Latest / DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates / Tackling the Special Education Teacher Shortage: A conversation with Elizabeth Bettini

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Tackling the Special Education Teacher Shortage: A conversation with Elizabeth Bettini · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

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This is Diver podcast about diversity,
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equity, and inclusion in special education research.
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I'm your host, Federico Beitholler, associate professor
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at the University of Illinois at Chicago and board member of
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the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children.
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Welcome to our second session season of
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Dive In, a podcast sponsored by the Division of Research of the
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Council for Exceptional Children. And you hear. Well, I didn't mean
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second episode. I meant second season. Because today we officially
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start with the first episode of our second season of Dive.
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End. If you haven't listened our episodes in season one,
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I encourage you, I urge you to go
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and listen to those episodes. We have some fabulous people in
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some hot topics on issues of diversity, equity,
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and inclusion in special education research. So go
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back to that timeline in your Spotify, in your Apple cast,
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or even in our website and check our episodes.
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Before we move to our first episode of season two,
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I want to let you know that it's award season for the Division
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of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children. As you
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may know, every year division of research gives
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awards to people that deserves recognition for their research in special
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education. A few years ago, we started two
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awards focusing on diversity on diverse
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populations, people that does research on diverse populations or underserved
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populations, and also an award for scholars
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for underrepresented groups in special education research.
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So I encourage you to check the Division
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Division of research website, check our awards,
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and please nominate someone that you
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think deserves or merits recognition for their work.
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So check it out and hopefully you
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will see some good news for you or your peers. Who knows?
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So, moving on with our episode. Today we have a
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fabulous episode with someone who has done extensive
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research on issues of special education teachers
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recruitment and retention. A few
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follow us. Last season we interviewed Chris Cormier,
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who talks about the experiences of BIPOC special education
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teachers. This episode built upon that
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and extends in the current context of the
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special education teacher workforce and their implications for
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equity and diversity in special education.
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So today we interview Doctor
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Elisabeth Bettini or Liz Bettini.
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She's an associate professor in the special education program at Boston
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University, and her research examine factors shaping the
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special education teacher workforce, particularly those working
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conditions that contribute to the sustained
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special education teacher education shortage.
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So if you are interested in teacher education,
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particularly the focus on special ed, first listen
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to our first episode of last season from Chris Comeier and
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continue watching this episode because here is the interview with
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Liz Pettini. Enjoy.
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Well, welcome, Liz, to our show. Thank you so much for being
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here with us today. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
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Yeah. I'm so excited to have you here. You know, one of the major
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topics I think, in special education, one of the many, many things that we're
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struggling with is just to not just recruit but
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retain teachers, particularly those serving students of color. So I'm very happy to
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have you here. And I know you've been doing a lot of research in the
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last year, so hopefully you can enlighten us with some good,
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good insights about how to resolve. But, you know,
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I'm hoping some good news. You know, we've been
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hearing. Yeah, I wasn't here for years, two years, as Perez
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was stylish special education student back on the day. We're not going to tell the
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audience when it was that because that would give my hoa.
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Anyway, it was somewhere between 2000.
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And I remember always being people,
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always being concerned about the shortage of special education teachers. Right.
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So you are here and I kind of want to expect good news. I want
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you to tell me that the issue has been resolved.
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Good news. You know, it's a very interesting year for the US, you know,
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so just give our audience some good news. I think we do. What is
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the current landscape of the special education teacher workforce?
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Yeah. So we have four kind of persistent problems
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facing the special ed workforce. And so, and those problems are not new.
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They've been with us since 1975, since special education has
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existed as a federal public mandate. So the
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first one is a problem of composition. So we just, you alluded
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to the shortage. We don't have enough people. And the people who we do have
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are disproportionately white relative to the student population. So we've
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got about 82% of special educators are
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white compared to a student population that's more than 50% students of color.
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And we don't have enough people overall. So that's the first problem. Second problem,
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problem of distribution. So the folks who we do have are not
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equitably distributed to schools. As teachers gain experience,
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as they gain skill, they tend to move from higher poverty schools serving more
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students of color to lower poverty schools serving more white students.
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That is particularly true of white
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teachers, and it seems to be in part due to challenging working conditions.
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Systemic disinvestment in higher poverty schools leaves teachers in those
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schools needing to do more work with less resources. So teachers are moving
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from those schools to more affluent schools as they gain experience.
