{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/special-education-teachers-middle-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, Middle School",
    "soc_code": "25-2057",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 95200,
    "median_annual_wage": 66810
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 76,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 14,
    "embodiment": 15,
    "liability_shield": 14,
    "trust_premium": 17,
    "judgment_accountability": 16
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "The generative gains land on goal-bank drafting and progress notes, but the daily core — running small-group reading in a resource room, co-teaching a 28-student general-ed math block, implementing a behavior intervention plan minute-by-minute, and taking frequency data on a student who elopes — is bodily supervision of adolescents that no system performs, which puts it at 14 rather than the 17+ of trades with no paperwork at all.",
    "embodiment": "You are on your feet in hallways, cafeterias, bus lines, and toileting/hygiene routines for students with significant needs, doing physical prompting and sometimes state-certified restraint or escort holds in a building whose layout and crowd you don't control — held below the high teens only because a real share of the week is spent at a desk on IEP documents and meetings.",
    "liability_shield": "A state special-education credential is mandatory and IDEA names you as the IEP team member whose signature and data are examined in a due-process hearing or OCR complaint, so a compliance failure — missed timeline, unimplemented accommodation — attaches to you personally; it sits at 14 not 18 because the district and LEA representative carry the financial exposure and defend the case.",
    "trust_premium": "Parents who arrived at middle school after years of fighting elementary placements decide whether to consent to services based on whether they trust you specifically, and the student who will attempt a reading task for you and no one else is the intervention — that continuity of one known adult across three years is what the job delivers.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide in the moment whether a behavior is escape-motivated or a genuine skill deficit, whether to pull a student from inclusion, whether a 13-year-old's refusal is defiance or a manifestation of disability under a manifestation determination review, and whether present-levels data justify exiting a service — calls made with incomplete information that alter a child's placement and are litigated later."
  },
  "rationale": "The paperwork half of this job — drafting IEP goal language, progress-monitoring summaries, accommodation checklists, parent update letters — is squarely in AI's wheelhouse and will get faster. The other half is bodily and unscheduled: de-escalating a meltdown in a hallway, prompting a 12-year-old through a math task hand-over-hand, reading a nonverbal student's shutdown before it becomes a crisis, and holding a contentious IEP meeting together. State licensure plus IDEA's legal machinery require a named, certified human to author and sign the IEP and to be answerable in due-process hearings.",
  "outlook": "Ten years out the paperwork burden shrinks meaningfully and the caseload work stays fully human; expect the same or more of these jobs, with the biggest shift being that documentation stops eating your evenings.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State education agency guidance or an OSEP Dear Colleague letter explicitly stating that AI-generated IEP content is not compliant unless the certified case manager personally authors and attests to individualization — several states (e.g., California, Ohio, North Carolina) have issued AI-in-schools guidance that could be tightened into an attestation requirement, and due-process hearing officers already treat boilerplate IEPs as procedural violations",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "A published due-process or OCR decision finding a district denied FAPE because AI-drafted goals were not individualized, making named-teacher authorship a documented liability point in district policy and insurance riders",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: once goal-drafting, progress-report generation, and accommodation checklists are AI-assisted, the residual role concentrates on behavior intervention plans, crisis de-escalation, FBA observation, and contested IEP facilitation — the tier AI cannot observe or perform. Watch for districts reallocating freed paperwork time to caseload increases rather than to judgment work, which would blunt this",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Union contract or state rule naming the special education case manager as the decision-maker of record for restraint/seclusion determinations and manifestation determination reviews, rather than an administrator — restraint-reporting laws are expanding in multiple states",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Parent-side pressure: IEP advocacy organizations and settlement agreements increasingly specify a named human case manager and in-person meeting attendance; districts under compensatory-services orders are already required to deliver instruction by a certified person rather than software",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Already 76 and near the practical ceiling: embodiment and trust are close to maxed by IDEA's structure and the physical nature of middle-school behavior support. The real downside risk is not automation but caseload inflation — AI absorbing paperwork so one teacher covers 40 students instead of 25, which cuts headcount without changing any dimension score."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 85840,
        "wage": 61440
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 80110,
        "wage": 61820
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 79070,
        "wage": 61820
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 82970,
        "wage": 62990
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 88850,
        "wage": 66600
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 95330,
        "wage": 64880
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 95200,
        "wage": 66810
      }
    ],
    "from": 2019,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 10.9,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}