Not Waiting for Superman

Is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No. Is it Superman? Well, yes—with regards to British Columbian (BC) TLs and student literacy advocates—it is. Only this time his alter-ego is not named Clark Kent, but rather Ken Haycock.

In his article “Connecting British Columbia (Canada) School Libraries and Student Achievement: A Comparison of Higher and Lower Performing Schools with Similar Overall Funding” from the January 2011 issue of School Libraries Worldwide, Dominican University, USA, professor emeritus Haycock—formerly of the University of British Columbia and San Diego State University—analyzes seven key school library funding and staffing variables in a selection of both low- and high-performing public and private BC schools to determine the nature and extent of the relationship between these variables and student academic success regardless of student demographics.

Haycock prefaces the presentation of his research with some engaging statements that serve as narrative summaries of his research findings. A few of these statements are:

• “Among predictors of academic achievement, the size of the school library staff and collection was second only to the absence of at-risk conditions in terms of poverty and low adult educational attainment” (38).

• “Teacher-librarian time, schedules and collaboration with teaching colleagues were associated with higher test score outcomes” (38).

• Quoting Lance and Loertscher from a 2003 study: “If you were setting out a balanced meal for a learner, the school library media program would be part of the main course, not the butter on the bread” (38).

The seven school library variables—and an anecdotal summary of his findings in the study—are outlined here:

• Access. Overall, schools with libraries open more hours per week during and outside of school hours were more likely to be higher achieving schools. During school operating hours, libraries at high performing schools were open 25% more hours on average than libraries at low performing schools: an average of 26 hours during school per week versus 20.8 hours per week. Outside of school, on average, libraries at high performing schools were open nearly 65% more hours than low performing schools: an average of 8.6 hours versus 5.2 hours. (40)

• Staffing. Libraries with more qualified school librarian hours, more paid clerical and technical staff hours, a larger number of volunteers and total number of staff were more likely to be associated with high school performance. At high performing schools, libraries were staffed with teacher-librarians for 29.2 hours per week versus 18.3 hours at low performing schools. Volunteers were more likely to be found at high performing school libraries than in low performing school libraries: an average of 20.2 volunteers versus 11.4. Total library staff hours per week were nearly double for high performing schools, with an average of 57.9 hours versus 31.5 staff hours per week for low performing schools. (40)

• Partnerships and outreach. Schools in which teacher-librarians were spending more hours offering student reading incentives, providing more information skill group contacts per week, and identifying materials for teachers were more likely to be higher achieving schools. High performing school teacher-librarians spent an average of 3.9 hours per week on reading incentive activities, twice that of counterparts at low performing schools. High performing school teacher librarians also spent 2.8 hours per week identifying materials for teachers, more than double that of counterparts at low performing schools. (40)

• Usage. School libraries seeing more group visits per week and more items circulating per week were more likely to be at higher achieving schools—though how much of this is due to differences in school size is not known. High performing school libraries received an average of 19.9 student group visits per week versus 13.8 at low performing school libraries. (40)

• Networked technologies. Schools with a greater number of library and school computers with catalogue access, and schools with a greater number of library computers with Internet access were more likely to be higher achieving schools. Libraries at high performing schools had 52% more computers with Internet access and nearly twice as many computers with library catalogue access. Even more profound, high performing schools offered nearly three times as many computers with school-wide library catalogue access than low performing schools. (40)

• Large current collection. Schools with libraries stocked with a large collection of books of all types and with more current materials were more likely to be higher achieving schools—though how much of this is due to differences in school size is not known. Libraries at high performing schools held an average of 15,000 items in their collections versus 12,000 at low performing schools, and their holdings on average were nearly four years newer as well. Spending on print resources at high performing schools was more than double that at low performing school libraries: $11,700 versus $4,900. (40)

• Adequate funding. Additional buying power such as that derived from school and parent fundraising was related to school achievement as indicated by the combined results of public and independent schools. School/parent fundraising at high performing schools far outnumbered funds raised at low performing schools, with $6,100 versus $1,800 annually. (41)

Perhaps the most striking detail in all seven of the variable areas above is this simple fact: in all cases, a greater allocation of resources in any form to the school library—whether money, time, human resources, materials, etcetera—resulted in a positive relationship with student academic achievement. We generally know this to be true intuitively, but what makes Haycock’s research so engaging is that he presents it as true empirically. As TLs, we tend to maintain an understandable bias when it comes to all things school library related: of course we “know” that there is a strong correlation between greater allocations of resources to the school library and student academic achievement, but we are not always able to point toward a document—toward tangible black and white print—that definitively supports our “knowing.”

What is particularly engaging about Haycock’s article is the fact that it is jurisdiction-specific. Many similar studies look at such jurisdictions as school libraries in Canada, school libraries in the United States, or school libraries in a particular US state. However, Haycock here examines the contextually-relevant data from BC and offers up his findings—findings that all BC TLs and BC student literacy educators, advocates, and proponents should know well and should keep easily accessible when it comes time to create school- or district-based budgets that affect school library funding. To quote former US President Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Or, in this case, “It’s funding allocation and priorities, stupid.” In the Ministry of Education’s 2009/10 Annual Service Plan report, Minister of Education Margaret MacDiarmid reiterates BC’s commitment to literacy: “Our Government’s commitment to literacy, laid out in our Great Goals, is for B.C. to be the best educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent, and we remain committed to that goal.”

We have the Minister’s commitment, we have the research data. We are merely waiting for the funding prioritization—both provincially and locally—to fall in line with what is required to make BC superlatively literate. What we are not waiting for, fortunately, is Superman.

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