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And as a consequence, students in predominantly low
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income schools serving mostly students of color, the teachers
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in those schools tend to be less qualified, less experienced,
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which obviously has implications for the quality of instruction they're providing and their effectiveness.
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So that's the second problem. So you got composition, distribution. Third problem,
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stability. So we've got a high rate of churn
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in the teacher workforce that obviously exacerbates problems with composition and
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distribution. But even if we didn't have those other problems, stability would be our
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problem, too. So when teachers leave, they take with them
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their relationships with families, their relationships with their JeDi colleagues.
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Any kind of school reform initiatives are challenging to sustain when
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you have high rates of churn, because every year you're trying to get new folks
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just up to speed on the basic practices. And so it's really hard, for example,
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to sustain an inclusive school reform if you're losing a high number of folks every
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year. And then finally, the last problem is effectiveness.
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So in the context of all of those other problems, it's really challenging
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to build folks knowledge and skill, to be highly effective
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educators and to continue growing over the course
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of their careers. And we have lots of research showing that oftentimes
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educators are not using highly effective practices. They may be doing practices
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that are actually harmful to students. And so
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those are the four core problems that we have. Where are the good news?
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All right, so some good news. So some good news is,
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I feel like in the last five years,
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particularly since COVID started,
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there's been a lot more public policy attention, a lot more public
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conversation about teacher shortages. And the cynical side
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of me says, well, that's because the problems that we've been experiencing
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for 50 years are now facing the teacher workforce overall. So people are finally
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paying attention. And that might be true, but the nice side of that is
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it has allowed for some big changes in some places that are
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really exciting. I think one
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of the most exciting places is Hawaii. I got a chance yesterday
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to hang out with Janet Kim, who's a faculty member at University of
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Hawaii in Manoa. And Janet is like a mover
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and shaker in the state of Hawaii. If you're not paying attention to what they're
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doing, I suggest you do so. They have a whole comprehensive suite
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of changes that they've been making. So the most prominent one that's gotten the most
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public attention is they instituted a $10,000 bonus
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for special education teachers annually. So every year, if you're a special ed
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teacher, you get a $10,000 bonus. There's also a bonus associated
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with working in a high shortage school, a school where they have a hard time
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retaining teachers, which in Hawaii, that's disproportionately very rural schools.
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You know, the very rural islands have a hard time retaining folks. And then
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there's also an $8,000 bonus if you're a hawaiian immersion teacher,
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and each of those bonuses works on top of each other. So if you are
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a special education teacher in a hawaiian immersion classroom, in a
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hard to staff school, you could potentially get as much as $28,000 in
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bonus money. Yes. Did you bought your
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tickets already to go to Hawaii? I know. Who doesn't want
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to move to Hawaii? Well, the problem they
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have is a lot of people from the mainland want to go there,
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and then they move there, and they realize it's really hard to live in Hawaii.
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It's far from your family, and so they really want folks who are
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from Hawaii, who have roots in Hawaii and who want to stay.
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I certainly did think about it, but $28,000
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a year, up to a $20,000 year bonus. So with some colleagues,
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we did an analysis recently led by Roddy Thielbald at Calder,
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where we looked at what was the impact of that bonus on vacancies,
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on the likelihood that students had a position that was unfilled. Their special
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education teacher position was unfilled. It was interesting because we
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found a significant positive effect. Right. So the vacancies
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dramatically reduced relative
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to gen ed teacher vacancies. So we're able to make almost causal inferences.
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And the. That's great.
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That's really important. It reduces inequities and access to qualified teachers.
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The kind of bad side of that is it didn't
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reduce special education teacher turnover. So the way
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it worked is it induced gen ed teachers to move into special education teaching
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positions. It was not enough to induce folks
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who were already in special Ed to want to stay, which to me
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indicates we have to be attending to working conditions. If we're not attending to the
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conditions in which people are working that lead them to feel supported, lead them to
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feel able to do their jobs well, the money isn't sufficient.
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The nice thing is Hawaii is doing a lot of work on improving working conditions.
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So, for example, the teachers union
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has a special educator, a special education teacher caucus within it
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that's advocating for supports for special education teachers.
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And the state's making some pretty big investments as well in support systems
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and networks for special educators across schools
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to help them advocate for changes. So there's a lot of good stuff happening in
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Hawaii. So there's some good news.
