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
Executive Summary
Educational paraprofessionals, also known as teaching assistants, can provide strong, multidimensional support for students' academic success. When schools and districts provide paraprofessionals with appropriate training, instructional team support, and supervision, the academic substance and effectiveness of their contributions to students improve. Paraprofessionals can play many roles well. In some Title I programs, for example, well trained and supervised paraprofessionals supplement the school's resources and help educationally disadvantaged students reach high academic standards. In many communities, paraprofessionals serve as advocates and coaches for students and families whose status as new immigrants or migrant workers may pose challenges to students' academic progress. Paraprofessionals not only nurture the emerging social and cognitive competence of preschoolers, they engage parents in thoughtful discussions about raising healthy and academically successful children. In programs for at-risk adolescents, paraprofessionals mentor, cajole, and offer a sympathetic ear so youngsters can say no to destructive impulses and yes to educational opportunity. Paraprofessionals also contribute to adult education programs associated with school-based initiatives.
As leaders in the professional associations that represent teaching assistants have noted, poor screening, assignment, and supervision sometimes place paraprofessionals in situations for which they are not adequately trained or supported. To save money or limit turnover, decisionmakers may, for example, reassign paraprofessionals hired to promote parent involvement or monitor attendance to positions demanding different skills, such as translating lesson content or tutoring in math. The best interests of students are not served by such practices.
Those wishing to improve overall school effectiveness must first assess not the size and quality of the paraprofessional staff but rather the overall adequacy of curriculum, instruction, and organizational arrangements--the foundation of everyone's work in school. If the assessment indicates that enhancing the role of paraprofessionals is desirable, then that goal may be achieved by applying sound principles in defining paraprofessionals' assignments, by choosing qualified candidates, and by providing professional development designed to ensure solid performance.
Paraprofessionals and Their Work
Paraprofessionals account for a major segment of today's elementary and secondary school workforce. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 500,000 classroom and library assistants were employed in the 1993-94 school year, most (90 percent) in public schools. About 75 percent of all paraprofessionals work in elementary schools (compared with 57 percent of teachers). Almost half of the paraprofessional workforce is involved in some aspect of special education. A little more than 15 percent work in bilingual programs, and about 18 percent work in programs supported by Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). More than one-third work part-time.
Employment guidelines and credentialing practices for paraprofessionals vary widely across individual districts and states. Thirty-one states have established minimal standards for paraprofessionals' education and experience, and 13 states have established certification or credentialing systems.
In many districts, paraprofessionals are members of bargaining units represented by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), the School Employees Association, or the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). About 100,000 paraprofessionals belong to AFT affiliates, and almost 120,000 belong to NEA affiliates. SEIU represents more than 100,000 school employees nationwide; in Los Angeles, most of SEIU's 28,000 members are teaching assistants. Local affiliates negotiate paraprofessionals' salaries and benefits, promote work-related professional development, initiate or support legislation about credentialing standards, and establish career ladders.
Paraprofessionals are often recruited from the local school community, a fact reflected in the employment demographics. In major urban and rural areas, 60 to 75 percent of paraprofessionals are from racial and language minority groups. In the suburbs, paraprofessionals are predominantly white.
Assessing Whether Paraprofessionals Can Help
The experience of many districts shows that paraprofessionals can make substantial contributions to school effectiveness. However, the overall quality of the school or program setting influences the quality of the work of any staff member, including the paraprofessional. Before deciding to invest in hiring or training paraprofessionals or in any other staff, educators should reflect on three questions about programmatic aspects of school success:
Do curriculum and instruction in general engage students in hard work on challenging content?
Research (Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993; USED, 1987) on effective schools has identified several factors consistently associated with student success. A key ingredient is providing high-quality lessons that engage students in cognitive activities that lead to learning (Tomlinson, 1990). Other ingredients that contribute significantly to effectiveness are safety and order, clear academic focus, frequent monitoring of student progress, instructional leadership, high expectations, and good home/school relationships, all of which support students' hard work. When student achievement is proven unsatisfactory, the schools must first question whether the curriculum and instructional practices, taken as a whole, are compatible with student needs and community expectations for academic attainment. Only if the program is sound will paraprofessionals' work have the intended impact.
In their individual and collective work, do staff members recognize their own contributions and those of others in promoting student achievement, and do they continuously gather evidence about the effects of their own performance?
