Sarah Darer Littman bemoans the fact that our policy makers are willing to spend more on testing while many schools have no libraries or librarians.
When she said this to an elected official, he responded: “Where’s the evidence for the benefit of libraries?”
In this post, she supplies the evidence. She cited the studies showing that schools and students tend to have higher literacy if they have libraries.
Yet, as she also reports, budget cuts are closing the doors to literacy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Without a love or reading books, I would have never gone to college on the G.I. Bill after serving in the U.S. Marines and fighting in Vietnam. Even while fighting in Vietnam, my mother mailed me paperback books that I read in bunkers when no one was shooting at us and I was off duty.
My favorite place at school K to 12 was the school library. I was a horrible student who barely graduated from high school. It was the hundreds (and maybe thousands) of books I read as a child and teen that saved my future when I decided to go to college—-not standardized bubble tests based on the unproven theories behind President Obama’s Machiavellian Common Core standards.
The more I read about the education issue in the U.S., the more my anger grows at the fake education reformers who are demonizing public school teachers and destroying the futures of millions of children by focusing on unproven theories while ignoring what’s really needed.
Obama’s Common Core agenda is the worst wrong headed thinking possible. A love or reading saved my life from living in poverty as my parents and older brother did.
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BREAKING NEWS:
The AFT convention debate is totally rigged in favor of supporting Common Core.
Only pro-Common Core party liners are being allowed to speak.
Watch it live NOW:
http://www.aft.org/convention/live.cfm
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I’ll wait until the convention is over and then read a summary of the Common Core debate. Maybe the critics will be allowed to talk last—if so, last is the best position because that means they will have the final word. If there are no opposing voices, then the Common Core debate was rigged and the Chicago teachers union was not allowed a chance to have their say.
Only arguments with both sides of an issue having equal time in the same forum are not rigged.
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Lloyd,
“Only arguments with both sides of an issue having equal time in the same forum are not rigged.”
Take it the next step forward and realize that most issues have more than two sides and therefore all voices should have equal time.
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How many sides might there be for one issue and if they pass 10 or more should there be a limit and how do we select those who should be part of the argument?
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I wasn’t necessarily looking at it from a “pragmatic” point of view but one of getting away from our seemingly instinctual dichotomous thinking.
The answer to your question would have to be answered by those involved in the process and/or some type of “Roberts Rules” (Sorry Bob S, not yours-ha ha!).
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The research re: libraries is CLEAR. Libraries make a positive difference in ways far beyond our imagination in the lives of people. To close libraries is like taking away nutrition necessary for physical health and development.
Click to access AASL_infographic.pdf
Click to access CC0211Presidents.pdf
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I think it’s part of the reformista agenda. By slashing school library budgets, we help to ensure that students do not develop sufficient research skills, which in theory could lead them to investigate and question education “reforms”.
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That politician did not really want evidence…not real evidence. Real evidence does not support their agenda, therefore, they don’t really want to see it. It’s just something to say to get us off their backs for a few moments. I’m glad Littman went to the trouble, because I like having access to the evidence to pass around.
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School librarians provide safety nets for students who seek independent learning and foster individual passions. Now more than ever it is critical to recognize and advocate for school library programs. Thanks to Sarah Littman and to Diane Ravitch for showcasing Sarah’s work. School librarians provide essential services, making proven differences in the lives of students. When administrators get lost in the data collection mandated by RTTT, they can lose sight of the child seeking information. Defunding school libraries whether staff or materials is a direct hit to children.
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I know it could be just a salve on a profusely bleeding wound, but when I was a kid in Newark, in supplement to our school library, we had “Book Mobile.” Book Mobile arrived weekly, and we would board the bus and check out a book, returning it the following week. Certainly this is an idea that could be reimplemented and go around to schools in adjoining towns. Why not? If they aren’t going to bring back libraries/librarians at schools, couldn’t this fill even a tiny bit of the void for the youngest classes, perhaps up to grade 5?
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I grew up in a fairly rural area of a western state, and I ADORED the Bookmobile. My mom got us to the county library and we had the school library, but something about a library on wheels captured my imagination.
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Littman bases her arguments on test scores – buying into precisely the same metric used to undermine her budgets. There is more than irony in building such a case, since the response – “they can use google” – more than documents what’s wrong with the old style library, and what might be solved by a 21st century information center.
Certainly libraries are critical to schools – at all levels, and for all parties, including kids, teachers, parents and others. The irony is that most school librarians serve largely archival roles – “where is that document,” “what is the Dewey Decimal System,” and “that book is late, so pay.” Many don’t, and there has been a serious movement toward multimedia resource centers that include loads of books, many of which are available on inter-library loans, and need no long term storage. Yet that is still the exception. And it will probably be that way for a long time, until teachers begin to learn from their students that “google” is not enough to answer a question worth asking.
Be very careful about this particular argument and theme, in other words, since it can bury several centuries of academic investigation with the cut of a budget and seriously eroded influence of teachers, librarians, and parents. Focus, instead, at creating new kinds of libraries, using a much broader spectrum of media, largely but not exclusively through computers and tech literacy offered by older kids to younger kids and teachers. What is exciting about 21st Century information centers is the lack of hierarchy in investigating interesting questions and creating useful solutions. But librarians – and parental experiences of librarians – are among the worst professions to break such hierarchies.
