Abstract
Research problem. Many school districts and county offices of education have responded to the present severe shortage of fully trained special education teachers by staffing special day classes with minimally qualified substitute teachers working under 20/40 waivers. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a significant difference in the perceptions of waivered substitute teachers and their supervising principals at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year regarding the extent to which the teachers evidenced mastery of twelve critically important competencies for beginning special education teachers identified by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Methodology. This is a descriptive study of differences and is ex post facto research. The population consisted of fifty-seven substitute teachers assigned to special day classes for severely handicapped pupils operated by the Los Angeles County Office of Education and the nineteen principals who supervised them. A questionnaire was utilized to collect data to answer four research questions. For each item on the questionnaire t-scores were determined. The data were tabulated and analyzed by comparing the statistics for each item. Findings. (1) There was a significant difference in the perceptions of waivered substitute teachers and principals regarding the abilities of the waivered teachers to meet ten of the twelve competencies at the beginning of the year and eight of the twelve competencies at the end of the year. The teachers consistently rated themselves higher than did the principals. (2) The waivered teachers' ratings of each of ten sources of assistance made no significant difference in the principals' final ratings of the teachers for each of the twelve competencies. (3) In the rare instances when a significant difference existed between principals' final ratings of waivered teachers who had relatively large amounts of prior day-to-day and long-term substitute experience and those who had relatively less prior substitute experience, the principals rated the teachers with relatively less prior experience higher. Conclusions and recommendations. As a group, waivered substitute teachers perceived themselves to be more effective in meeting critical special education competencies than did the principals who supervised and evaluated them. In the perception of principals, larger amounts of prior substitute teaching experience did not make a difference in the teachers' effectiveness in meeting critical special education competencies. Principals preferred waivered teachers who had not had a great deal of prior substitute teaching experience.