Toolkit
Empower and Utilize Expertise
These strategies highlight research and best practices, along with short-, medium-, and long-term solutions, as fundamental to recognizing and valuing the specialized knowledge and experience of special educators.
School Story
Principal Kassem: Untapped Expertise
Learn from Principal Kassem as she enhances job satisfaction for her special educators and improves supports for students with disabilities by empowering her special educators and fully utilizing their specialized skills.
Strategy A
Encourage and reinforce the autonomy of special educators.
Facilitate discussion and reflection with special educators to demonstrate your understanding of their strengths, skills, and areas of interest as they pertain to supporting students with disabilities.
Possible Actions
- During beginning-of-year check-ins, ask all special educators about their strengths, professional goals, and areas of interest.
- Engage special educators in consistent discussions that will support their professional goals.
- Stay up-to-date on district and statewide professional learning opportunities for all educators and encourage special educators' participation.
- Highlight the unique expertise of special educators during all staff meetings and encourage general educators to employ this expertise to enhance their own classroom practices.
Resources
Technical Assistance and Professional Development (example from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction)
Provide opportunities for special and general educators to develop new skills and expertise and then pilot these efforts in classrooms and schoolwide.
Possible Actions
- Regularly review subpopulation data on students with disabilities, academic and behavior, to identify the skills special and general educators need to improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
- Collaborate with the district office to identify targeted professional development opportunities in areas of interest or need.
- Minimize nonteaching responsibilities to create time for special educators to pursue professional development.
- Take time to observe and identify effective classroom and instructional practices and support schoolwide adoption, as appropriate.
- Provide space for special educators to showcase learnings with other educators.
Practice distributed leadership and provide highly effective special educators with opportunities to pursue advanced roles and responsibilities in the school and district.
Possible Actions
- Involve special educators in district and school policy development and decision-making processes to expand their influence.
- Identify a set of competencies, such as mentoring and supporting others, collaborative practice, strong IDEA knowledge, or expertise with strategic planning, that special educators need to take on increased leadership roles.
- Work with your district office to offer pathways for advancement, such as leadership roles in the special education department, opportunities to lead district- or schoolwide professional development sessions, and formal mentorship roles, while also providing opportunities for increased compensation, when possible.
- Redistribute the current responsibilities of special educators when they take on new leadership roles to prevent unmanageable workloads.
Solutions in Action
Acknowledging and Recognizing Specialized Knowledge and Skills
Sandra Ahlskog, Reading Specialist, Jones Lane Elementary, Darnestown, Maryland
David Nguyen, Assistant Principal, Jones Lane Elementary, Darnestown, Maryland
In this video, learn how a school in Maryland utilized distributed leadership to empower a highly effective special educator to implement a strategic plan to address student behaviors. This enabled teachers to manage classroom challenges effectively and improve overall learning outcomes.
Related IDEA Considerations
IDEA’s free appropriate public education (FAPE) requirements ensure that students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, which includes special education and related services that are designed to meet the student’s needs (20 U.S.C. § 1412 (a) (5)). IDEA’s FAPE language uses the term “educational benefit,” and the IEP is essential for ensuring that students with disabilities benefit educationally (34 C.F.R. § 300.101). The knowledge and skills of special education teachers are necessary to both carry out and design the IEP so that it is reasonably calculated to enable students with disabilities to receive educational benefit.
Although special education teachers take on various roles (e.g., co-teacher, resource room teacher), IDEA’s personnel requirements ensure that they have and maintain the qualifications necessary to carry out the purposes and requirements of IDEA (34 C.F.R. § 300.156). In partnership with other IEP team members, special education teachers facilitate students’ IEP development, which outlines various essentials, such as the child’s present levels of academic performance and functional achievement, measurable annual goals, plans for progress monitoring, special education and related services, supplementary aids and services, accommodations and modifications, and transition services (34 C.F.R. § 300.320). Special education teachers also must provide specially designed instruction, which involves adapting the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction to address the unique needs of the child and ensure access to the general curriculum (34 C.F.R § 300.39 (b) (3)). Special education teachers can help general educators by sharing the knowledge and skills they use to create specially designed instruction. .