FlightWay / Careers / Special Education Teachers, Preschool
Education
Special Education Teachers, Preschool
Teach academic, social, and life skills to preschool-aged students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities.
- Sector: Education
- Preparation: Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed
- O*NET code: 25-2051.00
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 86/100 for importance.
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Assisting and Caring for Others
a major part of the work — rated 84/100 for importance.
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Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates
a major part of the work — rated 82/100 for importance.
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Documenting/Recording Information
a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
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Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships
a major part of the work — rated 80/100 for importance.
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Training and Teaching Others
a major part of the work — rated 78/100 for importance.
Teach academic, social, and life skills to preschool-aged 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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Speaking
Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
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Active Listening
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
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Reading Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Social Perceptiveness
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Critical Thinking
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Knowledge
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English Language
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 88/100 for importance.
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Education and Training
Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Psychology
Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 71/100 for importance.
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Public Safety and Security
Needed at a basic working level (36/100), and rated 60/100 for importance.
Abilities
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Oral Expression
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
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Problem Sensitivity
Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
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Oral Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
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Written Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
How people get in
O*NET places this occupation in Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.
Education
Graduate school — a master's, a PhD, an MD or a JD, depending on the field.
Experience
More than five years of related experience is common before the title is yours.
Training
This is a long runway. Start the prerequisites early or the timeline slips a year at a time.
What it pays
These are typical education compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Special Education Teachers, Preschool 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.
- Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
- Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
- People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”
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, Preschool. 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, Preschool
Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Special Education Teachers, Preschool 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.