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Any other states that you feel it's worth highlight of
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some good initiatives in this regard? Yeah, I don't know as
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much about the details of what they're doing. But Georgia has a
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lot going on really well, too. They've been working closely with the Cedar center,
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and the way my understanding of kind of the framework
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in which they're thinking about it is that we need to bring in people
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rapidly. But if they're coming in unprepared, we need to make sure there's really systemic
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supports for them. And so they've focused a lot on
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building statewide induction and mentoring systems, coaching systems,
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excuse me, and really being
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systematic about the ways they're supporting folks who are coming in without licensure, without preparation.
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So you spoke a little bit about the current situation,
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which is challenging, but have
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you seen any changes? I mean, you say this program goes back to 1975.
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Do we see any changes in this historical development or
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thing has been steady. I mean, kind of not good ones,
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so that, you know,
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I'm going to. Interview someone else or at least someone who's
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all right. So we do what we see is fluctuation with labor
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market conditions. So when the labor market is,
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when the labor market is tight, when unemployment is very low,
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we see shortages go up because folks have more options for
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other jobs.
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There's greater bang for your buck in other professions perhaps,
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or just they have more options and so they're less likely
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to choose a education when the labor market is in
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a challenging place. So when unemployment is high, the shortage
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declines. So if you go back to some writing that folks
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were doing around 2010, 2012, they were like, oh, the shortage is gone.
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And it seemed like maybe it was disappearing. It seemed like maybe
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it was going away. And in fact, what seems to be the case is
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that during economic downturns,
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a stable position that is decently paid in many states, not in
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all, looks more attractive. And there's evidence that
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actually during economic downturns, the folks who come into teaching during
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economic downturns tend to be, have like stronger academic
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scores and stuff like that. It's a systematically different group of people who come in
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during economic downturns. So there's
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fluctuation with labor market conditions, and it's easy to kind of get excited like,
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oh, the shortage is gone, 2012, you know, and then five years
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later, not so much. We are seeing some
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really concerning signs right now. So enrollment
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in teacher preparation is in special education,
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teacher preparation programs is, that is very,
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very low. And for profit programs are making up a much
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larger share of teacher prep. So in a recent
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paper led by Tuan Nguyen, that's just
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out in remedial and special ed, we found that 40%
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of all new special education teachers in the state of Texas are being.
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Almost 40%. I think it was actually 37% are being
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prepared through a for profit program,
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and just two for profit programs
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are preparing 8% of new special education teachers in the
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entire country. Those two programs are
14:26
Grand Canyon University and a plus
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Texas teachers. And that's particularly concerning because,
14:35
well, we don't have good research on the quality of those programs.
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But the reporting on a plus Texas teachers in particular is very,
14:42
very bad, to the point that the state of Texas, which is not known for
14:45
regulation, is considering decertifying them.
14:49
Wow. Yeah. And 37. But if
14:52
they decertify them, 37% of new special educators in state of Texas are being
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prepared through that program. It's like a too big to fail kind
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of situation. Yeah. So is that because these
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programs are online, fully online and teaching,
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and people are more prompt for convenience
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to do more online programs for the flexibility, et cetera, et cetera?
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Well, we don't really know. Certainly there are online programs that
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are not for profit, that are run by reputable organizations.
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I think my gut, my instinct
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is that those programs are probably predatory and that they
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are not
15:39
using honesty in marketing, taking advantage
15:43
of people, exploiting folks. But I don't have research to back that up. That would
15:46
be my hunch.
15:51
Well, sorry. That's very interesting.
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We can go back to Hawaii if you want. Yeah, that's right.
15:59
So, you know, you mentioned a little bit about the distribution of teachers that,
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you know, areas that are mostly like underserved populations,
16:07
you know, where minority tax communities live,
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have a higher impact. But I also wonder if there are differences of,
16:15
between BIPOc and white teachers in terms
16:19
of development and also attrition and so
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forth. Absolutely. So BIPOC
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teachers tend to. Are much more likely to teach in higher poverty schools,
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serving more students of color. They are much more likely to stay in those schools.
