child education
Special Education Is Turning to AI to Fill Staffing Gaps—But Privacy and Bias Risks Remain
With special education staffing shortages worsening, schools are using AI to draft IEPs, support training, and assist assessments. Experts warn the benefits come with major risks—privacy, bias, and trust.
Seth King, University of Iowa
In special education in the U.S., funding is scarce and personnel shortages are pervasive, leaving many school districts struggling to hire qualified and willing practitioners.
Amid these long-standing challenges, there is rising interest in using artificial intelligence tools to help close some of the gaps that districts currently face and lower labor costs.
Over 7 million children receive federally funded entitlements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees students access to instruction tailored to their unique physical and psychological needs, as well as legal processes that allow families to negotiate support. Special education involves a range of professionals, including rehabilitation specialists, speech-language pathologists and classroom teaching assistants. But these specialists are in short supply, despite the proven need for their services.
As an associate professor in special education who works with AI, I see its potential and its pitfalls. While AI systems may be able to reduce administrative burdens, deliver expert guidance and help overwhelmed professionals manage their caseloads, they can also present ethical challenges – ranging from machine bias to broader issues of trust in automated systems. They also risk amplifying existing problems with how special ed services are delivered.
Yet some in the field are opting to test out AI tools, rather than waiting for a perfect solution.
A faster IEP, but how individualized?
AI is already shaping special education planning, personnel preparation and assessment.
One example is the individualized education program, or IEP, the primary instrument for guiding which services a child receives. An IEP draws on a range of assessments and other data to describe a child’s strengths, determine their needs and set measurable goals. Every part of this process depends on trained professionals.
But persistent workforce shortages mean districts often struggle to complete assessments, update plans and integrate input from parents. Most districts develop IEPs using software that requires practitioners to choose from a generalized set of rote responses or options, leading to a level of standardization that can fail to meet a child’s true individual needs.
Preliminary research has shown that large language models such as ChatGPT can be adept at generating key special education documents such as IEPs by drawing on multiple data sources, including information from students and families. Chatbots that can quickly craft IEPs could potentially help special education practitioners better meet the needs of individual children and their families. Some professional organizations in special education have even encouraged educators to use AI for documents such as lesson plans.
Training and diagnosing disabilities
There is also potential for AI systems to help support professional training and development. My own work on personnel development combines several AI applications with virtual reality to enable practitioners to rehearse instructional routines before working directly with children. Here, AI can function as a practical extension of existing training models, offering repeated practice and structured support in ways that are difficult to sustain with limited personnel.
Some districts have begun using AI for assessments, which can involve a range of academic, cognitive and medical evaluations. AI applications that pair automatic speech recognition and language processing are now being employed in computer-mediated oral reading assessments to score tests of student reading ability.
Practitioners often struggle to make sense of the volume of data that schools collect. AI-driven machine learning tools also can help here, by identifying patterns that may not be immediately visible to educators for evaluation or instructional decision-making. Such support may be especially useful in diagnosing disabilities such as autism or learning disabilities, where masking, variable presentation and incomplete histories can make interpretation difficult. My ongoing research shows that current AI can make predictions based on data likely to be available in some districts.
Privacy and trust concerns
There are serious ethical – and practical – questions about these AI-supported interventions, ranging from risks to students’ privacy to machine bias and deeper issues tied to family trust. Some hinge on the question of whether or not AI systems can deliver services that truly comply with existing law.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires nondiscriminatory methods of evaluating disabilities to avoid inappropriately identifying students for services or neglecting to serve those who qualify. And the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act explicitly protects students’ data privacy and the rights of parents to access and hold their children’s data.
What happens if an AI system uses biased data or methods to generate a recommendation for a child? What if a child’s data is misused or leaked by an AI system? Using AI systems to perform some of the functions described above puts families in a position where they are expected to put their faith not only in their school district and its special education personnel, but also in commercial AI systems, the inner workings of which are largely inscrutable.
These ethical qualms are hardly unique to special ed; many have been raised in other fields and addressed by early-adopters. For example, while automatic speech recognition, or ASR, systems have struggled to accurately assess accented English, many vendors now train their systems to accommodate specific ethnic and regional accents.
But ongoing research work suggests that some ASR systems are limited in their capacity to accommodate speech differences associated with disabilities, account for classroom noise, and distinguish between different voices. While these issues may be addressed through technical improvement in the future, they are consequential at present.
Embedded bias
At first glance, machine learning models might appear to improve on traditional clinical decision-making. Yet AI models must be trained on existing data, meaning their decisions may continue to reflect long-standing biases in how disabilities have been identified.
Indeed, research has shown that AI systems are routinely hobbled by biases within both training data and system design. AI models can also introduce new biases, either by missing subtle information revealed during in-person evaluations or by overrepresenting characteristics of groups included in the training data.
Such concerns, defenders might argue, are addressed by safeguards already embedded in federal law. Families have considerable latitude in what they agree to, and can opt for alternatives, provided they are aware they can direct the IEP process.
