School Libraries and School Accreditation March 23, 2008
Posted by Debbie Stafford in : Check this out!, Community , 1 comment so farMost, if not all, high school library media specialists are familiar with school accreditation team visits. Middle school and elementary school librarians may also be familiar with these. Many of us remember the days when the paperwork required prior to a visit looked at how many books were in the library, regardless of their age. Now these reports only ask for “adequate” if they look at the library program at all.One of the largest school accreditation organizations is AdvancED which combines NCA CASI and SACS CASI. Last week NCA held their annual convention in Chicago. I was in attendance and while there looked to see what would be of interest to school librarians and whether school librarians were at all represented.One strand was identified as Reading/Writing/Literacy. In the program I found three school librarians making presentations and I found two sessions focusing on Information Literacy and Reading Comprehension. There were a small number of vendors, two of them were programs familiar to school librarians, one a read and test program the other a read and discuss program. Assessment especially formative seemed to be the biggest topics in all strands.
Now my questions; what role should school librarians take in this area of school accreditation? Since we know that school libraries have a big effect on student performance, how can we make sure that school libraries are represented at conferences like these?