Federal grant helps UF to prepare next generation of special education leaders

Who will lead special education services in America’s public schools in the 21st Century? With baby-boom-age administrators headed for retirement en masse, and schools already scrambling to find qualified special education teachers, a serious shortage of qualified special education administrators may be just a few years away.

Equipped with an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, two COE faculty members are preparing the next generation of leaders to make sure special needs students get the education they deserve.

Associate Professor Jean Crockett and Assistant Professor David Quinn have secured funding for a four-year grant that will send working school leaders and future education researchers to UF for a new doctoral program that combines special education courses with courses in educational administration.

“There are about 20,000 administrators in charge of special education across the country right now,” Crockett said. “Many of these people are going to retire within the next few years, and there are fewer than a dozen colleges with programs in special education administration and policy.”

To fully understand the problem, one must look back to the mid-1970s, when what is now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other federal laws reformed American schools, requiring states to provide a “free appropriate public education” to all children with disabilities. To meet the needs of all students and eager to stay out of court, school districts across the country hired administrators to supervise special education. Most came to the field from other areas of school administration. Few had any training or experience in administrative problems specific to special education.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a boom in federal funding to support special education administration programs – but as growing numbers of administrators got up to speed on the provisions of IDEA, funding shifted to support training for special education teachers and enrollment in those programs plummeted. When programs closed, administrators had to learn on the job. At most universities, special education topics are still not covered in leadership courses.

Fast forward two decades. Seasoned directors and supervisors of special education are now heading en masse for retirement, taking much of their specialized knowledge with them, and teachers are beginning to worry about what will happen when those administrators leave.

“To do special education well, we need instructional leaders who understand how students learn and how schools can be organized to support their learning,” Crockett said. “Without administrators who really understand special education, we face a real threat to our ability to offer specialized services that are effective or legally correct.”

The UF researchers’ project — known as Project EXCEL — aims to help correct the problem in at least one Florida county by providing full scholarships for five practicing Collier County school leaders. Those individuals will take courses in special education and administration in pursuit of a professional practice doctoral degree (Ed.D.). In addition, the project is conducting a nationwide search for three Ph. D. scholarship recipients – students who would be groomed to become the next generation of cutting-edge researchers in special education administration and policy.

Eight students may not sound like a lot, but Crockett says Project EXCEL will have an effect beyond the eight scholarship recipients. The five Collier County administrators are expected to have a major effect on the culture of special education to meet the needs of special needs students in that county – and in any other systems these administrators work for in the future. The three Ph.D. recipients will ideally go on to work as faculty linking special education and educational administration programs in the future.

“A specialty in special education administration is offered at fewer than a dozen universities in the country,” she said. “There need to be many more, and Project EXCEL is a step in that direction.”