How AI Tools Can Support Special Education Students and Teachers

AI Can Help Teachers Deliver Truly Personalized Learning

An IEP is, by design, a personalized education plan tailored to one student, and AI can help identify that student’s strengths, weaknesses and key reteaching moments with much greater speed.

For instance, AI can be used to analyze whether a student understands and has mastered a specific learning objective. Instead of a teacher manually combing through evidence-based practices, AI can quickly review a student’s performance and pinpoint where things are breaking down. For example, if a student moves through a multistep math problem and clearly understands A, B and C but consistently struggles with D, AI can flag that pattern and recommend more targeted instruction on that final step.

AI can also streamline the lesson planning and assessment process, which involves conducting the initial assessment, building an individualized learning plan, checking a student’s progress against that plan and then suggesting where reteaching is needed. Having the teacher be able to access all of that information in less time with the use of AI is a true game changer.

WATCH: Industry experts discuss AI’s 2026 trajectory. 

How AI-Driven Assistive Technology Supports Special Ed

For a lot of students with special needs, one of their biggest challenges is communication. 

AI-powered augmentative and alternative communication systems can make a world of difference, especially for students who have severe speech difficulties. 

By analyzing a child’s speech patterns, AI can help speech-language pathologists working in elementary schools figure out exactly what a child is trying to say. Many of these students have a high level of frustration because they can’t communicate easily. But if AI can recognize what they’re saying and then produce it, that can be extremely freeing for children who have struggled to be understood.

At the high school level, special education teachers can use AI-powered virtual and augmented reality technologies to support social skills — the everyday “what do you do in this situation?” and “how do you react?” questions that students face. Using AI to generate ideas to help regulate behavior and manage anger is especially valuable because it can create real-world scenarios that students are likely to encounter.

For example, AI can walk a student through the appropriate way to respond when they’re frustrated because they have to wait in a line, or how to order when they’re nervous at a restaurant. The technology enables students to practice those skills in low-stakes environments before they have to handle those moments in real life.

SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to get the latest EdTech content delivered to your inbox weekly.

How AI Can Reduce IEP Workloads

Special educators spend a lot of time outside of instruction on administrative tasks because the  reporting process for IEPs requires a great deal of paperwork.

They must document a student’s needs, goals, services and accommodations; track progress over time; and record meetings, parent input and any changes made during the year. And they have to meet all of these requirements within a set time period, typically a school year.

Using an AI-supported system that plugs certain information into the IEP reporting system — all the things that have been observed about the student, their behaviors, learning goals and objectives — can be a tremendous timesaving tool for special education teachers.

Of course, the privacy of all that student data remains paramount. All students are covered under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but data privacy requirements are even higher for special education students, as covered under IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

K–12 schools can comply with those data privacy requirements by using AI in a closed system, meaning that student data and interactions stay within the school’s secure network and aren’t used to train public models.

Empowering Every Classroom With Humans Still at the Helm

Looking ahead, as AI becomes more ingrained, these tools are likely to become easier to use and easier to access. Right now, there’s still a real division between special education and regular education. But if regular education teachers can use AI to make it easier to include special education students and provide the accessibility they need, I think we’ll see much more adoption. In my view, that’s the real key: empowering the regular classroom teacher to use AI technology to support all learners.

It's worth remembering that as exciting as these AI tools are, they can never take the place of a human educator. AI can provide feedback and offer suggestions, but without that special education teacher at the wheel, we lose the most important part of the equation.

This article is part of the ConnectIT: Bridging the Gap Between Education and Technology series.