The adult who spends the most minutes next to the students with the most needs is the adult nobody designs software for. Paraprofessionals sit beside the child with the visual schedule, the reader three grade levels behind, the student who needs every worksheet chunked and every instruction repeated. They do this on the lowest pay in the building, usually with the least training and almost never with a budget line. Every AI tool I have seen marketed to schools is built for the teacher who plans the lesson, not the person who adapts it live at 10:15 on a Tuesday.
This post is for paraprofessionals (teaching assistants or learning support assistants, for UK and Australian readers), for the special education teachers who direct them, and for the director of special education or principal deciding what the support team is allowed to use. It is not about writing IEPs; my guide to AI tools for IEP writing covers that. It is about the six jobs a para actually does between the bell and the bus.
How This List Was Built
The pool was the 28 tools in the directory's special education and accessibility category, plus the two general teacher platforms that turn up in every special education classroom whether anyone chose them or not. I judged each tool on five things: whether it does a job a paraprofessional does, not a job a case manager does; whether it produces something usable in under five minutes without a student account; what the vendor declares about FERPA, COPPA and data hosting; whether the free tier is real; and whether it leaves the judgement with the adult in the chair.
Nobody pays to be on this list and vendors cannot buy placement. Three tools in the category were left out on purpose. Baobab and Sendix are built for EHCP paperwork in England and belong on a SENCO's desk, not a para's. Classroom Companion records and categorises teacher-student interactions by voice, which is a teacher and research tool and still in beta. I also left out Khanmigo for a reason I give below. Pricing and features verified 6 September 2026.
What the Directory Numbers Say About Special Education Tools
Special education tools declare more than the rest of the directory and are checked less. Of the 28 tools in the category, 14 declare FERPA compliance and 12 declare COPPA, against 33 and 29 of the 126 tools in the directory as a whole. Only five of the 28 carry an independent 9ine security assessment, and 13 of the 28 do not say whether they share data with third parties. Eleven are hosted in the US, seven in the UK, four in the EU, one in Australia and five do not say.
That pattern is exactly why the paraprofessional question matters. The person least likely to have read a data privacy agreement is the person most likely to be typing a student's diagnosis into a text box. Twenty-two of the 28 tools list accessibility features, which is the good news; the rule that follows from the rest is the one I would print on the staffroom wall.
If a tool needs the student's name to help, it is not a paraprofessional's tool.
The Six Tools at a Glance
The privacy column is what the vendor declares on our record, not an audit. The final column is the independent one.
| Tool | Best for | Pricing | Grades | Min age | Privacy (declared) | Data hosted | Independent security assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glint | Visual schedules and social stories | Free tier; $18/month or $150/year | All | 18+ | FERPA, COPPA, GDPR | US | No |
| Diffit | Levelling a text before the lesson | Free tier; $14.99/month or $149.99/year | Not stated | Not stated | FERPA, COPPA on vendor site; blank on our record | Not stated | No |
| Read&Write | Reading and writing support at the desk | Free for K-12 teachers; $184/year individual; district from $2.75/seat | Not stated | Not stated | FERPA, COPPA, GDPR on vendor site; blank on our record | Not stated | Yes (9ine) |
| Kami | Working through a worksheet together | Free tier; $149/year | All | No minimum | FERPA, COPPA, GDPR | US | Yes (9ine) |
| MagicSchool | Five-minute prep on a free plan | Free tier; $12.99/month or $8.33/month annual | K-12 | Not stated | FERPA, COPPA on vendor site; blank on our record | Not stated | Yes (9ine) |
| FrenalyticsEDU | Collecting IEP goal data | Free tier; paid EDU tiers, annual | K-12, post-secondary | No minimum | FERPA, COPPA | US | No |
Best for visual schedules and social stories: Glint
Glint is the best fit for the visual supports a paraprofessional makes every week because it generates a visual schedule, a social story or a task analysis from a plain sentence in about a minute, and it is one of the few tools in this category built for that job and nothing else. You type "first maths, then snack, then speech, then bus" and get a printable strip. You type "waiting my turn at the water fountain" and get a five-frame social story you can edit before it goes near a child.