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And there's very good evidence that teachers who are from the community in
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which they're teaching are more effective in that community. There's this
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great recent paper by Mary Lasky looking
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at a paraprofessional grow your own program in Mississippi,
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where paraeducators who'd worked in districts who did not
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have licensure were given, like, an emergency exemption
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from the licensure requirements and were hired as new teachers within their
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districts. They had to be nominated by their principal.
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So the principal was making a judgment about the skills at that para.
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And so the parents who did that were folks from the community that they were
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working in. They became first year teachers,
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and they were more effective than the average first year teacher.
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There's also a great paper just out by my
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colleagues here at BU,
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Andrew Bakker Hicks and Olivia Chi.
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So they were looking at, during the pandemic, Massachusetts waived
17:33
our emergency or waived our licensure test
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requirements and allowed people to become emergency licensed much
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more easily than they could have in the past. And the
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folks who came in in the first year of that policy,
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a large proportion of them were folks who had worked in schools for a
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long time. They worked as paras. They'd worked as cafeteria workers, bus drivers.
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They were members of the school community prior to this policy.
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They did not have what they needed for licensure. They were able to
18:02
get it through this policy, and they were as effective,
18:05
more likely to stay, and more likely to be people of color than
18:09
other newly hired teachers, which has led the state to really make some big changes
18:13
in their licensure policy. And, yeah,
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there's lots of research that teachers of color are more effective with students of color.
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They're more likely to stay in schools serving disproportionately students of
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color, and they're more likely to be satisfied in those schools as well.
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Are their working conditions different, too? Yeah.
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Yeah. So, yeah, because working conditions are racialized,
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right? So, yeah. So teachers
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of color, particularly when they're serving in schools with white principals and predominantly
18:45
white colleagues, experience a lot of challenges, a lot of
18:49
racial microaggressions. You know, the whole setup
18:52
of the school is, or is.
18:56
Is white dominant, right? Like the curricula, is white dominant? The discipline
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policies are white dominant in most schools. I mean, I know there are schools working
19:03
to change that, but that's the normative structure of how
19:06
schools operate. And so teachers of
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color who get into the profession aiming to address
19:15
inequities, to fight for social justice, to make sure that things
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are right for students of color. And then they walk into a system where every
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single piece of that system is organized to privilege whiteness.
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That's challenging. And there are a number of studies of
19:30
teachers of color wherever they talk about
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kind of being in what we call a double bind, where they're caught between
19:37
their commitment to their community, their commitment to social
19:41
justice and equity, and the
19:45
expectations for what it means to be a professional teacher, right? So,
19:48
like, as a teacher, you're expected to enforce these policies that
19:52
are discriminatory. You're expected to teach curriculum
19:55
that is discriminatory, and you
19:59
want to be a good teacher, right? You want your boss to think you're a
20:01
good teacher. But you're caught in this double bind between the professional expectations and
20:05
what you believe is right.
20:08
And so there are differences in working conditions. There's mostly qualitative
20:12
research showing that at this point, there are a handful of quantitative studies.
20:16
So I've got a paper with Lauren
20:20
Scott and Nelson Brunsting and a couple of other folks where we looked at
20:24
special educators who work with students with emotional and behavioral disorders.
20:27
And we found that teachers of color tended to receive
20:31
less social support from their colleagues and their administrators. They rated their
20:35
school culture less supportive.
20:38
And that's consistent with what we see in the qualitative research as well.
20:42
Wow. Yeah, we have. I mean, just for
20:45
you to know, for our audience, we had an episode of
20:49
diving last season with Chris Cormier, and he also spoke a little
20:53
bit. Yeah. Spoke a little bit about the working
20:56
conditions and the experiences of black special education teachers.
21:00
So for our audience, if you haven't checked it out, go back to system one
21:03
and check that episode. That's a great compliment to this one, too.
21:07
So you talked a bit about working
21:12
conditions, and, for example,
21:15
the example that you brought about Hawaii. They give almost,
21:18
like up to $20,000, something like that to stay.
21:21
But, you know, there's still. That's the input.
21:26
Right. That's the incentive to go in. Right. But the other part
21:30
is, like, what it means, what it feels, how you experience
21:33
working in a place. Right. So. And that seems
21:37
to be very important for the challenges that we're facing.
21:40
So can you give us three pieces of advice for state
21:44
or district officials or principals to retain
21:48
special education teachers? Yeah. So the biggest
21:52
one is to improve working conditions. So when I talk about working conditions, I think
21:55
sometimes what people hear when I say that they might think of, like,
21:58
the stuff that's in a teacher's contract, like pay or benefits, et cetera.
