Where the jobs are and what do they pay?

Abstract

As the Editor-in-Chief of JLD once observed, “learning disabilities” means several things all at the same time. Explaining the concept to our pediatric colleagues in a journal of that profession, he noted that LD refers to: a) a category of disability especially manifest in the classroom, b) a field of scientific inquiry which stands at the intersection of education, psychology and medicine, and c) the group of professionals who assume a responsibility for the care of young people so disabled and for research into the nature of their problems. Logically, those three definitions arrange themselves into the order stated. For obviously, it was the phenomenon of disabled children which called into being the field of scientific endeavor and the profession which centers around it. But from the standpoint of services which are actually rendered to children, the order reverses itself. Except for the development, over the last decade and a half, of a coherent group of professionals, the LD child could find no immediate relief from the burden of his handicap, nor could research continue which will one day unlock the secret of his disability. It was from this perspective that JLD undertook the first survey of the economic standing of the LD profession. How well, we wanted to know, are LD teachers, school psychologists, teacher trainers and special education administrators doing in today's job market? From the viewpoint of young professionals about to complete their training this spring: Will there be jobs out there commensurate with the special skills they have developed? From the viewpoint of established professionals: Is the job market elastic enough so that they can advance from one position to another as their ripening experience demands they should. Contained within the answers to those questions, we assumed, was that of an even more fundamental one: Is the LD field continuing to grow at a rate which will ensure a flow of services to all the children who need them? We also assumed that since this is only the first of an annual series of such surveys, for the present we would only be able to sketch out an overview: Where the jobs are, where they are lacking, and what kinds of salaries can professionals expect for their services. Over the next several years, then, we will attempt to fill in the details. For now we hope that—in addition to supplying the profession with some immediately useful data—we will have discovered the questions which must be answered in subsequent surveys.