FlightWay / Careers / Special Education Teachers, Elementary School
Education
Special Education Teachers, Elementary School
Teach academic, social, and life skills to elementary school students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities.
- Sector: Education
- Preparation: Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed
- O*NET code: 25-2056.00
What you'll actually do
The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.
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Getting Information
central to the job — rated 94/100 for importance.
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Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships
central to the job — rated 93/100 for importance.
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Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work
central to the job — rated 89/100 for importance.
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Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates
a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
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Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge
a major part of the work — rated 79/100 for importance.
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Analyzing Data or Information
a major part of the work — rated 76/100 for importance.
Teach academic, social, and life skills to elementary 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.
What it takes
Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.
Skills
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Active Listening
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Speaking
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Instructing
Needed at a solid working level (52/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Learning Strategies
Needed at a high level (66/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
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Social Perceptiveness
Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Knowledge
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Education and Training
Needed at expert level (79/100), and rated 95/100 for importance.
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English Language
Needed at a high level (69/100), and rated 90/100 for importance.
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Customer and Personal Service
Needed at a high level (63/100), and rated 80/100 for importance.
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Computers and Electronics
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 74/100 for importance.
Abilities
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Oral Expression
Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 85/100 for importance.
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Oral Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Problem Sensitivity
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
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Speech Clarity
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
How people get in
O*NET places this occupation in Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.
Education
A four-year bachelor's degree is the usual entry ticket.
Experience
Two to four years of related work, internships or research on top of the degree.
Training
Most of the learning happens before you are hired, not after.
What it pays
These are typical education compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Special Education Teachers, Elementary School specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.
Top University Admin
$90k – $180k
Public School Districts
$55k – $85k
Charter & Private Schools
$45k – $75k
How the work tends to run
Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.
- Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
- Part of the job is other people’s output, not only your own.From “Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others”
- Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”
How FlightWay scores your fit against this
No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.
- 1. You answer a short quiz
- Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
- 2. We correlate the two profiles
- Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Special Education Teachers, Elementary School. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
- 3. The number you see is personality fit only
- "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
- 4. Every factor is visible
- You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.
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See your fit for Special Education Teachers, Elementary School
Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Special Education Teachers, Elementary School and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.
Take the quiz Open in FlightWayOccupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.