The evidence is the job itself. Visual supports are on more elementary IEPs than any other accommodation I see, and they are the one most often made at the photocopier at 7:40 in the morning with clip art from 2009. Glint's task analysis feature, which breaks a routine like "hand-washing" or "packing up" into steps with a picture per step, is the piece I would hand to every new para on day one. The directory record shows it declares FERPA, COPPA and GDPR, hosts in the US and collects no student data.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool is that MagicSchool will write the text of a social story and leave you to find pictures; Glint produces the visual. What sets it apart from Canva is speed: a para who has never opened a design tool gets a usable strip in one go.
Watch out for: the minimum age is 18, which is fine because this is an adult tool, but it means students never use it themselves. The pictures will not match the symbol set a student already uses in their communication system, so check with the speech-language pathologist before swapping visuals mid-year. The free tier's limits are not published, and there is no independent 9ine assessment yet.
Pricing: free tier with unpublished limits; $18 per month or $150 per year for an individual; district plans with a shared library, usage analytics and bulk licensing by quote (verified 6 September 2026).
Safety: FERPA and COPPA declared, and the vendor says "aligned out of the box"; minimum age 18; hosted in the US; collects no student data; deletion on request; GDPR declared. No independent 9ine assessment.
Best for levelling a text before the lesson: Diffit
Diffit is the best fit for the reading level problem because it takes any passage, article, PDF or YouTube link and rewrites it at the grade level you name, with vocabulary and questions, in the time it takes the class to settle. For a para supporting a fifth grader reading at second-grade level in a science lesson about ecosystems, that is the difference between the student joining the lesson and sitting through it.
It rates 4.2 from 5 reviews on the directory and sits in three directory categories, including special education and accessibility. The feature that matters most for a para is the "adjust by reading level, length or language" control on an existing resource: the teacher makes the lesson text once, the para produces the version for their student, and both come from the same source so the content matches.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool's text leveller is the output. MagicSchool gives you rewritten text; Diffit gives you a formatted resource with a summary, key vocabulary, comprehension questions and, on the paid tier, graphic organisers, ready to print.
Watch out for: levelling can strip out the very vocabulary the student's IEP goal targets, so read the output against the goal before printing. The free tier only lets you see resources made in the last 90 days, and the Google Docs and Slides export sits on the paid plan. Our directory record for Diffit is blank on FERPA, COPPA and hosting; the vendor's own pricing page says it is FERPA and COPPA compliant and collects no student data, and I have asked for the record to be updated.
Pricing: free Basic plan with PDF download and 90 days of history; Premium at $14.99 per month or $149.99 per year; school plans are a flat annual rate tiered by enrolment, by quote (verified 6 September 2026).
Safety: FERPA and COPPA stated on the vendor's site, not yet on our record; no student data collected per the vendor; minimum age and hosting not stated; no independent 9ine assessment. Keep student names out of the prompt anyway; the tool does not need them.
Best for reading and writing support at the student's desk: Read&Write
Read&Write is the best fit for the accommodation itself, rather than the prep for it, because it is the toolbar that reads the screen aloud with dual-colour highlighting, predicts the next word as a student types, and turns a highlighted passage into a vocabulary list with pictures. It has been doing this since before anyone called it AI, which is precisely why it works on a Monday.
Three things make it a paraprofessional's tool. It runs on the student's Chromebook, so the para is coaching the student to use their own accommodation rather than doing it for them. It carries an independent 9ine security assessment, one of only five tools in the category that does. And Texthelp, now Everway, has made it free for K-12 teachers, which is how most support staff first meet it.
What sets it apart from Kami is scope: Kami works inside a document, Read&Write works on anything on screen, including the web page the teacher just put on the board.
Watch out for: the free-for-teachers offer says teachers, so a para usually needs the district licence, and the district licence is where the real price lives. It is an accommodation tool, not a generator; it will not make you a worksheet. Our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA and hosting, while the vendor's pricing page displays FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, SOPPA and ISO 27001 badges; ask for the data hosting location in writing.
Pricing: free premium subscription for K-12 teachers; $184 per year for an individual licence; K-12 group licences at $18.30 per seat with a 150-seat minimum; district licences from $2.75 per seat, all in US dollars and billed annually (verified 6 September 2026).
Safety: FERPA, COPPA and GDPR displayed on the vendor's site, not yet on our record; independent 9ine security assessment held; hosting and minimum age not stated on our record.
