School libraries are perceived to have a significant effect on student achievement. The reality is that evidence supporting the effects of school libraries on student achievement remains unconvincing to many serious researchers. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of 25 years of school library research examining student achievement. Results indicate that of over 260 studies, fewer than 27 approach the minimum requirements of research design. The unembellished truth is that most school library studies suffer from limitations of design, measurement, and analysis. To address such limitations, we built multiple statistical models based on six years of school-level data reflecting all public schools in New York State. We highlight key challenges of quantitative research: design, indicators, measurement and analysis approaches as they apply to ours and other school library research and share initial results from our study examining the causal relationships among school librarians, resources, activities and student achievement.

School library (SL) research has focused excessively on positive results from poorly designed and executed studies. While SL practitioners believe there is a preponderance of evidence showing the positive effects of school librarians on student achievement, the reality is drastically different. This study uses a statewide school building dataset and multiple models to investigate the effects of three different measures of school librarian presence on different measures of student achievement, while controlling for a wide range of student/school demographics, climate and prior academic achievement. The lack of significant SL effects from the statistical models in this study call into question much of prior research findings and emphasizes the need for more rigorous research designs and analyses.

This session relates directly to this year's conference theme

This chapter highlights critical lessons learned during the past six years during the development of a capstone graduate educational technology course, teaching School Library Media (SLMS) pre-service students how to develop learner centered, knowledge centered and assessment centered Web-based learning tools; in short, to enable them to become change agents in their educational communities. A large northeastern University has cultivated educational partnerships that bring together University students with their professional, in-service, PreK-12 counterparts to explore issues of technology in education, pedagogy, theory, curriculum, information literacy, assessment, and evaluation. Unlike traditional courses with prepackaged academic assignments, this course engages school library media specialists with real-world teaching and learning situations that are frequently ill-structured, often chaotic, and collaboratively defined by the learning needs of all participants (PreK-12 through university; in-service and pre-service). The strengths and weaknesses of the course are candidly discussed with recommendations for improvement.

Teachers' use of formative and summative assessment to document and enhance students' learning and teachers' instructional practice is firmly established throughout educational research as integral to the teaching profession. However, knowledge about how school librarians, also referred to as teacher librarians, or school library media specialists, use assessment information to shape and inform their instructional practice is far less understood. This study, conducted in a large populous state in the northeastern region of the United States, describes how significant and insignificant results, based on a state-wide web survey of public-school librarians aligned with student achievement data at respondents' school building level, reveal school librarians' assessment practices. Findings reveal that although school librarians use formative assessment to gauge student performance, they rarely share assessment results with teachers or administrators within their buildings. School librarians' demographic factors including prior experience and educational background appear to be associated with assessment practice. The article discusses the need for school librarians to become better versed in how to use assessment information to document evidence of their practice and reveal the contributions they make to various stakeholders within their school communities. Statistical analyses include descriptive statistics as well as regression modeling using school-district-level outcomes and covariates. The results of this study are limited to school librarians in this state and may not be generalizable to all school librarians.