Michael Giangreco | On the Overreliance of Paraprofessionals to Implement Inclusive Education

Think Inclusive: Season 10, Episode 15

For this episode, I speak with Michael Giangreco, a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Special Education in the Department of Education at the University of Vermont and is affiliated with UVM's Center on Disability & Community Inclusion.

Michael and I discuss why 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 seriously been so excited to share this interview with you. Dr. Giangreco has authored over 200 professional publications on various special education topics and presented extensively across the United States and internationally.

Thanks for listening, and if you haven't already, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Cover Art Image Description: black background; think inclusive logo in the top left; rainbow-colored waves overlayed with a headshot of Melissa Defayette; text reads: Michael Giangreco, On the Overreliance of Paraprofessionals to Implement Inclusive Education; MCIE logo in the bottom right

Mentioned in the Episode

• Helping or Hovering? Effects of Instructional Assistant Proximity on Students with Disabilities

• “Be Careful What You Wish for ...”: Five Reasons to Be Concerned About the Assignment of Individual Paraprofessionals

• Choosing Outcomes and Accommodations for Children (COACH): A Guide to Educational Planning for Students with Disabilities

• Marilyn Friend | Co-Teaching

• A Comics Collection Of The 'Absurdities & Realities of Special Education'

• Absurdities and Realities of Special Education

Credits

Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound designed by Tim Villegas and is produced by MCIE.

Original music by Miles Kredich.

Support Think Inclusive by becoming a patron!

Audio Transcript

Tim Villegas

Do you know how sometimes you hit play on a podcast episode? Because you're kind of interested in the guest of the topic, but don't know what to expect. But then you listen, and you're like, This is exactly what I needed to hear today. This is that episode.

My name is Tim Vegas from the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education. And you were listening to think inclusive, a show where with every conversation, we tried 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 MCI e.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. 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 talked 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 seriously 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. Michael Giangreco. Welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Michael Giangreco

Great to be here.

Tim Villegas

Right before we got on to recording, you said it's been a long time since we've talked. So I don't know exactly when but I believe it was a phone call. And I always tell this story, although I don't typically drop your name, we have a discussion. And I'm not exactly sure why we had a discussion, I just remember that we had one. I remember you telling me. You know, Tim, at some point, you're gonna have to decide. You're gonna have to decide, like, what is next for you? And I don't think staying in the school system is it? Is what I remember. Is that what you remember? Or is? Do you have a different kind of recollection?

Michael Giangreco

You're jacking my old brain. And I think I think that what I recall is you were still working in some separate programs at the time. Yes. What I remember is not that I said that 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, yes, because I knew that you were really committed to the concept of inclusion and the practices of inclusion. And that I think that was more of it, not whether you would continue to work in schools?

Tim Villegas

Well, you know, that's an interesting nuance, because I think probably from my perspective, there are no inclusive schools where I live, right. So I think it was more like the realization that, wow, if I want to keep doing what I'm doing, and if I really want to, I'm gonna have to move, which, you know, what, is wasn't an option, at least at that point, and certainly not now. But I'm going to have to look for something else. So Michael, I appreciate you having that conversation with me. And I really, honestly, I don't remember. So I,

Michael Giangreco

I think one of the things that you're making me think of is when you say that there aren't a inclusive schools were where you were, or are that 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 rules, because I have kind of a similar feeling all over the country that there are really, very, very few truly inclusive schools, even those that call themselves inclusive. There, they're really more inclusion oriented schools, they're striving to be inclusive, hopefully. But many of them have not fully arrived. And it's that I haven't had in Vermont is people want to come and visit quote, inclusive schools, and I have to tell them, like yes, these are folks that are You know, trying to be inclusive, but you're gonna see some warts, you know, you're gonna see some things that are utopia, right. And maybe we never, you know, maybe inclusion is like justice, you know, you're kind of always striving for it, and you never fully get there. And but it's, it's definitely worth keeping going.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think that's an important thing to discuss or to think about is that, yeah, inclusion isn't necessarily a destination, right? It's an idea. It's something that we're striving for. And there certainly are, like characteristics and markers of inclusive schools. And I'd rather have a school that was committed to inclusion, other than not. So there's those are all, you know, great points. But I generally agree, like we were very, we're very careful, I'm very careful. And we are MCI very careful at labeling schools as inclusive or not, we have, we have a very short, short, short, short list.

