Will AI replace Special Education Teachers, Preschool?
AI reaches some of this job’s work, but most of it stays with people.
29/100
Moderate exposure
More exposed to AI than 45% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 10% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 42% of the work
What the job involves
Teach academic, social, and life skills to preschool-aged students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who specialize and work with students who are blind or have visual impairments; students who are deaf or have hearing impairments; and students with intellectual disabilities.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(4)
- Observe and evaluate students' performance, behavior, social development, and physical health.
- Prepare objectives, outlines, or other materials for courses of study, following curriculum guidelines or requirements.
- Organize and display students' work in a manner appropriate for their perceptual skills.
- Present information in audio-visual or interactive formats, using computers, television, audio-visual aids, or other equipment, materials, or technologies.
Within reach(13)
- Develop or implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of disabilities.
- Maintain accurate and complete student records as required by laws, district policies, or administrative regulations.
- Meet with parents or guardians to discuss their children's progress, advise them on using community resources, or teach skills for dealing with students' impairments.
- Teach basic skills, such as color, shape, number and letter recognition, personal hygiene, or social skills, to preschool students with special needs.
- Modify the general preschool curriculum for students with disabilities.
and 8 more
Out of reach(19)
- Communicate nonverbally with children to provide them with comfort, encouragement, or positive reinforcement.
- Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification or positive reinforcement.
- Prepare classrooms with a variety of materials or resources for children to explore, manipulate, or use in learning activities or imaginative play.
- Attend to children's basic needs by feeding them, dressing them, or changing their diapers.
- Read books to entire classes or to small groups.
and 14 more
Also called
Special Education Teacher · Deaf Teacher · Early Childhood Special Educator (EC Special Educator) · EC Special Educator · Early Childhood Special Education Teacher (ECSE Teacher) · Preschool SPED Teacher (Preschool Special Education Teacher) · SPED Preschool Teacher (Special Education Preschool Teacher) · Autistic Teacher
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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