Why Schools Overuse Paraprofessionals in Inclusive Education (and What to Do Instead) ~ 1015

Tim Villegas
Do you know how sometimes you hit play on a podcast episode because you’re kind of interested in the guest or the topic, but don’t know what to expect? Then you listen, and you’re like, this is exactly what I needed to hear today. This is that episode.

My name is Tim Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, and you are listening to Think Inclusive, a show where with every conversation, we try to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. You can learn more about who we are and what we do at MCIE.org.

For this episode, I speak with Michael Giangreco, who is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Special Education in the Department of Education at the University of Vermont and is also affiliated with UVM’s Center on Disability and Community Inclusion. Michael and I discuss why so many school systems rely too much on paraprofessionals when implementing inclusive education. We talk about why he cautions parents about advocating for that one-to-one for their child, and stick around till the end when Michael shares what inspired using cartoons as a communication tool.

I’ve been so excited to share this interview with you. Dr. Giangreco has authored over 200 professional publications on a variety of special education topics and presented extensively both across the United States and internationally. And he has great stories. Thank you so much for listening. And now, my interview with Michael Giangreco.

Tim Villegas
Michael Giangreco, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Michael Giangreco
Great to be here.

Tim Villegas
Right before we started recording, you said it’s been a long time since we’ve talked. I believe it was a phone call. I always tell this story, although I don’t typically drop your name. We had a discussion, and I’m not exactly sure why, but I remember you telling me, “Tim, at some point, you’re going to have to decide what is next for you. And I don’t think staying in the school system is it.” Is that what you remember?

Michael Giangreco
You’re jogging my old brain. I think what I recall is you were still working in some separate programs at the time. What I remember is not that I said you have to think about whether you’re going to work in schools, but whether you’re going to work in separate segregated programs or inclusive programs. I knew you were really committed to the concept and practices of inclusion.

Tim Villegas
Well, you know, that’s an interesting nuance, because I think from my perspective, there were no inclusive schools where I lived. So it was more like the realization that if I want to keep doing what I’m doing, I’m going to have to move, which wasn’t an option at that point and certainly not now. So I had to look for something else. Michael, I appreciate you having that conversation with me.

Michael Giangreco
One of the things you’re making me think of is when you say there aren’t inclusive schools where you were, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but in a lot of my writing, I use the term “inclusion-oriented schools” rather than “inclusive schools,” because I feel there are very few truly inclusive schools, even those that call themselves inclusive. They’re really more inclusion-oriented schools, striving to be inclusive, hopefully, but many have not fully arrived.

People want to come and visit “inclusive schools,” and I have to tell them, these are folks trying to be inclusive, but you’re going to see some warts. Maybe inclusion is like justice—you’re always striving for it, and you never fully get there. But it’s definitely worth keeping going.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, I think that’s important to discuss—that inclusion isn’t necessarily a destination. It’s an idea, something we’re striving for. There are characteristics and markers of inclusive schools, and I’d rather have a school committed to inclusion than not.

Michael Giangreco
The same thing is true for “model programs.” I’m hesitant to identify any school as a model to follow, partly because context matters so much. Things are different in different places with different people, communities, and histories. Sometimes it’s ammunition for folks who want to maintain the status quo to say, “Look at the flaws in that model program.” Anytime you have humans, you’re going to have flaws. It’s never going to be perfect. It’s often messy, but it’s worth the mess.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely. Well, as long as we’re talking about inclusive schools, let me tell you a story. This was when I was working in my school district, probably early or middle of the road in my inclusion journey. We were actively including a student with multiple disabilities in general education. This was while I was a self-contained teacher.

One of the staff—I think they were an SLP—pulled me aside and said, “Tim, what you’re doing with this student is great. It’s awesome. And I know you want more of this for other students in the district. But if we’re going to do this, we need a whole lot of paraprofessionals to be pushed in for these kids to make it successful. Basically, we just need a whole bunch of one-on-ones.”

At the time, I thought, I don’t think that’s right, but I wasn’t well-versed enough to explain why. Even now, I hear of districts relying on paraprofessionals for this work. So what, in your opinion, are some of the detrimental effects of just relying on paraprofessionals to do the work of inclusion?