Michael Giangreco

And the same thing is true for quote, model programs, you know, I'm very hesitant to identify any school as kind of like their model that you should aspire to follow. Most partly because context matters so much. And things are different in different places with different people, different communities, different histories. And, and, again, sometimes it's ammunition for folks that want to maintain the status quo to say, oh, yeah, that that's supposedly a model program, but look at the flaws in it. And anytime you have humans, you're going to have flaws, right? I mean, we are human. So it's never going to be perfect. It's, 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. So this was when I was, I was working in my school district, this is probably early or middle the road in my, you know, inclusion journey. And we were actively including a student with multiple disabilities in, in general education. This was while I was a self contained teacher. And one of the staff I think it was, I think they were an SLP. She pulled me aside and she said, Tim, this, you know, what you're doing with? So and So, is, is great. It's, it's awesome. And I know that you want more of what you're doing 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 for it to be successful. You know, I mean, basically, we just need a whole bunch of one on ones. And so at the time, I was like, I don't think that's right. But I don't think I was well versed enough to say, well, here's why it's wrong. But even now, like, I hear of districts, just relying on paraprofessionals, for this work. So what, in your opinion, are some of those detrimental effects of just relying on paraprofessionals to do the work of inclusive?

Michael Giangreco

You know, I'd start by saying, I add in the word, inadvertent, inadvertent, detrimental effects, because when people whether it's a parent advocating for a one to one or a teacher or a special educator at making that advocacy, or whether it's an administrator, whoever it is, I'm assuming that their intention is positive, they're trying to be supportive. And the fact that there are documented, detrimental effects is an inadvertent side effect. I often think of the fact that adding paraprofessionals is kind of a path of least resistance. It's the easiest, simplest, most obvious thing that most people think of, and it's where a lot of the earliest inclusive efforts started. I mean, back in the 80s, here in Vermont. That was one of the ways that people got their foot in the door was to offer paraprofessionals the one of the big problems with offering the paraprofessional back then To get your foot in the door, is that it, it sent the wrong messages, it sent messages that, you know, schools, teachers, principals, you don't really have to change, you know, like, regular ed doesn't have to change at all, we're just gonna put this person there and they're going to be responsible, like, you're not really responsible, you're just a host. So don't worry, you know, your world isn't going to change that much. And so it's, it's kind of understandable that people took that path to get in the door when the door was shut tight in the 1980s. Right. But we never really moved off of that. And it proliferated. 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, who were in regular classes and Vermont schools. And we were studying service coordination. But at the end of the project, we noticed that we had a lot of data on paraprofessionals, because all the kids we were observing and, and the staff, we were interviewing, and so on, all these kids had one to one paraprofessionals. And so we had all this data. And even though it wasn't the focus of our project, we see Yeah, we really should look look at these data more closely. And the qualitative data that, that emanated from those interviews and observations resulted in the publication of a study that was published in exceptional children back in 1997, long time ago, which was called, I'm going to hopefully get it right, but it's going to be close. It was subtitled helping her hovering effects of instructional proximity on students with disabilities. And it was kind of a demarcation point in the literature. Because before that point, there were plenty of articles in the literature, some database, some not database, that were basically saying paraprofessionals aren't great, we just need more of them. We just need to do a better job training them, we just need to do a better job clarifying their roles and supervising them. But they're the answer. That was the mentality, they're the answer, go paraprofessionals. Now, I want to preface the the inadvertent detrimental effects by saying very clearly, as a former special education teacher, myself, I have a tremendous respect for paraprofessionals in the work that they do, I have a hard time imagining having any success in the settings that I was in, without the help of the paraprofessionals that I worked with, they were amazing. That said, the model of having a particularly one to one paraprofessionals kind of attached at the hip in regular education settings. We identified a whole series, you know, I won't list them all, but I'll name some of the key ones. So one of the things that that came up was that we documented were just kind of how this encouraged unnecessary dependency by the students on their paraprofessionals. It tended to interfere with peer interactions because the the paraprofessional was a physical and symbolic barrier to other people getting involved, particularly peers. And if you're assigned one to one, to help a student to support a student, what we found that was that the paraprofessionals were literally within arm's reach of like within three feet of their tune all the time. And when other students in the classroom, tried to come into the bubble, so to speak that the paraprofessional and student were in. Oftentimes, they were rebuffed. And part of it was you know, in talking to paraprofessionals was like, This is my job. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Like you do your thing. I'm gonna do my thing. And we noticed when paraprofessionals had to leave the situation, whether it was the you know, run an errand, take a break, go to lunch, whatever, other people fill that space typically. But what was really interesting is what happened when they came back. If if, if a student for example, a pier filled the space, and when the paraprofessional returned, the paraprofessional was like okay, now go back and do your thing because I'm here now I've got this under control. Then eventually, people stopped filling that space. When the paraprofessional left because they got the message like, this is a separate zone for just us, you know, just our professional and the student with a disability. But other examples of inadvertent detrimental effects besides interfering with peer interactions and creating unnecessary dependencies is it also interfered with teacher engagement with the teacher getting involved. And one of the things that I strongly believe and I think is well documented in the literature, is that among the most important variables and qualities of, of a successful inclusive placement, is the extent to which the regular education teacher takes ownership and is engaged with the student with a disability so that they're not just the host, they're actually the teacher and they think of themselves as the teacher. And so often, the presence of the paraprofessional interferes with that. It also decreases the availability of competent instruction for students, because as hard working and dedicated as paraprofessionals are, and you might get lucky and have a licensed teacher who's working as a paraprofessional, you can't count on that. And so it's like kids without disabilities get access to highly qualified teachers and special educators and related services providers, and particularly if you have a developmental disability. Our data here in Vermont suggests that if you have a one to one paraprofessional, especially, you might be getting 50 6080, sometimes 100% of your instruction, including first instruction from a paraprofessional. And that's rooted in a lot of really unhelpful foundations, and thinking about people with disabilities, it's rooted in very low expectations. And I tried to point out to people that this is fundamentally an equity issue. In part, it's an instructional issue, but it's an equity issue for people with disabilities. And it's, you know, I always encourage people to ask the question, would the practice be okay, if the student didn't have a disability? And, you know, if if you said to somebody, well, we've got a new, you know, new program and literacy for our first graders and kindergarteners, and they're not going to have access to any teachers who are actually trained in literacy instruction, we're going to hire a whole bunch of really nice, dedicated people who are willing to work for a non livable wage, and, and they're not really going to be supervised. And we're just going to kind of say, here, this this kid, go to it and do some reading stuff with them. You know, people will like, whoa, wait a minute. That's not That's not cool. That's not okay. But somehow, we've convinced people that we're doing kids and families, kids who have disabilities and their families, we're doing them a favor by assigning an untrained, unsupervised, less skilled person. And again, I want to really make the point, I'm not saying that paraprofessionals don't belong in the school systems, I think that they do. And I'm not saying that they don't have important roles, because I do think that they do. But I think the way that we're using them, and the way that we've approached this is really problematic. We've also seen another example of an inadvertent detrimental detrimental effect is loss of personal control, and sometimes gender identity. That was one of the less common ones, but I'll give you a really specific example from the research.

