Issues Facing Educators Today

Issues Facing Educators Today
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Special education is the process whereby students that possess special needs receive education by addressing their special needs while trying as much as possible to integrate them with normal classroom activities (Ojeda & Carugno, 2022). This is based on the idea that despite the student's needs, they need to be addressed in the same environment where their peers learn and should only be moved to a different setting when the mainstream setting is not effective enough. Like any other classroom training environment, special education educators face various challenges that must be addressed and remain crucial. Therefore, this paper will analyze two challenges they face, including inadequate funding and lack of staff, and how they impact educators. The paper will also look into possible solutions, such as allocating enough funds and seeking alternative sources and measures to encourage more people to join the program, such as scholarships and professional development opportunities for those already in the field.
One of the challenges is the lack of adequate funding. Students with disabilities often require additional resources as compared to the rest of the students. For instance, students with dyslexia may require speech-to-text software. These resources are crucial for functioning but costly to purchase and hire proficient special education practitioners. A plethora of other challenges stems from a lack of adequate funding development, such as a reduced quality of service for the students and an increased burden to the regular teachers to provide services to special education students. Another challenge is the limited staff present. The National Centre for Education Statistics (2022) reported that 45% of the schools that presented a teacher vacancy lacked special education teachers. Another report by Fitzmaurice and Gallagher (2022) outlined that from 1998 to 2018, 80% of the states reported lacking special education teachers. Several factors have been associated with this increased shortage of special education educators. One is because there is a high demand, with limited qualified personnel. Another factor is a high turnover rate that can be attributed to increased burnout and other factors such as inadequate student support. These shortages make the schools hire less qualified personnel to fill the open positions (Fitzmaurice & Gallagher, 2022).
Those affected include special education teachers. When there is ...