Teacher assistants face new standards

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.)

PIERCE

One main provision of 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act calls for all teachers to be “highly qualified.” This requirement also applies to teacher assistants, most of whom in Warren County currently are deemed to be so.

But that’s soon to change. The school system’s human resources department and Warren County Adult Education are working diligently to ensure the county’s teacher assistants are proven highly qualified by the 2006 deadline.

“We have to show the federal government what we already know: that we have highly qualified teacher assistants who do a great job,” said system human resources director Roy Pierce.

For all paraprofessionals who provide some instruction to students, the government has determined “highly qualified” to mean they must have done one of the following:

• completed 48 college credit hours;

• obtained an associate’s degree or higher;

• passed a test that demonstrates knowledge of the ability to assist in the instruction of students.

Pierce said the vast majority of the system’s 40 to 45 instructional teacher assistants do not meet either of the first two qualifications and therefore must pass a test if they wish to retain their jobs.

The exam chosen by the state Department of Education, called ParaPro, is a federally approved, 90-question exam which will cover only the core curriculum subjects (English, math and social studies).

Because many of the assistants haven’t taken a test in quite a long time, and are anxious about taking an exam on which their jobs depend, Pierce said the adult education program has designated two of its teachers to do nothing but help prepare the assistants.

And though the deadline for passing the ParaPro test isn’t until the 2005-2006 school year, Pierce said the system is requiring all teacher assistants take the exam at least once by the end of next school year. The reason for this, he said, is to find where an assistant’s deficiencies are so a tailor-made study plan can be put in place to better help prepare the test-taker to pass future tests.

He added the teacher assistants will incur no expenses from the test as federal Title funds will be used to pay for the tests, pre-tests and study guides.