And again, this was back in the 90s. Okay, when issues around gender identity weren't as predominant as they are today, okay. But what we do know is that the vast majority of paraprofessionals are female. So you've got a female paraprofessional with a student who is male, and they're in physical education class, and the teacher says to the group, Okay, girls, I want you to do 50 You know, jumping jacks and boys, I want you to take five laps go. Well, the paraprofessional kind of goes with the group that she identifies with. So she goes with the girls takes the male student with the girls, as opposed to with the boys. And and so, you know, it's things like that. And also you have personal control issues where people say, Well, why why is the students so unmotivated? And it's like they've learned that they have no control over anything that goes on in their life, like somebody's moving them around doing this taking them here taking them, they're not giving them choices. So there's a lot of loss of personal control, you see these very insular relationships. And oftentimes they're touted as being positive because there's a warm, nurturing relationship between the paraprofessional and the student. And that absolutely happens. But when it happens to the exclusion of other relationships, that's a problem. So, you know, you hear the issue of, you know, should the paraprofessional continue with the student in subsequent grades? And it's like, would, you know, sometimes schools do have multi age and multi grade situations that are chosen. But at some point, you know, you want kids to have experiences with different adults and be able to respond and generalize across different people. And if we said, you know, you're going to have the same teacher, you know, every grade through elementary school, like most people would be like, yeah, it's not really working for me, you know, it can also set up some unhealthy dynamics between the paraprofessional, the teacher, special educator and family where the, the paraprofessional kind of functions as like the eyes for the family, and they like report back to the family. And it the loop is kind of mixed up. But some of that happens, because teachers and special educators don't always know what's going on. Because we, as the professionals have abdicated some level of responsibility for that student. And then it really shows up when the paraprofessional is absent, like people are like, what do we do, we don't know what to do, because this person does everything. So you know, there's really a problem of, of being over be overly dependent on the paraprofessionals. And fundamentally, it gets at some service delivery issues where, you know, the the use of paraprofessionals. And the continued add on of paraprofessionals is because we don't have sound inclusive service delivery models that account for the inclusion of the full range of kids with disabilities that that exist in our schools.