Best for working through a worksheet together: Kami
Kami is the best fit for the side-by-side work a para does all day because it turns the PDF the teacher handed out into a document the student can hear read aloud, annotate by voice or by hand, and share back, with the para in the same file. A student who cannot yet write a paragraph can record their answer; a student who cannot read the question can have it read to them without leaving the page.
The directory record is the evidence here: Kami declares FERPA, COPPA and GDPR, hosts in the US, collects no student data on our record, allows deletion on request, has no minimum age, and holds an independent 9ine security assessment. That is the cleanest safety line of any tool in this post, and it is why Kami is the one I would let a student log into.
What sets it apart from Google Docs is that the worksheet stays a worksheet; nothing has to be retyped. What sets it apart from Read&Write is the collaboration: two people, one file, live.
Watch out for: the AI features, including the auto-generated questions and auto-grading, sit on the paid Teacher plan, and the free Basic plan is the annotation toolset. It only helps if the worksheet is digital, so the para still needs the file, not the photocopy. Domain-wide deployment is a district purchase.
Pricing: free Basic plan with the core annotation tools, Google Drive and OneDrive integration and unlimited collaborators; Teacher plan at $149 per year with all 40+ tools and LMS integrations; school and district plans by quote (verified 6 September 2026).
Safety: FERPA and COPPA declared; no minimum age, so under-13 use runs under the school's consent; hosted in the US; collects no student data on our record; deletion on request; GDPR declared; independent 9ine security assessment held.
Best for five-minute prep on a free plan: MagicSchool
MagicSchool is the best fit for the small prep jobs that fill a para's gaps because its free plan gives you the text leveller, the sentence starters, the vocabulary list, the chunked directions and a behaviour support suggestion tool without a purchase order, and it holds an independent 9ine security assessment. It rates 4.74 from 19 reviews on the directory, the highest of any tool on this list.
The tool I would point a para to first is not the IEP generator. It is the one that takes "student refuses to start written tasks and puts head on desk" and returns five evidence-informed strategies to try before you call the teacher over. A 2026 study of 204 paraprofessionals across 60 elementary schools in The Journal of Special Education found they reported only moderate knowledge of behaviour management practices, and the less experienced wanted more training on managing disruptive behaviour and spotting triggers. A tool that offers a strategy in the moment is not training, but it is a better first move than guessing.
What sets it apart from ChatGPT is that every tool is a form with an education-shaped prompt behind it, so a para who has never written a prompt gets a usable result, and the vendor signs district data privacy agreements. What sets it apart from Diffit is breadth: 80 tools rather than one job done deeply.
Watch out for: the IEP generator is a case manager's tool and a para should not be drafting IEP content, however tempting the button. The free plan has limited generations and history, which runs out fast in a busy week. Our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA and hosting; the vendor's pricing page claims FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2, GDPR and Common Sense Privacy certification, and I have asked for the record to be updated. If your district has the enterprise plan, use that login, not a personal one.
Pricing: free plan with 80+ teacher tools and limited generations; Plus at $12.99 per month or $8.33 per month billed annually; Enterprise for districts by quote, with a custom data privacy agreement, SSO and SIS integration (verified 6 September 2026).
Safety: FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2 and GDPR claimed on the vendor's site, not yet on our record; minimum age and hosting not stated on our record; independent 9ine security assessment held.
Best for collecting IEP goal data: FrenalyticsEDU
FrenalyticsEDU is the best fit for the data collection paras are asked to do on IEP goals because it replaces the clipboard tally with a session that records the student's responses as they happen and turns them into the progress monitoring chart the case manager needs at the annual review. In most US special education classrooms it is the para, not the teacher, who runs the trial and marks the tick, and this is the one tool on the list built around that fact.
The directory record shows it declares FERPA and COPPA, hosts in the US, does not share data with third parties and lets you request deletion. It is also, by design, the tool that collects the most: name, email, date of birth, learning data, location and usage analytics. That is not a criticism, since progress monitoring cannot work without the student's data, but it changes who may set it up. This is a case manager's purchase with the para as a user, never a para's free sign-up.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool is that MagicSchool drafts the goal; FrenalyticsEDU measures it. What sets it apart from a spreadsheet is the audit trail.
