If you’re looking to earn top pay in special education jobs, one of the best ways to do that is to earn your special education master’s degree. Depending on your school district, an advanced degree will likely correspond with a pay bump. 

However, earning more money isn’t the only reason students pursue a special education master’s degree, according to Dr. Joseph Johnson, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Troy University. Wanting to improve their teaching skills to help their students better succeed drives many back to the classroom, he says. 

“The student population doesn’t change from just having an undergraduate degree to having a master’s,” Dr. Johnson states. “You’re still going to be developing skills to work with students with disabilities, but everything is going to be on a higher level as a graduate student. You spend much more time looking at the actual research behind those strategies. You go deeper into the case law of special education.”

While it’s not unusual for undergraduates to go right into graduate-level collaborative degree programs like TROY’s, he recommends that students work in special education jobs first.

“Then when they come back to school and start working on their special education master’s degree and take a graduate course in special education law, it’s that much more eye-opening and more, Oh, I see it now,” he says. “Earning the master’s in special education, then, is really driven not just by finances, but by a desire to maximize their ability to help students by being that powerful, positive influence. It goes up exponentially when you have that better understanding of what continues to be effective practice and what evidence-based practices exist for those students.”

Expand Your Teaching Career Options with a Special Education Master’s Degree

TROY’s collaborative degree programs at the graduate level can also be valuable to teachers who have an undergraduate degree in elementary education. Kay-Anne Cornelia Blalock Morgan earned a bachelor’s in elementary education before earning her special education master’s degree at TROY in 2016. The former elementary school teacher is now a special education teacher at Ashford High School in Alabama’s Houston County School District.

“I enjoy working with the students the most,” she remarks. “I know I make a huge impact on them every day. I not only help them with their schoolwork but with skills that are going to impact them in the real world after graduation.”

TROY prepared her for her teaching role by providing multiple field experiences in a variety of school districts, she says.

“No school is the same,” she explains. “TROY allowed me to enter many different types of schools in order to prepare me to work with a wide range of students. I learned that a student is never a special needs student but always a student with special needs.”

As TROY alumni like Blalock Morgan can attest, earning a special education master’s degree makes you more marketable for general education and special education jobs. 

Dr. Johnson says, “It gives them a few more choices as far as their future career.”

In states like Alabama, earning your master’s in special education gives you a pay bump — even if you opt not to teach special education. “That’s based solely on the fact that you have a higher level of understanding to serve students with disabilities in your regular education classrooms,” Dr. Johnson explains.

Beyond classroom teaching, collaborative degree programs at the graduate level can also open doors to specialist roles in school districts, he adds. One TROY graduate, for example, became a behavior intervention specialist for their school district.

“Depending on the needs of your school district and your own personal abilities and what you’re gravitating toward, you’re going to have more administrative opportunities with that special education master’s degree,” he says. 

TROY’s Collaborative Degree Programs Attract Teachers & Non-Teachers Alike

Teachers with licensure and advanced degrees in special education are in high demand in Alabama, the Southeast and across the nation, Dr. Johnson notes. To help fill special education jobs, TROY offers two paths to earning your special education master’s degree. 

If you don’t have teaching experience, you’ll enroll in TROY’s Collaborative K-6 or 6-12 (Special Education) Alternative-A program. As part of this graduate program, you’ll learn alongside a seasoned special education teacher during a one-semester teaching internship.

“The Alternative A is for individuals with a degree outside of education. It could be business, marketing, communication, social work, law enforcement — their undergrad degree is just not in education,” Dr. Johnson explains. The program prepares them to pass the required tests they need for student teaching. During student teaching, students must complete their edTPA, the assessment used by teacher preparation programs throughout the U.S.

If you already hold a teaching certificate, you’ll choose TROY’s traditional option for the collaborative degree programs. Students in this graduate program have typically completed a traditional undergraduate teacher preparation program.

“The biggest differentiator between the two collaborative degree programs is that semester of student teaching that they do as part of the Alt-A program,” Dr. Johnson adds.

Earn Your Special Education Master’s Degree in Under Two Years

While he’s had students complete the TROY’s Collaborative 6-12 (Special Education) Alternative-A program in as little as 18 months, the average time to completion — due to the internship requirement — is about two years, Dr. Johnson says. He adds that the traditional degree program can be completed in less time — 15 months, on average. 

Taking the time to earn a special education master’s degree is worth it, Dr. Johnson believes. 

“I don’t know that you would ever be able to fully maximize your potential if you didn’t get into some of those higher levels of coursework,” he says. “I think if you didn’t go after your master’s degree, it would limit you professionally.”

Earning his master’s degree in special education allowed Dr. Johnson to change the direction of his career. He started as a social studies teacher and, in 2002, began teaching special education after a former teacher-turned-principal contacted him about an opportunity. He then earned an M.S. in special education from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and a Ph.D. in special education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Since 2014, he’s been preparing TROY graduates to succeed in special education jobs. 

“Earning my special education master’s degree helped me,” he remarks. “It improved my lateral thinking in that it helped me to have a broader view and a greater understanding of the entirety of the profession and the long-term effects I was going to have. I had not given proper consideration to everything I needed to do for those high school students with disabilities. My focus was entirely too much on getting them to, say, pass a test when the real true mission is, ‘What am I doing to set them up to be successful once they graduate?’”

A graduate course that focused on tradition prepared him to be “always looking down the road and making the link between what you’re working on as a skill set and how it is going to serve that student as a lifelong skill,” he says. “That was eye-opening for me. I know the master’s program helped me understand that at a much higher level.”

Unlike other collaborative degree programs, Dr. Johnson says TROY includes 15 graduate credits focused solely on special education. 

“They are geared toward advancing a student’s skill set, knowledge base, and special education topics, content and practices,” he says. “What really separates our programs is we designed them to be as practical and evidence-based as possible to help our students become really strong special education teachers.”

Learn More About TROY’s Collaborative Degree Programs

If you’re interested in learning more about the Collaborative K-6 or 6-12 (Special Education) Alternative-A program or traditional collaborative education programs at TROY, explore our special education master’s degree program now.