Tim Villegas

I love that you said, the high regard you have for paraprofessionals. Because I agree, you know, I when I was in the classroom, I couldn't do my job without paraprofessionals. I also couldn't have done the level of inclusion that I was able to achieve without paraprofessionals even though looking back, it really wasn't as inclusive as I would have wanted it to be. But even even thinking about the students that were that did Access General Education, especially in those early years, it wasn't because I facilitated that it was because paraprofessionals facilitated that. And it wasn't until later in my career that we that we talked about coaching and we talked about, you know, co teaching where I was planning lessons with a general education teacher and the paraprofessional supporting the goals and the lessons in that context. There

Michael Giangreco

are these myths about like, who needs a one to one, like for some while it's just like, you know, all kids with autism need a one to one, all kids with Down syndrome need a one to one. And those are, I think, dangerous assumptions to make up front. I pulled something up that I wanted to read you and it's a letter. It's a it's a very short vignette that a parent wrote. Oh, yeah, please, this sounds great. Yeah. So many years ago, I co authored an article with four parents. The article was called Be careful what you wish for five reasons to be concerned about the assignment of individual paraprofessionals. And it was written with my colleague Susan Yuan, and with Barb Mackenzie and Pat Cameron and Janice Bianca. And all four of those women are parents of their children. Each has developmental disabilities of various sorts. And one of the reasons I invited them to write this article with me is I kind of chant I asked them to challenge me, you know, like I was having these ideas, but I was concerned that they might be considered, like against what parents were advocating for. Like, wait a minute, I'm a parent, I'm advocating for a one to one And, and you're saying that there's problems with one to one, are we on the same team, because I've always thought of myself as somebody who was kind of advocating with the parents. And one of the things we've I've noticed is that there's been a shift over time. And although parents, many parents still do advocate for one to one paraprofessionals for their child, if you dig deep, you often find that the request is because there's a lack of trust in what the regular education system or special ed system is going to do. They're worried about whether their child's going to fall through the cracks, they're worried that the teacher is not really engaged, you know, they're worried that they're going to there's going to be some kind of low quality approach. And this is a level of insurance so to speak. Right? So I mean, there's there's very rational reasons why parents advocate for one to one's even if advocating for a one to one may not be the necessarily the best thing to advocate for. So I asked these parents to challenge me and I also asked three of them to share a personal vignettes that were included in the article. This is from Pat Cameron, regarding her daughter Beth. So she writes when my daughter Beth started high school, the high school personnel 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 to it, even though I felt it wasn't needed. Freshman year this arrangement worked out reasonably well. The paraprofessional was a young woman, not much older than bath, she was skilled at giving her room and knowing when to back off. During Beth sophomore year, this paraprofessional was replaced by one who was on her like Velcro. She was 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 quote didn't want to be bossed and, quote, didn't want an aide and quote, 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. And my point there in part, and to me, that's a really powerful story is that parents are now advocating for their child have access to the highly qualified content specialist. If if you want your child to learn to read or or you know, develop in math, you know, you you have a choice between an unskilled paraprofessional or somebody with a math background, like give me the person with the math background. Right. But we were still in this place where some people think of children who have children and youth with disabilities as my kids or your kids instead of our kids. Right. And so of course, part of the mentality in a in a truly inclusion oriented school is that we're all responsible for all the kids. We don't have your kids and my kids. They're they're our kids.

