Teaching in the Gap: Understanding Special Educators’ Experiences Teaching In Between Education Policies

As the expectations for special education move from compliance toward academic performance, teachers must help students meet grade-level proficiency while remediating educational deficits. Special education teachers' attempts to fulfill the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are complicated by demands for simultaneous compliance and vague guidance. Building upon the existing body of research, this study utilized critical policy analysis and constructivist grounded theory to understand how teachers make policy decisions when pressured to conform to accountability systems and standardized testing regimes. After being identified using a stratified recruitment strategy, ten elementary special education teachers from resource and inclusion settings participated in two semi-structured interviews. In keeping with prior research, the study findings suggest that special education teachers consider student benefits and professional judgment when policy directives are too demanding, numerous, or ambiguous. Furthermore, the findings suggest that special educators' adherence to educational policies is context-dependent and changes based on the school culture and resource availability. Despite differing school environments, educators developed similar coping mechanisms to lessen the strain of competing policy demands. Unfortunately, special educators’ coping strategies often contradicted the intentions of one or both policies. Knowing that policies are implemented differently across educational settings, policymakers must understand how special education teachers assess policies, account for external and internal influences on adherence, and respond to policy pressures if students are to benefit from both policies.