Quick answer: Most special education teachers leave their roles at least in part due to five working conditions: weak administrative support, unmanageable caseloads, insufficient preparation, professional isolation, and unclear roles (Billingsley & Bettini, 2019). Special education teacher retention improves when school leaders intentionally redesign these five conditions, not when they use one-off tactical approaches like adding stipends or running more recruitment fairs.
Download the Working Conditions Checklist
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Ask a principal why one of their most effective special education teachers left last year, and they might say: burnout, too much paperwork, not a good fit. That assessment - while not untrue - isn't the whole story. And it doesn't give the principal enough information about what to fix to retain other special educators.
Nationally, 15% of special education teachers leave their roles every year. Fifty-one percent of public schools report needing to fill a special education position before the next school year. In 2024-25, 45 states reported special education teacher shortages, more than any other teaching specialty, a pattern that has held for decades. Each departure costs a district roughly $20,000 to replace. No district can recruit its way out of numbers like that.
A review of three decades of research on special education teacher attrition (Billingsley & Bettini, 2019) points to the same five working conditions, every time: administrative support, caseload and paperwork demands, preparation, professional isolation, and role clarity.
These factors may seem entrenched and intractable, but the reality is that working conditions are something a school can redesign. It's never too late to make meaningful changes that impact these five areas.
Much of special education teacher turnover traces back to five specific, well-documented working conditions. Fix any one of them and retention shifts. Fix them together and the effect compounds.
Administrative support is one of the strongest predictors of intent to stay. It isn't a principal who's simply well-liked. It's a principal who understands special education, protects planning time, and includes special educators in school-wide decisions instead of leaving them on the sidelines. We worked with one school where the principal invested a small amount in a special education team summer retreat, was consistent about attending their department meetings and following up on requests, and generally elevated the importance of special education as a school priority - and it went a long way to making those teachers feel supported and sustained.
There is a common refrain across education spaces - that paperwork and compliance are so taxing on special educators that it can make the job untenable. And when paperwork stops at compliance, it's more likely to feel true. Some special educators case-manage students across four or more grade levels, with compliance tasks crowding out actual teaching. The fix isn't always more staff. We’ve seen schools and districts thinking creatively about shuffling staffing, designating case management days, and using other non-traditional solutions to shift the paperwork narrative. Scheduling, workload distribution, and streamlined documentation can relieve real pressure without adding headcount.
Teachers with a solid foundation feel more confident, and higher self-efficacy leads to less burnout and greater job satisfaction. Teachers who start the year without solid grounding in foundations such as specialized instruction, Individualized Education Program (IEP) quality, and special education law tend to feel unprepared and may struggle to keep up with more seasoned or trained folks. We also hear from our partners that special educators may not receive specific support related to their role because leaders perceive they don't have the expertise needed to go deep.
Some districts are closing that gap with structured, self-paced learning built for a whole school team, not just new hires. ABC's THRIVE Academy is one option: short courses on IEP quality, specialized instruction, and special education law.
Special educators often work, plan, and eat lunch alone. As we mentioned, in many settings, they are an afterthought when it comes to planning training days and frequently get put into content area PD just so they have somewhere to go. This can cause folks to feel unattended to and deprioritized, which impacts how educators feel about their jobs. On top of that isolation, when a crisis hits, those same few people are asked to absorb it - adding stress and overwhelm.
Protected co-planning time and a seat on cross-department teams turn isolation into shared accountability. The model of a special educator and a general educator content expert working together is designed to maximize two sets of expertise on behalf of students. Silo them, as frequently happens in the rush of day-to-day school business, and it impacts how each feels about their work, in addition to how they meet student needs.
Role clarity means everyone on staff knows who owns each part of the special education process. When general education assumes IEP work is special education's job, and administration assumes someone else will sort it out, nobody actually owns the process. Naming who's responsible for what, and when, keeps the work from landing on the special educator by default.
Understanding these five conditions is the first step toward redesigning them. The harder part comes when leaders try to put new systems in place. Change like this can feel like a massive shift, or like something outside a leader's control inside a district system.
We recently presented on retention at a conference, and one thing was clear: leaders want to work on these conditions, but they're one priority among many, alongside test scores, parent concerns, and whatever fire needs putting out that week. The theme that kept surfacing: without one step in the right direction, these barriers keep feeling insurmountable.
Progress is possible, and we've seen it happen. Targeting one element of your program on purpose is often the fastest way to start. That might mean sitting down with a colleague to name the highest-leverage shift you could make this year, or looking at your retention trends to pick one grade level to start with. One leader we spoke with set a goal to observe and give feedback to every special education teacher in her network at least once during the year. She saw retention climb to 95%.
We put together a free checklist covering all five conditions, with specific attention to what diverse learners and the educators who serve them need: caseload and scheduling structures, collaboration time, and role clarity across general and special education. We hope it sparks some thinking about what's possible for your special educators.
Download the Working Conditions Checklist →
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Why do special education teachers leave their jobs? Research points to five working conditions, not pay or passion: weak administrative support, unmanageable caseloads and paperwork, insufficient preparation, professional isolation, and unclear roles (Billingsley & Bettini, 2019). These conditions predict whether a special educator stays more reliably than salary or personal fit.
How big is the special education teacher shortage? In the 2024-25 school year, 45 states reported special education teacher shortages, more than any other teaching specialty, a pattern that has held for decades. Fifty-one percent of public schools report needing to fill a special education position before the next school year, and 15% of special education teachers leave their roles annually.
Does higher pay improve special education teacher retention? Pay alone has limited effect. The research behind special education teacher attrition consistently points to working conditions, administrative support, caseload size, preparation, isolation, and role clarity, as stronger predictors of retention than compensation.
What role does teacher preparation play in special education retention? Teachers who start the year without solid grounding in specialized instruction, IEP quality, and special education law leave faster and at higher rates. Preparation works best as an ongoing condition of the job, not a one-time onboarding event, and ideally reaches every educator on a team, not just special education staff.
What can school leaders do to improve special education teacher retention this school year? Audit all five working conditions, administrative support, caseload structure, preparation, professional isolation, and role clarity, before the school year starts. A free Start-of-Year Working Conditions Checklist walks leaders through concrete next steps for each condition.
Sources: Billingsley, B. S., & Bettini, E. (2019). Special Education Teacher Attrition, Retention, and Mobility: A Systematic Review of the Literature; Learning Policy Institute (2025); NCES School Pulse Panel (October 2024); Gilmour et al. (2023).