{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/career-technical-education-teachers-secondary-school/",
  "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": "Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School",
    "soc_code": "25-2032",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 111420,
    "median_annual_wage": 66270
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 69,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 13,
    "embodiment": 15,
    "liability_shield": 13,
    "trust_premium": 15,
    "judgment_accountability": 13
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Teaching a 16-year-old to strike an arc, feel when a torque wrench breaks over, or read a patient's blood pressure by hand requires standing beside them and correcting hand position in real time — but the lesson planning, Perkins V documentation, competency tracking, and certification-exam prep that eat a third of the week are already being drafted by software, which is what holds this at 13 rather than 17.",
    "embodiment": "The classroom is a shop, kitchen, greenhouse, or clinical lab with live 220V circuits, running saws, hot oil, and pressurized gas — you are moving between stations, physically stopping a bad cut, and doing your own equipment maintenance and lockout/tagout, though it is still a school building on a bell schedule rather than a roof or a roadside, which is why it sits at 15 and not 19.",
    "liability_shield": "You hold a state CTE credential plus the industry ticket (AWS, ASE, ServSafe, CNA program approval) and you personally sign off that a student is competent to test — and when a student loses a fingertip on the table saw, the OSHA-equivalent state inspection and the district's incident review land on your supervision record, not just the principal's.",
    "trust_premium": "The kids in your program self-selected into it and stay three or four years; you are the one writing the letter to the union apprenticeship coordinator, calling the shop owner who hires your graduates, and deciding which student gets the co-op placement — that network of local employer relationships is not transferable to whoever replaces you.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide daily whether a specific teenager is ready to run the CNC unsupervised, whether a shaky student should be pulled from clinicals before they touch a real patient, and how to fail someone on a safety competency without ending their pathway — real calls with bodily consequences, but bounded by state frameworks and industry certification standards that define the endpoint, which caps it at 13."
  },
  "rationale": "CTE teachers spend their days demonstrating welding beads, engine diagnostics, IV sticks on manikins, or knife work on a live line, and supervising teenagers around equipment that can injure them — none of which a language model or current robot does. The automatable slice is real but peripheral: syllabi, competency checklists, industry-certification study materials, safety quizzes, and grading rubrics. State teaching licensure plus an industry credential (ASE, AWS, ServSafe, CNA instructor approval) means a licensed adult must be in the room and is accountable for shop safety.",
  "outlook": "Demand holds or grows as states expand CTE funding and skilled-trade shortages persist; expect AI to absorb the paperwork while lab and shop time — and the credentialed adult supervising it — stays firmly human.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State boards and industry credentialers tightening the rule that a credentialed instructor of record must be physically present and personally sign off on each student's competency hours — e.g. AWS SENSE and NCCER instructor-of-record requirements, state CNA programs requiring an RN instructor at a fixed student:instructor ratio, and OSHA-aligned shop supervision ratios written into district policy. Any codification of named-instructor liability for shop injury raises this.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Continued expansion of clinical/shop hour mandates for dual-credit and industry certifications (welding bend tests, live-fire kitchens, patient-care clinicals) that cannot be logged via simulator — if state agencies keep refusing to let VR/simulator hours substitute for hands-on hours, the physical core is protected.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: as lesson plans, quiz banks, cert prep and grading are absorbed by AI tools, the remaining day is safety judgment calls, deciding whether a given teenager is ready to run the machine unsupervised, and signing competency attestations — the consequential-call tier. Also, formal designation as the person who authorizes student work-based learning placements under state WBL rules.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Employer-sponsored apprenticeship pipelines (registered apprenticeship, local union JATCs, manufacturer academies like Snap-on/Lincoln Electric or Toyota T-TEN) paying for a named human instructor with journeyman standing whose recommendation carries hiring weight — buyers here are employers who explicitly want a vouching human.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Expansion of the role into non-instructional duties AI does not do: advisory-board relationship management, employer placement, Perkins V compliance and equipment procurement — these are already in many CTE job descriptions and grow as content delivery is offloaded.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Realistic ceiling is high but the constraint is fiscal, not technological: CTE programs are cut for cost per pupil, equipment expense and enrollment, not because software replaced the teacher. A high register score does not protect against program closure or consolidation of shop courses into one regional center."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 78840,
        "wage": 58660
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 77460,
        "wage": 60250
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 74520,
        "wage": 61710
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 73530,
        "wage": 62460
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 84360,
        "wage": 61820
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 88280,
        "wage": 62500
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 90070,
        "wage": 65130
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 104450,
        "wage": 63910
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 111420,
        "wage": 66270
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 41.3,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}