Special Education Teacher Workforce Descriptors

[lmasonwms]

This is for capturing needs not currently supported by the CEDS model. Please do not send or share actual data as examples in this issue or in attachments.

Author(s)
Loretta Mason-Williams

Authoring Organization(s)
SPARC Center/Binghamton University

Email address
[email protected]

Use Case Title
Special Education Teacher Workforce Descriptors

Use Case Description
Special education teachers play many instructional and non-instructional roles in schools and across districts. Developing variables that may be used to identify their more specific roles can be useful for analyses. The current K12Staff >Assignment variable provides minimal information about these roles. Additional options may be useful, including:
• Special education teacher, non-instructional, district-based
• Special education teacher, non-instructional, cooperative-based (e.g., assigned to IU or BOCES)
• Special education teacher, co-teacher/collaborative/push-in/pull-out
• Special education teacher, self-contained setting
Additionally, additional classroom variables that provide an opportunity to indicate the assignment of a Special education teacher to a classroom (e.g., a co-teacher in a general education setting) or to designate a self-contained classroom (e.g., all students included have an IEP) would be useful.

I'm interested in learning more about what individual states are including within their SLDS to capture information about special educators in the workforce. I'm part of a USDOE-supported grant (Special Education Workforce: A Research Collaborative, or SPARC Center; @SPARC_CENTER) where we've partnered with a number of states to examine workforce issues in the SLDS but are having a difficult time using currently available variables to identify special education teachers.

Use Case Background
Current variables provide limited information about the role a special educator may play in the classroom/school, making it difficult to investigate differences in retention and effectiveness. Additionally, special education teachers may take on different roles throughout the day, making it necessary to consider how to implement this variable at the class-level, rather than in HR documentation.

Location of Element in the Domain Entity Schema
K12Staff >Assignment