Overworked and Understaffed: Special Educators Turn to AI for Help

For years, schools across the country have struggled to recruit and retain exceptional teachers. For the 2024-25 school year, 45 states have reported a shortage of special education teachers, and staffing increases are worse at schools that serve low-income students the most, like Riverview.

Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is the legally required paperwork placed on top of regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of educators across the country who are using AI to help speed up that paperwork — including writing individualized education plans (IEPs). Teachers and families keep these detailed documents that outline the goals and services students need to meet those goals at school.

According to a recent survey by the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57% of special education teachers surveyed nationwide said they are using AI to help improve their individualized programs for their students in the 2024-25 school year. That’s up from 39% last school year.

Along with the results of the study, the CDT warned of the privacy, legal and ethical risks of using AI. However, other research, including from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), has shown that when used correctly, AI can help special education teachers create IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers produce them alone.

And the time saved can benefit students, too. “When a student with a disability has more face-to-face time with the teacher, that tends to give them better results, both academically, practically — across the board,” said Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who has been studying the role of AI in special education.

Acebu says that is true in his classroom. He gives the example of Nkosi, one of his eighth grade students. “He wasn’t studying when he started the seventh grade. He’s studying now.” That, in Acebu, i the point of IEPs – applying what is on paper to his students. He says that can only be possible through deliberate, hands-on work in the classroom.

What are IEPs and why are they important

Every seventh and eighth grader in Mary Acebu’s class learns in a different way — some work independently, some in pairs, some with headphones and some with speech and text technology. That difference is included in each child’s IEP, a document required by federal law for each of the more than 8 million students with disabilities in this country.

Every IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s current needs, but more importantly, “and where you want to go within the next year,” said Danielle Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.

Both Coleman and Waterfield said that while many teachers report feeling overwhelmed by the work involved in developing IEPs, teachers recognize that they are a necessary tool for students with disabilities to receive a quality education.

Acebu says that in order to promote those goals, teachers must know each student’s learning style closely. “The key word is ‘individual.’ No two children are the same,” she said. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and in-depth knowledge of complex education law and policy.

It used to take Acebu about 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals for each student. He points to a large, blue binder at least 5 inches thick on his bookshelf that contains the California education standards. “It used to be flipping through all those pages,” he says, “to find the right level of matching with different student goals.”

Then came AI.

Using AI — with the ‘human touch’

A few years ago, Acebu started conducting courses on how to use AI safely and effectively. Around the same time, his district, Mt. At Diablo Unified, we entered into agreements with companies that provide AI tools focused on education including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a major concern of those who warn of the dangers of using AI in schools. A growing number of states are adopting such products, although only a few states have formal AI education policies.

Recently, using a tool tested by the district, Acebu customized her school’s chatbots and trained them on state standards, tests and other special education data. He now uses his “little assistants” to do a variety of tasks, from creating personal worksheets to developing IEP goals.

Then he says, “you double-check everything. Since you have to put that human touch, that’s the last step.”

In their research, Coleman and Waterfield found that special education teachers across the country are using AI to help write IEP goals, track student progress, integrate data and create differentiated learning materials, among other things.

Acebu is uniquely equipped to use technology tools: He recently received his doctorate in instructional technology and is on his district’s AI team, which develops official AI policy.

Some of Acebu’s less tech-savvy colleagues, however, were skeptical, including Paul Stone, who has been a special education teacher at Riverview for 22 years.

Then the number of worshiping students increased.

“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it’s put a lot of pressure on my mental health and my health,” Stone said of his work this year. “It would be good if there were two jobs, like a paper worker and one working with children.”

So, a few weeks ago, after a lesson from Acebu, he gave the chatbot a shot. He was surprised by the results.

“It’s been an amazing time saver so far,” he says. Stone has used AI for many things including generating simple summaries of complex data to present to parents at IEP meetings. “I mean it’s not like ‘that’s it, I’m done.’ I still have to go over and check everything.”

He and Acebu both say it can help them, and other teachers, avoid burnout. However, Ariana Aboulafia, who was the lead author of the CDT report, calls AI tools a “Band-Aid” for special education teachers who feel overwhelmed.

Using AI in special education – with monitoring tools

Band-Aid or not, many teachers there is using AI across the country. There are a number of concerns about its use, especially in special education, which is highly regulated. “Students’ privacy comes first,” said Acebu. “Don’t put information there that will identify your readers.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while privacy risks may be mitigated if a school uses a vetted vendor, a data breach can still put that information at risk.

But not all teachers use district-approved tools. Coleman, Waterfield and CDT’s research all found that teachers across the country are using AI formally and informally – from free consumer forums like ChatGPT and Claude to district-approved tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini and Playground IEP, among others. To help educators navigate this complex landscape, Waterfield and Coleman developed a “decision tree” for implementing behavioral AI.

Another concern is that AI models can be biased, including against people with disabilities, said Aboulafia, who leads the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Project at CDT. In addition, he worries that AI models built on pattern recognition, “to some extent, are not inherently compatible with the process that legally requires individualization.”

Aboulafia is particularly concerned about the 15% of teachers the CDT survey found were relying entirely on AI to develop IEPs. There must always be an “inside person,” he says.

Acebu, who is the teacher of the year in his district, says these days, he gets to class 30 minutes before his students, and leaves after the last bell. This has improved his work life and the quality of his teaching.

King, an eighth-grader in her class who has become a confident student, also attends math class now without extra support.

“That’s the dream of all special educators,” he said happily. However, that requires a lot of hard work.

AI tools, Acebu says, have given him more time for that kind of hard work.