Elizabeth Tatum (left) and Mary Reed examine student writing samples during a class on the MPS comprehensive literacy framework. The class discussed ways to help students improve their writing and communication skills.

By Bill Hurley
OnWEAC Editor

You could just tell that Elizabeth Tatum and Mary Reed were excited about the new skills they were learning at a daylong training April 13 at Custer High School in Milwaukee.

Oh, sure, they were there so they could keep their jobs as general educational assistants in the Milwaukee Public School system. But they were taking so much more than that out of the experience.

“We’re learning a lot,” said Reed, who works at Webster Middle School. “We’re trying not only to keep our jobs, but we’re getting filled in on what students need to help them succeed.”

“This will help me when I’m helping the students write papers,” added Tatum, who works at MacDowell Montessori School.

Cheryl Barczak

Shannon Gordon

Deb Berndt

Reed and Tatum are among nearly 600 general educational assistants partaking in an extraordinary months-long training program organized through a joint venture of Milwaukee Public Schools, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, the Milwaukee Educational Assistants Association and the WEAC Professional Development Academy (PDA).

The training is in response to a new federal law – often referred to as the “No Child Left Behind” act – that requires educational assistants, sometimes called teacher aides, to be “highly qualified” by next January or lose their jobs. Basically, the law requires them to possess 48 college credits, an associate’s degree, pass a stringent test or meet comparable requirements.

Representatives of MPS and the MTEA got together and decided that a convenient, comprehensive training program was the best approach. Rather than just have the educational assistants pass a test or scout around for college courses, MPS and MTEA agreed it made sense to provide a single in-house training program through which they could not only meet the new requirements of the law but learn new teaching strategies that they could put to use in the classroom.

They decided to use a proven training program developed by the WEAC Professional Development Academy – the Education Support Professional Certificate program.

That’s what brought Reed, Tatum and the other educational assistants to Custer High School April 13 – the first of four daylong districtwide training programs for educational assistants to help them meet the new requirements. Classes were held throughout the school. Another daylong program is scheduled for May 13, and two others are planned for early next school year.

Each daylong session provides 7½ hours of training for each educational assistant. Anyone who attends the four daylong sessions will earn 30 of the required 40 hours of training to obtain an ESP Certificate. They can earn the other 10 hours through after-school and Saturday classes being planned as part of the MPS-MTEA program.

Once they get their ESP Certificate, they will be considered “highly qualified” under the law, whose official title is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

Making sure that the nearly 600 Milwaukee general educational assistants get the necessary training by the end of the year is “a massive undertaking,” said Cheryl Barczak, an MTEA assistant executive director who is organizing the program. But MTEA and MPS are doing everything they can to make the training accessible and to help everyone complete it, said Barczak and Shannon Gordon, the school district’s ESEA implementation and compliance manager.

“We don’t want to lose any of our people,” Barczak said. “Our goal is to do whatever we have to to keep every one of them.

“We’re giving them every opportunity so that they know far enough in advance that if they don’t do this, December 31 is their last day.”

The district and school principals also are working to inform every educational assistant of the requirements and the training opportunities so that nobody is left out, Gordon said.

“We’re telling every one of our people that we value you and we want to strengthen your skills, and we want to keep you,” she said.

Under the PDA program, the educational assistants must complete a “reflective assessment” of each class, explaining how they are going to use the information they learned to improve their work in the classroom. They compile a folder of these assessments and then turn them into the PDA for review and approval.

Once the educational assistants complete the 40-hour PDA program and earn their certificate, they must go through an assessment process. This is where school district officials observe the educational assistant on three occasions working with students and complete an evaluation form. If the assistant passes the evaluation, he or she will be certified to continue working as an educational assistant under the ESEA. If the evaluation is unsatisfactory, the assistant will be given assistance – such as more in-service training or a mentor’s help – in order to meet the ESEA standards.

Not everybody was excited about the training at first, and Barczak said she had to personally talk some people out of their reluctance to participate. Understandably, she said, some educational assistants feel insulted by the ESEA requirements. In some cases, these people have been doing their jobs for 20 or 30 years, and now the federal government comes in and says they have to prove themselves.

“But I told them, ‘Don’t throw away your career,’ ” Barczak said.

