Special education crisis in Racine Unified

By Paul Sloth

Sunday, July 29, 2007 2:11 AM CDT

Journal Times

Racine

- Lynn Hollow should have listened to her father, but she didn't. A retired principal, he suggested she become a teacher. She had other things in mind.

Hollow graduated with a different degree, back in her 20s.

After being a stay-at-home mother and raising three children, the classroom called and she decided to substitute teach.

Hollow, 42, worked primarily in special education classrooms and loved it, so two decades later she decided to listen to her father's advice and pursue her teaching license.

Like many teachers in Wisconsin, Hollow was able to get a classroom job with an emergency license, which allowed her to work while she pursued her education.

The Racine Unified School District employed 45 teachers with emergency licenses during the 2006-07 school year, or roughly 3 percent of the district's 1,562 teachers.

Nearly half of those teachers worked in special education, according to a review of school district data by The Journal Times.

Every year school districts throughout the state and around the country face a shortage of qualified special education teachers, according to state officials and special education experts.

"The areas we have the greatest challenges in are special education, math, science and reading. Those are typically the areas that surface year after year," said Steve Hejnal, Unified's human resources director.

During the 2005-06 school year, the most recent year for which state data is available, 849 of the state's 61,132 licensed teachers worked with an emergency license, roughly 1.4 percent.

That same school year, the state had roughly 10,061 licensed special education teachers, 455 of whom worked with emergency licenses, or 4.5 percent.

"There is always a need for qualified special education teachers," said Patrick Gasper, a state Department of Public Instruction spokesman. "This is a long-standing issue that we've always had."

It's been an issue ever since the federal government passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975. The number of students receiving special education has increased each year, said George Giuliani, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers and director of the graduate school in special education at New York's Hofstra University.

Nationally, 6 million students are in special education classes. There are more children in special education than ever before, Giuliani added.

As a whole, 9 percent of all children in public schools, ages 6-21, are classified as special education - they range from students with learning disabilities and students with emotional and behavioral disorders to students with physical disabilities like cerebral palsy and spina bifida.

If you put them all in a room, more than 50 percent are classified as children with learning disabilities - that is one out of every two students, Giuliani said.

The increasing number of special education students and the shortage of certified special education teachers put a lot of pressure on school districts to hire teachers with emergency licenses.

"They scramble, they scramble like hell, because they have to meet the federal mandates," Giuliani said. "It's the last resort, because it's unfair to the children in special education when you throw a teacher with no background into a classroom of students with learning disabilities."

For teachers like Lynn Hollow, it has been an alternative route into the teaching profession. The state of Wisconsin fails to provide adequate alternative routes into education, according to a report released in June by the National Council of Teacher Quality.

When Hollow decided to go back to school for her teaching license, she knew the traditional route would take too long. Hollow started working at Janes Elementary in March 2005 with an emergency license.

She started working at the same time on her license through the National Teacher Education Center, a program at Rockford College.

"They make it possible for you to teach and get a license," Hollow said. "It was a wonderful program. It was all practical learning."

Lori Peterson, a team teacher with Hollow at Janes, said special education could be tough for some teachers once they get into the field. There's a high burn out because of the demands on special education teachers, Peterson said.

"It can be overwhelming with the students and the paperwork," Peterson said.

The right amount of support from the school's administration and a good rapport with general education teachers have helped, Peterson said.

Hollow is in the process of applying for her teaching license.

There's a number of factors why district's like Racine Unified struggle to find certified special education teachers.

Only half of the state's colleges and universities, both public and private, offer special education certification, Hejnal said.

"I don't think the campuses that do offer it have a lot of individuals that do want to get involved in it," Hejnal said. "I don't think the colleges and universities are producing enough. We do our best to try and recruit special education licensed teachers."

Hejnal said the district has reduced the number of teachers with emergency licenses by almost half in the past four years.

"I don't know if we'll ever get to 100 percent, obviously that's our goal," Hejnal said. "Our ultimate objective is to have every teacher completely certified."

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