ParaPro study guide
ParaPro · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The ParaPro Assessment is an entry-level paraeducator assessment developed by ETS, the organization behind the Praxis tests. It is designed for people who work - or want to work - as paraprofessionals, instructional aides, and similar classroom support staff, and for practicing paraeducators who must show competency to meet state certification, licensure, or hiring requirements. Because the rules are set locally rather than nationally, ETS directs candidates to check their own state's requirements first to confirm which assessment to schedule and what score is accepted. The test is multiple choice and is administered at test centers and, where available, at home, with ID requirements and accommodations handled through ETS. Topics on this exam: Reading, Writing, and Mathematics. The ParaPro study guide has 3 sections and about 938 words.
01Reading: Main Idea, Inference, and Purpose
The Reading section asks you to work with short passages like the ones students meet in class - informational text, short fiction, and instructions. Questions fall into a few predictable categories: main idea, supporting detail, inference, vocabulary in context, sequence and organization, and author's purpose. detail is the most common trap. A choice can be factually true and still be wrong because it answers "what is one thing the passage says" rather than "what is the passage mostly about." Test a main idea by asking whether it covers the entire passage or only one paragraph.
341 words, about 2 min02Writing: Conventions, Sentence Combining, and Revision
The Writing section tests standard English conventions plus your ability to combine and revise sentences. You should be able to spot, quickly: subject–verb agreement, pronoun–antecedent agreement, verb tense consistency, and correct use of commas, apostrophes, semicolons, and quotation marks - along with clear pronoun reference. Trap 1: interrupting phrases. In "The list of supplies, including three notebooks, (is/are) on the desk," the subject is list , not supplies .
310 words, about 2 min03Mathematics: Number Sense, Percents, and Geometry
The Mathematics section covers number sense and operations, fractions/decimals/percents, ratio and proportion, basic algebra (solving for an unknown), measurement and geometry (perimeter, area, volume, conversions), data interpretation (tables, graphs, mean/median/mode), and word problems. Calculators are generally not allowed, so practice mental-math shortcuts. Trap 1: order of operations. Parentheses, then exponents, then multiply/divide left to right, then add/subtract left to right.
287 words, about 1 min