Michael Giangreco
I’d start by adding the word “inadvertent”—inadvertent detrimental effects—because when people advocate for a one-to-one, whether it’s a parent, teacher, special educator, or administrator, I’m assuming their intention is positive. They’re trying to be supportive. The fact that there are documented detrimental effects is an inadvertent side effect.

Adding paraprofessionals is often the path of least resistance. It’s the easiest, simplest, most obvious thing people think of, and it’s where a lot of the earliest inclusive efforts started. Back in the ’80s here in Vermont, that was one of the ways people got their foot in the door—by offering paraprofessionals.

The big problem with offering paraprofessionals back then was that it sent the wrong message: schools, teachers, principals, you don’t really have to change. Regular ed doesn’t have to change at all. We’re just going to put this person there, and they’re going to be responsible. You’re not really responsible; you’re just a host. So don’t worry—your world isn’t going to change that much.

It’s understandable that people took that path when the door was shut tight in the 1980s. But we never really moved off of that, and it proliferated.

Michael Giangreco
In the early 1990s, some of my colleagues and I had a federal grant looking at related services for students with deafblindness and multiple disabilities in regular classes in Vermont schools. We were studying service coordination, but at the end of the project, we noticed we had a lot of data on paraprofessionals because all the kids we observed had one-to-one paraprofessionals.

Even though it wasn’t the focus of our project, we decided to look at these data more closely. The qualitative data from interviews and observations resulted in a study published in Exceptional Children in 1997 called Helping or Hovering: Effects of Instructional Proximity on Students with Disabilities.

Before that point, the literature was full of articles saying paraprofessionals are great—we just need more of them, better training, clearer roles, and supervision. The mentality was: paraprofessionals are the answer.

Now, I want to preface this by saying, as a former special education teacher, I have tremendous respect for paraprofessionals and the work they do. I can’t imagine having any success without the help of the paraprofessionals I worked with—they were amazing.

That said, the model of having one-to-one paraprofessionals attached at the hip in regular education settings has problems. We identified a whole series of inadvertent detrimental effects. Here are some key ones:

• Unnecessary dependency by students on their paraprofessionals.
• Interference with peer interactions because the paraprofessional becomes a physical and symbolic barrier.
• Reduced teacher engagement—teachers often abdicate responsibility when a paraprofessional is present.
• Decreased access to competent instruction—as dedicated as paraprofessionals are, they are not trained teachers.

Our data in Vermont suggested that if you have a one-to-one paraprofessional, you might be getting 50–100% of your instruction from that paraprofessional, including first instruction. That’s an equity issue.

I always encourage people to ask: Would this practice be okay if the student didn’t have a disability? If the answer is no, then it’s not okay for students with disabilities either.

Michael Giangreco
Another effect is loss of personal control and sometimes even gender identity. For example, most paraprofessionals are female. If a male student is in PE class and the teacher says, “Girls, do jumping jacks; boys, take laps,” the paraprofessional often goes with the girls and takes the male student along.

There’s also the issue of students having no control over their day—someone moves them around, makes choices for them. That can lead to learned helplessness and lack of motivation.

You also see insular relationships between the paraprofessional and the student. They can be warm and nurturing, but when they exclude other relationships, that’s a problem. Sometimes schools even keep the same paraprofessional with a student for years. If we said, “You’ll have the same teacher every grade,” most people would object.

It can also create unhealthy dynamics between paraprofessionals, teachers, and families. Sometimes paraprofessionals become the primary communicator with families, which mixes up the loop. And when the paraprofessional is absent, everyone panics because they’ve been doing everything.

Fundamentally, this overreliance happens because we don’t have sound inclusive service delivery models that account for the full range of students with disabilities in our schools.

Tim Villegas
I love that you said you have high regard for paraprofessionals because I agree. When I was in the classroom, I couldn’t do my job without them. I also couldn’t have done the level of inclusion I achieved without paraprofessionals—even though looking back, it wasn’t as inclusive as I wanted it to be.

Even thinking about the students who accessed general education in those early years, it wasn’t because I facilitated that—it was because paraprofessionals did. It wasn’t until later in my career that we talked about coaching and co-teaching, where I planned lessons with the general education teacher and the paraprofessional supported goals in that context.

Michael Giangreco
There are myths about who needs a one-to-one. For a while, people assumed all kids with autism or Down syndrome need a one-to-one. Those are dangerous assumptions.

I pulled something up I want to read to you. It’s a short vignette a parent wrote. Many years ago, I co-authored an article with four parents called Be Careful What You Wish For: Five Reasons to Be Concerned About the Assignment of Individual Paraprofessionals. It was written with my colleague Susan Yuan and parents Barb Mackenzie, Pat Cameron, and Janice Bianca.

One reason I invited them to write with me was to challenge me. I worried my ideas might seem against what parents were advocating for. Parents often advocate for a one-to-one because they lack trust in the system—they fear their child will fall through the cracks, that teachers won’t be engaged, or that quality will be low. So a one-to-one feels like insurance.

Here’s the vignette from Pat Cameron about her daughter Beth:

“When my daughter Beth started high school, the school insisted she have a full-time paraprofessional, presumably because she has Down syndrome. It was a battle I wasn’t willing to fight, so I agreed, even though I felt it wasn’t needed.

Freshman year, this worked out reasonably well. The paraprofessional was a young woman, not much older than Beth, and she was skilled at giving her room.

During sophomore year, this paraprofessional was replaced by one who was on her like Velcro—always telling Beth what to do, insisting she leave class early, and generally making a spectacle of their interactions.

It wasn’t long before Beth reacted uncharacteristically—she ran away from the paraprofessional, called her names, and even left school and went home. Though Beth’s communication wasn’t socially desirable, her intent was clear, but no one seemed to be listening.

A month or so into the year, after the second paraprofessional quit, Beth’s team met to decide what would happen next. Beth said she ‘didn’t want to be bossed’ and ‘didn’t want an aide.’ Her request was honored. Beth didn’t have an individual paraprofessional for the rest of high school. The problem behaviors disappeared, and with no intermediary between her and the teachers, Beth was more academically connected.

It made me feel even more strongly that we need to involve students in determining their own need for supports.”

To me, that’s a powerful story. Parents are now advocating for their child to have access to highly qualified content specialists. If you want your child to learn math, you’d choose someone with a math background over an untrained paraprofessional.

But we’re still in a place where some people think of children with disabilities as “my kids” or “your kids” instead of “our kids.” In a truly inclusion-oriented school, we’re all responsible for all the kids.

Tim Villegas
Exactly, exactly. Well, that brings up the discussion of what roles there should be in inclusive schools. You mentioned general education teachers feeling like students with disabilities in their classrooms are actually their students—not just the responsibility of the special education teacher or the paraprofessional. How have you seen those responsibilities shift in the mindsets of educators?

Michael Giangreco
They haven’t shifted wholesale around the country. If they had, we’d see a lot more success. There’s still a lot of unevenness—even within the same states and districts. Things change as personnel and leadership change. We have a long way to go.

A number of years ago, I convened a group of general and special education school leaders. As a result of working with them, my colleague Jessie Suter, local school principal Vicki Graf, and I wrote an appendix in the book Choosing Outcomes and Accommodations for Children (Third Edition).

One of the things we advocate is that while many places start with “What’s the paraprofessional’s role?”—that’s part of the problem. We should never start there. If a student is in a regular class, the first question is: What is the teacher’s role?

We identified eight key roles for teachers related to inclusive education. It all starts with the phrasing:

“Teachers contribute to the education of students with disabilities in inclusive schools and classrooms and demonstrate educational ownership by…”

Originally, “teacher ownership” was one of the items, but school leaders told us it should be the foundation. All the roles should contribute to educational ownership.

Then we outline special educator roles, which mostly parallel teacher roles, but emphasize co-creating, co-managing, and co-facilitating with the regular educator.

Only after defining teacher and special educator roles do we define paraprofessional roles:

“Paraprofessionals contribute to the education of students with disabilities in inclusive schools and classrooms and help create opportunities for classroom teachers and special educators to spend time instructing students with disabilities and collaborating with each other by…”

The paraprofessional’s role is not to support the student directly, but to support the teacher and special educator. That’s a big mindset shift.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, that’s a great point, Michael. I’m not sure I’ve thought about it quite that way. I wonder if some of the language I’ve heard—calling paraprofessionals “teaching assistants”—is on purpose.

