California’s System of Special Education Staffing

The number of students with disabilities is growing rapidly in California and the United States as a whole. How are California’s schools keeping up in terms of staff? To answer this question, we look beyond just special education teachers to the ecosystem of staffing across three types of professionals most directly engaged in meeting the needs of special education students: teachers, related service providers (such as psychologists or speech pathologists), and classroom support (paraeducators). Using the broad brush of administrative data to capture the number of staff occupying these three types of positions across California and more granular experiences of principals to show the experience within schools, we find shortages in each of the three staffing areas, particularly evidenced in our qualitative data. In a nutshell, there is no slack in the special education staffing system. Principals cannot make up for short- or long-term shortages in one area by drawing on another, which leads them to a crossroads about how to best meet the needs of special education students. What’s more, we find that while staffing shortages occur across the state, they look different depending on where they take place in California’s diverse educational landscape. To address the issues that we lay out in this report requires, at a minimum, additional data to better understand where and how staff shortages occur and with what effect. Additionally, targeted solutions for the special education workforce (e.g., differential pay) that take into account both role and district context could be a useful policy lever to pull. Beyond adjustments to pay and benefits, more robust in-service and pre-service training and preparation to equip general education staff to serve students with disabilities could have benefits for both staff and students in the state.