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Delivery of Special Education Services and

COVID-19: Challenges and Triumphs

By Kristine Melloy and Francie R. Murry

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presents challenges and triumphs for delivering special
education services for students with disabilities. In this study, graduate students in a leadership
preparation program were surveyed to gather their perceptions of the challenges and triumphs
they experienced in delivering special education services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study results contribute to the research about implications for practitioners related to the
challenges and triumphs for promoting academic, social, emotional, and behavioral growth for
students with disabilities despite the ongoing pandemic.

he COVID-19 pandemic has brought substantial challenges to individuals,
Teducational agencies, and various societies across the globe. Heading into Year
3 of the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus and its variants,
school personnel continue to experience challenges and triumphs (Bailey et al.,
2021). Daily, schools face staff shortages and disruptions to in-person learning and
family life (Lesh, 2020). Schools with the technology to provide online education
and educators trained to implement the online programming have greater potential
to avoid the feared achievement gap. If they can keep students engaged, they can
prevent students from falling behind academically (Morgan, 2015). However,
administrators and others lament challenges experienced due to mask-wearing, adult
and student illness, shortages, and policies about dealing with the pandemic that
change daily, such as requiring quarantine or no quarantine. As long as the risk of
COVID-19 infection remains high, school districts must be ready to promote in-
class instruction and other methods of pivoting to remote learning. It is essential to
identify and devise strategies for addressing the learning needs of children, especially
in educational settings with limited options.
Taylor (2021) determined that students, including those with emotional and
behavioral disorders (EBD), have experienced trauma due to the pandemic and will
need trauma-informed care (TIC) to be successful in school. However, Taylor also
found that, despite the many challenges, school personnel succeeded in providing
in-person instruction and avoided returning to distance learning due to preventive
measures such as vaccinated staff and students and mask-wearing.
Early in the pandemic, Jackson and Bowdon (2020) identified challenges due to
COVID-19 that related to remote teaching and learning for students with disabilities.
Their identified challenges included logistical and pedagogical difficulties, access to
the one-to-one technology needed, rural connectivity to Wi-Fi, hands-on instructional
accommodations, and teacher exhaustion when they were expected to teach face-to-
face and remotely simultaneously. Other challenges involved collaboration among
teaching colleagues, related service personnel, social services, and other agency
partners (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2020).

Purpose of the Present Study
The general purpose of the current study was to provide knowledge about
educators’ work-related experiences during the 2019–2020 school year when

36 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators