Paraprofessionals have become a significant portion of the educational workforce for students with or at risk for needing, or receiving special educational services. Although best practice and federal legislation require supervision of paraprofessionals by certified professional educators, research indicates that supervision rendered to paraprofessionals is often ad hoc, infrequent, and not based on data. We critically examined the availability and validity evidence of existing assessment approaches (published or publically posted) for evaluation and monitoring of paraprofessional practices in schools in the United States. Overall results from a systematic review of research literature and a review of materials made available publically by schools yielded 14 assessment tools with a focus on 18 constructs. Each assessment lacked reliability and validity evidence, and had limited utility for guiding paraprofessional supervision and professional development. Based on the larger paraprofessional literature and availability of assessments, a framework of recommendations for measurement development and validation is proposed. Specifically, we offer suggestions for domains of practice and validation efforts for evaluating forms of reliability, construct validity, and consequential validity for new assessment approaches for these important school personnel.

中文翻译：

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准专业实践评估的现状和未来方向

准专业人士已成为有需要或有风险或需要特殊教育服务的学生的重要组成部分。尽管最佳实践和联邦法律要求由经过认证的专业教育者对准专业人士进行监督，但研究表明，对准专业人士进行的监督通常是临时性的，不频繁的，并且并非基于数据。我们严格审查了现有评估方法（已发布或公开发布）的可用性和有效性证据，这些评估方法用于评估和监视美国学校的超专业实践。通过对研究文献进行系统性审查以及对学校公开提供的材料进行审查的总体结果得出了14种评估工具，重点是18种结构。每种评估都缺乏信度和效度证据，并且在指导准专业监督和专业发展方面的作用有限。基于大量专业人士的文献和评估的可用性，提出了用于测量开发和验证的建议框架。具体来说，我们为实践领域和验证工作提供了建议，以评估这些重要学校人员的新评估方法的信度，构造效度和结果效度形式。