Finally: Convincing Evidence for the Impact of School Librarians?

• In Event: 52.084 - Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: 52.084-21 - Leveraging Underutilized Resources to Improve Schools

Abstract

This is a part of on-going research exploring the impact of school librarians on student achievement across all grade 3-8 public schools in New York State outside of New York City. The models examine school library impact on student English and math achievement, while taking account of prior academic achievement, a wide range of student demographic variables (such as gender, special education status, limited-English proficiency, minority status, free/reduced lunch participation), and building level characteristics (size, discipline climate, district accountability status, and overall district financial capacity).

Results show a statistically significant impact on ELA Common Core achievement, after controlling for a wide range of other student and school covariates. Similar results were not seen for Common Core math achievement results.

Authors

• Michael S Radlick, Institute for Research on Learning Technology Visions

• Joette Stefl-Mabry, University at Albany - SUNY