Lee V. Gaines and Dylan Peers McCoy separately reported two stories for US National Public Radio about the difficulties schools in the US are having hiring and keepng special education teachers. In “Students with disabilities have a right to qualified teachers — but there's a shortage” (Ms. Gaines, 20 April 2022) and “Schools are struggling to hire special education teachers. Hawaii may have found a fix” (Ms. McCoy, 21 April 2022) you can get an indepth examination of facets of the teacher shortage schools are confronting.

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If you are concerned about whether your child will have a qualified teacher, how your colleagues who may teach in a different part of the country are doing, the overall state of special education, or just about anything having to do with special education, I recommend these articles to you. Ms. McCoy and Ms. Gaines present views that are largely sympathetic to the plights of parent and teachers of students with disabilities, but they don’t neglect the pressures school administrators feel in hiring and retaining teachers (e.g., the difficulties in simply finding teachers with adequate training). They include comments about the topic from representatives of many different constituencies.

Here are links to the stories:

• “Students with disabilities have a right to qualified teachers — but there's a shortage” and

• “Schools are struggling to hire special education teachers. Hawaii may have found a fix.”

Ms. McCoy and Ms. Gaines a both journalists who write stories about education.