I am extremely concerned with the direction our districts are going with respects to dual certified special education teachers. We have elementary schools which are serving ELL, Spec Ed and general education students and many of these students are also low income students. What seems to be the norm, correct me if I am wrong, if you are a dual certified special education teacher you have additional responsibilities than a teacher who is not dual certified. I am not saying that general education teachers who are not dual certified are not working as hard as a dual certified teacher; what I am saying is dual cert. teachers have more responsibilities that require an action with documentation such as IEP meetings, IEP paper work, implementing the IEP etc. The school districts and the State are getting two teachers in one at the same pay scale.
I was in Dover recently for the JFC meeting when JFC members were asking DOE questions about DOE salary scale. It was interesting to hear the Department of Education and their reasoning behind the salaries. They spoke about the need to be competitive in order to attract the best people. They spoke about people doing multiple jobs under one title and there was a need to pay them more.
We have teachers performing multiple jobs as well under one title and not receiving one penny more. We really need to rethink how we are educating our children here in Delaware and what is expected from our staff who are responsible for making this happen. The necessary resources that are needed in our classrooms are not there. We are demanding our teachers to do more and more with less and less. The teachers I know, want to make a difference but cannot do that because of what is expected of them and what is lacking in their classrooms.
DelawareFirstState 
As a 4th grade teacher, I don’t really mind that I don’t get paid more for having dual-certification. I was a K-8 certified teacher for 23 years before becoming receiving my special ed. certifcate 4 years ago. What is the worst is the diservice to all students. Last year I would administer a reading test to 28 students at a time. Seven of them had IEP’s that required accommodations for these tests. I would provide small group testing with 28 students in the room. So I had seven students at a small table, where I read them the test questions and answers, while 21 students had to take the test, too. How do you explain this to an elementary aged child? How distracting is it for students listen to me while trying to focus on a test? How do I help the students without IEP’s without compromising the accommodating of those with? Thank you for bringing this situation to light.
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We have teachers in our building that are not spec ed certified and have special education children in their room. These childrens’ IEPs are written: location-general education room. These non spec ed teachers are now responsibly for what is on these IEPS. For most of these teachers this is the first time they have had to deal with an IEP by themselves. (However there are case managers for these children.) Since this is happening all over red clay, it appears to a lot of teachers that you don’t need to be spec ed certified because you still can solely be responsible for children with IEPS based on how it is written.
Some schools are teaching all of their teachers how to write IEPs. So, you don’t need a spec Ed degree anymore in red clay.
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