22:02
That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about are the
22:06
demands that are made of teachers, the responsibilities they have as a function of their
22:09
job, and then the resources they're provided to meet those demands or to
22:13
fulfill those responsibilities, and particularly the balance between those
22:16
two. So if you have a. It's not you. You know, it's good to
22:20
have responsibilities. Teachers should have responsibilities for students,
22:23
for instruction, for case management, for all of those things. That's why they get into
22:26
the job. They want those things. The problem is when they have
22:29
so many responsibilities and insufficient resources to fulfill
22:33
them effectively. So, for example, take a
22:36
teacher who is teaching five subjects to three grade levels
22:41
that is an unrealistic responsibility. That was my job when I
22:44
was teaching. I taught five subjects to three grade levels. That's ridiculous.
22:48
All right. If you're going to do that well, you need a heck of
22:52
a lot of planning time, a heck of a lot of curriculum. And I was
22:55
often doing it with no planning time and no curriculum.
22:59
Right. And so the consequence was that I had to triage.
23:03
I had to triage the things that I would do well, right. So I would
23:05
say, all right, I'm. It's really important that my. My reading instruction, my math
23:09
instruction is on point, and it's particularly important that it's on point for
23:12
these students who are struggling. So those kids who aren't struggling, I'm going to just
23:15
put them in front of a book and they can figure it out. Right?
23:18
That's not okay. It doesn't feel okay as a teacher to do that. We've interviewed
23:22
teachers where they talk about, you know, one teacher was talking about how my administrator
23:26
will know if I don't have my paperwork done and I'll
23:30
get in trouble. I will not get in trouble if my lesson sucks,
23:33
right? So I'm going to show a movie to my kids and it sucks and
23:37
I hate it, but I'm going to get my paperwork done so I don't get
23:39
in trouble. There's this great paper by Rosie Meisner recently
23:43
where she talked about, she found that when paraprofessionals were
23:46
absent, now one was sent to replace the paras. There's no paraprofessional sub.
23:51
And so the teacher was having to choose between,
23:54
do I take this, feed this child who's
23:58
normally fed by a para, or provide this instruction that I'm not supposed to be
24:01
providing? And obviously you're going to feed the child, right. But then that means the
24:04
other kid is missing their service minutes, and this is happening consistently, day after day.
24:08
They're having to triage which kids they're providing services to. That feels awful,
24:13
right? So whatever responsibilities people have, they need to
24:16
have resources to fulfill those responsibilities so that they can do
24:19
all the responsibilities well, so that they're not having to make those triaging choices.
24:23
So number one would be to improve working conditions. That is way easier said
24:27
than done, right? So the challenge with improving working conditions, there are
24:30
a number of challenges, but one critical one is that leaders
24:35
think they know their teachers working conditions and they don't.
24:39
Even good leaders, they don't know, and they
24:43
need to have systems for understanding what those conditions are. So I
24:46
can't tell you how many times I've talked with district administrators who say things like,
24:50
oh, yeah, we buy teachers whatever they need. You know, if they want to.
24:53
If they need to buy reinforcers for their students, yeah, they can just go buy
24:56
them. If they need to buy curriculum, you know, curricular materials for the students,
24:59
they just go buy them. And then you talk to the teachers and you say,
25:01
how much are you spending of your own personal money? And they'll say, I'm spending,
25:05
you know, it's probably about $150 a month. And, you know, you add up the
25:08
math, they're spending a significant portion of their paycheck on their students. Right.
25:13
You can talk about the district leaders telling me, oh,
25:17
we really protect our teachers planning time. They all get ample planning time. And then
25:20
you go talk to the teachers they know because there's no skilled supervision from my
25:24
students during that time. I can't take it. Like, that would be wrong. Right?
25:27
I don't get a lunch. What are you talking about? You know, so one
25:32
of the first things that leaders need to do if they want to improve working
25:35
conditions is they actually needed to gather data. They need to gather data that
25:39
is trustworthy, anonymized. So I
25:43
have a research team right now with Nelson Brunstein, Michelle Cumming,
25:46
Kristen Merrill O'Brien, and Corinne Huggins Manly.