Programs that could support students' academic success are often compromised by weak implementation. The performance of the instructional team may be impaired by lack of understanding of what is properly expected of them, the inability to assess their work in light of program goals, unwillingness to reject ineffective but familiar approaches, or failure to coordinate their efforts with other team members. In schools where the focus is on total quality and continuous improvement, however, paraprofessionals, along with teachers, administrators, custodians, and other staff members, take an engaged, critical stance with respect to the whole organization's productivity. Staff recognize their contribution and that of others and strive for individual and collective efficiency. In the absence of such coherence, paraprofessionals' work may not materially advance educational goals.
Do school policy and practice communicate an unequivocal commitment to ensuring every student's success and to avoiding preventable failures?
In a recent analysis of promising educational programs, Stringfield (1995) documents their resemblance to high reliability organizations (HROs), such as the staff that oversees air traffic control towers and electric power grids. Because members of HROs share the belief that each failure is a disaster, they use interlocking task structures, deliberately overlapping roles, and a high degree of mutual accountability at every level of their operations to focus everyone's attention on success. They exhibit zero tolerance for system failure. School officials must recognize that ensuring the academic success of all students may not depend only on hiring more staff or redefining staff roles but may also necessitate a commitment to policies and practices that encourage people to protect against any potential student failure. Overall, before they can determine whether to add paraprofessional positions or change paraprofessionals' roles, education decisionmakers need to assess (1) the adequacy of curriculum and instruction, (2) the extent of organizational engagement, and (3) the level of staff commitment to every student's success.
Elements of Good Paraprofessional Practice
Ensuring that paraprofessionals' work contributes appropriately to achieving the school's mission requires five important factors: clear definitions of roles and responsibilities; appropriate job qualifications; ongoing professional development; organizational support; and career ladders for those aspiring to be certified teachers. Clear Definitions of Paraprofessionals' Roles and Responsibilities
Aligning diverse responsibilities, time allocations, teacher direction, and formal supervision can generate clear expectations for teaching assistants and lay the foundation for teamwork between them and their teacher colleagues. Because paraprofessionals now play many diverse educational roles, they need clearly defined responsibilities, or they risk being pulled in different directions by those who direct and supervise them. For instance, a teaching assistant whose job is to manage a computer lab may be regularly asked to patrol the halls or deliver audio/visual equipment to various teachers, leaving her assignment uncovered. Those who work closely with paraprofessionals suggest that role overload and role conflict are more often the rule than the exception.
Appropriate Job Qualifications
Concerns about the qualifications of teaching assistants were raised during the recent reauthorization of ESEA, after studies commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education found that some Chapter 1 assistants were assuming roles normally reserved for teachers. To help prevent such problems, 26 states have established specific education or experience guidelines for hiring paraprofessionals in regular education. Through the advocacy of professional associations, some paraprofessionals have called for employment standards, such as a minimum number of college credits or a minimum level of training. For example, the AFT has recommended that standards for paraprofessional licensing include: a high school diploma; district-sponsored training that includes initial preservice and ongoing inservice education; and demonstrated competency in areas directly bearing on paraprofessionals' assignments, such as instructional methods, behavior management, and child development. Associations of early childhood educators have recommended similar credentialing requirements.
Ongoing Professional Development
Awareness of the value of professional development is growing at school and classroom levels and among policy makers at state and local levels. In Title I projects that have earned national recognition for their educational quality, staff development for paraprofessionals (as well as for other staff) is sometimes a key feature, and the terms of ESEA promote this approach. The effectiveness of any professional development program is determined in part by its goals, curriculum, and structure. Developing a good training program begins by identifying which skills and knowledge are most important for paraprofessionals to cultivate. Experts recommend that professional development programs include topics that not only provide the foundation for instructional support activities but also build a shared professional language for collaborating with teachers (Pickett & NEA, 1994). These topics include: the developmental characteristics of children; learning principles and instructional strategies; classroom and behavior management strategies; school policies, legal and ethical issues, and confidentiality protection; school governance issues related to school or district practices; and maintenance of a safe and secure environment.
Professional development activities should provide a continuum of experiences, including:
- Formal orientation that sets the foundation for paraprofessionals' work. Participating as a fully contributing member in a team effort requires understanding the team's goals, the team's relationship to the larger institution, and the ways different roles and responsibilities fit together to form an integrated whole.
