federal grants to target recruits to earn a master’s in special education. “The hope is, if we can provide them with tuition and at least a minimal stipend, they would be willing to return to school and complete a master’s degree,” Short said.
In exchange, students are required to work two years for each year they receive funding.
“It’s a win-win for the hiring school district,” Short said. “They are guaranteed a teacher for at least four years.”
It worked for Amber Wilson, a special education teacher at Durham Public Schools. “I don’t need any more debt from student loans,” said Wilson, a triple Eagle who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at NCCU before starting on a master’s in special education.
Wilson was already teaching special education on a three-year license when she decided she wanted to earn a master’s and obtain a permanent teaching license. From August 2022 to December 2024, she took two to three classes per semester while continuing to teach.
“We were able to apply our schooling into our daily work,” Wilson said. “It gave me a deeper understanding of what I did.”
A couple of NCCU faculty in the program visited her classroom to observe and offer feedback.
It’s a challenging job. Wilson works both with small groups of children as well as in mainstream classrooms. For children with social-emotional needs, she might teach them how to socialize with their peers, self-regulate, self-advocate, time management, attention to tasks and conflict management.
Wilson is typical of the type of student the NCCU School of Education enrolls – someone already involved in special education. About eight to ten years ago, NCCU began targeting classroom teaching assistants in the Triangle area. “They are in the best place to get their license and be successful in the field, because they are already there,” Short said.
Other masters’ students are second-career individuals who have earned a bachelor’s degree in a non-teaching field.
The MAT degree program is a mix of online and in-person (hybrid) courses during the evenings, which allows those enrolled to continue working during their studies. Some faculty are available to talk to students outside regular business hours
Next steps for the program include providing peer mentors to graduates who are teaching special education, ideally someone who is within the vicinity.
“Students get a sense of wraparound service,” Pierce said.