Jobs / Education and social services / 25-2058.00
Special Education Teachers, Secondary School
Teach academic, social, and life skills to secondary 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.
- US jobs
- 163,930
- Median wage
- $74,260 a year
- Job family
- Education and social services
Can agents do the work of special education teachers, secondary school?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Education and social services:
- Task levelUnexploredNo task-level benchmark in our collection tests teaching, counseling, or casework.
- Project levelPartialThin, adjacent evidence only. GDPval, which spans 44 occupations, is the one benchmark in our collection mapped here. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all GDPval occupations. No benchmark tests work with students or clients.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in education and social services, not always this occupation's tasks.
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Establish and enforce rules for behavior and policies and procedures to maintain order among students.
- Maintain accurate and complete student records, and prepare reports on children and activities, as required by laws, district policies, and administrative regulations.
- Confer with parents, administrators, testing specialists, social workers, or other professionals to develop individual educational plans (IEPs) for students' educational, physical, and social development.
- Employ special educational strategies and techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition, and memory.
- Establish clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects, and communicate those objectives to students.
- Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.
- Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification and positive reinforcement.
- Confer with parents or guardians, other teachers, counselors, and administrators to resolve students' behavioral and academic problems.
- Develop and implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of handicapping conditions.
- Teach personal development skills, such as goal setting, independence, and self-advocacy.
- Prepare students for later grades by encouraging them to explore learning opportunities and to persevere with challenging tasks.
- Modify the general education curriculum for students with disabilities, based upon a variety of instructional techniques and technologies.
Other job titles for this occupation (51)
Education Specialist · Emotional Disability Special Education Teacher (ED SPED Teacher) · Exceptional Student Education Teacher (ESE Teacher) · Handicapped Teacher · HS SPED Teacher (High School Special Education Teacher) · Learning Disabilities Special Education Teacher (LD Special Education Teacher) · Learning Support Teacher · Special Day Class Teacher (SDC Teacher) · SPED Resource Teacher (Special Education Resource Teacher) · SPED Teacher (Special Education Teacher) · Blind Teacher · Braille Teacher · Cross-Categorical SPED Teacher (Cross-Categorical Special Education Teacher) · Deaf Teacher · Emotionally Impaired Teacher · Exceptional Children's Teacher (EC Teacher) · Hearing Impaired Teacher · High School Learning Support Teacher · Inclusion Coordinator · Inclusion Special Educator · Inclusion Specialist · Inclusion Teacher · Interrelated SPED Teacher (Interrelated Special Education Teacher) · Learning Disabled Teacher (LD Teacher) · Learning Specialist · Life Skills Teacher · Lip Reading Teacher · MI Teacher (Mentally Impaired Teacher) · Physically Impaired Teacher · Reading Specialist · Remedial Math Teacher (Remedial Mathematics Teacher) · Remedial Reading Teacher · Resource Center Teacher · Resource Specialist · Resource Specialist Teacher · Resource Teacher · RSP Specialist (Resource Specialist Program Specialist) · Secondary School SPED Teacher (Secondary School Special Education Teacher) · Secondary SPED Teacher (Secondary Special Education Teacher) · SED High School Teacher (Serious Emotional Disability High School Teacher) · Self-Contained Classroom SPED Teacher (Self-Contained Classroom Special Education Teacher) · Severe Emotional Disorders High School Teacher · Sign Language Teacher · Special Educator · SPED Inclusion Teacher (Special Education Inclusion Teacher) · SPED Instructor (Special Education Instructor) · SPED Itinerant Teacher (Special Education Itinerant Teacher) · SPED Math Teacher (Special Education Mathematics Teacher) · Teacher · Transition Teacher · Visually Impaired Teacher