Para Power

Para Power is a history of the first generation of paraprofessional educators in US public schools, who arrived amid the struggles of the late 1960s. Working within a crisis of care in public education, paras improved both education and social welfare systems, even though they were poorly paid and treated as second-rate staff.

Nick Juravich presents paras as key players in Black and Latino struggles for jobs and freedom. Focusing on New York City, he details how these early paras changed the nature of work in public schools and the relationships between schools and the communities they served.

Paraprofessional programs created hundreds of thousands of jobs in working-class Black and Latino neighborhoods. They also became an important route into training Black and Latino teachers in the 1970s and early 1980s, while the organizing of paras helped drive the growth and integration of public sector unions.

The book portrays an often invisible profession. It examines the lives and practices of those first paras against a backdrop of fights for justice, equality and self-determination.