School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians
(Calif.) The good news is that the number of certificated librarians in California schools has increased slightly the past three years.
The bad news, however, is that the state’s ratio of one librarian for every 7,187 students ranks at the bottom nationally for professional library staffing.
“Most elementary schools don’t have a dedicated teacher librarian, and in many cases at the intermediate or middle school level, teacher librarians are only available a few hours a day or even a week if that,” Rosan Cable, full-time teacher librarian at Pacifica High School, said in an interview.
“That’s a common story throughout the state,” said Cable, who also serves as vice president of communications for the California School Library Association.
In spite of research showing that students at schools with full-time librarians score better in reading and writing on assessments of state standards, the number of certified librarians employed in California’s public schools has declined every year since 2000-01, according to statistics from the California Department of Education.
Librarian staffing levels reached an all-time low of 804 in the 2012-13 school year but rose to 859 in 2014-15, the most recent year for which data are available. With just over six million K-12 students in the state, that puts the librarian: student ratio at 1:7,187. By comparison, Texas with its five million students has 4,639 teacher librarians.
The drop in working school librarians mirrored a sharp decline in school funding that began in 2008-09 as a result of a massive economic recession. The economy has improved and school funding has increased the past few years but librarian numbers have remained fairly stagnant.
At the same time, the need for the services these professionals provide has increased substantially in large part because of the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.
These new math and English language arts standards call for students to be adept at accessing, evaluating and using content from a diverse range of sources. In today’s media-saturated society, learners must be able to assess information gleaned from websites, blogs, social media sites and online news sources, reference books and videos. Students also have to learn to locate and use School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet: