Northwest Education: Nexus of Knowledge: the School Library in the 21st Century
"A strong library program would be like an octopus. It would work its way into every classroom, and if you tried to cut off the tentacles you couldn't because it was so interwoven into the fabric of the school."
-Kelly Kuntz, Past President
Oregon Educational Media Association
Fall 2003
Growing up in the southern Oregon town of Medford, little Steve Wisely wasn't much of a reader. His elementary school library was just a sort of warehouse—a place where classroom teachers helped students check out books, mainly to meet book report requirements. He read a Jack London classic or two, but he never got the reading bug. No one clued him in that he could flop on the sofa with a really good book and become an astronaut (or a pioneer or a basketball star) for an afternoon.
Many years later this hometown boy, armed with a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon and a hefty résumé, came back to run the district. By then, the libraries had slipped even further. Classified staff "with no formal training in instruction, no child development background, no knowledge of reading levels of students, and no coursework in libraries," had taken over the job of ordering books and staffing the checkout desk, Wisely told participants at the White House Conference on School Libraries in 2002. In short, Medford's school libraries of the 1980s were not even holding steady. They had sunk below the minimal levels of Wisely's 1950s boyhood.
Alarmed, the new superintendent launched a total revamp. First, he hired certified library media specialists to run each of the district's 13 elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools. Next, existing library staff members were trained to support the work of the professional librarians. Then the new crew of librarians hunkered down to write a district media guide. Adopted by the school board in 1993, the guide spelled out the many-layered roles and far-reaching goals of an effective school library program. It talked about an "information skills curriculum" that begins in kindergarten and continues through 12th grade. It talked about inquiry and investigation. Literature appreciation and reading guidance. Collaboration among librarians and classroom teachers. The librarians spoke of enriching lives and feeding minds far beyond the halls of academia—about laying the groundwork for nothing less than an entire lifetime of learning.
Under Wisely's leadership (and with an influx of voter-approved funds from several local bond measures), Medford's school libraries have emerged as some of the region's best—"beautiful, vibrant places of learning," to use Wisely's words. It's no coincidence, he says, that Medford's students are also among the Northwest's best. "In comparison with national and state scores," Wisely told the White House conference, "Medford School District's graduating seniors exceed both the state and national averages" on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
"School libraries constitute an indispensable introduction to literacy and learning about the world and the universe. They are pathways to self-discovery. They are instruments for progress and autonomy."
—Dr. Vartan Gregorian
Carnegie Corporation
Far from being "extras"—nice if you can afford them but not really necessary—libraries are tightly linked to the academic mission of schools. Steve Wisely's belief that top-notch school libraries can—and do—boost student achievement is backed by a compelling body of research that has arisen in recent years. Keith Curry Lance, leading a team of researchers affiliated with the University of Denver and the Library Research Service of the Colorado State Library, has become legendary among school library advocates for his rigorous studies showing powerful links between good libraries and good student performance.
Lance's studies—including two conducted in the Northwest states of Alaska and Oregon—have established that kids are better readers in schools whose libraries meet certain levels of staffing and service. His recent Alaska study, Information Empowered: The School Librarian as an Agent of Academic Achievement in Alaska, found that the percentage of students scoring proficient or above on reading tests was higher for schools with:
To make sure the higher reading scores could really be credited to libraries—and not to other factors such as school affluence or parents' educational levels—Lance and his colleagues were careful to account for "the considerable impact on academic achievement of community socioeconomic conditions." In his 2001 publication Proof of the Power, in which Lance summarizes these and other findings, he is careful to note that "the distinguishing feature" of his team's research model in Alaska, Oregon, and several other states is "controlling for school and community differences." All things being equal, what Lance found is that library media factors "almost always outperformed other school characteristics, such as teacher-pupil ratio and per-pupil expenditures."
Lance's Oregon study helps shed light on what a really good school library looks like. In the 2001 study findings, Good Schools Have Good Librarians: Oregon School Librarians Collaborate To Improve Academic Achievement, the researcher reports that a "strong and successful" library program is one:
"The library media centers are truly the 'hub' of the school. It is the one place in school where all students go at some time and the welcome mat is always out."
—Dr. Steve Wisely
Medford, Oregon
The studies, of course, tell only part of the story. In all human endeavors, the intangibles—the personalities, motivations, and relationships of the individuals involved—are at least as weighty as the things you can count, like books and computers and dollars and FTEs. School libraries are no exception. Their strengths and impacts are enhanced (or limited) by the library media specialists who run them, the classroom teachers who use them, and the administrators who oversee them. Professor Gary Hartzell of the University of Nebraska told the White House conference that a "dynamic librarian" and a "committed principal" together form the nucleus of a first-rate library program. During his three years with the national Library Power program, funded by the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, Hartzell traveled the country, visiting innovative library programs in big-city schools and one-horse towns. All the great programs, he says, have two key assets: "a librarian who not only has the technical skills but an enterprising attitude," along with a principal who gives the librarian time, resources, and encouragement to collaborate with other teachers, attend curriculum committees, and provide staff development.
"You might have the very best librarian you could ever get on your staff, but being ready, willing, and able represents only three-quarters of what it takes to make significant contributions," Hartzell says. "The fourth part is opportunity. And opportunity rests in the principal's hands."
Many principals, however, hold old-fashioned notions about librarians' role. "There's an immense gulf between how high school principals see school librarians and how the latter view themselves," Renee Olson and Randy Meyer write in a 1996 article in School Library Journal. That old idea, nailed succinctly in the words of Larry Dorrell of Central Missouri State University, is "keeper of the books"—a stunning contrast to the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) vision of librarians as nothing less than the "the essential link" among students, teachers, and other sources of resources. In its recently updated "bible," Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning, the AASL argues that the library media specialist "plays a unique and pivotal role in the learning community." In setting out its information literacy standards for student learning, the association defines the school librarian as a "teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, and program administrator" (notice the order in which the hats are listed) whose mission is "to ensure that students and staff are effective users of ideas and information." That mission, it says, is accomplished by:
"The principal is an absolutely essential element in maximizing the return on library investment."
—Gary Hartzell
University of Nebraska
Libraries are critical partners with schools in shaping readers and thinkers, scholars and inventors, good citizens and productive workers, safe and vibrant communities, a viable planet, a peaceful world. To ignite the powerful engines for learning that libraries can be, Keith Curry Lance offers the following research-based "call to action" in Proof of the Power:
Libraries should be thought of as "knowledge spaces" rather than "information places," argues Ross Todd, a professor from Australia who recently spent a year at Princeton. That's because a student's ability to locate the most arcane or germane information in the universe is worth little more than a dime novel if he can't synthesize it, shape it, wrestle it, analyze it, appreciate it, contextualize it, use it, own it.
In Medford, the 600 students at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School took out no fewer than 46,000 books from their state-of-the-art library in 2001-2002. Steve Wisely, recently retired from his 25-year stint as Medford superintendent, sums up the value of a well-stocked, well-staffed, well-run library this way: "It allows students to do some dreaming."
|
This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2002 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Date of Last Update: 10/22/2003  |