Tim Villegas

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

Michael Giangreco

You know, they they haven't shifted wholesale around the country. If they had we'd be seeing a lot more success than we're seeing because we see a lot of unevenness around the country and even within the same states and school districts. There's ebbs and flows as personnel change as leadership changes and so on. So I think we still have a Long way to go with this a number of years ago, I convened a group. I can't remember how many people I'm looking at a document here, it was probably a dozen or more people, and they were all general and special education school leaders. And as a result of working with them, my close colleague Jessie Souter, and I and local school principal, Vicki Graf, longtime advocate of inclusive education, as, as a regular education school principal, wrote an appendix that is located in the book, choosing outcomes and accommodations for children, Third Edition. And one of the things that we advocate in there is the idea that, while so many places want to start with, like, what's the paraprofessionals role? And you see all kinds of articles on what's the paraprofessionals role? We think that that's part of the problem, we should never be starting with what's the paraprofessionals role? If a student is in a regular class, the very first place we want to start is what is the teacher's role. And the way we framed it in this document, was we identified eight key roles for teachers. So not every single role that a teacher engages in, but eight key roles related to inclusive education. But it all starts with the phrasing. Teachers contribute to the education of students with disabilities and inclusive schools and classrooms, and demonstrate educational ownership by and then doing these different things. Okay. And it's interesting, because when we first did our first draft of this, the idea of teacher ownership was one of the items. And it was by vetting this document through like a dozen school leaders, they said, no, no, that is part of the base, that's part of the starting point, all of the things should be contributing to them having educational ownership. And so what we do is we start with the general education roles. And then there's a set of special educator roles, which mostly parallel the teacher roles. And part of it is that with the special educator roles, we say special educators contribute to the education of students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms by an A lot of it is CO creating, and CO managing co facilitating all the things with the regular educator. And it's only after you have determined, what is the role of the teacher, and the special educator, that you're in a position to then start to say, for paraprofessionals 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 doing these things. So it's not what's their role in instruction? What's their role? They shouldn't have a role in planning, I don't think but it's like the paraprofessionals role is not so much to support the student, but to support the teacher and special educator. And that's also a big mind shift. Yeah, because what we typically do is we say the role of the paraprofessional is to support this student. And so it's their instruction as their social behavior, etc. And what we're saying is, no, that the teacher is the is the lead person for every other kid in that classroom. They should be the lead for this person. But then we have to focus on how do we support this teacher? And that's a great point. Yeah, should be supporting the teacher. So it's a mind shift. Sure.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great point, Michael, I'm not sure if I've thought about it quite in that way. I wonder if you know, some of the language I've heard around paraprofessionals is that they're teaching assistants. And I wonder if that is on purpose.

Michael Giangreco

So I always use the word, and it's a very nuanced difference. But I think there's a difference between being a teaching assistant and a teacher assistant. Oh, yeah. So to me, they are a teacher assistant. They are an assist to the teacher. And it's not necessarily with teaching, it might be with teaching or part of it may be with teaching, but part of it may be with other things. I also think that it's a problematic when you assign somebody just two students with disabilities in the classroom, in the models of service delivery that we've been developing. The paraprofessionals have split funding or shared funding. In between general education and special education, and because they are assigned to the teacher, not to the student, then the teacher deploys them to work with whichever students, you know, they need them to work with.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Michael Giangreco

The big role, a big role shift.

Tim Villegas

So, like I'm thinking about, like assigning students in natural assigning learners in natural proportions. Because let's say you have a grade level, and let's, let's stick to let's take the middle school, and you have seventh grade students. And you have a number of students with particular disabilities, and you are spreading them out across the grade level. So there's no inclusion classrooms, it's just classrooms. And then typically, you know, see, typically, you have students first, and then you look at roles. So you look at teachers, general education, teachers, special education teachers. And so how you're putting or finding spots for paraprofessionals is really the same. It's the same idea. You're just saying, In this role, this classroom or this teacher is going to need this kind of role. Is that right?

Michael Giangreco

The will the teachers helping to decide how the paraprofessional is most useful to them, so that they can be engaged with all their learners. You know, this brings up a point that's a little bit off off the topic. But it's, it's kind of a personal pet peeve of mine, when you mentioned natural proportions, because I think that's a really important concept. And as you know, co teaching is very popular. And co teaching can be great. But one of the problems that I see in schools that I visit, and I've seen it repeatedly over many, many years, is that in order to justify the presence of a co teacher, meaning a special educator, co teacher, schools routinely violate natural proportion, they put a disproportionately high percentage of students with disabilities and other non standard needs, meaning kids at risk kids who are non English language learners, anybody that has any kind of issue that is requires extra support, they congregate in the CO taught classroom, and makes that classroom completely out of whack. And so you're going forward one step, and you're going backwards three. So I would really, I really hope that people will look at this issue of natural proportion related to co teaching in the models of service delivery, that exemplar models of service delivery that we've been exploring, given typical resources, say here in Vermont, about the best we can figure out is 20 to 25%, per teacher for co teaching. We can't figure out how you do that with existing resources 100% of the time without congregating kids, and it's to me it's not worth it. It's creates more problems than it's worth.