Overworked and Understaffed: Special Ed Teachers Turn to AI for Help

For years, schools across the country have struggled with recruitment and retention special educators. In the academic year 2024-25 45 states are reported special education teacher shortages and staff turnover are worse at schools that serve mostly low-income students, like Riverview.

Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overwhelmed is the legally required paperwork layered on top of regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of teachers across the country using AI to speed up that documentation—including writing individualized education programs (IEPs). Educators and families maintain these detailed documents that outline the goals and services students need to achieve those goals in school.

According to recent study from the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57 percent of special education teachers surveyed nationwide said they used AI to help develop individualized plans for their students in the 2024-25 school year. That’s up from 39 percent the previous school year.

Along with the survey results, the CDT warned about 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), shows that when used appropriately, AI can help special education teachers craft IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers create them themselves.

And the time saved can benefit students, too. “The more time a student with a disability has with a teacher often leads to better outcomes for them, both educationally and functionally — across the board,” says Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who studies the role of AI in special education.

Asebu says that rings true in her classroom. As an example, she points to King, one of her eighth-graders. “He wasn’t reading at the beginning of seventh grade. He’s reading now.” This is for Asebu point of the IEP — to put what is on paper into practice for their students. She says this is only possible with intentional, hands-on classroom work.

What are IEPs and why are they important?

Each seventh- and eighth-grader in Mary Asebu’s class learns differently — some working independently, some in pairs, some with headphones, and still others with speech-to-text technology. These differences are recorded 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.

Each IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s current needs, but most importantly, “also where you want them to go next year,” says Daniel Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.

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

Acebu says that to develop these goals, teachers need to know each student’s learning style intimately. “The key term is ‘individualized.’ No two children are the same,” she says. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and an in-depth knowledge of complex education laws and policy.

It used to take Acebu about 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals per student. She points to a large, blue binder at least 5 inches thick on her bookshelf that contains the California Education Standards. “I used to flip through all these pages” to find the right standard to meet a student’s unique goals, she says.

Then came AI.

Using AI – with a “human touch”

A few years ago, Acebu started attending courses on the safe and effective use of AI. Around the same time, her district, Mt. Diablo Unified has entered into agreements with companies that offer artificial intelligence tools focused on education, including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a major concern for those who warn of the risks of using AI in schools. However, more and more areas are adopting such products only a few countries have formal AI education policies.

Recently, using a district-approved tool, Acebu customized chatbots for her school and trained them on state standards, assessments and other special education data. She now uses her “little assistants” for a wide range of tasks, from creating personalized worksheets to developing IEP goals.

And then, she says, “you check everything. It’s like you have to add that human touch, that’s the final step.”

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

Acebu is uniquely equipped to use technical tools: she just got her PhD in instructional technology and is part of her district’s AI task force, which is developing official AI policy.

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

Then the number of students it serves increased.

“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it’s put a huge strain on my mental health and my life,” Stone says of her work this year. “It would be kind of nice to have two jobs, like one with paperwork and one with the kids.”

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

“It’s been an incredible time saver so far,” he says. Stone has used AI for a number of things, including creating 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 and check everything.

Both he and Asebu say it can help them and other educators avoid burnout. Still, Ariana Aboulafia, who was the lead author of the CDT report, called AI tools a “bottleneck” for special education teachers who feel overwhelmed.

Using AI in Special Education – With Railings

Bonding or not, more teachers are use of AI across the country. There are a number of concerns about its use, particularly in special education, which is highly regulated. “Student privacy is number one,” Asebu says. “Don’t put information out there that will identify your students.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while the risks surrounding privacy can be reduced if a school uses a verified provider, data breaches can still leave that information vulnerable.

But not all teachers use district-approved tools. Research by Coleman, Waterfield, and CDT found that educators across the country are using AI both formally and informally, from free user platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to district-endorsed tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini, and Playground IEP, among others. To help teachers navigate this complex landscape, Waterfield and Coleman develop a “decision tree” for ethical use of AI.

Another consideration is the fact that AI models can be biased, including against people with disabilities, says Aboulafia, who leads the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Project at CDT. In addition, she worries that AI models built on pattern recognition are “to some extent inherently incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization.”

Aboulafia is most concerned about the 15 percent of teachers, according to the CDT survey, who rely entirely on AI to develop IEPs. There should always be an “in-the-know person,” she says.

Asebu, who happens to be her district’s teacher of the year, says these days she comes to class just 30 minutes before her students and leaves right after the last bell. This improved her work-life balance and the quality of her teaching.

King, the eighth-grader in her class who has evolved into a confident reader, now also takes math class without extra support.

“It’s every special educator’s dream,” she says, beaming. “But guess what? It takes a lot of hard work.”

AI tools, Asebu says, have given her more time for this kind of hard work.