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Elementary Special Education Teacher Career Assessment

Resource room, co-teaching, and the years the gap opens

Section 1 of 11

Welcome

Elementary special education teachers work with children roughly five to eleven years old who have a disability that affects how they learn. Most of them are in a regular classroom most of the day. You are the one who pulls them for what they cannot get there, or who teaches beside their regular teacher so they never have to leave.

These are the years when a gap either closes or opens for good. A child who cannot read at the end of third grade is in real trouble by sixth. That is the fight you are in. This page will show you what the job really is, what it pays in North Dakota, and whether it fits you.

This takes about 15 minutes.

What is a Elementary Special Education Teacher?

An elementary special education teacher teaches the children on their caseload — usually somewhere between twelve and twenty-five of them, spread across several grades. You do not have one class in one room all day. You have a schedule. Some hours you run a small group in a resource room, usually reading or math, drilled hard and taught differently than the regular classroom does it. Some hours you co-teach: you are in the regular classroom with the general education teacher, and between you every child gets what they need. Some hours you are in a self-contained room with children who need most of their day taught separately. Around all of that sits the paperwork. You write every IEP on your caseload, you run every IEP meeting, you gather progress data, and you make sure every accommodation on every plan actually happens in every class, including the ones you are not in.

A special education teacher works with two students in a resource room.

The Reality: Say this part out loud: the paperwork is not a small side task, it is a second job. An IEP is a legal document, and a caseload of twenty means twenty of them a year, each with meetings, notices, evaluations, and deadlines you cannot miss. Special education is the most heavily regulated corner of teaching, and if a family disagrees with you they have the right to a hearing. That pressure is real, and it is one of the two reasons people leave this job. The other is caseload size. Ask any district you interview with, straight out, how many students are on the caseload and how many paraeducators you get, and treat a vague answer as an answer.

Your Responsibilities:

You are the reason a child who could not read in October can read in May.

A Day in the Life

A special education teacher supports a student in the regular classroom.

7:30 AM — In early. Print progress data for two meetings, check the sub plan for a paraeducator who is out, and reschedule your whole morning around it.

8:15 AM — Co-teach third grade math. You take the six students who did not get yesterday’s lesson to the back table while the class moves on.

9:15 AM — Reading group, four second graders, phonics drilled hard. Twenty-five minutes, every single day, and it is the most important half hour in the building.

10:00 AM — A fifth grader is under a desk in another room. You go. You do not argue, you wait, and you walk him out the back way with his dignity intact.

10:45 AM — Testing a new referral — a first grader nobody can explain. Two hours of assessment, split across three days.

12:00 PM — Lunch, mostly at your desk, writing the draft of an IEP due Friday.

1:00 PM — IEP meeting. Parents, the classroom teacher, the principal, the speech therapist. You run it, keep it on time, and say the hard number out loud kindly.

3:30 PM — Buses go. Two hours of paperwork, data entry, and an email to a teacher who is not following an accommodation. You take some of it home.

You move between rooms all day on somebody else’s schedule, and the writing happens in the cracks and after the buses.

Training in North Dakota

A four-year degree, a North Dakota teaching license, and a special education endorsement. You need a bachelor’s degree from an approved teacher preparation program and a North Dakota license from the Education Standards and Practices Board, usually called ESPB. On top of the license sits a special education endorsement. The big one at this age band is the Strategist endorsement, which combines Specific Learning Disabilities, Emotional Disabilities, and Intellectual Disabilities in a single credential — that is what lets you teach the mixed caseload an elementary resource room actually has.

Training Pathways:

Where to Train in North Dakota:

Before You Start: A high school diploma or GED to start the degree. You have to be a strong writer, because IEPs and evaluation reports are writing and they are legal documents. You need to be comfortable enough with elementary reading instruction and elementary math to teach them a second and third way when the first way failed. Teacher preparation programs have a GPA gate partway through; UND asks for at least 2.75. A fingerprint background check is required before licensure or placement.

