{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/education-and-childcare-administrators-preschool-and-daycare/",
  "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": "Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare",
    "soc_code": "11-9031",
    "category": "Management",
    "us_employment": 73660,
    "median_annual_wage": 59300
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 69,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 11,
    "embodiment": 14,
    "liability_shield": 13,
    "trust_premium": 16,
    "judgment_accountability": 15
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Roughly half the week — enrollment paperwork, CACFP food-program claims, tuition invoicing, immunization record tracking, staff scheduling around ratio requirements, licensing binder upkeep — is template work a system can do, which is why this sits at 11 rather than 16; the other half, covering a classroom when a teacher calls out at 6:45am and coaching a 19-year-old aide through a toileting accident, does not compress.",
    "embodiment": "You are physically in the building before opening and after close, doing the walk-through of playground surfacing and diaper stations, kneeling to de-escalate a tantrum, and being the body that fills a ratio gap — a 14 rather than 18 because it's an indoor licensed facility with known layouts, not a construction site or a stranger's home.",
    "liability_shield": "State licensing names you as director of record with a specific credential (CDA, director's certificate, or degree-plus-hours depending on the state), and your name is on the license that gets suspended, the mandated-reporter call that gets reviewed, and the citation an inspector writes — a 13 rather than 18 because it's a state license tied to a facility, not an individually portable professional license with a board that can strip your right to practice anywhere.",
    "trust_premium": "Parents choose the center largely on the twenty-minute tour with you and keep choosing it because you know their child's name and call before pickup when something happened; enrollment is word-of-mouth in a five-mile radius, and a director's departure routinely moves families out the door.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You make calls with no clean procedure and real consequences: whether a bruise pattern crosses the threshold for a DCF report, whether a beloved teacher who yelled gets coached or terminated, whether to disenroll a child whose behavior is injuring others, and whether to close for a snow day — a 15 rather than 19 because state regulation supplies bright lines on ratios, exclusion for illness, and reporting timelines that narrow the space you're deciding in."
  },
  "rationale": "The paperwork half of this job — enrollment forms, tuition billing, staff schedules, licensing compliance checklists, parent newsletters, curriculum plan templates — is squarely in AI's wheelhouse. The other half is not: walking classrooms to check ratios and safety, handling a biting incident or a suspected-abuse report, hiring and coaching teachers in a high-turnover labor market, and sitting across from an anxious parent who is deciding whether to trust you with their two-year-old. State child care licensing requires a named, credentialed human director of record who is personally answerable when an inspector or a court asks what happened.",
  "outlook": "Administrative overhead shrinks and directors spend a larger share of the week on staffing, safety, and parent relationships; headcount tracks child enrollment and licensing rules, not AI capability.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State licensing rules already name a 'director of record' with minimum credential and on-site presence hours (e.g., Texas HHS minimum standards, California Title 22 Director qualifications). Raising this further: a state adding an explicit rule that the named director must personally sign and be answerable for AI-generated ratio logs, incident reports, and mandated-reporter referrals — plus expansion of mandated-reporter personal criminal liability to the administrator who reviewed an automated flag — would push this up. QRIS-tied director credential requirements (National Administrator Credential adoption in state QRIS) tightening from 'encouraged' to 'required' does similar work.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If licensing enforcement moves toward the pattern seen in post-incident state investigations — where the director is the named party in a citation, revocation hearing, or civil suit over a supervision lapse — and insurers writing child care liability policies require documented human review of suspension/expulsion, suspected-abuse, and staff-termination decisions, the ambiguous-call ownership becomes formally the director's and non-delegable.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier job: if billing, enrollment, scheduling, subsidy paperwork, and newsletter drafting are absorbed by center-management software (Procare, Brightwheel already doing much of this), the residual day is classroom walk-throughs, incident handling, teacher coaching in a 30-40% turnover market, and parent conflict — the tier current models cannot do at usable quality. Score rises by subtraction, not by new capability limits.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Parent willingness to pay for a named human director is real but mostly bundled into tuition rather than priced separately; the plausible visible move is state-published director-of-record identity in licensing search portals and QRIS star ratings weighting director stability/tenure, making the human an advertised feature.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Ratio checks, physical building/playground safety inspection, and hands-on de-escalation of a biting or injury incident are already unautomatable; a state rule mandating minimum on-site director hours per licensed capacity (some states specify this) would harden it further, but the ceiling here is near.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Realistic ceiling around 78-82. The binding constraint is enrollment: child care demand and center count, not AI, sets headcount, and administrative consolidation — one director of record across multiple sites, enabled by remote monitoring and centralized back office — reduces positions even as each remaining role scores higher on every dimension."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 52360,
        "wage": 48210
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 46410,
        "wage": 49160
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 56430,
        "wage": 47310
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 60010,
        "wage": 49690
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 64090,
        "wage": 54290
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 71620,
        "wage": 56270
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 73660,
        "wage": 59300
      }
    ],
    "from": 2019,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 40.7,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}