25:49
We have an IES grant where we're developing and validating a
25:53
measure of special education teachers working conditions. It's designed to
25:57
be used in research, but we're hoping that it will also be used in schools
26:01
so that schools and districts can administer a working condition survey, gather data. What are
26:05
we doing well in supporting our teachers? What are we doing poorly and make changes.
26:09
I think another possible solution is, you know, have regular meetings
26:12
where you talk about these things, you know, keep track. You know,
26:16
just have an open conversation about what supports folks need and
26:19
don't get mad at them when they say they feel unsupported, like, say, oh,
26:23
I'm so sorry. Tell me more. You know?
26:26
Yeah. So those are some of the first steps I would say folks should take.
26:30
Yeah. And I imagine also it's like a solve reinforcing
26:33
challenge, because I was hearing your image principle.
26:37
I have, you know, 25 ieps,
26:41
and I have one case manager, one specialized teacher whose poor thing is
26:45
managing 25 IEP well. One way to
26:48
help her to reduce that load would be to hire another specialty teacher. But,
26:52
you know, guess what? There's a shortage.
26:55
So I cannot improve working conditions because it's
26:59
also difficult to hire more teachers, I imagine.
27:03
Yeah, it's kind of like a death spiral. It's like, you know,
27:06
you know, people talk about, like, virtuous cycles where the good makes the other things
27:09
better. This is like a death spiral. Yeah, I mean, I think. I think that's
27:13
a real challenge. I think it. It matters, you know, if you're
27:16
a school leader and what you really need to do is hire more
27:19
personnel and you can't do it, at least communicate to your teachers
27:23
that you're. That you're trying. Right. Like, here's what I'm doing to try to
27:27
reduce the load. I think there's other things you can do, too. Like, I think,
27:31
you know, in the. The situation that you just described,
27:34
are there things you can take off that teacher's plate? Maybe they don't need to
27:36
do bus duty or lunch duty. I totally buy. Special educators should be part.
27:40
They should be part of the school community. They should be doing those things.
27:42
But in that situation, that teacher needs that time until
27:46
you get someone else hired, can the school secretary
27:49
help with scheduling IEP meetings? Can they help with, you know, mailing out
27:53
the paperwork? Are there things that you can take off of their plate?
27:56
Perhaps there. I think oftentimes we forget that,
27:59
like, a lot of the instructional skills
28:02
for which we rely on special educators, there are other people in the school who
28:06
can pitch in. So maybe do you have a reading specialist who
28:10
could provide some of the reading interventions and
28:14
reduce the number of students to whom that special educator is providing services?
28:17
Do you have a school counselor who could help us
28:20
out with some of the social, emotional, and behavioral interventions that they're providing?
28:23
Draw on your other personnel who also have knowledge and skills and are capable
28:27
of serving students. I imagine also,
28:31
I was thinking someone think that Chris Premier shared
28:35
with us in that episode about the experience of him being a
28:38
black special education teacher and some
28:42
micrographs that he received? So I'm also thinking, I imagine also another
28:46
recommendation could be, how do you improve school class
28:50
for teachers,
28:52
particularly BIPOC special ed teachers?
28:56
Feel welcome, you know, and, you know, not have to deal with
29:00
all sorts of microaggressions or,
29:04
you know, some unconscious
29:08
racist practice that are conscious that are going on.
29:13
Yeah. So Chris and I actually have a paper in review of ed research on
29:16
this. So we did a systematic review of research on the experiences
29:20
of. Of beginning teachers of color.
29:23
We were initially planning to do it on beginning special ed teachers of color,
29:27
but at the time, we could only find two studies, one of which was by
29:30
Chris. So we wound up expanding to teachers overall.
29:34
So, yeah, so what we kind of concluded was that really,
29:37
like every, every aspect of the
29:41
way the school is structured is rooted in whiteness.
29:44
And so to undo that is a
29:48
huge systemic, huge systemic change across every single system.
29:52
So, you know, revising the curriculum, making sure that you're purchasing culturally
29:56
relevant curricula, revising discipline policy,
29:59
discipline practices to make sure that you're honoring students
30:02
cultures in the ways that you're constructing your rules and expectations and
30:06
your responses to those, and the ways you're building relationships with students,
30:10
revising your teacher support systems, elevating leaders
30:14
of color. Right. It really is a wholesale systemic
30:19
change that will take years
30:24
to make that kind of systemic change. And so in the meantime,
30:28
what we recommended is that there have to be bridges,
30:32
spaces in the school that are deliberately created to help teachers of
30:36
color sustain through those changes.
