Key points:
Technology has long been viewed as having the promise to make schools more effective and educators more efficient. In the late 1990s, the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) provided recognition to school districts that were using technology in effective and efficient ways. Artificial intelligence (AI) has raised the promise of that decades-old goal to new heights.
The number of students we are focusing on is significant. More than 15 percent of students nationwide and more than one in five students in some areas are diagnosed as needing special and individualized educational programming. Districts have reported a shortage of special education teachers since the late 1990s. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 37 states identified special education as a teacher shortage area during the 2023-2024 school year.
Because special education teachers consistently identify high levels of paperwork as a regular source of burnout and job dissatisfaction, educational leaders need to look to generative AI tools to streamline special education processes.
There are several simple ways to use generative AI tools to streamline special education paperwork. One simple tool has already been specifically designed to assist in the development of student individual education plans (IEPs). MagicSchool.ai includes an IEP generator that will draft an initial IEP given the child’s grade level, disabilities and strengths, needs, and behaviors. Easy-peasy.AI has an IEP generator that quickly and seamlessly allows an IEP team to develop a goal for a student, rather than the old model of having to maintain goal banks as a reference. IEP Co-pilot is another option for AI support that can help teams develop SMART IEP goals and be incorporated into the pre-referral process for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) goal setting.
While AI resources for IEP development have been revolutionary for helping with paperwork overload, the benefits of AI related to special education workload do not stop there. At Goal Genius, not only does AI help to develop IEP goals, but it can also offer tailored accommodation recommendations, sample lesson plans, create quarterly objectives, and generate progress reports for data tracking. This can also be supported through data tracking and progress monitoring of goals to help teams determine if adequate progress is being made. MagicSchool.ai has a specific behavior intervention plan (BIP) generator that can help teachers with additional and objective ideas when behavior plans naturally find themselves needing multiple revisions. For both novice and veteran teachers, Poe.com provides access to a behavior intervention bot in real-time to help with questions that might arise with paperwork or strategies for student behavior. In this case, AI can essentially serve as an on-demand instructional coach for special education teachers.
Creating reading level-appropriate text can be another tedious task for special education teachers. There are a number of text leveling tools that will allow a teacher to input text and have AI return text at a requested level. This can be used for students with either higher- or lower-level reading needs. MagicSchool.ai has a text leveler, as does Rewordify.com, which lets a teacher modify a text passage to make it generally easier to read, removing difficult vocabulary with more common terms. A third option is Text Compactor.com , which allows for some language translation as well. All these AI supports come together to provide special education staff with strategies to help support the science of reading while simultaneously needing to differentiate content for students.
Planning for and facilitating multiple meetings per year can be extremely time consuming for special education teachers, but AI has become a very useful resource for this planning. Many bots can draft personalized IEP meeting agendas, staff meeting agendas, or team meetings. This allows the special educator to move into more of an editing role to make sure that content fits with the specific needs of the student. Taking detailed notes at a meeting can also become a thing of the past. Zoom’s AI meeting assistant can provide an AI-generated summary of IEP or other meetings to save staff from having to take notes during the meeting. One consideration with Zoom is to remember that the AI assistant generates a summary for the meeting, not just the portion of the meeting that is recorded. Otter.ai is another AI tool for taking meeting notes. The team should always be sure that there is consent for confidentiality of notes being taken in this way, and that can be added as a starting point for the meeting agenda.
During the evaluation process, a multidisciplinary team will come together to provide information as part of an evaluation to determine eligibility for services. Traditionally, the special education teacher oversees compiling and helping organize all these specific reports. AI can help to both organize and explain more complicated issues/reports that might be provided to the school. For example, teams could consult with AI about specific medical reports to learn more about how the school could best support a student’s individual needs and help with program planning ideas. AI allows individual members of the team to be better informed about medical issues during meetings.
While there still may be some questions about AI and ways that it can be integrated into special education, there is overwhelming evidence of resources and websites that are now being commonly utilized by teams to help reduce workload and pressure on special education staff. AI provides the opportunity for special education teachers working in a rural district or in a solitary role at their building to have collaboration and support on demand for questions that might arise, when previously this might have looked like a need to schedule a meeting with a mentor or instructional coach. Additionally, AI can help support IEP goal writing, accommodations/modifications, behavior/safety plans, development of notes for medical documents, transition planning, and data tracking. The opportunities are limitless, and new resources are constantly emerging. Helping special education teachers view themselves as a facilitator of learning and resources is a great way to continue to embrace new technology with AI and support efficiency as a part of their work in supporting student learning.