Tip: Start with financial aid and scholarships. Fill out the FAFSA, ask the school’s financial aid office what you qualify for, and ask an employer whether they help pay for school. That is where the money starts. After that, a career counselor or Job Service North Dakota may be able to help with what is left over, like tuition, books, a laptop, or exam fees. What can be paid for depends on the program and on your own situation, so ask before you enroll rather than after. Worth asking about specifically: two-year degrees that train you for a job, like civil engineering technology, land surveying, mechatronics, electronics, or instrumentation. North Dakota two-year colleges also cost far less than a university. Ask about paid summer internships too — engineering firms, plants, and survey crews hire students while they are still in school.

Certification & Licensing

North Dakota licenses you personally, through the Education Standards and Practices Board. ESPB issues the teaching license and the special education endorsements. The endorsement areas are Specific Learning Disabilities (LD), Emotional Disabilities (ED), Intellectual Disabilities (ID), the Strategist endorsement that combines all three, and separate areas in hearing impairment, visual impairment, early childhood special education, and gifted and talented. For an elementary resource room, Strategist is usually the one you want.

How You Get and Keep the Credential in North Dakota:

The Exams: North Dakota requires all three Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators tests: Reading (5713, qualifying score 156, minimum 149), Writing (5723, qualifying score 160, minimum 153), and Math (5733, qualifying score 150, minimum 143), or a composite of 466 with no single score below that test’s minimum. You also take a subject test, and ESPB’s first special education licensure option runs on passing a special education Praxis test and then applying for the Major Equivalency Endorsement. ESPB does not publish the subject test codes and cut scores on its testing page, so confirm the exact special education test and score with ESPB before you register (nd.gov/espb/licensure/testing-information).

Cost: From the ESPB fee list: initial application $30, fingerprinting $44.50, Initial In-State two-year license $85, two-year renewal $65, five-year license $140, endorsements $80 each, Alternate Access License $165, Interim Substitute License $95, transcript review $175, and a $100 late fee if a license lapses. A $5 maintenance charge is added to new applications.

Keeping It Current: ESPB renews the five-year license with at least 30 days under contract and six semester hours of continuing education. A Plan on File renews yearly, up to three years total, and only with new transcripts and a new administrator letter. Graduate credits move you up the district pay scale at the same time, which is why summer classes are so common in this field.

Salary & Job Outlook

North Dakota Elementary Special Education Teacher Pay (May 2025) — yearly contract pay:

What that means: Teachers are paid on a yearly contract, not by the hour, so the numbers above are yearly pay. Your district’s salary schedule is what tells you exactly what each step and each year of experience pays. The middle North Dakota elementary special education teacher earns about $57,950 a year, against a national middle of $65,120. The ND bottom tenth is about $47,060 and the national bottom tenth is about $49,350 — close. The gap is at the top: the ND top tenth is about $77,150 while the national top tenth is about $103,010. In plain words, North Dakota starting pay is near the national floor and the ceiling here is much lower. Notice also that the ND 10th and 25th percentiles are almost the same number, about $47,060 and $47,070, which tells you the bottom quarter of this job in this state is packed into one narrow band — that is what a district starting salary schedule looks like. Pay rises with years taught and with graduate credits, and ND district salary schedules are public, so look them up before you apply.

Jobs in North Dakota: About 670 people do this work in ND today. By 2034, that should be about 710 (about 6% growth). Expect about 50 job openings every year in ND from growth and people retiring or changing jobs. Across the U.S., the change is about 2% decline.

Outlook: Good, and moving the opposite direction from the country. O*NET shows North Dakota going from about 670 elementary special education teachers in 2024 to about 710 in 2034, roughly 6% growth, with about 50 openings a year. Nationally this job is shrinking about 2%. Fifty openings a year is the largest number of the four special education jobs in this group, so this is the one where a new graduate has the best odds. ESPB declared all content areas critical shortage teaching positions at its March 12, 2026 meeting for the 2026-2027 school year, and special education is among the hardest of all to fill — rural districts especially will hire you fast.

