---
title: "Special Education Teacher, Elementary School"
description: "Teach academic, social, and life skills to elementary school students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-elementary-school"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Special Education Teacher, Elementary School

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-2056 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-2056.00

Teach academic, social, and life skills to elementary school students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who specialize and work with students who are blind or have visual impairments; students who are deaf or have hearing impairments; and students with intellectual disabilities.

Also advertised as: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Teacher (DHH Teacher); Emotional Disabilities Teacher; Hearing Impaired Itinerant Teacher (HI Itinerant Teacher); Learning Support Teacher; Resource Program Teacher; Severe Emotional Disorders Elementary Teacher (SED Elementary Teacher); Special Educator; SPED Inclusion Teacher (Special Education Inclusion Teacher).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $67,170 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $49,230 to $105,020, with the middle half between $59,770 and $83,980
- **Total US employment:** 583,430
- **Typical entry education:** Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -0.1% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 37,100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 37/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 583,430 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $49,230 |
| 25th | $59,770 |
| 50th (median) | $67,170 |
| 75th | $83,980 |
| 90th | $105,020 |
| Mean (average) | $74,730 |

### Pay by state

OEWS publishes no state-level wage estimates for this occupation.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 584,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 583,800 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 300 jobs, or -0.1%. Declining: -0.1% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 37,100 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 51.4% |
| Master's Degree | 37.7% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 10.3% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 0.3% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 0.2% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 0.1% |

## What the work involves

- Develop or implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of disabilities.
- Establish and enforce rules for behavior and procedures for maintaining order among students.
- Observe and evaluate students' performance, behavior, social development, and physical health.
- Encourage students to explore learning opportunities or persevere with challenging tasks to prepare them for later grades.
- Establish and communicate clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects to students.
- Attend professional meetings, educational conferences, or teacher training workshops to maintain or improve professional competence.
- Instruct students with disabilities in academic subjects, using a variety of techniques, such as phonetics, multisensory learning, or repetition to reinforce learning and meet students' varying needs.
- Maintain accurate and complete student records as required by laws, district policies, or administrative regulations.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Instructing — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Education and Training — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Artistic (A).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 7.00 |
| I — Investigative | 3.94 |
| A — Artistic | 3.65 |
| C — Conventional | 3.48 |
| R — Realistic | 2.27 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.77 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INFJ | 67.2 |
| ENFJ | 66.6 |
| ENFP | 66.4 |
| ESFP | 65.2 |
| ISFP | 64.2 |

Best-fitting types: INFJ, ENFJ, ENFP, ESFP, ISFP, INFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Special Education Teacher, Kindergarten](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-kindergarten) — median $67,170
- [Special Education Teacher, Secondary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-secondary-school) — median $74,260
- [Special Education Teacher, Middle School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-middle-school) — median $66,810
- [Special Education Teacher, Preschool](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-preschool) — median $64,830
- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adult-basic-education-adult-secondary-education-and-english-as-a-second-language-instructor) — median $61,540
- [Teaching Assistant, Special Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-special-education) — median $37,010
- [Kindergarten Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/kindergarten-teacher) — median $62,680
- [Tutor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/tutor) — median $43,350
- [Adapted Physical Education Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adapted-physical-education-specialist) — median $76,580

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

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