{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/teaching-assistants-except-postsecondary/",
  "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": "Teaching Assistants, Except Postsecondary",
    "soc_code": "25-9045",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 1420350,
    "median_annual_wage": 36780
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 60,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 16,
    "embodiment": 17,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 13,
    "judgment_accountability": 9
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Physically restraining a student mid-crisis under a district's approved restraint protocol, changing a diaper for a nonverbal 10-year-old, and shadowing a runner on the playground are the tasks that fill the day, and none of them decompose into anything a model can do — the 16 rather than 19 reflects that grading practice sets, prepping laminated materials, logging ABC behavior data, and running the scripted reading fluency drill are genuinely being handed to adaptive software.",
    "embodiment": "You work in hallways, cafeterias, buses, sensory rooms, and playgrounds — uncontrolled spaces with unpredictable bodies — doing lifting, transfers, hand-over-hand feeding, and physical de-escalation; it sits at 17 rather than 20 only because a meaningful slice of the week is spent seated at a table or a computer doing small-group instruction and data entry.",
    "liability_shield": "The ParaPro Assessment or two years of college credit under ESSA is a hiring screen, not a license — no board can revoke your practice, and when an IEP goal is missed or an incident report is filed, the certified special-education teacher and the district own it, which is why this is 5 and not 0: the ESSA paraprofessional requirement is a real federal floor a district cannot simply waive.",
    "trust_premium": "You are often the one adult a specific student will accept — the paraprofessional assigned 1:1 whose removal triggers regression, whose reading of a kid's pre-meltdown cues is documented nowhere; 13 rather than 17 because the assignment is made by the district, follows the placement, and parents did not choose you by name.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You make live calls the IEP does not spell out — when to prompt versus wait, when a behavior plan is failing today, when to pull a student from the room — but the plan, the goals, and the consequential decisions are written by the teacher and the IEP team, so 9 reflects real in-the-moment discretion inside someone else's framework rather than ownership of the outcome."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job — sitting beside a struggling second-grader, de-escalating a meltdown, assisting a student with feeding, toileting, or mobility, watching a playground — is physical child supervision that no current robot or chatbot performs. What AI does erode is the paperwork edge: drafting worksheets, grading practice sets, prepping materials, logging behavior data, and one-on-one reading/math drill, where adaptive software is already deployed in classrooms. The modal worker here is a special-education paraprofessional whose real risk is district budget cuts and edtech substitution for tutoring blocks, not automation of the caregiving core; the weak spot is the near-total absence of a licensure shield (ParaPro test or associate degree, not a protected license).",
  "outlook": "Headcount holds or grows because special-education caseloads and supervision ratios are legally driven, but general-classroom aides whose day is worksheets, prep, and drill tutoring will be thinned first as districts substitute adaptive software under budget pressure.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "IDEA-driven change making the 1:1 paraprofessional a named, legally required service on the IEP with state-set qualification credentials — e.g. state boards moving paraprofessionals onto a credentialed 'educational aide certificate' with renewal and disciplinary authority (Texas and Ohio already issue such certificates; expansion plus IEP-mandated staffing ratios would harden it). Also state mandatory-reporter and restraint/seclusion statutes naming the aide personally.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Due-process settlements and OCR findings requiring districts to prove a qualified human adult was physically present for specified minutes of 1:1 support, making software substitution for an IEP service minutes non-compliant.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formal role in behavior-intervention-plan implementation and crisis response — district policy requiring the trained aide (CPI/Safety-Care certified) to make the restraint/no-restraint call and document it, with the aide's log as the legal record in due-process hearings.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: if adaptive reading/math software absorbs the drill blocks and AI absorbs behavior-data logging, the residual day is de-escalation, toileting/feeding, seizure and allergy response, and physical prompting — the tier no software touches. Genuine two-tier job.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Parent-side demand encoded in IEP negotiation — parents refusing edtech-only tutoring blocks and winning named human aide minutes; plus growth of privately-funded 1:1 aides and shadow aides in private/charter placements.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Little headroom; already near ceiling. Rises only marginally if medical-adjacent duties (g-tube feeding, catheterization, lift transfers) shift further onto paraprofessionals under state delegated-nursing-task rules.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "The binding risk here is fiscal, not technical: ESSER cliff budget cuts and aide-to-student ratio increases displace these workers regardless of dimension scores. A licensure shield would also raise entry cost into a job that currently pays near minimum wage, so districts and unions may resist the very credentialing that would protect it."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 1346910,
        "wage": 27920
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 1272840,
        "wage": 28900
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 1187270,
        "wage": 29360
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 1254240,
        "wage": 30920
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 1337320,
        "wage": 35550
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 1375300,
        "wage": 35240
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 1420350,
        "wage": 36780
      }
    ],
    "from": 2019,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 5.5,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}