In NYC’s Special Education, Knowing a Subject Is Optional

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I barely made it through high school because of math. In fact, back in the day, standing in front of the blackboard for what felt like an eternity and staring at an equation I could never solve, I vowed hatred for math and an allegiance with the humanities. And so far, I’ve kept this promise. I became a literature student, then a writer, then a teacher—of English—in the private sector.

When I decided to teach in an urban setting at the secondary level, special education seemed like a great opportunity: to work with children who are at a physical and/or mental disadvantage while utilizing my own strengths to assist them in improving their literacy skills.

So when, at the end of my first job interview a principal asked me if I would rather teach math or science, I knew something was wrong. If you look at my résumé, you see literature scattered all over the page. So why would you want to hire me as a math teacher? I imagined myself leading a double life: teaching math and pretending to know it and like it, and then going home and secretly hating it. I couldn’t do it and confessed the truth. Kids can see right through you anyway.

If you are wondering why the American education system is going down the drain, here is one of the reasons: sometimes, as a teacher, you no longer need to be an expert in what you teach. In fact, you can be an idiot in math, for example, and still be offered a teaching position in this content area. And forget about having a passion for teaching what you love—that’s a cliché, too.

All the questions centered around how I would discipline my students.

While special education students account for approximately 10 percent of the school-age population in America, this number is almost doubled for NYC. That means that out of the 1 million students in the city’s public schools, roughly two hundred thousand receive special education services.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997), the law requires that every child with a documented disability between the ages of 3 and 21 be provided “free and appropriate public education” in the “Least Restrictive Environment” (LRE).

The most popular model of LRE in NYC is Collaborative Team Teaching (CTT), in which a general education teacher provides instruction alongside a special education teacher in a general education classroom with up to 40 percent of special education students.

The notion behind a CTT setting is that both, say, the Social Studies teacher and the Special Education teacher collaborate together on providing instruction to the general and the special education students alike, although my main role would also be to make the material available to the special education students. It seems implied that in order to do so, one must still posses a mastery of the material given.

For a Special Education teacher like myself, that often means competence in not one, but three or four subject areas. During one of my interviews, a principal mentioned nonchalantly that I would be the co-teacher for Math and ELA (English Language Arts), and the lead teacher for Social Studies. Or Science, she added, as if it made no difference whether you teach about the Civil War or breeding bacteria.

I said I knew nothing about math and science, a statement that was met with a shrug from my interviewer. At home, I examined the components of the Master’s degree in Education I had begun to pursue—there was not one class in any content area, or how to teach it. Instead, the 32-credit degree program is comprised entirely of education theory classes that all sound, and so far have been, more or less the same. As a result, each year breeds thousands of special education teachers, many of whom land jobs teaching subjects they receive no formal training in.

What is more, it’s no longer about teaching anyway. My interviewers do not ask me what I want to teach, nor how I would teach it. On the contrary, all the questions center around how I would discipline my students. “It’s all about classroom management,” said one of my college professors.

No wonder that the one position I would be an excellent fit for—teaching English to students with special needs—I did not get. As I talked about my passion for literature during that interview, and explicitly stated how I would instill this passion into a middle school of ADHD and emotionally disturbed youths, the assistant principal’s face remained blank.

She did not care whether I had the expertise and/or passion to teach ELA. All she cared about, she made clear, was whether I could manage a class of 12 misbehaving youngsters. It turns out that what the Board of Education is really looking for are nannies, not teachers, of special education.

I wanted to change the world, to teach NYC’s children that anything is possible, and that strong literacy skills are a major component to achieving success in life. I was ready to give up my weekend plans and instead stay home to differentiate instruction for every single student of mine. I was ready to stay up all night to prepare an interactive lesson on “Romeo and Juliet.” Not just lecture on why it is a classic, but have the students figure it out themselves, so that they could become analytical thinkers.

I wanted to do all this and more, until I realized the sad truth: that in the case of the New York City Department of Education’s approach to special education, it doesn’t matter what you know, but rather, if you can control your student; and that this Board of Education—despite all its idealistic platitudes about all children being able to learn if they are held to high expectations—has, in fact, very low expectations of special education students and their teachers.

All children can indeed learn. But they cannot learn math if their teacher does not know it. And love it. The solution, to train Special Education teachers in the subject area of their choice in addition to training them in assisting children with disabilities, seems obvious, and there are some dual-certified Special Education teachers out there. But as long as principals continue to hire Special Education teachers for multiple subject areas, and for subjects they are not competent in teaching, our children will not receive what is federally mandated to them by law—free and appropriate public education.

Agatha Pravda is the pen name for a teacher in New York City.