The State of Special Education Careers, From Shortages to Retention

The special education workforce is under increasing strain, yet much of the conversation around teacher shortages misses what’s actually happening on the ground. This webinar features Dr. Tuan Nguyen, Associate Professor at the University of Missouri and creator of TeacherShortages.com, for a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of special education employment in the United States.

What You Get

You’re not just getting random handouts. These downloads are designed to be useful the moment you open them. Here’s what’s included:

All 3 files are free to download, easy to print, and don’t take long to go through. You can start using them the same day you grab them.

What You’ll Learn

These downloads will help you:

• Understand the Complete Employment Landscape: Current hiring trends, vacancy patterns, and workforce mobility—including 56,000+ vacant positions and 350,000 underqualified positions nationwide.

• Examine How Teachers Enter and Exit: How preparation pathways and training quality influence who enters special education classrooms and who stays.

• Identify Why Shortages Persist Despite Constant Hiring: The difference between stability and churn, and why districts struggle even as they fill positions.

• Explore State and Regional Variations: How retention differs across contexts, including emerging trends from alternative and for-profit training pipelines in states like Texas.

• See What’s Not Working: Which common retention strategies don’t reduce turnover, and why systemic solutions matter more than individual interventions.

• Discover Evidence-Based Solutions: Interventions making measurable differences—from support structures to professional development to administrative practices.

• Plan Strategic Next Steps: Actionable workforce data to inform decisions before the critical budget season, whether you’re deciding about next fall or planning hiring strategy.

About Dr. Tuan Nguyen

Dr. Tuan D. Nguyen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri and a leading national expert on teacher shortages, retention, and workforce trends.

As the creator of TeacherShortages.com, Dr. Nguyen provides the most comprehensive public database tracking teacher vacancies and underqualification across all 50 states. His research estimates over 56,000 vacant teaching positions and 350,000 underqualified positions for the 2025-2026 school year, making critical workforce data transparent for policymakers and school leaders.

Using rigorous quantitative methods and large-scale data analysis, Dr. Nguyen examines what drives teacher attrition and retention, with particular focus on how shortages uniquely impact special education and rural schools. His work identifies evidence-based interventions that actually work to keep educators in the classroom.

Widely published in high-impact journals like AERA Open, Dr. Nguyen’s research is essential to national conversations on educator preparation, workforce stability, and policies that support the most vulnerable student populations.