By a similar token, using AI tools to build IEPs or lessons may seem like an obvious improvement over underdeveloped or perfunctory plans. Yet true individualization would require feeding protected data into large language models, which could violate privacy regulations. And while AI applications can readily produce better-looking IEPs and other paperwork, this does not necessarily result in improved services.
Filling the gap
Indeed, it is not yet clear whether AI provides a standard of care equivalent to the high-quality, conventional treatment to which children with disabilities are entitled under federal law.
The Supreme Court in 2017 rejected the notion that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act merely entitles students to trivial, “de minimis” progress, which weakens one of the primary rationales for pursuing AI – that it can meet a minimum standard of care and practice. And since AI really has not been empirically evaluated at scale, it has not been proved that it adequately meets the low bar of simply improving beyond the flawed status quo.
But this does not change the reality of limited resources. For better or worse, AI is already being used to fill the gap between what the law requires and what the system actually provides.
Seth King, Associate Profess of Special Education, University of Iowa
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
child education
When School’s Out, Community Steps In
Community: The joy of being a kid on summer vacation offers a time to explore with your friends, discover new things about the world and yourself and recharge for a few months before heading back to school in the fall. However, for millions of families, the end of the school year also marks the beginning of a stressful season filled with tough choices, as children can fall behind in the months away from the classroom.
(Feature Impact) The joy of being a kid on summer vacation offers a time to explore with your friends, discover new things about the world and yourself and recharge for a few months before heading back to school in the fall. However, for millions of families, the end of the school year also marks the beginning of a stressful season filled with tough choices, as children can fall behind in the months away from the classroom.
The summer gap begins when the school doors close and many children lose access to the daily routines, educational support and dependable nutrition that help them thrive. For families already juggling tight budgets and demanding schedules, summer can quickly become a season of added pressure and stress.
Summer learning loss – or the decline in academic skills and learning during the school break – can have a lasting impact on academic outcomes. Studies show over the summer, students can forget 20-30% of what they learned during the school year. Without the right support, students often start the new school year playing catchup, which can cause them to fall further behind.
Summer can also intensify food insecurity. Of the more than 22 million kids who rely on free or reduced-priced school meals, many lose access to these vital programs over the summer. When those meals disappear, families must stretch already limited budgets to cover up to 10 additional meals a week per child. In fact, recent United Way Worldwide data from 211 – the free 24/7 helpline that connects people with local resources – identified food access as one of the most pressing needs facing millions of families nationwide.
These overlapping pressures fall especially hard on millions of working families living paycheck to paycheck, including ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) households. They earn above the federal poverty level but still struggle to afford basic expenses like housing, medicine, food and transportation.
Addressing the summer gap requires a community-wide approach and solutions that meet hardworking families where they are. For example, United Way Community Schools are community-based hubs that bring together schools, social services agencies, volunteers and other community partners to provide students and families with essential support like tutoring, food access and health and wellness resources.
Families also need easy, practical, daily tips and local resources to make ends meet and help their kids stay on track.
Learning that Fits Your Day
For busy families, low- or no-cost learning moments that fit into packed schedules can make a real difference. Many communities and nonprofits offer dedicated programs to keep children active and learning during the summer, such as:
- Summer art classes, creative writing workshops and digital literacy tutoring at local libraries
- Free monthly book deliveries and reading challenges through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library – a United Way partner – or book exchanges at Little Free Libraries in high-traffic areas
- Gardening classes, nature appreciation classes and swim lessons through local parks and recreation departments
- Free weekly youth workshops offered by many public museums, zoos and botanical gardens
- Free virtual museum field trips through institutions like the Smithsonian and NASA Glenn Research Center
- Free online courses in topics ranging from coding to art or language learning
Accessing Your Community’s Food Network
Families shouldn’t have to choose between nutritious food and other essentials. Help is available to ensure kids have the nutrition needed to thrive over the summer. While resources vary by community, examples include:
- Youth-serving organizations serving as open summer meal sites, offering free breakfast and lunch to kids and teens
- City parks departments offering daily meal stations
- School districts offering summer meal programs; food delivery may be an option
- Local places of worship hosting open-door meal programs or distributing weekend grocery bags for families
For those looking to make a difference this summer, consider lending a hand to help children and families. Volunteering is a rewarding way to give back to your community. Whether it’s mentoring, serving meals, reading with students or supporting local programs, even a small time investment can make a lasting impact. After all, when families thrive, communities thrive.
To learn more about childhood summer learning programs, food initiatives and ways to support your community, visit unitedway.org.
SOURCE:
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Blog
The Substitute Teacher Who Wanted Blueprints of Our House
A fifth-grade assignment took a strange turn when a substitute teacher asked students to draw schematics of their homes. What followed — a wildly fictional floor plan and a priceless reaction from my mom — turned into one of my funniest childhood memories.
Last Updated on June 4, 2026 by Daily News Staff
The Substitute Teacher Who Wanted Blueprints of Our House
Elementary school memories tend to blend together — cafeteria pizza, playground arguments, the eternal struggle of times tables — but every once in a while, something happens that sticks with you for life. For me, that moment came in the fifth grade during a week when our regular teacher was out, and we cycled through substitute teachers like we were testing models for durability.