Watch out for: the free plan has a single staff account, so a para would be working under the teacher's login, which is exactly the shared-credential habit a FERPA audit dislikes; ask for a named account. GDPR is declared as "no" on our record, so UK and Irish readers stop here. There is no independent 9ine assessment.
Pricing: free plan with 10 student profiles, one staff account and one learning session per student per day; EDU Essentials and EDU Extras tiers listed at $1,499 and $1,699 with annual billing, and the pricing page's period label is unclear, so confirm the figure with the vendor before signing; Enterprise with rostering and SSO by quote (verified 6 September 2026).
Safety: FERPA and COPPA declared; no minimum age; hosted in the US; collects name, date of birth, learning and location data; shares with no third parties; deletion on request; GDPR declared no. No independent 9ine assessment.
What About ChatGPT, Khanmigo, Quizlet, NotebookLM and SchoolAI?
These are the names a para will be asked about in the staffroom, so one line each. ChatGPT is not a paraprofessional's tool for anything involving a student, because without a district agreement there is no data privacy agreement, and the habit of pasting a student's behaviour plan into a public chatbot is the single most common FERPA mistake I see support staff make. Khanmigo is a Socratic tutor that needs a student account and a fixed pedagogy; it is a good tool for the student, and it is not a tool for the para, which is why it is not on the list. Quizlet is a study tool for older students and has no special education layer. NotebookLM is the best free tool for a para who wants to understand a 40-page evaluation report, provided the report has been de-identified first. SchoolAI is worth knowing about if your district has bought it, because a para can watch a student's AI conversation live inside a bounded Space; it rates 4.92 from 13 reviews on the directory.
How Can Paraprofessionals Use AI in the Classroom?
Paraprofessionals can use AI for the preparation around a student and should not use it for the judgement about one. That is my rule for teachers, outsource the doing and not the thinking, applied to the person whose whole job is the thinking that happens in the moment: is this student ready to try the next step, is this a behaviour or a need, does this visual mean anything to this child. No tool above can make those calls. Every tool above can shave minutes off the prep that gets in the way of making them.
Three rules follow. If the tool needs the student's name, diagnosis or IEP goal to work, stop and ask the case manager which approved tool to use, because the answer is probably "none" and the second answer is FrenalyticsEDU under a named account. If the job is making something a student will hold or see, use Glint for visuals and Diffit for text, and check the output against the IEP before it reaches the child. If the job is helping a student do their own work, put the tool on the student's device, Read&Write or Kami, and coach them to use it, because the accommodation the student can run without you is the one that survives your absence.
One thing for the leaders reading this. Paraprofessional staffing in US public schools rose by about a quarter between 2012 and 2022 on the National Council on Teacher Quality's analysis of federal data, and classroom aides were the most frequently cited vacancy in the NCES School Pulse Panel. England now has 295,183 full-time equivalent teaching assistants, 6,200 more than the year before. This is the fastest-growing group of adults in classrooms on both sides of the Atlantic, and almost none of your AI training budget reaches them. Fix that before you buy another licence.
What I'd Do This Week
Pick one student, one routine and one tool. Ask the case manager which visual support that student needs most and make it in Glint on Monday, then use it every day for the rest of the week. Measure one thing: how many prompts it takes to start the routine on Friday compared with Monday. If the number drops, you have evidence for the next IEP meeting and a reason to ask for the paid plan. If it does not, you have learnt something about the student that no tool could have told you, and that is the job.
The Bottom Line
The best AI tools for paraprofessionals are the ones that prep, not the ones that decide: Glint for visual schedules and social stories, Diffit for levelling a text, Read&Write for reading and writing support on the student's own device, Kami for working through a worksheet together, MagicSchool for five-minute prep on a free plan, and FrenalyticsEDU for IEP goal data under a named account. Five of the 28 tools in the special education and accessibility category have been independently assessed, and the security assessments page shows which. My posts on AI tools for students with dyslexia and which AI tools are actually safe for schools sit alongside this one, and the full directory has the rest.
The paraprofessional is the most individualised teacher in the building. It is about time the tools noticed.
Dan Fitzpatrick is a Forbes contributor, a three-time bestselling author and the founder of The AI Educator, and has trained more than 150,000 educators across 30+ countries.
