These instructional aides work with groups of no larger than five students. Aides are used in all grades from K-12, but the vast majority are found in the district's 39 elementary schools, according to Woodrow Hammond, the district's director of Chapter I, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, project management, and grants. Each school in the district receives an allocation from Title I funding and can hire as many aides as they see fit, he said. The Rochester district requires its aides to have at least a high school degree and undergo training and professional development much like the training teachers in the district receive. One of the most beneficial uses of their teacher aides, said Hammond, is in providing extra help for students.
Aides provide similar tutorial experiences for students in summer programs as well.
The enhancement to the students' performance is significant. I aides in grades K-5. Four of them, as well as two additional aides paid for out of the local budget, assist teachers in the district's Writing to Read program, which uses an IBM computer software package as one tool for teaching reading to first-graders. Writing to Read is used in six of the district's seven elementary schools, with one aide in each. According to Michael Melamed, assistant to the superintendent, the district tends to have good scores at the elementary school level.