By midweek, in walked a substitute with a mysterious, slightly intense energy — the kind of vibe that suggested he either meditated at dawn or worked a graveyard shift doing something he couldn’t talk about. We settled into our seats, expecting worksheets or quiet reading time.
But nope.
He had other plans.
“Today,” he announced, “we’re going to draw schematics of our houses.”
Schematics. Not drawings. Not little houses with smoke coming out of the chimney. Actual blueprint-style schematics. He wanted the layout of our bedrooms, our parents’ rooms, and where the pets slept. Every detail.
Now, to be fair, Highlights Magazine did have a feature that month teaching kids how to draw floor plans. So maybe he was just a bit overenthusiastic about cross-curricular learning. Or maybe — and this is my completely rhetorical adult theory — he worked the graveyard shift as a cat burglar gathering intel between heists. Just moonlighting between blueprints.
While the rest of the class tried their best to recreate their actual homes, my imagination sprinted in a totally different direction. The house I drew had:
- A massive master bedroom with an oversized bathroom for my parents
- Separate bedrooms for us kids on the opposite side of the house
- A kitchen placed right in the center like a command center
- And the dog — the true VIP — had a luxurious two-story doghouse
I had basically created a dream home designed by a 10-year-old watching too much Fantasy Homes by the Yard.
Later that day, my mom asked the usual question: “So, what did you guys do today?”
“We drew schematics of our house,” I said casually.
The look on her face was instant and intense. She wasn’t panicked, but there was definitely a “Why does a substitute teacher need to know the exact layout of my home?” expression happening. Parental instincts activated.
But then I showed her my diagram.
She stared at it. Blinked. Then sighed with massive relief.
“This isn’t our house,” she said.
“Nope! I made it up,” I replied proudly.
Her shoulders relaxed so much she probably lost five pounds of tension in one instant. If the substitute was secretly planning a heist, my masterpiece of misinformation would have sent him to the wrong house entirely.
Looking back, the whole moment feels like a sitcom setup — a mysterious substitute collecting “house schematics,” me creating a completely fictional piece of architecture, and my mom going on a full emotional journey in under 30 seconds.
Maybe he was just excited about the Highlights Magazine floor-plan activity. Or maybe — just maybe — he moonlighted in cat burglary. We’ll never know.
But if he was, I like to think I threw him completely off the scent.
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Money Management: The Importance of Financial Literacy
You may have mastered the core subjects like math and grammar in school, but financial literacy – or understanding the basics of money management in order to help you make better financial decisions – often goes overlooked before adulthood. It’s not so much a course of study as it is a plan of action. When you understand how to earn, save, spend and invest wisely, you aren’t just building a stable future for yourself, but your family and community as well.
Last Updated on May 11, 2026 by Daily News Staff
(Feature Impact) You may have mastered the core subjects like math and grammar in school, but financial literacy – or understanding the basics of money management in order to help you make better financial decisions – often goes overlooked before adulthood. It’s not so much a course of study as it is a plan of action.
Financial literacy in the United States has remained stagnant at generally low levels for several years, according to research from TIAA Institute and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center, with even lower levels among Gen Z. Yet greater financial literacy – including key aspects such as goal-setting, budgeting, saving, credit management and investing – is strongly linked to better financial outcomes, including lower rates of debt constraint and financial fragility.
While emboldening yourself to understand financial terms can be a little overwhelming at first, once you have a grasp of basic concepts you can begin to get a handle on your money and make better financial decisions. Simply put: When you understand how to earn, save, spend and invest wisely, you aren’t just building a stable future for yourself, but your family and community as well.
From nonprofit partnerships to volunteer-led programs and fee online resources, Schwab and its employees help millions of people every year build the knowledge and confidence to take charge of their financial futures by serving as board members, mentors, role models and educators.
Because financial health is a lifelong journey, the earlier people learn vital money skills, the better. That’s why the financial advisory services provider develops education programs geared toward kids that continue into adulthood, helping people no matter where they are on their journeys.
Talk Money
It’s never too early to start a conversation about financial literacy. Having teens identify goals that are important to them – such as concert tickets or a first car – can kickstart coversations about money. Working with your child (and a financial advisor, if necessary) on a plan for saving to realize those goals can serve as a jumping off point. After achieving some success, their enthusiasm may grow, which is a powerful motivator to keep saving.
Support School Initiatives and Programs
Outreach programs that empower young people to make smart financial decisions is key to a bright future. Programs like Money Matters – Schwab’s flagship financial education program utilized by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America – gives young people hands-on experience with all aspects of money and investing.
This example, and others, don’t just include program funding – they build partnerships that create impact and opportunity with national collaborations that reach more than 17 million youth annually, empowering young people with the tools and confidence to make smart financial decisions for life.
Spread the Financial Love
Championing financial literacy empowers everyone – individuals, families and communities. By serving as a board member, mentor, role model or educator to help bring financial literacy to others in your community, you can supply the tools and knowledge to lead programs that focus on giving back, empowering future generations in countless ways.
To learn more about financial literacy and find resources to empower your local community, visit SchwabMoneywise.com.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
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Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
