Education Week - September 29, 2021 - 12

3 Reasons Why Being a Special Education
Teacher Is Even Harder During the Pandemic
Spec. ed. teachers left
to navigate on their
own, survey shows
By Eesha Pendharkar
While the pandemic made it harder for
teachers everywhere to do their jobs, special
education teachers in particular experienced
a lack of training, support, and collaboration
with their general education counterparts.
That's according to a new study released
by the Center for Reinventing Public
Education. This spring and summer,
researchers interviewed more than 60
special education directors and teachers,
school leaders, and general education
teachers working at 15 schools across the
country to ask them about their experiences
with special education during the pandemic.
Most of the special education teachers did
not have their own classrooms, but provided
special education to students in general
education classrooms, according to Lane
McKittrick, a research analyst for CRPE.
Earlier this year, in a separate study, CRPE
found that the pandemic had impacted
students with disabilities disproportionately,
with districts struggling to meet the needs of
students with complex learning disabilities,
which require more support. Prolonged
school closures kept students away from
physical or cognitive therapy and hands-on
instruction, while online learning platforms
proved insufficient to ensure accessibility
for students with a range of disabilities.
That led to students with disabilities facing
steeper learning losses and reporting higher
absenteeism, that study found.
Schools with majority students of
color and schools with high poverty
levels reported that the pandemic had
a disproportionately higher impact
on services offered to students with
disabilities, according to a nationally
representative survey of 1,500 teachers
conducted by the RAND Corporation
last October. Nearly 2 in 5 teachers said
that their schools offered alternative
instructional arrangements for students
with disabilities during the pandemic, but
this was less common in majority nonwhite
and high-poverty schools.
" For me as a special education parent, I
know sometimes special education feels like
an afterthought, and as a researcher too, it
kind of feels like that as well, " McKittrick
said. " There's a lot of kids that were left
behind last year because we just weren't able
to serve them. "
Here are some of the difficulties special
education teachers in particular have faced
over the last 18 months.
Paraprofessional Jessica
Wein helps Josh Nazzaro
answer questions
from his teacher while
attending class virtually
from his home in
Wharton, N.J.
1.
Special education teachers didn't collaborate with
general education teachers.
3.
Collaboration between general and special education teachers
was a challenge before the pandemic. That collaboration would
have helped teachers gain important information about
students and strategies on how to best meet their needs
during the pandemic when special education students were
struggling.
More than 45 percent of high school teachers and between 30 percent
and 35 percent of middle and elementary school teachers said
they had never collaborated on lesson planning.
That might have been because only about a third of general
classroom teachers said they see themselves as primarily
responsible for accommodating their special education students'
needs, despite the fact that these students are typically educated
alongside their peers who aren't receiving services.
Even before the pandemic, 1 in 5 teachers felt " very well
prepared " to teach students with mild-to-moderate learning
disabilities according to a May 2019 survey of 1,350 teachers
by the National Center for Learning Disabilities and
Understood.org.
" It was only one or two schools that had indicated to us that
they felt like collaboration was going really well, " McKittrick said.
" The rest of the schools were still really struggling with how to
make time for all of that, given all the different priorities that were
going on. "
2.
The responsibility of communication with parents was
primarily on special education teachers.
While schools were closed or in hybrid mode last year,
communication with parents of students on individualized
education plans was vital so that parents could keep track of
their child's academic progress. But although students typically
spend most of their day with general education teachers, special
education teachers felt primarily responsible for leading the
communication with families regularly, the study found.
About 60 percent of high school and middle school special
education teachers and 40 percent of elementary school teachers
said they mostly stayed in touch with families.
According to the CRPE study, when general and special
education teachers " share responsibility for educating students
with disabilities-planning lessons together, co-designing
modifications and accommodations, and jointly communicating
with families-teachers feel more supported and their
students experience more inclusive and productive learning
environments. "
12 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 29, 2021 | www.edweek.org
Districts often did not factor in students with
disabilities for reopening plans.
In a separate study, CRPE found that 12 percent of school reopening
plans it surveyed did not even mention students with disabilities at all.
Even the plans that mentioned them did not elaborate on reopening
plans specifically for these students. And while 52 percent of plans called
for in-person learning for students with disabilities, only 33 percent
included interventions or increased support for students with disabilities
to address pandemic-related " learning loss, " according to the report.
Given this lack of guidance, teachers attempted to adapt their
instructional approach to meet the diverse educational needs of
students with a wide range of disabilities. But often they were
left to figure out an approach on their own with minimal or no
guidance, much less a shared understanding of the best ways to
help special education students make up for lost time.
Special education needs to be a priority this school year
Collaboration between general and special education teachers and
training for special education teachers were not prioritized before
the pandemic either, according to the CRPE study. Although some
districts implemented co-teaching over the last decade-that pairs a
general and a special education teacher in the same classroom-many
districts have still not encouraged collaboration on lesson plans.
But to recover from the academic and social losses students with
disabilities faced over the past year and a half, schools need to
change their approach to special education.
Some ways CRPE suggested in its study included administrators
encouraging general and special education teachers to be jointly
responsible for students with disabilities by explaining what shared
responsibility looks like for lesson planning, classroom instruction,
family communication, and supporting students outside the classroom.
School leaders should also help educators meet these new standards
by scheduling dedicated time for collaboration and training for general
educators about special education students' needs and how to meet
them, the CRPE study suggested.
Federal relief funding that can be applied to professional development
should be allocated toward targeted training and support in this area.
" It would be really detrimental to students and our families to
just go back to the way things were, " McKittrick said. " People just
didn't have enough time to be able to think about special education
differently last year. I just hope this is a catalyst for change and not
just going back to the status quo. "
Coverage of students with diverse learning needs is supported in part by a
grant from the Oak Foundation, at www.oakfnd.org. Education Week retains
sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.
Seth Wenig/AP
http://www.Understood.org http://www.oakfnd.org http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - September 29, 2021

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