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School Libraries and School Accreditation March 23, 2008

Posted by Debbie Stafford in : Check this out!, Community , trackback

Most, 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?

Comments»

1. Nancy White - March 30, 2008

In Colorado, we have been fortunate to have “ET-IL” - “Educational Technology and Information Literacy” linked directly to the school district accreditation process. Each district has been required to have a plan that includes such things as collaboration with school librarians to integrate information literacy and technology. In my district, as a library coordinator, I found myself being asked to serve on the district’s accreditation committee, and, translating this down to the school level, accreditation external review teams were asked to look for evidence of collaboration, integration, internet safety instruction, and professional development for teachers (which you guessed it- emphasized collaboration with teacher-librarians to create inquiry-based lessons that integrated ET-IL) The fabulous thing for my district is that we went beyond simply having a plan for this - I had the support of the adminstrators to assure that this plan was carried out.
The future of ET-IL and accreditation is currently under review. As our state writes a new plan for accreditation, we are strategizing how best to approach state leaders to assure that this successful practice continues. ET-IL has caught on in a big way in some of our school districts, but needs more time to grow in others. The state has shown a real interest in integrating “21st century skills” into the curriculum, and so we will need to show the connection between what we have accomplished with ET-IL and 21st century skills.