For Tejeda, a special education teacher with 20 years of experience in Riverside County, California, helping students take part in school life is central to the job. It is also work carried out amid a persistent shortage of special educators and a workload that reaches well beyond classroom teaching.

Special education teacher shortages affect 45 states, according to the Learning Policy Institute. More than 8.2 million students — about one in six public school students — receive special education services, and demand for qualified staff is growing.

The challenge is not simply that the work is difficult, researchers say. Liz Bettini, a former special education teacher and Boston University professor, said research does not support the idea that teachers leave because students are hard to work with. Instead, educators can feel isolated, responsible for too many needs and overwhelmed by paperwork, often without additional pay for specialized training.

Special educators support students with a wide range of needs, including autism, learning disabilities, developmental delays and physical disabilities. One study found they spend about a third of their day on instruction. Much of the rest can go to tracking student progress, coordinating services such as speech therapy, training support staff and preparing individualized education programs, or IEPs.

Required by federal law, IEPs set out students’ needs and annual goals and help families hold schools accountable. They also guide efforts to educate students alongside their peers without disabilities as much as possible. But writing and implementing the plans, and meeting with families, takes time away from instruction.

Tejeda said that when she supports students in general education classrooms, she checks in with the whole class while ensuring that a particular student’s accommodations are in place. The aim is to help students access the classroom without singling them out.

Teachers describe competing demands when a student experiences a crisis. Grace Fitzgerald, a first-year elementary teacher in Peoria, Illinois, said one student’s emotional crisis required her to evacuate the rest of her class for safety. Danalyn Garcia, an elementary teacher in Chicago, said an escalating student’s distress can disrupt an entire shared classroom area and affect other students.

The pressure can extend beyond the school day. Kaori Anderson-Walker, a middle school teacher at Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia, said he once had little life outside work. In his fourth year, he has become better at managing his time, but said he still finds himself thinking constantly about students’ progress. His school hired staff to handle IEP paperwork, giving teachers more time for classroom work. “Not having that stress is amazing,” he said.

Pay and the supply of trained teachers are also central to the shortage. A 2020 pay increase of $10,000 a year for special education teachers in Hawaii reduced vacancies by 35%, though it did not resolve retention problems. Seventeen states now offer extra pay for hard-to-staff subjects, including special education, down from 22 states four years earlier. In 32 states, teachers receive no additional pay for the hardest-to-staff positions, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.

The pipeline is not keeping pace with departures. Education policy researcher Chad Aldeman estimated from federal data that about 46,000 special education teachers leave public schools each year, while preparation programs train fewer than 30,000 annually. Aldeman has cautioned that the figures are a rough estimate, but said demand is growing faster than the supply of trained educators. Some schools consequently hire teachers who are not fully qualified for the work.

Research suggests community-based “grow-your-own” programs can help recruit special educators. Bettini and her research partners have also found that supportive administrators and protected planning time can make the job more sustainable.

Fitzgerald said she worked with school leaders to add dedicated planning time to her day after feeling overwhelmed early in the year. She uses the time for lesson planning, recording student data and writing IEP goals — work she hopes to do less often after school. The time, she said, should help her be more present with students.

For Tejeda, the student who moved from simply coping with high school to joining school activities illustrates what sustained support can make possible. But with student needs rising and vacancies widespread, schools’ ability to provide that support depends in part on whether they can recruit and retain the people trained to do it.