Elizabeth Bettini

Dr. Bettini is an expert in the challenges facing the special education workforce – including the shortage, high attrition rates, and inequities across schools – and factors shaping those challenges. Her work particularly focuses on how working conditions could be leveraged to strengthen the special education workforce. Her work has been funded by >$14M in federal grants and published in >65 peer-reviewed publications. She is affiliated with the Wheelock Education Policy Institute and the Wheelock Institute for the Science of Education. She currently serves as Co-Director for the SPARC Center (Special Education Workforce: A Research Collaborative Center), an IES-funded mixed-methods research center; PI for Project RESPECT, an IES-funded study to develop a measure of special educators’ working conditions; Co-PI for Project SUSTAIN, an IES-funded study to develop an intervention to improve special educators’ working conditions in self-contained settings for students with emotional/behavioral disorders; PI for Project LINC, an OSEP-funded grant to prepare 10 new doctoral scholars in interventions and complex systems at BU and UConn; and Co-PI for Project TEAMS, an OSEP-funded grant to prepare 9 new doctoral scholars to advance equity in mental health, at BU and UC Santa Barbara.