{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/special-education-teachers-preschool/",
  "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, Preschool",
    "soc_code": "25-2051",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 29510,
    "median_annual_wage": 64830
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 82,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 15,
    "embodiment": 18,
    "liability_shield": 15,
    "trust_premium": 18,
    "judgment_accountability": 16
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Hand-over-hand prompting through a fine-motor task, running discrete trial or naturalistic teaching sessions with a nonverbal four-year-old, and taking live data on behavior antecedents while the behavior is happening are the bulk of your contact hours, and none of that survives being moved to a screen — the 15 rather than 19 reflects that IEP paperwork, progress-report narratives, present-levels drafting, and Medicaid billing notes are genuinely being pulled into software.",
    "embodiment": "You spend the day on the floor mat, on the toilet-training schedule, physically blocking a child from bolting the classroom, positioning a student in a stander or gait trainer, and doing safe-hold or de-escalation with a child who is biting — an uncontrolled environment where the 'workspace' is a moving three-year-old with sensory dysregulation.",
    "liability_shield": "State early-childhood special education licensure is a hard prerequisite, and IDEA Part B requires that services be delivered by personnel meeting state qualifications with your signature on the IEP as the provider of record; the 15 rather than 19 is because the district, not you personally, absorbs due-process complaints and compensatory-education orders — you are named, not sued.",
    "trust_premium": "Families who just received a developmental diagnosis hand you their child for the first structured setting of their life, and your ability to get a parent to accept an eligibility determination, agree to a behavior plan, or trust that a meltdown at drop-off is normal is what makes the whole placement work — the same reason a mid-year teacher change can undo months of progress.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide in real time whether a behavior is escape-motivated or pain-driven, whether to abandon a planned activity, when to call a suspected-abuse report, and you sit in eligibility and reevaluation meetings arguing for or against services on ambiguous developmental data for a child too young to have a stable profile — the 16 rather than 19 reflects that the IEP team, not you alone, formally owns the placement decision."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job is physically managing and teaching 3-to-5-year-olds with autism, speech delays, and motor impairments — hand-over-hand prompting, toileting support, de-escalating meltdowns, running play-based interventions on the floor. AI can draft IEP goal language, summarize progress data, and generate parent communication, but it cannot conduct a developmental observation, hold a distressed child, or sit accountable in an eligibility meeting. State special education licensure plus IDEA's legal requirement that a qualified provider deliver and document services locks a credentialed human into the role.",
  "outlook": "Demand holds or grows as early identification rates rise; AI takes over the paperwork load that currently eats evenings, which improves the job more than it threatens it.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State education agencies or OSEP guidance explicitly requiring that any AI-generated IEP goal, progress note, or eligibility determination be reviewed and personally signed by the licensed special educator of record, with the signature carrying due-process liability — mirroring the district-level AI policies already being adopted (e.g., state DOE AI guidance in CA, OR, WA) and the OCR/OSEP position that IDEA obligations rest on a qualified provider. Also plausible: a Due Process hearing decision voiding an IEP written substantially by AI without documented educator review.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If eligibility and least-restrictive-environment placement calls become more contested — rising due-process filings and mediation rates plus mandated documentation of the educator's independent clinical rationale for departing from an AI/data-system recommendation — the role formally owns the ambiguous call rather than ratifying a system output.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: if AI absorbs the documentation tier (progress monitoring narratives, IEP boilerplate, Medicaid billing notes, parent updates) that currently consumes large shares of the week, the residual job is nearly all live observation, behavioral de-escalation, hand-over-hand instruction, and family conferencing — the tier with no automation path. This tier genuinely exists and is already the bottleneck.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Little headroom; already near ceiling. A minor rise only if staffing rules raise the ratio of one-on-one physical intervention time (e.g., state mandates on restraint/seclusion requiring two credentialed adults present during physical management, as in several state restraint statutes).",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Parents of children with disabilities already select programs on the named teacher and advocate for human-delivered service hours in IEP negotiation; a formal parental right to refuse AI-mediated instruction or AI-generated assessment inputs, written into state IDEA implementation rules, would harden that preference into a purchasing constraint.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Already 82/100 with embodiment and trust near maximum; realistic total headroom is roughly 8-9 points. The binding risk to this occupation is not AI but funding and enrollment — IDEA Part B preschool appropriations, district budget cuts, and paraprofessional substitution — which the register does not score."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 28540,
        "wage": 53640
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 23480,
        "wage": 55840
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 22340,
        "wage": 60000
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 20300,
        "wage": 61400
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 21130,
        "wage": 62420
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 22970,
        "wage": 62240
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 24850,
        "wage": 65270
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 28200,
        "wage": 62190
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 29510,
        "wage": 64830
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 3.4,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}