Occupation / job
Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School
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
Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School pays $65,120 at the midpoint, 30% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
This is a large occupation: 260,870 people work as Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
The quarters sit at $59,710 and $80,280, $1,714 a month apart at a ratio of 1.3x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.
Even the bottom quarter of Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School earns $59,710 — $28.70 an hour and $9,690 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you could not absorb the hours outside the timetable, which are real and unpaid.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 260,870 people employed as Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School; 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 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $59,710 and $80,280 is the whole of the negotiation.
Put in money rather than ratios: $59,710 at the 25th percentile, $65,120 at the midpoint, $80,280 at the 75th. $20,570 separates the quarter of Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $80,280, the 75th percentile, is worth $15,160 a year more than the $65,120 midpoint and $20,570 more than the $59,710 a quarter of Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School settle for.
The top quarter of Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School begins $15,160 above the $65,120 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $5,410 below it. A range stretched that far in one direction is the signature of a field where a small group earns a great deal more than the middle does.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $28.70 at the bottom quarter, $31.30 at the midpoint, $38.59 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School. The self-employed are excluded, so $65,120 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $65,120 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else