Special Education Teacher Education: Degrees and Training for Private and Charter Schools

The degree that qualifies you depends on who employs you, because three kinds of school set the bar in different ways.

District schools are the reference point.

Under the IDEA regulations at 34 CFR 300.156, public school special education teachers must hold full state special-education certification (or pass the state licensing exam), must not be working on an emergency waiver, and must hold at least a bachelor's degree.

Charter schools follow their state's charter law on certification.

The same federal rule says a public charter school special education teacher must meet the certification requirements, if any, set by the state's public charter school law — so the state, not a single national rule, decides certification, while the bachelor's floor still applies.

Private schools set the degree bar themselves, within state rules.

NAIS says independent schools do not always require state certification of their teachers, and NAIS requires member schools to be accredited by an approved state or regional association; what a given school asks degree-wise appears in its posting.

State approval rules can still reach private special-education schools: New Jersey requires certification for professional staff in NJDOE-approved private schools for students with disabilities.

Private school teachers arrive on several kinds of degree, and the federal survey data shows it.

In NCES's 2020–21 National Teacher and Principal Survey, private K-12 teachers' highest degree was less than a bachelor's for 5%, a bachelor's for 45%, a master's for 41% and higher than a master's for 9%.

These shares describe all teachers in each sector, not special education teachers only.

By affiliation, the private-school master's share ran from 34.1% at other religious schools to 40.7% at Catholic schools and 49.8% at nonsectarian schools.

Teachers with less than a bachelor's were 1.8% at Catholic schools, 8.9% at other religious schools and 3.1% at nonsectarian schools.

Teacher preparation also differs across sectors: before their first year of teaching, 66% of private school teachers had taken a course in lesson planning, versus 78% of public school teachers and 70.7% of charter school teachers.

Practically, three degree shapes are worth planning around for this field: a bachelor's in special education; a bachelor's in another field plus special education coursework or a master's; and a bachelor's in any field plus the specialized training a school's program model requires.

The same degree serves three different jobs, and each setting weighs your education differently.

Dedicated private special-education schools post their own hiring bars, but state approval rules can reach them, as New Jersey's certification rule for its approved private schools for students with disabilities does — so check the posting and the state education agency.

One IDEA nuance is worth knowing before you compare these settings.

A child with a disability whose parents place them in a private school has no individual right to the special education and related services the child would receive if enrolled in a public school.

Instead, the local school district must spend a proportionate share of its federal IDEA funds on equitable services for those children, and the district makes the final service decisions.

The special education teacher career guide covers how IDEA attaches across settings, including students placed by districts.

Charter schools hire special education teachers into public-school IDEA obligations, with certification set by the state's charter law as described above.

The charter column of the table above is their degree picture, and charter teachers averaged 10 years of total teaching experience against 15 years in traditional public schools in the same 2020–21 survey.

Learning-support roles — learning specialists, reading specialists and interventionists — sit adjacent to special education teaching.

Reading specialist work even shares the TEACH Grant's high-need field list, which the master's section below covers.

Online programs are one way to earn an education degree, and the practical question for special education is how the online program maps to the rules where you want to teach.

Federal rules give you one check worth running on every online program: under 34 CFR 668.43(a)(5)(v), a college whose program is designed or advertised to meet licensure requirements must disclose, state by state, where that program meets and does not meet them.

The same federal rule requires the college to notify prospective students before enrollment if the program does not meet — or the college has not determined — their state's requirements.

Ask any online program for that disclosure in writing before you enroll, and read it against your target state's rules for private, charter and district schools.

Western Governors University, an online competency-based university, describes the distinction worth watching: its Teachers College says it can help students prepare for licensure in any of the 50 states, and it says its initial and advanced licensure programs are CAEP-accredited.

The same university says its educational-studies bachelor's does not include student teaching and does not lead to a license — a reminder that program titles alone do not tell you what a degree qualifies you for.

Whatever the modality, the degree question ends at the school you are targeting: the program's licensure disclosure, the state's rules and the school's own expectations decide.

The master's share among private school teachers rose from 29.8% in 1987–88 to 40.7% in 2020–21, according to NCES's Digest of Education Statistics.

At NAIS member schools in 2022–23, 39% of teachers held only a bachelor's, 50% a master's and 10% a doctorate — NAIS member schools only, not a private-school average.

Doctorates stay the exception: NCES counted about 15,000 private school teachers with a doctor's degree as their highest degree out of about 466,000 private school teachers in 2020–21, about 3.3%.

Program type matters as much as level: WGU describes Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) programs as typically leading to initial licensure, while M.Ed. and M.S.Ed. programs typically serve current educators and advanced roles.

Check each program's own licensure disclosure, because the MAT-versus-M.Ed. split is a tendency, not a guarantee at every college.

Relay Graduate School of Education prices by credit: for students entering in 2026–27, tuition is $850 per credit, its 39-credit MAT in special education totals $33,150, and most of its 32-credit MAT programs total $27,200.

Its 38-credit MAT for culturally and linguistically diverse learners totals $32,300.

Relay reports an average out-of-pocket cost of $6,100–$12,100 for its MAT after aid, citing average external aid of $7,900 and average Relay aid of $2,800 per student, and prices its alternative certification programs at $15,300–$20,400.

Those are one provider's 2026–27 figures, not a sector-wide tuition average.

Two funding routes matter for special education teachers specifically.

Under IRC section 127, employer educational assistance — including tuition help — is excluded from an employee's income up to $5,250 per calendar year, and private schools and charter schools can sponsor a section 127 plan like any employer.

The TEACH Grant names special education as a high-need field, alongside bilingual education and English language acquisition, foreign language, mathematics, reading specialist, science (including computer science), and any other field listed for the state in the Education Department's annual Teacher Shortage Area Nationwide List.

The service obligation runs four full-time academic years of teaching in a high-need field at a low-income school, within eight years of leaving the program.

If the obligation is not met, the grants convert to a Direct Unsubsidized Loan with interest charged from the date of each disbursement.

Federal Student Aid lists both public and private elementary and secondary schools serving low-income students in the annual Teacher Cancellation Low-Income (TCLI) Directory, so teaching at a listed private school can count — the specific school has to appear in the directory for that year.

Program models come with their own training systems — a layer on top of the degree.

Two families you will meet in this space are structured-literacy approaches such as Orton-Gillingham and behavior approaches such as applied behavior analysis (ABA).

These trainings are credentials of the training bodies that issue them, not state teaching certificates.

Each body sets its own entry requirements, coursework and supervised practicum, so the numbers describe one credential at a time.

The Orton-Gillingham Academy's Associate level, for example, requires a bachelor's in any field, 70 hours of coursework and a supervised practicum of 100 lessons over at least 8 consecutive months.

That is OGA's Associate credential only — other levels, and other organizations' programs, set different requirements, so treat any single hour count as program-specific rather than a standard.

For applied behavior analysis training, our research found no single requirement covering ABA programs generally, so the reliable source for its expectations is the training organization and the school you are targeting.

Practical sequencing: ask the school which structured-literacy or behavior model its program runs, pick the training body and level that matches it, and keep your practicum records.

Career information, not legal or tax advice: degree, certification, grant and training rules change — confirm current requirements with your state education agency, Federal Student Aid, the training body or the school.