FlightWay / Careers / Teaching Assistants, Special Education
Education
Teaching Assistants, Special Education
Assist a preschool, elementary, middle, or secondary school teacher to provide academic, social, or life skills to students who have learning, emotional, or physical disabilities.
- Sector: Education
- Preparation: Zone 3 — medium preparation needed
- O*NET code: 25-9043.00
What you'll actually do
The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.
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Getting Information
a major part of the work — rated 84/100 for importance.
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Assisting and Caring for Others
a major part of the work — rated 77/100 for importance.
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Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates
a major part of the work — rated 72/100 for importance.
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Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships
a regular part of the work — rated 70/100 for importance.
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Monitoring Processes, Materials, or Surroundings
a regular part of the work — rated 68/100 for importance.
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Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events
a regular part of the work — rated 66/100 for importance.
Assist a preschool, elementary, middle, or secondary school teacher to provide academic, social, or life skills to students who have learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Serve in a position for which a teacher has primary responsibility for the design and implementation of educational programs and services.
What it takes
Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.
Skills
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Active Listening
Needed at a solid working level (48/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Social Perceptiveness
Needed at a solid working level (48/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
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Speaking
Needed at a solid working level (46/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
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Learning Strategies
Needed at a solid working level (52/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.
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Reading Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (50/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.
Knowledge
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English Language
Needed at a solid working level (47/100), and rated 63/100 for importance.
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Psychology
Needed at a solid working level (49/100), and rated 59/100 for importance.
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Education and Training
Needed at a basic working level (36/100), and rated 47/100 for importance.
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Customer and Personal Service
Needed at a solid working level (47/100), and rated 46/100 for importance.
Abilities
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Oral Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
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Oral Expression
Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
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Problem Sensitivity
Needed at a solid working level (50/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
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Speech Recognition
Needed at a solid working level (48/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
How people get in
O*NET places this occupation in Zone 3 — medium preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.
Education
Vocational training, an associate degree, or equivalent on-the-job experience.
Experience
One to two years of related experience is typical.
Training
Employers expect you to arrive with the core skill already.
What it pays
These are typical education compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Teaching Assistants, Special Education specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.
Top University Admin
$90k – $180k
Public School Districts
$55k – $85k
Charter & Private Schools
$45k – $75k
How the work tends to run
Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.
- People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”
How FlightWay scores your fit against this
No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.
- 1. You answer a short quiz
- Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
- 2. We correlate the two profiles
- Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Teaching Assistants, Special Education. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
- 3. The number you see is personality fit only
- "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
- 4. Every factor is visible
- You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.
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See your fit for Teaching Assistants, Special Education
Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Teaching Assistants, Special Education and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.
Take the quiz Open in FlightWayOccupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.