Giving Teachers a Chance: Taking Special Education Teacher Preparation Programs to Rural Communities

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Winter 2007 by Bargerhuff, Mary Ellen, Dunne, James D, Renick, Patricia R

Abstract

Over the last several years special education teacher shortages have increased to alarming levels. Remote rural areas face even more critical special education teacher shortages. Many professionals teaching students with disabilities in rural areas do not have formal special education training. This article describes a distance education partnership program between Wright State University and school districts in rural Ohio that addresses special education teacher shortages in these areas. Although the program required intense effort from university faculty, partnership students, and district education staff, program benefits outweighed the work necessary to implement and maintain the program.

In September 2001 the Intervention Specialist (special education) division at Wright State University (WSU) started an innovative distance education/ outreach program to address chronic and acute shortages of qualified intervention specialists in areas of rural south central Ohio. The program utilized WSU faculty, distance education technology, traditional face-to-face classroom instruction, and cooperation from local education agencies to initially license a cohort of 20 intervention specialists across a seven county rural Ohio area. The success of this program led to a second and now a third cohort program in the same area, additional cohort programs at the Wright State University, Lake Campus (located over 80 miles from the WSU Dayton campus in rural southwestern Ohio), and requests for similar programs from other school districts. In this article, we describe the rationale for the program, the process we implemented, and some lessons we learned as we refined our distance education approach.

Program Context

Nationally, the number of students identified with disabilities grows steadily, while the number of qualified special education teachers licensed to teach them lags significantly. During the 1990-1991 school year, 4,361,751 students received special education services in the United States. By 1999-2000, that number had increased 30% to 5,677,996. During the same time period, special education teaching positions grew by only 10%, from 323,565 in 1990-1991 to 358,537 in 1999-2000 (Boyer & Mainzer, 2003). Teacher shortages stem in part from the insufficient supply of teachers holding the required qualifications, such as specific degrees earned, type of teacher preparation program completed, extent and type of teaching experience, demonstrated teaching ability, and certifications held (Kraayenoord, 2001). Schools draw their entering teacher supply from four pools: (a) teachers with recent degrees from teacher education programs; (b) teachers with recent degrees from other fields; (c) teachers without recent degrees who delayed entry into education, and (d) reentering experienced teachers (Kraayenoord). A majority of special educators, however, come from ranks outside recent education program graduates, suggesting efforts to decrease the shortage could best be aimed at other sources, such as upgrading the credentials of current teachers.

Administrators, teachers, and parents from rural school districts report critical problems in hiring and retaining qualified teachers. Knapczyk, Chapman, Rodes, and Chung (2001) reviewed several studies and found that 80% of the rural school districts surveyed reported shortages in special education staffing. Eighty-three percent of the surveyed districts used emergency certifications to fill vacancies, and 97% of special education teachers in rural areas surveyed reported not being fully prepared for their jobs. Rural communities often face more critical teacher shortages than urban and suburban areas because educators in rural areas cannot easily access university teacher preparation programs.

The situation in Ohio mirrored the special education supply and demand issues seen nationally. Ohio had an alarming rate of teacher vacancies, with special education positions representing much higher vacancy rates than general education (Siedentop, Fleeter, Driscoll, Sommers, & Loadman, 2003). Siedentop et al. noted that Ohio special education teacher shortages were particularly acute in the rural areas of southern Ohio, areas with limited access to university teacher preparation programs. Many new teachers hired to teach students with disabilities do so with emergency or temporary credentials. Often, newly hired special education teachers have general education backgrounds and want to change their area of concentration to special education. Many, in fact, are former elementary, middle school, or high school teachers looking for enhanced job security in the field of special education.

Most of the graduate students who participated in the WSU distance program taught students with disabilities with emergency/temporary certificates and had little formal training in special education. As in many rural areas, these students had difficulty accessing university teacher preparation programs to improve their special education knowledge and skills. The innovative program we describe in this article attempts to address this deficiency in rural south central Ohio by training cohorts of special education licensure and master's degree candidates through a combination of distance learning links and face-to-face classroom formats.