I had the honor of delivering a keynote at the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) convention this year. The talk was called “Opportunity in the Shift,” and I want to share the heart of what I brought to that room. In part, because the conversation I had with hundreds of special educators that day and the ones that followed is one I think we all need to be having.
I started where I always start. With the people doing the work.
Before I got on that stage, I asked educators all over the world to surface their problems of practice. What came back was familiar and heavy. No shared planning time. Managing limited time with massive caseloads. Proximity without partnership. Burnout. Tech that removes teacher agency. Too much time spent differentiating learning materials. And the constant weight of navigating inaccurate assumptions about data.
These are not new problems. But there is one common thread and strong lesson from our co-design sessions that I shared during that talk: You cannot care your way out of a structural problem. You must build your way out of it.
We Have Been Here Before
Education has been through technology revolutions before. Remember 1:1 devices and the App Store era, among those in the past 25 years? The average number of EdTech tools per U.S. school district tripled from 841 in 2018 to 2,739 in 2023. Only half were accessed monthly. Education app users jumped from 185 million to 350 million in three years. And only 4% of educators used evidence-informed decision-making when choosing those tools.
The pattern has continually been inconsistent implementation and inaccurate integration. Even when over 40% of teachers reported difficulties using technology tools in practice. We flooded classrooms with tools and then wondered why outcomes did not follow.
Now there is a powerful technology at the table with us. And, as I shared on the stage, numbers tell a complicated story. 57% of special education teachers used AI to develop an IEP or 504 plan last year. Yet 68% of teachers said they did not receive training on how to use AI tools. 86% of educational organizations worldwide are using AI. Only 10% have governance that supports its effective use.
During my talk I fully acknowledged that ideas for the use of AI are coming from everywhere. However, I also shared my belief that the questions that are surfacing from the educators we have worked with are the right ones. What is possible? What is missing? What could be next?
50 Years of Opening Doors
I grounded the conversation in history because I think it matters. In 1975, more than 1 million children with disabilities were entirely excluded from the public school system. Doors opened. The 1980s brought early intervention services to families of children born with disabilities. The 1990s added new categories, transition services, and a new emphasis on access to the general curriculum. By the 2020s, more than 8 million children with disabilities received special education and related services in public schools.
But even with doors being broken down, today we still have work to do. Our understanding of and expectations for inclusion are not done evolving. We will be pushed and pulled in ways we have never imagined in the years ahead. I shared a few numbers on how our workforce has grown from 695,466 teachers in 2017 to 942,446 teachers and related service personnel in 2022. But was sure to remind the audience at CEC that even last year we still had more than 400,000 teaching positions unfilled. We are not done.
Change has required an ecosystem of change agents who must be thoughtful contributors. Families must be active. Universities must adapt and redesign. Focus must be across a spectrum of players, from early intervention to classroom teachers to therapists to counselors to psychologists to program administrators.
I said during my time on stage, and I will state again today — policies opened the door for inclusion. Teachers have continued to redesign the room. But today technology is offering us a new opportunity to scale.
50 years of evidence shows that when we center the student, outcomes improve across academics, behavior, and engagement. The most successful changes have always put students at the center. Teachers live this every day. Yet we still have gaps in the system.
And it is important that we constantly remember that our students and our teachers live within a system.
It Is Time to Move Beyond the Tools
Here is what I pushed the room to think about. Adding 21st-century technologies to 20th-century teaching practices will dilute the effectiveness of teaching. Using AI without intentional pedagogical framing lowers confidence and reduces engagement.
The tools do not decide what matters. We do.
Quality is more imperative than ever. And we must be mindful of what we are using and how it aligns with research and information that is both well-informed and well-designed. I reminded everyone in the room that the expertise of human teachers and members of the ecosystem that supports all children is of value. We are actively seeing some missteps when expertise gets left out of the equation.
There is so much to consider. And there is so much you can do. But it takes all of us to be cognizant of what we do with AI and what we don’t. It will take humans to question, adapt, test, and retest anything that AI generates. Will it get smarter? Of course, AI systems will, but so will we.
What Co-Design Looks Like in Practice
I shared examples of what we have co-designed with educators, families, teachers, advocates, professors, and leaders. Real use cases that start with problems of practice, not tools.
Building an IEP re-eval sequence for the year with built-in data gathering and new evaluation work. Building a multimodal study tool that is mobile friendly for high school students. Creating a fake dataset so we can see what this data can really tell us if we visualize it, before we write the grant or send out the RFP. Creating leveled text from a paragraph and deploying individualized word documents to student folders in under five minutes. Supporting a family in creating a dashboard for their young child experiencing seizures. Adding visuals to help calm a heated conversation about educator preparation programs. Creating an app that allowed preservice teachers to understand mathematical misconceptions and address those with instructional supports.
These are not hypotheticals. These are things people built because they started with what they knew and what they needed.
Readiness Before Adoption
AI is different than any other technology that has come into this space. Readiness must come before adoption. Nearly 100% of educators we have data for are already using AI. Data privacy is the number one issue for these educators. And while use cases are still focused on efficiency, educators and leaders want guidance from the system, not just ideas. They want collaborative builds with AI tools. Every teacher team I have worked with knows when they are replicating errors and duplicating tasks with generative AI. They don’t want to work in isolation — but it takes a system to help them connect the dots and develop the infrastructure to make this possible.
Co-design is not optional for any of us.
As I shared on stage, we once asked people to learn to think in hypertext. Today we need people to engage in hyper-thinking. The capacity to move across ideas, tools, and perspectives quickly, synthesizing them into informed action. The good news is that teachers do this on a daily basis — now it is time to move that skill to an environment that can leverage AI supported technologies.
What Comes Next
Today more than ever our ability to build is imperative. The most valuable assets you have are your content knowledge and your very human ability to see the unique brilliance of every student you serve. But it can’t stop there.
I challenged the group to go home and lead. When AI tools arrive, what would it look like if they were the person in the room who asks the hard questions? This shift takes leadership and action. One shared lesson. One co-planned unit. One conversation that becomes a workflow.
Responsible AI is not a side project. It is how you safeguard students. The mindsets and habits that make leveraging AI worth it today will be critical for future teachers for the next thirty years.
I stood in front of that room and I thought one thing: The next chapter of policies that support inclusion need the fingerprints of experience at the center.
The story of inclusion is not a finished document. It is a living design. And we can be the designers. If anything, I hope that the folks in that room last week remember that while today we have a new design partner, it will take us actionizing that partner (e.g., AI systems and tools) for anything good and sustainable to happen.
I left with this thought: AI is powerful. So are you.
I truly believe that AI without expertise will add nothing but clutter, AI with expertise can be a game changer. There is so much left to learn, but the big lessons for me are coming directly from the time I am spending with some of the most amazing educators across the multiple countries we are working in today.
Thanks to everyone who joined the conversation last week in Salt Lake City, and who has reached out since to share their insights and observations. You all listened, learned, questioned, pulled, and pushed in so many important ways.
We have one way to go… forward!
Remember that the future of education is being shaped now. We need informed, thoughtful voices to make meaningful choices. Subscribe to Jody’s newsletter for weekly updates as soon as they’re published at https://jodybritten.medium.com/subscribe
