Will AI replace Special Education Teachers, Secondary School?

What this score means

Special Education Teachers, Secondary School leans toward the safer end for Education. Parts of the role touch tasks AI is getting good at, but the core still depends on hands on work or judgment that resists automation. At 34 out of 100 it scores 5 points below the Education average of 39. Across the 5 sources behind this baseline, individual estimates run from 6 to 48, so the score is a weighted consensus rather than any single figure.

The number is a consensus estimate for the typical version of the role, built from published academic and industry research scored occupation by occupation. It is not a prediction about any individual. How scoring works

What this job actually involves

Exposure follows the work itself rather than the job title, so it is worth seeing what the role is made of. These are the tasks O*NET records for Special Education Teachers, Secondary School, most central first, showing 12 of 40.

• 01Establish and enforce rules for behavior and policies and procedures to maintain order among students.
• 02Maintain accurate and complete student records, and prepare reports on children and activities, as required by laws, district policies, and administrative regulations.
• 03Confer with parents, administrators, testing specialists, social workers, or other professionals to develop individual educational plans (IEPs) for students' educational, physical, and social development.
• 04Employ special educational strategies and techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition, and memory.
• 05Establish clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects, and communicate those objectives to students.
• 06Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.
• 07Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification and positive reinforcement.
• 08Confer with parents or guardians, other teachers, counselors, and administrators to resolve students' behavioral and academic problems.
• 09Develop and implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of handicapping conditions.
• 10Teach personal development skills, such as goal setting, independence, and self-advocacy.
• 11Prepare students for later grades by encouraging them to explore learning opportunities and to persevere with challenging tasks.
• 12Modify the general education curriculum for students with disabilities, based upon a variety of instructional techniques and technologies.

Task statements from O*NET by the National Center for O*NET Development, used under CC BY 4.0. The tasks are descriptive; the exposure score above is ours.

The research behind this score

This baseline aggregates 5 research sources that scored Special Education Teachers, Secondary School for AI and automation exposure. More recent, higher confidence studies carry more weight in the final number.

• 01Anthropic Economic Index 2026 - AI Task Exposure · 2026Anthropic
• 02Global Automation Atlas: Task Substitution Exposure by Occupation · 2026Garg, Crosta, Baier (2026), arXiv:2605.17086
• 03Working with AI: Measuring the Applicability of Generative AI to Occupations · 2025Tomlinson, Jaffe et al., Microsoft Research (2025)
• 04GPTs are GPTs: Labor Market Impact Potential of LLMs · 2024Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin, Rock (Science, 2024)
• 05AI Occupational Exposure to Language Modeling · 2023Felten, Raj, Seamans (2023)

Common questions

How likely is AI to replace Special Education Teachers, Secondary School?

Published research puts Special Education Teachers, Secondary School at 34 out of 100 for AI displacement risk, in the lower risk band. The number is a weighted consensus of 5 research sources and describes the typical version of the role, not any individual.

Do researchers agree on the risk for Special Education Teachers, Secondary School?

Only partly. Individual estimates for Special Education Teachers, Secondary School run from 6 to 48 out of 100 across the 5 sources behind this score, so the single number smooths over real disagreement. More recent and higher confidence studies carry more weight in it.

Which education roles face similar AI exposure?

The closest published education roles to Special Education Teachers, Secondary School by score are Special Education Teachers, Middle School (35/100), Physics Teachers, Postsecondary (33/100), and Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary (36/100). Each has its own page with the research behind its number.

Also covers

Blind Teacher · Braille Teacher · Cross-Categorical SPED Teacher (Cross-Categorical Special Education Teacher) · Deaf Teacher · Education Specialist · Emotional Disability Special Education Teacher (ED SPED Teacher) · Emotionally Impaired Teacher · Exceptional Children's Teacher (EC Teacher) and related titles

More education occupations

• Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructors38/100
• Forestry and Conservation Science Teachers, Postsecondary38/100
• Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education37/100
• Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education37/100
• Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary36/100
• Self-Enrichment Teachers36/100
• Special Education Teachers, Middle School35/100
• Physics Teachers, Postsecondary33/100