Special and General Education Teachers in Public Schools: Sources of Supply in National Perspective

In view of the chronic shortage of qualified special education teachers and the pauciij, of data on the sources of supply of entering teachers, this research provides such data from a national probability sample of 46,599 public-school teachers from the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey. The analysis focused on two main teaching fields (special and general education) and five main sources of supply of public school teachers (first-time teachers who recently graduated, first-time teachers who delayed entry to the teaching profession, reentering experienced teachers, teachers migrating from private to public schools, and public school teachers continuing from the prior year). Results showed significantly, greater annual inflow of entering teachers in special education (8.5%) than in general education (5.9%). The main source of entering public teachers in 1990-91 was the reserve pool (68% in special education; 69% in general education), composed of (a) delayed entry first-time teachers and (b) reentering experienced teachers. The other sources of entering public teachers were first-time teachers who recently graduated from college (24% in both special and general education), and migrant teachers from private schools (8% in special education; 7% in general education). Although special and general education were more similar than dissimilar in their respective sources of supply of teachers, these two fields differed somewhat in the following respects: (a) there was a greater percentage demand in special education for teachers to fill open positions, and (b) special education filled a higher percentage of open positions with reentering eaperienced teachers Implications for teacher shortage, recruitment, and teacher education are discussed