From Candidate to Classroom: Research-Based Practices for Recruiting and Hiring Highly-Effective Teachers
Category: Staffing, Finance, and Operations
Districts nationwide seek to diversify the educator workforce, yet pathways for paraprofessionals—typically more ethnoracially and linguistically diverse than the general teacher pipeline—remain understudied. Using administrative data from New York City Public Schools (NYCPS), this study examines paraprofessionals’ demographics and factors predicting their transition to teaching or exit from NYCPS. Between 2016–17 and 2023–24, the paraprofessional workforce grew substantially, and more new teachers had prior paraprofessional experience. Those advancing to teaching were more ethnoracially diverse but more likely to eventually leave teaching in NYCPS, especially when staying in the same school that they served as a professional. Findings underscore the need for targeted support to strengthen both the retention of paraprofessionals and the sustainability of their success as classroom teachers.
Keywords
Staff Development, Career Development, Teacher Characteristics, Retention, Race, Ethnicity, Descriptive Analysis, Regression Analysis
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/511n-s861
