Occupation / job
Special Education Teachers, Secondary 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
A midpoint of $74,260 against $50,020 means Special Education Teachers, Secondary School pays $2,020 a month more than the typical American job. At that distance the entry requirement is the real subject, because it is what the premium is buying.
National employment is 163,930. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Special Education Teachers, Secondary School — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $60,180 and a quarter above $93,730: a 1.6x ratio, $33,550 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.
At $60,180, or $28.93 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $10,160 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.
Avoid it if you need the compensation to track the contribution. In this field it reliably does not.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 163,930 figure counts people already working as Special Education Teachers, Secondary School, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
At 1.6x between $60,180 and $93,730 this is a normally shaped occupation. $74,260 is what the middle of Special Education Teachers, Secondary School earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $60,180 and $93,730. That is $33,550 of range, with $74,260 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $93,730. Reaching it from the $74,260 midpoint is $19,470 a year; reaching it from the $60,180 that the bottom quarter of Special Education Teachers, Secondary School earn is $33,550.
$19,470 separates $74,260 from the $93,730 top quarter, while only $14,080 separates it from $60,180. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Special Education Teachers, Secondary School has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Special Education Teachers, Secondary School is $35.70 an hour. The quarters sit at $28.93 and $45.06, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $74,260 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $74,260 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