Michael Giangreco
I always use the term “teacher assistant,” not “teaching assistant.” It’s nuanced, but important. They assist the teacher—not necessarily with teaching. It might include teaching, but also other things.

It’s also problematic when you assign someone only to students with disabilities. In the service delivery models we’ve developed, paraprofessionals have split funding between general and special education and are assigned to the teacher, not the student. The teacher deploys them to work with whichever students need support.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Michael Giangreco
That’s a big role shift.

Tim Villegas
So, I’m thinking about assigning learners in natural proportions. Let’s say you have a grade level—middle school, seventh grade—and you have a number of students with disabilities. You spread them out across the grade level so there are no “inclusion classrooms,” just classrooms.

Typically, you have students first, then you look at roles: general education teachers, special education teachers. So finding spots for paraprofessionals is the same idea—you’re saying, “This classroom or teacher needs this kind of role.” Is that right?

Michael Giangreco
The teacher helps decide how the paraprofessional is most useful so they can be engaged with all their learners.

This brings up a personal pet peeve of mine when you mentioned natural proportions. Co-teaching is very popular and can be great, but one problem I see repeatedly is that to justify a co-teacher, schools violate natural proportion. They put a disproportionately high percentage of students with disabilities and other non-standard needs—kids at risk, English learners, anyone needing extra support—into the co-taught classroom.

That makes the classroom completely out of whack. You go forward one step and backward three. I hope people look at natural proportion related to co-teaching.

In the models we’ve explored, given typical resources in Vermont, the best we can figure out is 20–25% per teacher for co-teaching. We can’t figure out how to do 100% of the time without congregating kids, and it’s not worth it. It creates more problems than it solves. This issue has gotten very little attention in the literature—and no research, as far as I know.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely. I think I was talking with—this was months ago—but I was interviewing Marilyn Friend about co-teaching. She said co-teaching isn’t even in the law. There’s nothing in IDEA about it.

Michael Giangreco
Right.

Tim Villegas
So when you go to IEPs, people talk about the continuum of services, which is really alternate placements. In the IEP, it’s like: general education classroom with no support, then general education classroom with additional support—usually a paraprofessional, sometimes a co-teacher. Then you go down the list with all these checkboxes.

Michael Giangreco
One of the challenges is that some prominent, well-known, highly publicized inclusive schools use models where they have co-taught classes with a full-time special educator and a full-time regular educator in the same classroom. As far as I know, that’s not a sustainable model in most places.

What it does is congregate highly disproportionate percentages of kids with non-standard educational needs in one setting to justify that model. It’s like districts that have one “shining star” school—their inclusive school—and they send all the kids with disabilities there. Meanwhile, the rest of the district might be a wasteland of segregation or non-inclusive practice. But they say, “Look at the shiny thing we have over here—don’t look at the rest.” That’s not good.

There’s a lot of work to be done, for sure.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, in the limited time we have, I actually want to talk about your cartoons, Mike.

Michael Giangreco
I love talking about cartoons.

Tim Villegas
We use the cartoons all the time—Absurdities and Realities of Special Education, the cartoon collection available at the University of Vermont digital collection. How did you get into using cartoons as a communication tool?

Michael Giangreco
First, I appreciate you accessing that public site. It became available a couple of years ago because the books originally published—most recently distributed by Corwin/Sage—went out of print. Since I held the copyright, I was able to make them available for nonprofit and educational purposes for free.

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I used cartoons in my presentations—often Gary Larson Far Side cartoons. People like cartoons; they find them humorous and insightful. But the problem was they weren’t really on point. I wished there were cartoons about special ed.

I found some about education in general, but many made fun of kids or families. My experience as an educator was that the most absurd things were perpetrated by us—the professionals—in the name of our profession. So I wanted to poke fun at us, at the things we do, things I did myself that I look back on and think, “How could I have thought that was a good idea?”

