RSS Feed
An unnamed special education assistant in middle school (no it’s not me) posted this description of his or her job on the employment website CareerCast.com. It is definitely worth reading. http://www.careercast.com/page/special-education-assistant I think our profession is darn lucky to have this thoughtful person, particularly at a wage of ”approximately $9 per hour.”
The following is a May 17 letter to the editor by Hedy Morrison reprinted here in its entirety from The (Nashville) Tennesseean: When Schools Director Jesse Register made changes in the support staff handbook, we all feared that there was a reason. Our fears are now being realized. One-third of the educational assistant (paraprofessional) positions at the school at which I work are going to be eliminated. I work at Harris-Hillman Special Education School. All the students at our school have severe disabilities. I am in a senior classroom with eight students ages 17-22. All are non-verbal, non-ambulatory and...
Sixty-two Cape May County (NJ) school aides were given layoff notices May 15, moving forward on a school district threat to privatize paraprofessionals if the Middle Township Education Association didn’t cave on contract negotiations. District Superintendent Michael Kopakowski seemed to realize he was walking a narrow political fence by suggesting that a private, for-profit corporation, and not the school district, might be determining what paraeducators were placed in the classrooms of Middle Township. In an article by Deborah McGuire in the Cape May County Herald, Kopakowski is quoted as saying: “I can tell you this. We will control who...
‘The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.’ ~Franklin D. Roosevelt ‘When you look at what a paraeducator is making in the district, some of them are just a few pennies away being on government assistance for food stamps.’ government assistance for food stamps,’ ~Murray Campbell, Yakima Educators United ‘$40,000 is spent per year for every inmate in state prisons while only $10,000 is spent on every California student.’ ~Dave Low, Executive Director, California School Employee Assocciation ‘What is so improper about an ‘improper fraction’? I mean, that’s so judgmental.’ ~Richard Finegan,...
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that seems to think any person should be allowed to practice any occupation without training or state regulation (attorneys excluded, naturally), has issued a survey and report on occupational licensure in the 50 states. Titled License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing, the report contains interesting data, if not particularly persuasive conclusions, about requirements for teacher assistants. According to the IJ report, only 29 states have any sort of licensure for teacher assistants, which they define as including “teacher aides, paraprofessionals and paraeducators, perform duties that...
Recent Comments