Post submitted by Paige Jaeger, coordinator for school library services with the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex (N.Y.) Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and Sue Kowalski, president of New York State Library Association's Section of School Librarians, on behalf of whole child partner American Association of School Librarians(AASL). Connect with school library professionals on Twitter @AASL and the AASL Blog.
As school librarians, we love the Common Core State Standards. Its focus on rigor and relevance are commendable and necessary to educate the Millennial generation and help the United States become competitive in a global society. Across the U.s., simultaneous with the launching of the Common Core is the requirement to have Annual Professional Performance Reviews (APPR) defined for classroom teachers in order to meet Race to the Top (RTTT) criteria. It's RTTT that is this year's thorn in the flesh.
As states across the nation develop APPR models to measure the classroom teacher's efficacy, they often don't think about the school librarians, technology folks, and other educators who "complete" the learning experience. In New York State, the APPR model for teachers didn't adequately measure a school librarian's performance, so a team of educators from the library world worked together to craft a rigorous rubric which would work effectively to "measure" the efficacy of a 21st century librarian. After 18 months of review and