30:40
Things like affinity groups, mentoring from
30:44
senior colleagues of color, from leaders of color,
30:48
that those kinds of supports are really, really important because systemic,
30:52
the whole scale systemic change is going to take years and years to happen.
30:56
One of the other things we wrote about was just the importance of having
31:00
senior folks in the school and the district to protect,
31:05
protect teachers of color from any kind of community
31:10
pushback that they might get, particularly in an era of like,
31:14
you know, book bans and pushback
31:18
against CRT and so on, that teachers need to
31:21
know if they're using culturally relevant curricula, if they're teaching about the honest history
31:25
of the United States, that they need to know that their leader has their back,
31:28
that their district has their back, and that if there's community outrage about that,
31:31
they're not going to have to deal with it. That's really important.
31:35
I forgot one thing I forgot to mention earlier. You asked about
31:38
changes. So we have a paper that's in revision right now in
31:42
exceptional children. It's with me and Tammy Ellis
31:46
Robinson and Twan Nguyen and Lucky Mason Williams and a
31:50
couple other folks. So we looked at change
31:53
over time in the proportion of teachers of color in the United States,
31:57
and we found that the proportion of special ed teachers of
32:00
color is slowly increasing. It is increasing
32:04
far more slowly than the population of
32:07
students of color with disability. And so as a
32:10
result, we actually, the demographic divide between the special ed
32:14
teacher population and the student population is growing.
32:18
So we use an indicator called the parity index, which is,
32:22
it basically can be interpreted as the proportion of
32:25
teachers of a particular race ethnicity that we have
32:29
relative to what would be needed for parity with the student population.
32:32
So a parity index of 100% means you've got all the teachers
32:36
of that race ethnicity that you would need for parity.
32:39
Right. And nationally,
32:43
the parity index has declined since 2012 from about
32:47
35% to about 32%, which means nationally,
32:50
you've got about 32% of the teachers of color who would be needed
32:53
for parity with the student population. And so the thing
32:57
that. That tells me is that not only do we have
33:01
to do a hell of a lot more to recruit
33:05
and. And sustain teachers of color in the profession,
33:08
but we also need to do a hell of a lot more to make sure
33:11
that white teachers are prepared for culturally responsive instruction, because our
33:16
teacher population, it's not changing at the
33:19
rate. So we cannot rely on teachers
33:23
of color alone to be the solution. We need white teachers to step up
33:27
to learn about culturally relevant practice and to be
33:31
prepared to enact culturally relevant practices.
33:34
Wow, that's super interesting. Thank you for sharing that.
33:38
One thing that it came up to my head while you
33:41
were saying about the teaching conditions. Is there any research out
33:45
there looking at states with
33:51
a political context where book bans are happening? Or they
33:55
said, you know, a ban on diversity and
33:58
equity inclusion initiatives on
34:04
if the teacher turnover is much greater in those states?
34:08
Do you know there is. There's. Yeah, I haven't seen any. I am hoping.
34:12
I'm hoping that papers like that will start to come out in the next few
34:15
years. I would bet. I mean, I personally, I know teachers
34:19
who've quit in the context of those book bands.
34:23
So my instinct would be that that's probably really
34:26
impactful. We don't yet have evidence on it.
34:29
Yeah, we great. Have some of that. Well, Liz, I have two last
34:33
questions. There are questions that I ask every one of my
34:37
people that invite to the show. The first one is,
34:41
what three pieces of Ibadan would you give to special
34:44
education scholars who wants to do research related
34:48
to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
34:54
Let's see.
34:59
I would say read deeply
35:05
and be really self critical about your own experience and
35:08
your own relationship to the work that you're doing.
35:12
I think that.
35:18
I think a lot of times, folks tend to.
35:21
Folks in special ed, which is historically a very positivist,
35:25
traditional, little C conservative field,
35:29
tend to look at issues of equity,
35:33
diversity, and inclusion through the lens of, like,
35:36
achievement gaps. So this is specific to special
35:40
ed, not disability studies. Right.
35:43
So, looking at things through the lens of, like, oh, well,
35:47
you know, good literacy instruction is about equity,
35:50
or, you know, phonics instruction is about equity. And yes, we should. We should be
35:54
concerned about ensuring equitable access to good instruction.
