Teacher Librarians being cut due to budget

“Research from eleven states and over 4,000 schools documents that credentialed LMTs raise achievement scores anywhere from 8-20%. Support personnel alone in an LMC do not raise achievement but credentialed LMTs do. Why? Because the LMT concentrates on teaching and learning rather than on managing a warehouse. When there is no LMT, achievement suffers – its people rather than just things that make the difference.”

-Loertscher, David V. with Ross J. Todd. Evidence-Based Practice for School Library Media Specialists. Salt Lake City UT: Hi Willow Research & Publishing, 2003.

California dead last in libraries

If you were looking for something to write a letter to the editor about, this came from a post over at CALIBk12 today. Pretty dismal for California libraries.

From a new study (Reading Across the Nation: A Chartbook):

Number of children age 0-5 per California public library
California 2,688
National 1,368
Ranking 51

California has the lowest number of public libraries per child under the age of five years in the nation. They also have the worst level of school library staffing in the nation (1,400 librarians for 9,000 schools).

And this is key:

To be average, California would have to double the number of public libraries in California and hire 8,000 credentialed school librarians.

(Thanks to Richard K. Moore, InfoSherpa, for this CALIBK12 post on the study.)