{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/adult-basic-education-adult-secondary-education-and-english-as-a-second-language-instructors/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructors", "soc_code": "25-3011", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 37310, "median_annual_wage": 61540 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 51, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 10, "liability_shield": 6, "trust_premium": 15, "judgment_accountability": 9 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Roughly half the week — writing leveled passages, marking TABE/CASAS practice items, running pronunciation and grammar drills, generating BEST Plus placement scores and NRS progress narratives — is already replicable by an app, while the other half (multi-level classes where one adult decodes at 2nd-grade level and another needs workplace idioms, plus the phone calls chasing a student who missed three weeks for a shift change) has no software equivalent, which lands it mid-band rather than higher.", "embodiment": "You teach in physical rooms — church basements, community college annexes, county jails, employer break rooms — and do real bodywork there: modeling mouth position for /θ/, walking students through a paper GED registration or a bus route, hauling materials between two or three sites a night, but it is still a classroom rather than a job site with hazards, so it sits at the top of the 'some physical component' range, not in the field band.", "liability_shield": "Credentialing is genuinely split: ABE and adult secondary teachers in K-12-operated programs often need a state teaching license, while a large share of ESL instruction at nonprofits and community-based providers hires on a bachelor's plus a TESOL certificate or nothing at all — and in neither case does a licence attach personal legal liability to your instructional calls, so the protection is a hiring filter rather than a shield.", "trust_premium": "Adults with interrupted schooling, past classroom humiliation, undocumented status or a supervisor who resents the night class attend because of a specific person who learned their name, remembered the daughter's surgery, and did not make them feel stupid the first time they read aloud — retention, the metric your funder actually watches, is almost entirely a function of that relationship, which is why this is near the top of the band.", "judgment_accountability": "You make consequential calls — placing someone at the right level, deciding a student is ready to sit the GED, noticing disclosed domestic violence or a learning disability and knowing where to refer — but they run inside CASAS/NRS assessment rules, mandated-reporter statutes and state curriculum frameworks that constrain the range of defensible answers, so the discretion is real but bounded, not the ambiguous ownership of a 15." }, "rationale": "The content layer of this job — leveled reading passages, grammar drills, GED practice sets, pronunciation feedback, placement quizzes, progress reports to funders — is exactly what language models and apps like Duolingo already produce cheaply, and self-study tools will absorb the motivated, higher-level learner. What survives is the part machines handle badly: standing in a room with adults who have interrupted schooling, low digital literacy, trauma, night-shift jobs and immigration stress, and keeping them coming back week after week. Funding is the real threat vector here as much as AI — adult ed programs are grant-dependent and thin-staffed, so cheap software gives budget-cutters an excuse.", "outlook": "Expect flat-to-shrinking headcount with larger class loads as apps absorb intermediate learners, while demand holds for in-person instructors serving the lowest-literacy and highest-barrier adults.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: if content generation (leveled passages, GED practice, pronunciation drills) is fully absorbed by apps, the residual job becomes intake triage, trauma-aware classroom management, and retention of learners with interrupted schooling — genuinely two-tier work, and the surviving tier is the hard tier. Watch WIOA Title II program designs that redefine the instructor role as 'learning navigator/coach' with AI content, as some state adult ed offices (e.g. Texas, Washington) have piloted.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If WIOA Title II accountability rules or state adult-ed manuals make the instructor the named decider on NRS educational functioning level placement and gain, including overriding AI-scored CASAS/TABE placements with documented rationale, the role owns a consequential call under ambiguity rather than transcribing a score.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "ESL instruction attached to legally consequential attestations — USCIS-recognized citizenship-test preparation, I-9/ESL workplace compliance training, or court-mandated GED completion — where a credentialed instructor must sign attendance/competency certifications. Also state licensure floors: several states already require adult ed teachers to hold a standard teaching credential; extending that to grant-funded ESL contractors would raise the floor.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Trust premium here is paid by funders and employers, not learners: if refugee resettlement agencies, unions (e.g. SEIU/1199 training funds, Building Skills Partnership), or employer-sponsored workplace ESL contracts specify in-person human-taught cohort hours rather than software seat licenses, the premium is contractual rather than sentimental.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Every lever here is downstream of appropriations. Federal WIOA Title II adult education funding has been roughly flat-to-declining in real terms for two decades; a licensure or countersignature requirement raises per-seat cost in exactly the programs least able to absorb it, and the likely response is fewer sections, not better-protected instructors. Headcount can fall while the score rises." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2019, "emp": 51950, "wage": 54350 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 42910, "wage": 55350 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 38260, "wage": 59720 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 36490, "wage": 58590 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 36890, "wage": 60560 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 36260, "wage": 59950 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 37310, "wage": 61540 } ], "from": 2019, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -28.2, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "special-education-teachers-middle-school", "title": "Special Education Teachers, Middle School", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 76, "median_wage": 66810, "overlap": 77, "skills_to_close": [ "Coordination", "Active Learning", "Complex Problem Solving", "Service Orientation" ] }, { "slug": "secondary-school-teachers-except-special-and-career-technical-education", "title": "Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 69, "median_wage": 72040, "overlap": 77, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Material Resources", "Quality Control Analysis", "Coordination", "Management of Financial Resources" ] }, { "slug": "special-education-teachers-preschool", "title": "Special Education Teachers, Preschool", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 82, "median_wage": 64830, "overlap": 77, "skills_to_close": [ "Quality Control Analysis", "Management of Material Resources" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }