The association between teaching students with disabilities and teacher turnover.

More students with disabilities (SWDs) are being educated in general education classrooms than ever before, resulting in higher expectations for the abilities of general education teachers to meet SWDs’ educational needs. Yet few recent, quantitative studies have examined if teaching SWDs influences general education certified or special education certified teachers’ decisions to leave their school. We fit multilevel logistic regression models to a large state administrative dataset in order to examine (a) if the percentage of SWDs a teacher instructs was associated with turnover, (b) if this association varied by student disability, and (c) how these associations were moderated by special education certification. The percentage of SWDs in teachers’ classes was associated with an increase in the odds of turnover after controlling for teacher, classroom, and school characteristics. This association was moderated by special education certification such that there was not an association between the percentage of SWDs in these teachers’ classes and their odds of turnover. Teaching students with emotional/behavioral disorders was associated with a large increase in the odds of turnover for all categories of teachers. Results suggest the need for more training and supports for teachers with SWDs in their classrooms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)