A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Roles for Education Paraprofessionals in Effective Schools - 1997

Career Development Program

Albuquerque School District
Albuquerque, New Mexico

A University-District-Association Partnership

Financial and social support strengthen career ladder
Innovative funding promotes interagency collaboration
Classroom experience is linked to certification

Overview

Elena is a full-time college student for the first time in her life at the age of 32. After working as an educational assistant in a public elementary school for seven years, she received a scholarship that allows her to take a leave of absence from work and study full-time. Before the semester started, Elena was concerned about finding her way around campus, keeping up with her courses, and helping her husband and two children cope with the demands resulting from her becoming a full-time student. Attending a support group has helped her adjust because the group provides a place where she can ask questions and share feelings about her experiences. After the semester is over, Elena, who has applied for and was awarded a federal grant, will resume her studies full-time next semester and finish her bachelor's degree in special education within a year.

The Career Development Program targets educational assistants in the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS), providing them with one-semester scholarships at the University of New Mexico (UNM). The program is a collaborative effort by APS, UNM, and the Albuquerque Educational Assistants Association (AEAA), an AFT affiliate. The program provides scholarship recipients with leave time from their jobs, financial assistance to compensate them for both lost income and the costs of tuition and books, and a support group to help them make the transition to their new experiences as full-time students.

Program Context

The Career Development Program awards scholarships to five educational assistants every semester. There are about 97,000 students and 11,000 school staff members in the public schools in Albuquerque. APS has about 1,600 educational assistants, including 1,400 who work full-time. Educational assistants in APS are funded through the following programs: Title I, Title VII, Special Education, and Indian education.

Major Program Features

Program Development

In January 1990, representatives from APS and UNM discussed the need to provide support for educational assistants with limited resources who were interested in earning a bachelor's degree in education. Although previously many educational assistants had taken courses at the vocational-technical college in Albuquerque and participated in training offered by AEAA, few could afford to take education courses at UNM and work toward their teaching certificate.

A planning group, consisting of individuals from both APS and UNM, discussed how to provide support to educational assistants and how to meet the needs of mid-career professionals who want to earn their teaching certificates to teach at the elementary level. The group, led by Dr. Keith Auger of UNM, developed an exchange of services financial model (discussed below) to support a scholarship/degree program for educational assistants and an intern/licensure program for mid-career professionals with bachelor's degrees outside of education.

Targeted Participants

To be accepted into the scholarship/degree program, candidates must have worked as educational assistants at an Albuquerque public school for at least three years. In addition, program staff look for educational assistants with some college credits who have earned contact hours by taking courses offered by AEAA and the school district. Applicants must submit a resume, a set of recommendations, including one from their principal or another person who has supervised their work, and a completed UNM application form.

Once they are selected, scholarship recipients enroll in one of four departments: elementary, secondary, bilingual, or special education. Thus far, all scholarship recipients have been women, their ages ranging from their mid-30s to their 50s. Recipients are 54 percent minority (52 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian).

Program staff publicize the program by advertising in newsletters and career opportunities brochures sent to APS teachers, sending a mailing to members of AEAA, and mailing a flier to each school.

Financial Assistance and Leave Time

Each educational assistant selected to participate in the program receives a one-semester scholarship of $5,000. Some of the scholarship pays for full-time tuition and expenses, and the remainder offsets the loss of income from not working. Because APS gives them leave time, educational assistants can return to their jobs once they complete the program.

Support Group

Scholarship recipients, many of whom are the first in their families to go to college, have many concerns and fears once they begin the program. To learn how to negotiate the university system, and to share their experiences with each other, they meet on a bi-weekly basis. Their meetings are facilitated by a professor from the Department of Family Studies and Counseling at UNM. At the meetings, they learn about different resources at UNM. For example, the new scholarship recipients tour the Center for Academic Performance, a tutoring program at the University, and they meet the center's director. Many of them work with tutors at the center.

Curriculum Content

Once scholarship recipients satisfy UNM's core course requirements and are ready to begin their professional coursework, they may choose between a traditional track and a blocked track. In the traditional track, students complete their courses and then they do their student teaching. In the blocked track, students take integrated courses while they do their fieldwork.

Funding

The Career Development Program awards scholarships to ten educational assistants each year, at a total cost of $50,000. The program also makes $10,000 available for recipients electing to continue their studies for an additional semester. The scholarships are funded through an exchange-of-services financial model: through a contractual agreement with APS, UNM supplies the district with elementary teacher interns who cover an average of 15 classrooms every year.

Scholarships are funded through an internship licensure program. The interns are mid-career professionals enrolled in a 17-month, 39-semester-hour program at UNM to earn elementary teaching licenses. They begin the program in January, taking courses and working full-time in an elementary classroom under the supervision of a mentor teacher. After taking courses during the summer, the interns receive temporary teaching licenses.

In the fall, the interns co-teach in pairs. During spring semester, one intern from each pair becomes the head teacher in the same classroom while the other becomes the head teacher in a different classroom (and often in a different school). Throughout the program, the interns meet weekly in methods seminars and receive weekly in-classroom support from supervisors.

Interns pay tuition only for the first spring semester. Once they co-teach in the fall and teach on their own during the second spring semester, they earn about one-third of a beginning teacher's salary, paid by the program. With the money it saves, UNM can pay the scholarships for the educational assistants, the program director's salary, and stipends for supervisors, mentors, and interns.

Other Opportunities

The Technical Vocational Institute in Albuquerque offers an associate's degree program in child development for educational assistants. Educational assistants take courses at a cost of $23 per credit hour. Eighty-five credit hours are transferable to UNM.

The Albuquerque Teachers Federation offers educational assistants 16 training courses. One of these courses, Educational Research and Dissemination, is a 16-hour course, but the rest are all two-hour courses. Educational assistants can earn career ladder credit for taking college courses or courses provided by the teachers' union.

Evidence of Success

The program was started in January 1991. As of May 1995, there were 48 scholarship recipients. Twenty-two have earned degrees in education along with their teaching licenses. Twenty of these 22 are now working as regular classroom teachers, bilingual teachers, and special education teachers in elementary and secondary classrooms. Only one scholarship recipient chose not to finish her degree; the rest are continuing to take courses.

Through the program 36 of the 48 recipients have received additional support ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, to continue their studies. In addition, through the support group, many of them have applied for and received grants, loans, and other scholarships. Through creative schedules some scholarship recipients work as educational assistants while they continue taking courses full-time.

In 1995, the Career Development Program won an Association of Teacher Educators' Distinguished Teacher Education Program Award.
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