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.

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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.

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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.

(Feature Impact) Rosacea is a chronic skin condition, mainly affecting the face, that causes redness, swelling, pain and changes in appearance. It is estimated that more than 16 million people in the United States have rosacea, according to the National Rosacea Society (NRS), but only about 1 million are under active treatment.

Physical impacts include prominent redness, acne-like bumps and pimples, highly visible enlarged blood vessels, pronounced dryness and unpleasant sensations like stinging, burning, itching and tingling. As many as half of sufferers also experience eye symptoms. Rosacea also affects emotional and social well-being. From lower confidence and self-esteem to avoidance of public contact and social engagements and missed work, the impacts are far-reaching. However, rosacea can be treated and managed.

Learn more about the condition with this information from the NRS and the experts at Crescel, who are transforming rosacea care by harnessing nature and science to heal skin with their Skin Renewal Cream. It holds the NRS’s Seal of Acceptance, and its therapeutic benefits and tolerance have been confirmed in multiple clinical studies.

“Sensitive and easily irritated skin is a common issue for people with rosacea, and harsh products can aggravate the condition,” said Andrew Huff, executive director of the NRS. “That’s why the NRS expertly evaluates skin care and cosmetic products to ensure they are gentle, clinically tested and found to be unlikely to irritate sensitive rosacea skin.”

What causes rosacea?

The exact cause of rosacea is not fully understood. However, research suggests facial redness is often the first step in a chain of skin inflammation. This process may begin when the nerves, blood vessels and immune system don’t work together as they should.

Researchers have also found a microscopic skin mite called Demodex may play a role. These tiny arachnids normally live within hair follicles and oil glands on everyone’s skin, but people with rosacea tend to have higher numbers on the face, which may contribute to irritation and inflammation.

Some studies have found links between rosacea and other health conditions, such as heart disease, digestive disorders, neurological or autoimmune conditions and certain cancers. These findings suggest rosacea may be related to inflammation throughout the body.

What are the most common symptoms?

The most common symptoms of rosacea include:

• Easy or severe blushing or flushing
• Persistent redness
• Bumps and pimples on the skin without blackheads
• Burning or itching sensation
• Swelling

Symptoms are different for each person and can change over time. There may be times when symptoms are worse and instances when they become milder.

What triggers a flare up?

Rosacea patients can improve their chances of maintaining remission by identifying and avoiding lifestyle and environmental factors that trigger flare-ups or aggravate the condition.

Common triggers include sun exposure, stress, extreme temperatures, heavy exercise, alcohol consumption, spicy foods and some skin, hair and makeup products.

What causes a flare-up in one person may have no effect on another, making this a highly individualized process. Knowing what triggers your flare-ups can help reduce discomfort, improve treatment results and prevent the condition from getting worse.

How do you treat rosacea?

Because the signs and symptoms of rosacea vary from one patient to another, treatment is tailored by a physician for each individual case. It typically involves three key elements:

• Skin care: Committing to a gentle routine using mild, non-irritating products.
• Lifestyle management: Identifying and reducing exposure to triggers.
• Medication and other therapies: Combining topical and oral treatments along with laser therapy to target various symptoms.

As the world’s first intelligent therapeutic, Crescel’s Skin Renewal Cream harnesses nature and science to heal skin. The cream contains:

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Talk with your dermatologist about your treatment routine and visit crescel.com to learn more about rosacea care.

SOURCE:
Crescel

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Last Updated on February 6, 2026 by Daily News Staff

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