In fact, the real 21st Century School is a library with blackboards and whiteboards, where students teach each other, teach teachers, and inspire parents and administrators, and where teachers help those students document how much those students know about what those students think is important. But that’s a long, long way from the check-out line.
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I’m in the upper midwest. Almost without exception school library media specialists here have created contemporary libraries. It has been a long time since I have seen an old fashioned library our encountered an antediluvian library media specialist. Under investment in school libraries is a problem in some urban and rural systems out here however.
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joebeckmann,
Who the bloody hell are you?!? Clearly you have some major misinformation going on about school librarians (aka teacher librarians, media specialists, media coordinators and even “Libary Lady!”)
I do not know of a single school librarian who resembles the creature you described. I teach every one of my 400 plus little people every week in addition to running the media program etc all by myself. I can assure you that this decrepit little old lady librarian knows technology and teaches it. We have a full service library as much as
the budget and my personal finances will allow.
Most school librarians know the studies. I have not read Ms. Littman’s piece yet but when one is talking to an accountant or a farmer, it is best to speak in terms they use. Putting studies out there is a way of connecting and of giving veracity to the content and turning their rationale back on them.
And finally, don’t piss off the librarian.
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The librarians at the high school where I taught for more than half of my thirty years in the classroom had a computer lab in the library, and that’s where we took our kids so the librarian could teach them how to use the Internet for research. All the ninth graders went through her workshop early each school year. In fact, they went through several workshops, each with a different purpose. For instance, teach them how to use the library.
Teachers also scheduled time to work on research papers in the library computer lab with help from the librarian even if teachers knew how to use the Internet for research. Both of the librarians we had during those years were certificated teachers who had taught before moving from the classroom to the librarian position and they loved working with kids.
In addition, teachers sent kids to the library to work on individual projects during class time, and the librarian was there to supervise, offer help and even teach when needed.
All the librarians in the schools where I taught for thirty were a great support and resource. Anyone who badmouths school librarians is spewing fighting words.
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I was also a librarian once myself, and pissed off was a common event. Of course the pterodactyls didn’t like it in those days, but..where are they now?
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Your description of school librarians doesn’t resemble any of the librarians/media specialists I ever worked with. I depended on them to teach my history students how to research using books, online resources, and the internet. They helped my students find appropriate resources, taught them how to take notes and cite their sources, and even how to use online programs like Glogster to produce a project. In addition, they encouraged reading for pleasure by conducting book talks, sponsoring contests, and hosting book clubs. My one regret is seeing our libraries turned into “commons” where the environment has become much more social and good materials are being discarded. We have only a fraction of the materials we had two years ago, and it is truly a shame.
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Well what better way to dumb down a population than to take away opportunities to access literature. I mean really isn’t that their end game?
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Remember the library and books in the movie Logan’s Run? It was abandoned and the books turned to rot. Of course there is no money for librarians. There is barely money for text books and supplies. This fits into their agenda nicely. Don’t teach script writing, so they can’t read founding documents or sign their names. Don’t have books to withdraw because there’s an app for that. I don’t think the reformers will truly be happy until the distance between them and theirs and me and mine is an enormous gap, and until I, too, am tethered to public assistance, begging at their tests. However, I’ll still have my pubic school education and my own intelligence; I just wasn’t fortunate enough to be born wealthy.
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One “where’s the evidence?” question deserves another…or several:
Where is the evidence for the benefit* of Common Core?
Where is the evidence of the benefit* of all the standardized testing?
Where is the evidence of the benefit* of charter schools?
Where is the evidence o f the benefit* of VAMs for teacher assessment?
Where is the evidence for the benefit* of Bill Gates anti-democratic activities?
*to the public and not just individuals and corporations
The great irony is that these people would not know real evidence if it were staring them in the face (which it currently is, in the form of the crisis that they are precipitating with their current policies)
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TAGO!
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Do we really need to even have this debate? Is this politician really taking on Ben Franklin? I would love to know the title of the last book he read. What a waste of energy!
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Sadly, here is an article about librarian aides loosing their jobs across Alabama due to the lack of funding thanks to the Alabama Accountability Act.
http://www.alreporter.com/in-case-you-missed-it-2/6489-tallapoosa-county-superintendent-accountability-act-to-blame-for-job-losses.html
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If there are no libraries or librarians, why are we spending so much time teaching children to read? How are they supposed to practice those skills we are teaching? Or is reading just a useless punishment devised by old people and inflicted on each upcoming generation? Is reading taught so that students can pass tests? If you want a child to be a really fluent reader, the child will need to find the books that speak to the interests that that child has This will happen in a library, probably with the assistance of a librarian who knows and loves children’s books.And, incidentally, all that pleasure reading will help that child have killer test scores in comprehension and vocabulary. A child who reads fluently will also be able to write, a real anomaly in our post verbal world.
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Patricia,
I know and love children’s books. My mother was a librarian. Nowadays administrators don’t want me to read books from my collection. They want Core Knowledge. Reading books to my kids was my favorite part of teaching. I would tell them about how my mother read me books when I was a little girl. I felt like I was passing on a hallowed tradition.
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I cannot believe an elected official said that.
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I’m not surprised. It’s amazing what comes out of the mouths of corrupted elected officials and talk show hosts. It’s a common tactic to throw out a question that the person they are talking to may not be ready to answer. The odds usually favor the crook with specific questions like this.
I mean, how many people would have the facts ready unless they were one of the rare few with instant recall and a photographic memory.
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