Occupation / job
Special Education Teachers, Preschool
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, Preschool pays $64,830 against $50,020 across all occupations — $1,234 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
At 29,510 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.
School teaching suits people who can manage thirty people at once and still notice the one who is struggling, every day, for a whole year at a time.
How long it takes to become one of the 29,510 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 of the field earns under $52,210 and a quarter over $91,660: $39,450 between them, a ratio of 1.8x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.
The bottom quarter of Special Education Teachers, Preschool still clears $52,210 — $2,190 above the $50,020 typical job. A high floor is the most valuable and least advertised property an occupation can have.
Avoid it if you could not absorb the hours outside the timetable, which are real and unpaid.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 29,510 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
From $52,210 to $91,660 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $64,830 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.
In cash terms the middle half of Special Education Teachers, Preschool runs $52,210 to $91,660 — $39,450 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $64,830.
Between $52,210 and $91,660 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $64,830. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $26,830; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $39,450.
The upper half of the middle range — $64,830 to $91,660, or $26,830 — is far longer than the lower half at $12,620. In a shape like this an average would flatter Special Education Teachers, Preschool considerably, and would describe nobody.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Special Education Teachers, Preschool is $31.16 an hour. The quarters sit at $25.10 and $44.06, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Special Education Teachers, Preschool for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $64,830 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Special Education Teachers, Preschool, the hourly figure is $64,830 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