Occupation / job
Special Education Teachers, All Other
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
At $76,580 against a $50,020 midpoint, Special Education Teachers, All Other pays $26,560 a year more than the typical American job — $12.76 an hour. Nothing pays that much more for free, and the thing it is paid for is what you should be reading about.
With 33,930 employed as Special Education Teachers, All Other, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.
This work suits people who can plan a year, deliver it daily and adjust it hourly, in front of an audience that has no obligation to be interested.
How long it takes to become one of the 33,930 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $60,930 and a quarter above $99,690: a 1.6x ratio, $38,760 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
Even the bottom quarter of Special Education Teachers, All Other earns $60,930 — $29.29 an hour and $10,910 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you need the compensation to track the contribution. In this field it reliably does not.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 33,930 people employed as Special Education Teachers, All Other; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $76,580 as where you might be after years in Special Education Teachers, All Other, and $60,930 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Special Education Teachers, All Other runs $60,930 to $99,690 — $38,760 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $76,580.
Between $60,930 and $99,690 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $76,580. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $23,110; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $38,760.
$23,110 separates $76,580 from the $99,690 top quarter, while only $15,650 separates it from $60,930. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Special Education Teachers, All Other has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $36.81 at the midpoint for Special Education Teachers, All Other, $29.29 at the 25th percentile and $47.92 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $76,580 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Special Education Teachers, All Other, the hourly figure is $76,580 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else