RetrainMap / Pivot Audits / Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education

The Pivot Audit · verified 2026-08-15

Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education: an honest AI-exposure audit

Teach one or more subjects to students at the secondary school level.

How to read this page (the honest frame)
1,094,500
employed, US (2024) — BLS via O*NET OnLine, fetched 2026-08-15
$72,040
median annual wage (2025) — BLS OEWS via O*NET OnLine
Decline (-1%)
BLS projected employment change 2024–34 · projected openings/yr: 66,200
82nd
AI-exposure percentile, of 774 scored occupations — Felten–Raj–Seamans AIOE (2021 index)

About that “decline” projection: a BLS decline projection is not an AI attribution. BLS projections reflect many factors — demand, demographics, technology, offshoring. The exposure indices measure task overlap with AI; they do not establish why BLS expects fewer jobs. We show both without splicing them into one scare number.

USAGE

What the AI-usage data actually shows

Anthropic Economic Index (May 2026): no published figure for this occupation. The index recognizes the occupation but suppressed its numbers this release under privacy minimums — suppression, not zero.

Read this correctly: it measures how often tasks like this occupation's appear in Claude conversations — not how many members of the occupation use AI; “augmentation vs automation” describes conversation styles, not job outcomes. Snapshot of period 2026-05-01; no trend exists. Source: Anthropic Economic Index (CC BY 4.0), retrieved 2026-08-15. The dataset's own instruction: it “cannot ground advice on career choices in either direction.”

AUDIT

What the “related occupations” pivot list really offers

Pivot tools — free and paid — typically recommend O*NET's related occupations for your job. Here is that exact list for Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education, with each occupation's AI-exposure percentile attached. Judge the escape value yourself.

Zero of the 12 scored “related occupations” for this job sit below the median of AI exposure. The skills-adjacent pivot list for this occupation is sideways-or-worse — not because we say so, but because relatedness is shared task content, and exposure is a function of task content.

8 of the 20 related occupations carry no AIOE score (2018-SOC codes newer than the index) — an honest gap, labeled in the table.

#Related occupation (O*NET 30.3)AI-exposure percentile (AIOE)
1Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education87th
2Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education72nd
3Tutorsnot scored
4Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructors93rd
5Special Education Teachers, Secondary Schoolnot scored
6Special Education Teachers, Elementary Schoolnot scored
7Special Education Teachers, Middle Schoolnot scored
8Career/Technical Education Teachers, Middle School63rd
9Teaching Assistants, Preschool, Elementary, Middle, and Secondary School, Except Special Educationnot scored
10Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School60th
11Self-Enrichment Teachers63rd
12Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education59th
13Special Education Teachers, Kindergartennot scored
14Teaching Assistants, Postsecondarynot scored
15English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary97th
16Education Teachers, Postsecondary82nd
17Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary68th
18Teaching Assistants, Special Educationnot scored
19Instructional Coordinators88th
20Special Education Teachers, Preschool60th

Computed 2026-08-15 from O*NET 30.3 “Related Occupations” × AIOE percentiles (average-rank method; full method in the source ledger). Across all 782 scoreable occupations, an occupation's exposure percentile and its related occupations' mean exposure percentile correlate at r = 0.907; 122 of 192 top-quartile-exposed occupations (63.5%) have zero related occupations below median exposure. “Skills-adjacent and AI-safe” is a near-empty set for exactly the people searching for it.

ROUTES

The routes that actually change the number

In the data, pivots that genuinely reduce exposure are mostly job-zone jumps into hands-on work — retraining, not adjacency. That has real costs and real prices, so here they are, from the institutions' own pages. Routes below are the nearest-by-wage destinations from our audited library (exposure ≤ 60th percentile).

Physical Therapist Assistants

$68,380 median wage 2025 Much faster than average (7%+) · BLS 2024–34 −$3,660 vs this occupation's median

AIOE exposure: 37th percentile of 774 scored occupations · employment (2024): 111,500 · wage/outlook: BLS via O*NET OnLine, fetched 2026-08-15

What training costs (published prices, dated):

  • 2-year associate at community colleges. No program price was re-verified today.

Surgical Technologists

$64,650 median wage 2025 Faster than average (5% to 6%) · BLS 2024–34 −$7,390 vs this occupation's median

AIOE exposure: 39th percentile of 774 scored occupations · employment (2024): 115,600 · wage/outlook: BLS via O*NET OnLine, fetched 2026-08-15

What training costs (published prices, dated):

  • Certificate or associate program at community colleges (typically 1–2 years). No program price was re-verified today — ask your local college for the total published cost.

Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses

$64,400 median wage 2025 Average (3% to 4%) · BLS 2024–34 −$7,640 vs this occupation's median

AIOE exposure: 38th percentile of 774 scored occupations · employment (2024): 651,400 · wage/outlook: BLS via O*NET OnLine, fetched 2026-08-15

What training costs (published prices, dated):

  • Lincoln Land Community College (IL) LPN certificate — ≈$8,899 total in-district tuition and fees at the 2025–26 rate ($287/credit; 2026–27: $293/credit); books, supplies and licensing ≈$1,100 more, itemized on the page (llcc.edu, verified 2026-08-15)

Funding: training toward routes like these can be WIOA-fundable for eligible adults and dislocated workers — eligibility is determined at your local American Job Center (find yours); state Eligible Training Provider Lists name the approved programs. Registered apprenticeships are searchable at apprenticeship.gov.

The full report for Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education — $29, one-time

This free audit shows the shape. The paid report builds your priced menu: every evidenced route out of Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education with published program costs near you, earnings records where they exist (College Scorecard field-of-study / Census PSEO), apprenticeship and WIOA funding pointers, the credential ladder, and the same honest exposure read — every figure sourced and dated. No score theater, no “safe jobs” list the data cannot support.

The $29 report Read the free specimen first

No email capture before purchase. No countdown timer. It's a report, not a funnel.

Sources for this page