“For most of these people, this isn’t just a job,” she said. “Many of these people grew up in the neighborhoods where they work. They’re the ones who understand that Suzie’s tired today because of the shootings in her neighborhood last night.

“We really don’t want to lose any of our people. I would be very upset with a person who doesn’t do this, and we lose him or her.”

Barczak said she has learned from attending conferences that districts throughout the country are struggling with ways to get their educational assistants – sometimes called teacher aides – to meet the ESEA’s requirements. The MPS/ MTEA program is a model for doing it right, Barczak and Gordon said.

MPS is covering the entire cost of the program, using funds provided through the ESEA. The four daylong training programs are paid days for staff, who use what is called “banking time” to attend. Under the MTEA contract, staff earn “banking time” when they give up prep time on regular work days and bank that time for future use for in-service, staff development, prep time, or colleague interaction time. The only cost to the staff, Barczak said, comes down to time – the additional 10 hours of classes they must take beyond the four daylong training programs.

The WEAC Professional Development Academy has been offering the ESP Certificate program for 10 years, and PDA Director Deb Berndt said she is excited to expand the program to ESEA training.

“The ESP Certificate program is an excellent model for use in helping education support professionals meet the requirements of the ESEA and become ‘highly qualified,’ ” Berndt said. Some other districts are using the program to some degree, but Milwaukee’s involvement “is on a much, much larger scale,” she said. The ESP Certificate program actually goes beyond the requirements of the ESEA, she said.

To earn an ESP Certificate, participants must complete 40 hours of instruction, including five in four core curriculum areas (a total of 20 hours), 10 in elective/job-specific area, and 10 that may be applied to any of the curricular areas. The four core areas are communication, legal/ethical, behavior management, and growth and development.

Another advantage of using the ESP Certificate program for ESEA training, Berndt said, is that participants have a broad range of options for completing the program. For example, they can in some cases earn credits at the WEAC Winter Conference, WEAC Convention and possibly the WEAC Summer Academy, she said.

“We want to make it as convenient as possible for our ESP members to earn a certificate and to achieve the ‘highly qualified’ standard,” she said.

Berndt said she is always interested in hearing from other local associations and school districts considering the use of the PDA program for ESEA training.

For educational assistants like Tatum, the program is the perfect fit, and it’s about much more than just doing time to keep her job.

“I have a lot of students who can’t read and get frustrated,” she said. “Hopefully, with the help of this training, I can learn to help them a little bit more.”

What are the ESEA requirements?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 2001 requires that all paraprofessionals working in Title I schools must be “highly qualified.”

The law, also known as the “No Child Left Behind” act, requires each local education agency receiving assistance to ensure that all paraprofessionals hired after the date of enactment of the ESEA (January 8, 2002) and working in a program supported with Title 1 funds shall have:

• Completed at least two years of study at an accredited institution of higher education that is equivalent to at least 48 semester hours; or
• Obtained an associate's (or higher) degree; or
• Met a rigorous standard of quality and can demonstrate, through a formal state or local academic assessment:
  1. knowledge of, and the ability to assist in instructing reading, writing, and mathematics; or
  2. knowledge of, and the ability to assist in instructing reading readiness, writing readiness, and mathematics readiness, as appropriate.
     

All paraprofessionals hired on or before January 8, 2002, must satisfy the requirements by January 8, 2006.

Under the agreement between Milwaukee Public Schools, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association and the WEAC Professional Development Academy, most MPS staff must complete the ESP Certificate program by November 1 to maintain their jobs past December 31.

What is the 'No Child Left Behind' law?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act is the main federal education law, describing federal requirements for the nation’s public schools, most of which receive some form of federal aid.

ESEA was first enacted in 1965. It is revised every five to seven years.

The latest revision, passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law by President Bush in 2002, implements dramatic changes to federal education laws. The Bush administration refers to the revision as the “No Child Left Behind” law, but critics say that description is very misleading.

The law is extremely controversial, largely because it strongly emphasizes standardized tests that rob school districts and teachers of control over their classrooms and the content of their educational offerings. Rather than providing support to help schools succeed, the law emphasizes punitive measures against schools that fail to meet what many believe are unreasonable requirements. Also, critics say the law is severely underfunded, making it nearly impossible for many schools to meet its standards.

For more about the law, visit the OnWEAC Resource Page on the ESEA.

Posted May 13, 2005