For years, schools across the country have had trouble recruiting and retaining special educators. In the 2024-25 school year, 45 states reported Special education teacher shortages and staff turnover are worse in schools that primarily serve low-income students, like Riverview.
Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is the legally required paperwork that adds to regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of teachers across the country using AI to help speed up that paperwork, including writing individualized education programs (IEPs). Educators and families maintain these detailed documents that describe the goals and services students need to achieve those goals in school.
According a recent survey According to the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57% 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% the previous school year.
Along with the survey results, the CDT warned about the legal, ethical and privacy risks related to the use of AI. However, other research, including from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), has shown that, when used appropriately, AI can help special education teachers produce IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers produce them alone.
And the time saved can benefit students, too. “The more face-to-face time a student with a disability spends with a teacher, often results in better outcomes for them, both educationally and functionally, across the board,” says Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who has been studying the role of AI in special education.
Acebu says that rings true in her classroom. He points to King, one of his eighth grade students, as an example. “He was a non-reader, starting seventh grade. Now he’s reading.” That, for Acebu, is the spot of IEPs, to put into practice what is written on paper for their students. She says that is only possible with practical and intentional work in the classroom.
What are IEPs and why are they important?
Each seventh- and eighth-grade student in Mary Acebu’s class learns differently: some work independently, some in pairs, some with headphones on, and some with speech-to-text technology. Those differences are reflected 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.
(Talia Herman for NPR)
Each IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s current needs, but, more importantly, “also where you want them to go over the next year,” says Danielle Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.
Both Coleman and Waterfield say that while many teachers report feeling bogged down by the work that goes into developing IEPs, teachers also recognize that they are a necessary tool for students with disabilities to obtain a quality education.
Acebu says that to develop those goals, teachers must intimately know each student’s learning style. “The key term is ‘individualized.’ No two children are the same,” he says. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and in-depth knowledge of complex education laws and policies.
It used to take Acebu about 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals per student. He points to a large blue binder at least 5 inches thick on his bookshelf containing the California educational standards. “It used to be flipping through all those pages” to find the right standard that matched students’ unique goals, he says.
Then came AI
Using AI, with a “human touch”
A couple of years ago, Acebu began taking courses on how to use AI safely and effectively. Around the same time, his district, Mt. Diablo Unified, entered into agreements with companies that offer education-focused artificial intelligence tools, including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a major concern of those warning about the risks of using AI in schools. Although an increasing number of districts are adopting these products only a few states They have official AI education policies.
Recently, using a district-approved tool, Acebu customized chatbots for his 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 custom worksheets to developing IEP goals.
And then, he says, “you’re checking everything twice. Like you have to put that human touch, that’s the final step.”
(Talia Herman for NPR)
(Talia Herman for NPR)
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 learning materials, among other things.
Acebu is uniquely equipped to use technological tools: She just earned her doctorate in educational technology and is part of her district’s AI working group, which is developing an official AI policy.
However, some of Acebu’s less tech-savvy colleagues were skeptical, including Paul Stone, who has been a special educator at Riverview for 22 years.
Then the number of students it serves skyrocketed.
“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it’s been a huge stressor on my mental health and my life,” Stone says of her work this year. “It would be pretty good if there were two jobs, like one for paperwork and one for working with the kids.”
So a few weeks ago, after a tutorial from Acebu, he gave his chatbot a try. He was surprised by the results.
“So far, it’s an incredible time saver,” he says. Stone has used AI for several things, including producing simple summaries of complicated 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 through everything.”
Both he and Acebu say it could help them and other educators avoid burnout. However, Ariana Aboulafia, lead author of the CDT report, calls AI tools “a Band-Aid” for special education teachers who feel overworked.
Use of AI in special education, with safety barriers
Band-Aid or not, more teachers are using AI across the country. There are a lot of concerns about its use, especially in special education, which is highly regulated. “Student privacy is the number one priority,” Acebu says. “Do not include information that could identify your students.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while privacy risks may be reduced if a school uses a vetted provider, data breaches could still make that information vulnerable.
But not all teachers use district-approved tools. Coleman, Waterfield, and CDT’s research found that educators across the country are using AI both formally and informally, from free consumer platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to district-approved tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini, and Playground IEP, among others. To help teachers navigate this complicated landscape, Waterfield and Coleman developed a “decision tree” for the ethical use of AI.
Another consideration is the fact that AI models can be biased, even against people with disabilities, says Aboulafia, who heads the Disability Rights Technology Policy Project at the CDT. Additionally, he is concerned that AI models based on pattern recognition are, “to some extent, intrinsically incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization.”
Aboulafia is most concerned about the 15% of teachers surveyed by CDT who have relied entirely on AI to develop their IEPs. There should always be a “human in the know,” he says.
Acebu, who happens to be her district’s teacher of the year, says these days she arrives to class just 30 minutes before her students and leaves just after the last bell. This has improved their work-life balance and the quality of their teaching.
King, the eighth-grader in her class who has become a confident reader, now also goes to math class without any additional support.
“That is the dream of every special educator,” he says. “But guess what? That takes a lot of hard work.”
AI tools, Acebu says, have given him more time for that kind of hard work.
