Paraprofessionals Speak Out: A Survey

A need for more personnel to teach students with disabilities resulted from the passage of Public Law 94-142, The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which enabled those children to attend school in regular classrooms. Many schools solved their shortages of teaching personnel by hiring assistants, termed paraprofessionals, who were not certified special education teachers but would work under a supervising teacher. The authors review the legislation that affects these paraprofessionals and examine the findings of a survey conducted by the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired that gathered information about paraprofessionals, including their salaries and work hours, their job descriptions, and their training. The paraprofessional will be even more important to special education in the future. Their training and educational achievements determine how beneficial they can be to children with visual impairments.