Never Before: Using Treatment Effects Modeling to Examine School Library Impact on Student Achievement

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Investigating Literacy Outcomes

Abstract

Based on hundreds of published studies, school library practitioners believe strong evidence exists supporting a causal connection between school libraries and student achievement. An extensive review of the research literature (Authors, 2017) shows that the evidence is weak, and flawed by lack of rigorous research designs and analyses. This study uses treatment effects modeling to estimate the causal impact of a full time certified school librarian on a set of different academic outcomes, using non-experimental data. The study analyzes average treatment effects (ATE) using two different techniques to establish baseline equivalence between the treatment and the control groups. In addition, this study is replicated with multiple subject area outcome measures, multiple grade groupings and two large, distinct population groups.

Authors

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

• Joette Stefl-Mabry, University at Albany - SUNY