Teacher Aides and Students’ Academic Achievement

Abstract

Despite more than 600,000 teacher aides in American schools today, research provides little information about their classroom activities, their qualifications for carrying out their duties, or their impact on student achievement and behavior. This investigation asked whether the presence of a teacher aide in the classroom has any noticeable impact on pupils' learning. Three primary questions were addressed: (1) In Grades K through 3, does the presence of a full-time teacher aide in the classroom affect students' academic achievement? (2) If teacher aides have a positive effect on students' performance, does the effect depend on the number of years the student attends classes with a teacher aide? (3) Do some functions of aides (i.e., clerical tasks, instructional tasks, noninstructional tasks) have a greater impact on student achievement than others? This investigation showed that the teacher aide movement in the United States has created a state of affairs that requires many aides to perform tasks for which they are ill-prepared. In addition, teacher aide data were analyzed from Tennessee's Project STAR, a longitudinal experiment in which students were assigned at random to small classes, regular-size classes without an aide, or regular-size classes with a full-time teacher aide. The analyses reported here extend previous investigations, examining the functions and effects of teacher aides in depth. The results showed that teacher aides have little, if any, positive effect on students' academic achievement. The only positive effect was an improvement in reading scores for students who attended a class with a teacher aide for 2 or 3 years. These results were the only exceptions to a plethora of negative findings. The study also showed that the types of duties aides performed had no bearing on student achievement. Because teacher aides are called upon increasingly to provide instruction to pupils, policies and research must help us select and prepare aides to perform effectively.

Lessons from the Research on Paraprofessionals for Attendant Care in Children’s Mental Health

“…Only a few empirical studies, many outdated or lacking adequate controls, inquired about outcomes for students (Giangreco & Doyle, 2002;Giangreco, Edelman, & Broer, 2001a;Jones & Bender, 1993). Available findings show no clear empirical evidence to support claims of effectiveness of paraprofessional services to improve student achievement (Giangreco et al, 2001a;Gerber, Finn, Achilles, & Boyd-Zaharias, 2001). Nonetheless, the number of paraprofessionals in special and inclusion classrooms is rapidly increasing, and recent estimates suggest that over 600,000 paraprofessionals currently work in schools nationwide (Gerber et al, 2001).…”

“…In most states paraeducators are hired without training, or certification (Jones & Bender, 1993). Only six states and the District of Columbia provide formal training plans for school districts (Gerber et al, 2001). Pre-service training is virtually non-existent and in-service training and supervision are marginal at best (Giangreco et al, 2001a).…”

“…Available findings show no clear empirical evidence to support claims of effectiveness of paraprofessional services to improve student achievement (Giangreco et al, 2001a;Gerber, Finn, Achilles, & Boyd-Zaharias, 2001). Nonetheless, the number of paraprofessionals in special and inclusion classrooms is rapidly increasing, and recent estimates suggest that over 600,000 paraprofessionals currently work in schools nationwide (Gerber et al, 2001). The appraisal of paraeducators' work by parents, students, teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals themselves (Sullivan, 1998) is unequivocally supportive and favors the utilization of paraprofessionals especially for students with moderate to severe disabilities (Jones & Bender, 1993;Marks, Schrader, & Levine, 1999).…”

The impact of teaching assistants on improving pupils’ academic achievement in mainstream schools: a review of the literature

“…Two of the studies were large scale (Blatchford et al 2001;Gerber et al 2001) and focused on the impact of TAs on the academic attainments of all children in a number of primary schools. The Frelow, Charry, and Freilich (1974) and the Loos, Williams, and Bailey (1977) studies, however, focused on the impact of TAs in one school.…”

“…There were four non-targeted intervention studies that were included in the EPPI review (Frelow, Charry, and Freilich 1974;Loos, Williams, and Bailey 1977;Blatchford et al 2001;Gerber et al 2001). In these studies academic achievements of all primary aged children in a class, school or group of schools were linked to the numbers of TAs who worked in these schools.…”