Utilizing parents for paraprofessional intervention

This study was based on research which examined paraprofessional intervention in an urban community having large numbers of educationally and socially disadvantaged children and disenchanted parents. Establishment of paraprofessional corps has grown rapidly in the past decade and is accelerating as a strategy for improving the quality of education in urban communities. This development incorporated many concepts: (1) new careers, (2) growth of educational technology, (3) cultural assimilation and diversity, (4) team teaching, (5) personal improvement of teacher aides, (6) parents as partners (based on action theorists' postulations as a theoretical frame for the study), and (7) home and school focus on achievement—all of which yield high productivity in the community-education arena inexpensively to insufficient school budgets and strategically to teaching-learning demands for quality education.