35:58
But if your interest in it kind of ends there,
36:02
then you've really missed the boat.
36:06
And so I think.
36:09
Being. Being really critical about your own experience, your own background,
36:15
history, relationship to the work that you're doing,
36:19
I think is important for going deeper.
36:22
Thank you. Let's start there. Yeah.
36:27
Any book that you think is a must read or you would recommend, like,
36:30
particular young scholars to read as they want to
36:34
do research, especially has to do with equity and justice and
36:38
diversity. Yeah. So a couple of.
36:42
A couple of things that have been really impactful for me. Kimberly Crenshaw's
36:46
work is. I highly, highly recommend,
36:49
like, just go back to her original, like, 1991 paper on intersectionality
36:53
is fantastic. Current scholars,
36:56
I would read everything you can get your hands on by Mildred Boveda.
37:00
Like, if the second it comes out, stop what you're doing and
37:03
read it, because it's going to make you think really, really hard.
37:08
I think. There's this 2011 paper by Susan
37:12
Bagliari. It's in
37:15
teachers college record, and I'm blanking on the name of it, but it's
37:19
about unpacking the concept of normal,
37:24
at least for me. That was a really impactful paper that.
37:29
That I really loved, and that changed the way I thought about a lot of
37:32
things. The older
37:35
work by Tom Skrdick. Everything by Tom Skrdick is
37:39
fantastic. There's this 2001 paper.
37:43
It's led by Maya Kalyan, per Beth Harry
37:46
and Tom Skrdick. That is
37:50
fantastic. And it unpacks the
37:54
ways that whiteness is integrated into the
37:58
structure of idea. The equity assumptions and idea
38:02
are steeped in this assumption around parent
38:06
advocacy. That's very rooted in whiteness. That paper totally changed the way I thought
38:09
about the law. I don't tend to read books.
38:13
I'm really bad about reading books. I only read articles. So you asked for
38:16
books, and I'm not naming any books. That's good. That's good. That's good. I read
38:20
books for fun, not like I read fiction books, you know, but, yeah,
38:23
that's good. And for you and Aldo,
38:26
we do have in season one, an episode with Mildred, Vulvera and souvenir
38:30
on functionality. So our audi have it here. You can go back to that.
38:33
And we. Oh, of course I didn't name 2013 discredit.
38:37
You got to read. Everyone has to read 2013. Onoma, Connor and
38:40
Ferry. Sorry, forgot to name that one. That's a critical. That's good.
38:44
And we also have an episode with Maya Kalyankur talking about the
38:47
global south. Oh, awesome. So, yeah,
38:50
so, for our audience, if they haven't go back to season one and
38:54
check those episodes. So last question. What would you like to see
38:57
in the next five years regarding equity inclusion, special educational
39:01
research? What would you like to see in five years from now?
39:04
Yeah, I'd like to see a lot more work on
39:07
how do we prepare all teachers for culturally responsive practice. I think that's really
39:12
critical. I think we need to see a lot more
39:15
work on how do we actually improve working conditions. So we have
39:18
all of this work on documenting that working conditions are problem,
39:22
the consequences of working conditions being problem,
39:25
we do not have work to date on how to improve them. My colleague
39:29
Nelson Brunsting is the PI on an IES grant that's starting to do some of
39:32
that work. But I think we need to, we need work on changing systems
39:39
as a field. We've, you talked about this in your conversation with Nate
39:43
Jones. As a field, we've, we've had done a lot of intervention
39:47
work on changing students or changing teachers,
39:51
and we have not done work on changing systems. And so I would love to
39:54
see intervention work on how do we change the systems that are producing these
39:58
really problematic outcomes. Well,
40:00
thank you. Those are great ideas to see in
40:04
five years. Well, Liz, I want to thank you to be
40:07
on the show and wish you best, and it was a pleasure
40:11
to interview you. Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
40:20
Thank you for listening to dive in, a podcast about equity,
40:24
diversity, and inclusion in special education research.
40:28
This episode was produced by me, Federico Vittolar, with contributions
40:32
of Tasia Gonzalez, Kelly Carrero, and Haya
40:35
Abdelat. I hope you enjoyed the episode and learn as much
40:38
as I do. Take care, and I see you next time.