Career Explorer Education
Changing shape
Special education teachers, secondary school
Teach academic, social, and life skills to secondary school students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who specialize and work with students who are blind or have visual impairments; students who are deaf or have hearing impairments; and students with intellectual disabilities.
Changing faster than most: more resilient than 29% of the 831 careers we score. AI exposure is high (the Bureau of Labor Statistics rates it high), and US jobs are projected to change by -0.2% by 2035, expected to shrink. The work leans on emotional intelligence and creative vision.
AI can do many of the tasks, and hiring is expected to grow slower than average or to shrink. The job is likely to change, so build the human parts of it.
- Median pay (2025)
- $74,260
- Job growth to 2035
- -0.2%
- Openings a year
- 10,400
- People doing it (2025)
- 165,000
- Usual route in
- Bachelor's degree
Where people already use AI for this work
- Advise others on educational or vocational matters
- Prepare informational or instructional materials
- Teach life skills
From Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025).
Work AI rarely helps with
- Develop educational programs, plans, or procedures
- Assess student capabilities, needs, or performance
- Collaborate in the development of educational programs
What the work looks like
- Establish and enforce rules for behavior and policies and procedures to maintain order among students.
- Maintain accurate and complete student records, and prepare reports on children and activities, as required by laws, district policies, and administrative regulations.
- Confer with parents, administrators, testing specialists, social workers, or other professionals to develop individual educational plans (IEPs) for students' educational, physical, and social development.
- Employ special educational strategies and techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition, and memory.
- Establish clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects, and communicate those objectives to students.
From O*NET 31.0, US Department of Labor.
Careers using similar strengths, with a stronger outlook
- Career/technical education teachers, middle schoolChanging shape, Index 33, -0.5%
- Kindergarten teachers, except special educationChanging shape, Index 58, -0.3%
- Speech-language pathologistsGrows with AI, Index 77, +16.6%
- Medical and health services managersGrows with AI, Index 76, +24.2%
Also known as: HS SPED Teacher (High School Special Education Teacher), Learning Support Teacher, SPED Resource Teacher (Special Education Resource Teacher), SPED Teacher (Special Education Teacher), Education Specialist, Emotional Disability Special Education Teacher (ED SPED Teacher), Exceptional Student Education Teacher (ESE Teacher), Handicapped Teacher.
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Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2025 to 2035; O*NET 31.0; Microsoft Research (2025); Anthropic Economic Index (2026); Eloundou and colleagues (Science, 2024); Felten, Raj and Seamans (2023). How we score. Updated 12 October 2026.