Who Hires in ND: Public school districts in every North Dakota county, multi-district special education units (many small ND districts share one unit and one director), tribal and Bureau of Indian Education schools, and some private and charter schools. Large districts like Fargo, West Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, and Grand Forks post the most positions; rural districts have the least competition per opening and often the largest caseloads.

Work Setting: Not one room. You have a small resource room with a kidney table and a lot of shelving, and you spend a big part of the day in other people’s classrooms on their schedule. School calendar, roughly late August through late May, plus extended school year services in summer for students who need them. You share lunch, recess, and bus duty with everyone else, so you are outside in North Dakota winter too. You arrive before the students, stay after them, and the paperwork follows you home.

Physical Demands: Moderate to high, and it depends entirely on your caseload. Most days it is walking between rooms, sitting at low tables, and being on your feet. But if you have students who need physical help — lifting, transfers, toileting — that is on you and your paraeducators. Some elementary students hit, kick, throw, or bolt, and districts train staff in safe physical response for a reason. Ask in the interview what kind of behavior support the building actually has, not what the handbook says.

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, North Dakota, May 2025 (SOC 25-2052); North Dakota and U.S. long-term employment projections 2024–2034, via O*NET OnLine. Numbers are rounded.

Where This Leads

Path 1: Resource Room Teacher — Run reading and math groups and manage a caseload.

Path 2: Co-Teacher — Teach beside a general education teacher all day so students never leave.

Path 3: Self-Contained Classroom Teacher — Teach students who need most of their day taught separately.

Path 4: Reading Specialist or Interventionist — Add the credential; go after reading alone.

Path 5: Behavior Specialist or Autism Specialist — Add coursework and support a whole district.

Path 6: Special Education Director — Add a master’s and the DPI director credential and run the program.

The Real Talk

What's Great:

What's Hard:

Be Honest: Can you write clearly and hit a legal deadline every time, even in a week that went badly? Can you teach the same reading skill a third and fourth way without showing frustration to the child who still has not got it? Can you sit in a meeting where a parent is angry at you, stay steady, and keep the child at the center of it? And can you ask a district hard questions about caseload and paraeducators before you sign, instead of finding out in October?

Part 1: What Attracts You?

What draws you to elementary special education?

Part 2: Are You Ready?

1. I can commit to a four-year degree and a state license.
2. I write clearly and I meet deadlines.
3. I can teach one skill four different ways without getting frustrated.
4. I can work on someone else’s schedule and move between rooms all day.
5. I can stay calm with a child who is hitting, throwing, or running.
6. I can run a meeting with parents and staff and keep it on track.
7. I can supervise and schedule other adults.
8. I am open to a job in a smaller ND town, where the openings are.

Part 3: Your Next Move

What's your plan?

Your Elementary Special Education Teacher Assessment Results

Sources & Learn More

Everything on this page comes from these sources. Each one opens the page the information came from, so you can check it yourself or keep reading.

Career information
Elementary Special Education Teacher on O*NET OnLine — what the job involves, the skills it uses, and related jobs.
Pay and employment data
North Dakota pay for Elementary Special Education Teachers — from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025.
North Dakota job outlook, 2024–2034 — state projections from Projections Central.
Education and training
North Dakota schools that train Elementary Special Education Teachers — colleges and programs in this state, with how many people finished recently. From the U.S. Department of Labor, using federal college data (IPEDS).
More career exploration
RUReady.ND.gov career planning — North Dakota’s own career and college planning site. An account may be required.

Pay and outlook figures on this page were taken from the sources above in September 2026. Occupation code: 25-2052.00. Numbers are updated by the agencies over time, so check the links for the newest figures.