What’s Past Is Prologue: Sage Reflections on Teacher Education and Special Education

In this Special Issue, we proudly showcase five articles that reflect on the past and look toward the future across a number of critical issues in teacher education and special education. This special issue also serves as our inaugural project as new Teacher Education and Special Education (TESE) editors. We invited “Sages” (i.e., well-respected, senior-level members) from the Teacher Education Division (TED) community to author articles that include historical perspectives and future considerations pertaining to a topic. We directed each Sage to create a writing team, inclusive of one or more early career scholars, with the intent to leverage multigenerational perspectives about several contemporary issues within the field of teacher education and special education. The topics we identified certainly do not represent an exhaustive account of the myriad of pressing issues, trends, and unanswered questions facing the field, as there are too many to include in one special issue; rather our aim was to put forth a collection of articles that, when taken together, represent broad fields of study that have been, and continue to be, critical to advancing the scholarship in teacher education and special education, and most importantly, improving outcomes for students with disabilities and their families. In particular, these topics have remained fundamental to scholarly and practical pursuits within teacher education and special education across time, despite shifts in social, political, and economic contexts. Given the Office of Special Education Programs’ vision for Results-Driven Accountability and shift from compliance to improving results for all students with disabilities, as well as the recent U.S. Supreme Court unanimous decision in Endrew F. vs. Douglas County School District, special education must do more to ensure that students with disabilities achieve beyond minimum expectations and meet challenging and worthwhile objectives. Important work has begun and holds promise for addressing these goals, such as the development of multitiered systems of support, high-leverage and evidence-based practices, and efforts to improve both general and special education teacher knowledge of and skill in using effective programs and practices for students with disabilities. The notion of early intervention and prevention in its broadest sense is relevant to these efforts suggesting not only the importance of identifying difficulties and intervening early in a child’s life, but also the benefits of prevention across the lifespan as students with disabilities encounter barriers during childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. Yet, declining enrollment in traditional teacher preparation programs, rising teacher attrition and PK-12 student enrollment, and an aging teacher workforce have contributed to the widely reported teacher shortages across the United States. We also acknowledge the critical need to address the lack of diversity within the predominantly White, middle class, female, cisgender, monolingual, able-bodied teacher workforce. Relatedly, continued research is needed to address inequitable outcomes in terms of teacher quality and student achievement in “hard-to-staff” schools that are often underresourced, located in urban or rural areas, and serve large numbers of students from marginalized groups. Promising practices, such as partnerships between college and university preparation programs and school districts, and data collected by States for monitoring these variables, are important for identifying effective ways to recruit and prepare new teachers, retain them, and ultimately, support students with or at risk for disabilities to achieve to 900689 TESXXX10.1177/0888406419900689Teacher Education and Special EducationEditorial editorial2020