- Training sessions that supplement and enhance knowledge and skill development. Paraprofessionals, like other educators, are continually learning from their practice, but their learning can be accelerated and focused at key junctures by formal professional development experiences.
- Structured on-the-job coaching in classrooms or other learning environments. Every concept and strategy acquires a slightly new shape when applied to real classroom settings and implemented with the unique skills and insights of a practitioner. Paraprofessionals, like other educators, learn best when formal training is supplemented with opportunities to reflect on practice in the company of a colleague whose understanding of a given technique or content area is more advanced.
- Opportunities for paraprofessionals to earn academic credit or enter professional preparation programs. Because the content of professional development programs often overlaps formal coursework for teachers, and because the pool of teaching assistants has been identified as ideal in many ways for recruiting new teachers, the quality, relevance, and motivational features of inservice education may be enhanced overall by links with formal education.
Along with preservice and inservice education, instructive and supportive supervision offers a noticeable boost to teaching assistants' performance. Although some paraprofessionals may lack access to formal training, they can learn from the teachers who direct their work, if time and circumstances permit. Such arrangements instill a team approach to meeting the needs of students, give teachers opportunities to groom paraprofessionals to assume new tasks, and provide teaching assistants with feedback for improving their performance. Some skills, such as tutoring students or managing their behavior, also benefit from systematic planning. It is important to note, however, that many teachers have hectic schedules that may prevent them from providing routine or consistent support. Therefore, the school system must make a commitment to support this teamwork.
Organizational Support for Paraprofessionals' Work
Roles designed for paraprofessionals should be performed under the supportive direction of a certified teacher. Effective programs and schools provide the conditions that enable paraprofessionals to learn the duties required of them, receive evaluation that helps them excel in their positions, and become more aware of the important role they play on the instructional team. Unfortunately, say those closely connected with paraprofessionals' work, these conditions are seldom found in most schools. Four organizational supports are especially useful in developing positive conditions.
First, written job descriptions provide teaching assistants and their supervisors with an explicit understanding of the assistants' responsibilities. As school improvement efforts evolve, appropriate adjustments in formal job descriptions should be made in writing so that affected staff members can determine how well a role has been filled or what further training might be helpful. Second, in productive work environments, performance assessments are conducted regularly (at least annually), based on job descriptions, and linked with professional development opportunities. Good schools and districts evaluate staff on how well they perform their assigned duties, and, if improvement is prescribed, they provide access to the appropriate inservice programs. New forms of school organization and governance have brought to light new approaches to evaluation that make a valuable addition to traditional methods. Many interviewed for this volume expressed the opinion that some form of feedback would be a welcome addition to paraprofessionals' conditions of employment. Third, involving classroom teachers in planning and delivering the paraprofessionals' inservice training ensures a better complement of their combined skills and shared expectations. Finally, teachers themselves should receive training in how to work with an assistant, to improve their efficiency and ability to collaborate.
Development of Effective Career Ladders
Career ladders, which most often support the transition from paraprofessional to teacher, are an increasingly popular strategy for recruiting qualified teachers and improving the diversity of the teacher labor force. Some programs, conducted by school or district staff, lead to salary increments and promotions within the role of teaching assistant. Others, often co-managed by districts and colleges or universities, lead to degrees and certification. Little evaluation has been conducted to determine which features of these programs yield success; however, using their own experience as a guide, those in the field recommend several strategies that reward participants' persistence and goal attainment:
- Tuition reimbursement for any course required for certification
- Stipends to cover school-related expenses (parking, books, and even childcare)
- Workshops about such topics as college enrollment, professional roles, certification test preparation, and other areas of social and academic interest
- Coursework and internships explicitly tied to job assignments
- Structured meetings for participants to solve problems and plan programs
- Occasional gatherings for the families of participants
For many paraprofessionals studying to become certified teachers, their college enrollment is a first in their families' history. Participants in such programs report that they need and want family support but that their families often do not understand the nature and extent of program demands. Programs that celebrate participants' small successes through periodic informal social events for families have discovered that such gatherings nurture family support. A few programs have even recruited additional family members through these activities.
In some districts, professional development for teachers and assistants is connected to formal education, or it can be connected at the participant's request. Recognizing that paraprofessionals are often employed at hourly rates, many schools and districts offer compensation for time spent in training, either through the provision of staff development activities during regular hours or through hourly pay or stipends.
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