You teach students with disabilities and you write the legal plan that says what their school has to provide.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $65,120 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $49,350 at the lower end to about $103,010 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 6 years after high school, on the usual route.
$33,000 to $88,500 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a license or registration before you can work.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$65,120
Bottom tenth
$49,350
Top tenth
$103,010
The national median for elementary school special education teachers is $65,120 a year. The bottom tenth earn $49,350 or less and the top tenth $103,010 or more (2025 federal wage survey). The wage survey splits this job by grade level, and these are the elementary school figures. Your pay is set by a published district salary schedule, not by negotiating.
$49,350 to $59,710
What the bottom tenth to bottom quarter of elementary special education teachers earn, 2025
Each district publishes its own salary schedule, so you can look up a district's first step before you apply.
$97,910 a year
The median in the District of Columbia, the highest anywhere in the country
California is close behind at $97,170 and Washington state is at $95,040. The lowest is West Virginia, at $50,380. State medians for elementary special education teachers, 2025 federal wage survey.
Roughly, all in
$33,000 to $88,500
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is two years at a community college at about $4,150 a year, transferring to an in-state public university for the last two at roughly $12,000 a year, plus two or three Praxis subject tests at $130 to $180 each and a background check and license fee of $50 to $200. The high end is all four years at the university plus the master's degree many teachers go on to take, $15,000 to $40,000, often part time while working and sometimes paid for by the district. Neither figure counts the few hundred dollars a year teachers spend on classroom supplies. Public school work can qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and a separate federal program worth up to $17,500 targets special education teachers who stay five years in a low income school.
Start with the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). Then look up PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness): teach full time in a public school on an income driven repayment plan and the remaining federal loan balance can be canceled after 120 qualifying payments.
A state pension
Public school teachers in most states are in a defined benefit pension plan, which is rare outside government work now.
A ten month contract
You are paid over twelve months but work about 180 school days. Summers are genuinely off.
Health insurance
District plans are usually solid and cover families.
Loan forgiveness
Public service and special education specific federal programs both apply to this job.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A bachelor's degree, a supervised teaching placement, state exams, then a state license.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Nothing specific required. Volunteering with children, especially disabled children, is the thing that will actually tell you whether you want this.
Bachelor's degree with a teacher preparation program
4 years
Either a special education major, or a subject major plus an approved preparation program. It must be an approved program in the state where you want the license.
Student teaching
One semester
A full semester in a real classroom under a mentor teacher, unpaid, and effectively a long job interview.
Pass your state exams
Final year
Most states use the Praxis series, including Special Education: Foundational Knowledge, plus a basic skills test and sometimes a subject test.
Apply for your state license
Weeks to months
Background check, fingerprints, transcripts and exam scores. Then you can be hired into a public school classroom.
English
You will write plans, reports and legal documents constantly, and parents read all of them.
Psychology
Development, behavior and how people learn. The closest high school subject to the actual work.
Math and science
Elementary special education teachers teach every subject, so gaps in your own learning show up fast.
Spanish or American Sign Language
Both are directly useful. Many families you work with do not speak English at home.
You cannot teach in a public school without a state issued teaching license, and special education is a separate endorsement on it. Licenses do not transfer automatically. Most states have reciprocity agreements that let you carry a license across, but you will usually still owe extra exams or coursework within the first few years. Private and religious schools are not always required to hire licensed teachers, though most do. Decide early which state you want to work in, because you should train under that state's rules.
Your own state's public universities
Almost every state has several approved programs. In-state tuition plus a license valid where you already live is the cheapest sensible route.
University of Texas at Austin College of Education
One well known example, with a dedicated special education department and bachelor's, master's and certification routes.
Alternative certification programs
For people who already hold a degree in something else. You teach on a provisional license while finishing the coursework, and you are paid.
Check state approval, not rankings
A program that is not approved by your state's education department cannot get you licensed there, however good it looks.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Autism
A growing part of the caseload, and schools look for teachers who are properly trained in it.
Visual impairment, or deaf and hard of hearing
Small, specialized and genuinely short staffed. Some districts will fund the training.
Early childhood special education
Birth to five, often in a home or early intervention setting rather than a school.
Reading specialist
Structured literacy training is in demand everywhere and is directly useful with dyslexic students.
Work as a paraeducator first
A teaching assistant job in a special education classroom pays while you study and tells you the truth about the work.
Camp and respite work
Summer camps for disabled children are the single best trial run for this career.
Behavior training
De-escalation and behavior support courses are the skills new teachers most often wish they had.
Patience with paperwork
Unglamorous, but the legal documents are half of the job and doing them badly causes real problems.
Plenty of special education teachers stay in the classroom for thirty years, and that is a good life. The common moves out are to district level coordinator or compliance roles, to behavior analyst work after extra certification, to school administration with a leadership license, or to a teaching job at a university. Because districts everywhere struggle to fill these posts, you have more leverage than most teachers about where you work and what you teach.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
In by seven thirty to set up. Some of your students are in mainstream classes where you co-teach with a subject teacher, the rest come to you in small groups through the day. You are running three or four different lesson levels at once, tracking data on every goal, and handling whatever behavior comes up. Lunch is often supervision duty. After school there is a meeting with parents, an assistant principal and a therapist about one child's plan. Then you write it up. The teaching part is maybe half the hours.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Every student in special education has an IEP (Individualized Education Program), a written plan setting out goals, services and accommodations the school must deliver. It is not advice. If a school does not follow it, parents can take the district to a hearing, and the teacher who wrote it will be asked about it.
IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) requires public schools to give every eligible child a free appropriate public education. In 2022 to 2023 about 7.5 million students aged 3 to 21 were served under it, 15% of all public school students.
Special education appears on the teacher shortage list in many states, year after year, even though O*NET (Occupational Information Network) projects little or no change in the number of jobs from 2025 to 2035. Openings come from teachers leaving: about 16,400 a year for elementary special education alone.
The federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness program cancels up to $17,500 of federal student loans for a special education teacher who works five complete consecutive years in a qualifying low income school. Most other teachers max out at $5,000 under the same program.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Teaching first, then the rest of the field. See every career in education.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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