Michael Giangreco
I started writing down ideas and incubated them for years. Finally, I just started drawing them—badly. I’m a terrible artist, so I worked with my friend Kevin Rockwell, an amazing artist. I’d show him my stick figures and say, “This character should have this expression and be doing this action.” We’d edit back and forth until the cartoon matched the image in my mind.

I did all the original drawings and text, and Kevin made them look like real cartoons. Originally, they were black-and-white line drawings because presentations used overhead projectors—color didn’t work. Later, when presentations went digital, we colorized everything.

People don’t read the literature, but they’ll look at a book of cartoons and remember the ideas. That’s why they resonated. We’ve done over 340—maybe 350 now. Some on the site were never published in books.

It was another way to communicate. I always tried to do the research, then create teacher-friendly summaries and practical tools. The cartoons were part of that.

At first, nobody wanted to publish them—they thought cartoons were unscholarly and would make me look unprofessional. It took a tiny mom-and-pop publisher, Peytral Publications in Minnesota, to say yes. Later, Sage/Corwin distributed them, and now they’re free online.

It was a labor of love and a lot of fun.

Tim Villegas
What a gift to the community. I love seeing them pop up. We share them all the time, and they’re wonderful.

Michael Giangreco
The sad thing is many of these cartoons were written in 1998–2000, and they’re still relevant more than 20 years later. That’s sad.

Tim Villegas
Yes. The most recent cartoon—wasn’t it around 2012?

Michael Giangreco
Yeah, maybe. I did one last year for an Australian inclusive education organization—they asked me to turn a diagram into a cartoon. That one’s in the digital collection.

Tim Villegas
We’ll make sure to link that in our show notes.

Tim Villegas
As we wrap up, is there anything else you want to share with our audience of educators and families?

Michael Giangreco
You and I exchanged emails about thinking about the future. I’ve been working on inclusive education since the late ’70s. It started when I was teaching in a segregated wing of a vocational center. I had a segregated classroom for students with severe and multiple disabilities, but I began trying to include a few young children in a childcare program in the same building.

In the early ’80s, I worked on inclusion again—taking my students to a local elementary school and including them in natural proportion in regular classes. I got in trouble for it—what John Lewis would call “good trouble.”

Sometimes it feels like banging my head against a wall. Other times, once you’ve seen what inclusive education can do when done well, there’s no turning back. I can’t imagine not advocating for it.

One message I want to give: watch out for critics who make an either/or argument—either the child can be included, or they can have good instruction. That’s a false choice. You can’t have quality inclusive education if the student isn’t academically engaged. They don’t have to function at the same level as their classmates, but they need to be part of the classroom community.

We have to strive for both: uphold students’ civil and individual rights and provide appropriate instruction. And we need a sense of urgency. While we debate, kids are growing up and families are moving on.

We also need better inclusive service delivery models. You can have the best teachers, curriculum, and instructional strategies, but if you don’t have a service delivery model that allows teachers and special educators to do their work, it all falls apart. That’s what my colleague Jessie Suter and I have been working on for the last 10 years.

To those fighting the good fight: it’s important advocacy. It’s going to be messy, but as my favorite football coach, Marv Levy, used to say about winning: “It’s simple, but it’s not easy.” Families are the best models of inclusion—we have a lot to learn from them.

Tim Villegas
This has been a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much, Michael Giangreco, for being on the Think Inclusive podcast.

Michael Giangreco
Thanks, Tim.

Tim Villegas
Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound-designed by Tim Villegas and is a production of MCIE. Original music by Miles Credit. If you enjoyed today’s episode, here’s one way you can help our podcast grow: join us on Patreon for exclusive previews of Inclusion Stories, our new podcast series launching later this year. Go to patreon.com/thinkinclusivepodcast.

Special thanks to our patrons Melissa H., Sonia A., Pamela P., Mark C., Kathy B., Kathleen T., Jarrett T., Gabby M., Aaron P., and Paula W. for their support. For more information about inclusive education or to learn how MCIE can partner with your school or district, visit MCIE.org.

We publish three times a month now, so look in your feed next week for more Think Inclusive. Thanks for your time and attention. And remember: inclusion always works.