Johns Hopkins study shows positive role of paras

Paraprofessionals who are adequately trained and properly used in the classroom can have a significant, positive effect on school success, suggests a new Johns Hopkins study.

The report, "Effective Uses of Paraprofessionals in Restructuring Elementary Schools," a joint project of the AFT and Johns Hopkins University, found that adequate professional development, good working relations with teachers and clear roles in the classroom are essential for the successful use of paras in schools.

To single out what Johns Hopkins researcher Sam Stringfield calls "intelligent, productive" uses of paras, the researchers looked at eight schools in six states--Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Texas. These were high-poverty schools, employing significant numbers of paraprofessionals, that were conducting whole-school reforms and getting better student achievement results than expected, given their demographics.

The report comes out at a time when the debate rages in Congress over the future of the Title I program, which provides funding for paras in virtually every school district in the country. Some critics of Title I have charged--usually without data to back up their criticism--that Title I paras are not effective and should be barred from providing any sort of instruction.

The AFT/Johns Hopkins research team, which presented its preliminary findings at the AFT's QuEST conference in July, has a different story to tell from that of the critics, however. A number of themes that emerged from the school visits include:

• A unifying vision, and related to that, whole-school reform. The most effective reforms involved the entire school, not just a few classrooms or teachers.
• Whole-school professional development. If the reform approach really does involve the entire school, everyone should receive adequate training.
• Clear tasks for paraprofessionals. This includes academic as well as managerial tasks. In all these schools, paras were clear about their roles and teachers were skilled at getting the most out of the paraprofessionals.
• Teachers--and paras--coordinating and instructing seamlessly. In many of the classrooms they visited, Stringfield says, it was difficult at first to tell the para from the teacher because they worked so well together and were doing substantive work with children.
• Faith in a set of practical methods for teaching reading and math. Some of these came from the national programs, such as Success for All or the Open Court textbook series, but in each case, the educators in the school used programs that produced results.

After studying paraprofessionals for the first time in a long and distinguished career as an education researcher, Stringfield told QuEST participants that it makes absolutely no sense to eliminate paraprofessionals, as some would like to do in the Title I program.

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