{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/special-education-teachers-kindergarten-and-elementary-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": "Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School",
    "soc_code": "25-2052",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 260870,
    "median_annual_wage": 65120
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 75,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 14,
    "embodiment": 15,
    "liability_shield": 13,
    "trust_premium": 18,
    "judgment_accountability": 15
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "A 14 reflects the split: goal-bank drafting, progress monitoring graphs, and prior-written-notice boilerplate are already being generated by IEP software, but discrete-trial instruction, physical prompting through a fine-motor task, and running a functional behavior assessment on a child who bolts when transitions are announced are the daily core and none of it survives being moved to a screen.",
    "embodiment": "A 15 rather than a 19 because the work is unambiguously hands-on — blocking a head-banging episode, escorting a student to the sensory room, hand-over-hand tracing, diapering a nine-year-old — but it happens in a resource room and a school building you control, not on a roof or a roadside, so the environment is unpredictable in behavior rather than in terrain.",
    "liability_shield": "State special education certification plus the IDEA requirement that a qualified teacher serve on the IEP team and deliver services as written puts this at 13: your signature is on the IEP and a due-process complaint names your implementation, but the district and the LEA representative absorb the financial judgment, so the personal exposure stops short of a physician's or an engineer's seal.",
    "trust_premium": "An 18 is earned in the IEP meeting where a parent who has been told for three years that their child is fine finally believes a bad assessment because you delivered it, and in the nonverbal student who will attempt a demand for you and shut down for a substitute — the working alliance with both child and family is the intervention, not a wrapper around it.",
    "judgment_accountability": "A 15 covers calls that no procedure resolves: deciding whether a behavior is a manifestation of disability before a removal, judging whether to recommend a more restrictive placement over a parent's objection, choosing when to restrain versus wait it out, and reporting suspected abuse when a child's disclosure is fragmented — each is high-stakes, contested, and yours in the moment."
  },
  "rationale": "The paperwork half of this job — drafting IEP goal language, progress-report narratives, accommodation lists, data-tracking summaries — is squarely in AI's wheelhouse and will get faster. The other half is physically present work with 5-to-11-year-olds who have communication, behavioral, and motor needs: de-escalating a meltdown, hand-over-hand prompting, toileting and feeding support, reading a nonverbal child's frustration signals in real time. That part is not automatable with current robotics or software, and IDEA makes a certified human legally answerable for the plan.",
  "outlook": "Headcount holds or grows on chronic shortages and rising identification rates, with AI absorbing much of the documentation load and shifting the job further toward direct instruction, behavior support, and family negotiation.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "IDEA/state-board rules explicitly requiring that IEP content generated with AI assistance be reviewed, edited, and signed by the certified case manager, with AI-drafted goals disallowed as the sole basis for placement decisions — several state education agencies (e.g., California, Ohio) have already issued AI guidance memos naming the IEP team's non-delegable authority; codifying this in state regulation or as an OSEP dear-colleague letter would harden it",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Due-process hearing and OCR complaint outcomes that treat unreviewed AI-drafted IEPs as procedural denial of FAPE, making districts require a named certified teacher's attestation on every document — one published hearing decision on this point would propagate through district counsel guidance fast",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "As goal-drafting and progress-data summarization automate, the residual role concentrates in the genuinely contested calls: least-restrictive-environment placement, manifestation determinations in discipline cases, restraint/seclusion decisions, and eligibility disputes with parents' advocates. This is a real two-tier job and the judgment tier is the tier with legal exposure",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Same task-mix shift: if narrative and data-tracking work is absorbed by district-adopted IEP software, the remaining day is behavior intervention, physical prompting, and crisis response — raising the resistant share of the job even as total hours fall",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Already near ceiling — parent advocacy groups and special-education attorneys actively pressure districts against automation-mediated services, and caseload caps in union contracts (e.g., Chicago Teachers Union, UTLA special-ed provisions) price a human per student",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "At 75 the score is already near the practical ceiling for a public-sector role; the realistic risk is not displacement but headcount compression — paraprofessional substitution and larger caseloads justified by AI-assisted paperwork throughput. Dimension scores can hold while positions shrink."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 184920,
        "wage": 58600
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 185190,
        "wage": 59390
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 193830,
        "wage": 60460
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 191170,
        "wage": 60620
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 187070,
        "wage": 61640
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 195010,
        "wage": 62390
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 212850,
        "wage": 64910
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 231570,
        "wage": 63000
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 260870,
        "wage": 65120
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 41.1,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}