More than 7.5 million American students have a disability that qualifies them for an individual education plan (IEP). But certified special education teachers are in short supply—and this problem has put a huge strain on school district special education departments and personnel.
According to federal data, nearly nine in 10 schools (86 percent) have struggled to hire special education teachers, and 83 percent have had trouble hiring other positions such as classroom aides and mental health professionals. More than three out of four K-12 leaders surveyed (77 percent) said these positions are at least somewhat hard to fill.
These hiring challenges mean that special educators are often stretched thin. They don’t have a lot of extra time to accomplish the many responsibilities they’re tasked with, from creating IEPs and lesson plans to personalizing instruction, assessing growth, and reporting on student progress.
Artificial intelligence holds great promise to help with these functions. As AI has emerged as a powerful tool to aid people across a wide variety of roles and industries, it can also support special education teachers, administrators, and students when used effectively.
Consider these examples:
AI can support teachers in creating lessons, developing student behavior plans, writing reports, drafting emails to parents, and completing other time-consuming administrative tasks, which frees up teachers to spend more time with individual students. As Education Week reports, some special education teachers spend as many as eight hours a week on documentation and other paperwork alone.
AI can help personalize instruction for every child. For instance, to ensure that students with an IEP can master the same content as their peers, teachers often spend a lot of time simplifying texts written at grade level. Generative AI tools can achieve this goal in seconds, leveling texts to an appropriate reading level for individual students almost instantly.
AI can empower students with disabilities. For students who have a disability that prevents them from developing written expression, generative AI can help them express their ideas. Teaching students how to write an effective prompt within an AI generator can unlock a world of potential for these children.
But in order to realize these benefits, educators and administrators must overcome their very real concerns about using AI. In an April 2024 poll conducted by Education Week, 30 percent of respondents said they don’t use AI tools within their special education programs—nor do they have plans to do so.
Clearly, leaders who see the value of using AI within special education have some work to do in convincing their colleagues. This will require honest conversations about the pros and cons of using AI within educational settings, as well as the establishment of proper policies and safeguards to protect against misuses of the technology.
In taking on this work, here are five important keys to success.
Don’t ignore AI
Educators and administrators can’t afford to ignore AI, because it’s not just going to disappear— and students are already using the technology on their own outside of school. In fact, one survey found that 89 percent of students admitted to using ChatGPT or other generative AI programs to help with a homework assignment.
What’s more, AI is transforming the nature of jobs across many industries. To be successful in future workplace environments, students will need to understand how to use generative AI as a productivity tool—a lesson they should be learning in both general and special education classrooms.
AI is here to stay, and therefore AI literacy is a critical skill for all students to acquire. K-12 leaders must craft thoughtful policies governing the use of AI in education, and students need explicit instruction in how to use the technology ethically and responsibly.
Start small
AI can seem intimidating at first. To teach students how to use the technology, educators first must understand it for themselves. Special education teachers can develop this understanding by experimenting with the technology to create lesson plans and handle other simple administrative
tasks using an education-specific tool such as SchoolAI or MagicSchool AI.
Start small to begin with, and then expand your use of the technology as you become more comfortable. You might try creating one assignment a week with the help of AI initially.
Understand AI’s limitations
In learning about AI, students and educators should understand that the technology isn’t always accurate. Generative AI tends to get things wrong sometimes, such as making up false information or creating images of human beings with extra arms and legs.
There is also inherent bias built into AI programs. AI generators have underlying biases that reflect the datasets they’re trained on, and research suggests the technology might actually amplify the racial and gender stereotypes that tend to exist within humans.
Using AI in the classroom affords a valuable opportunity to teach students critical thinking and media literacy skills. Students should learn how to think critically about any content they generate with the help of AI.
This lesson applies to educators as well: Special education teachers will need to review AI’s suggestions carefully to make sure the information is accurate and appropriate for the students they serve. (Think of it like speech-to-text software: It’s a good shortcut, but you still have to check this output for yourself.)
AI can be a good starting point for generating content, but ultimately teachers will need to customize the content they create with the help of AI to meet their own specific needs.
Set clear boundaries
Besides not being 100-percent reliable, AI raises many privacy concerns. For instance, teachers should never enter personally identifiable information about their students into an AI generator, because the program might ingest this information and repeat it back to another user.
To ensure the safe and responsible use of AI for education, K-12 leaders should establish clear guidelines protecting students and staff. Students and educators might want to avoid using ChatGPT and instead use only district-approved AI generators. Instead, look for AI platforms with clearly stated privacy policies that don’t put users’ privacy at risk, such as systems that don’t save prompts or link queries to individual user accounts.
In addition, school districts should update their academic integrity policies to reflect the existence of AI, creating policies for when it’s appropriate—and not appropriate—for students to use the technology when completing assignments.
For instance, students should use AI only to generate ideas and not to pass off AI-generated content as their own work. Teachers should go over these rules with their students to establish clear expectations for student behavior.
Be open to learning from others
All of this is new, and we’re all still learning as we move forward together. Teachers and administrators should adopt a growth mindset and be willing to learn from colleagues as they navigate their way through this new educational landscape.
Those who haven’t used AI before should try it. Don’t be scared of it. Learn alongside your students and fellow staff members. Learning along with others makes the process less intimidating. A service such as BlazerWorks, which offers special education training and consulting, can serve as a valuable resource as well.
When used appropriately, AI is a fundamental tool to help special education teachers, administrators, and students become more effective. With the right support and resources in place, including proper guidance on how to use AI safely and responsibly to advance special education programming, the technology can empower students to reach new heights of success— and it can help teachers reclaim valuable time for classroom instruction.
About the author
John Veneracion is an Assistive Technology and Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) Advisor at BlazerWorks, where he brings over ten years of experience in school-based occupational therapy. Phillip Salvador is an Occupational Therapy Advisor for BlazerWorks, with 17 years of experience as a school-based and pediatric occupational therapist.
