Will AI replace Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education?
AI reaches some of this job’s work, but most of it stays with people.
30/100
Moderate exposure
More exposed to AI than 47% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 10% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 46% of the work
What the job involves
Instruct preschool-aged students, following curricula or lesson plans, in activities designed to promote social, physical, and intellectual growth.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(4)
- Adapt teaching methods and instructional materials to meet students' varying needs and interests.
- Plan and conduct activities for a balanced program of instruction, demonstration, and work time that provides students with opportunities to observe, question, and investigate.
- Organize and label materials and display students' work in a manner appropriate for their ages and perceptual skills.
- Collaborate with other teachers and administrators in the development, evaluation, and revision of preschool programs.
Within reach(12)
- Teach basic skills, such as color, shape, number and letter recognition, personal hygiene, and social skills.
- Organize and lead activities designed to promote physical, mental, and social development, such as games, arts and crafts, music, storytelling, and field trips.
- Demonstrate activities to children.
- Establish clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects and communicate those objectives to children.
- Meet with parents and guardians to discuss their children's progress and needs, determine their priorities for their children, and suggest ways that they can promote learning and development.
and 7 more
Out of reach(18)
- Establish and enforce rules for behavior and procedures for maintaining order.
- Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.
- Assimilate arriving children to the school environment by greeting them, helping them remove outerwear, and selecting activities of interest to them.
- Read books to entire classes or to small groups.
- Identify children showing signs of emotional, developmental, or health-related problems and discuss them with supervisors, parents or guardians, and child development specialists.
and 13 more
Also called
Pre-Kindergarten Teacher (Pre-K Teacher) · Teacher · Pre-K Teacher · Preschool Teacher · Early Childhood Teacher · Day Care Teacher · Infant Teacher · Nursery Teacher
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics