School Librarian Staffing Levels and Student Achievement as Represented in 2006-09 Kansas Annual Yearly Progress Data

Abstract

To address the presence or absence of library media specialists in Kansas public schools, a study using Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was designed to investigate library media specialist (LMS), the label used for school libraries in Kansas licensed-personnel data, staffing levels and student achievement at the school level. Five subject areas (reading, mathematics, science, history/government, and writing) were examined over a four-year period (2006-09). The study examined approximately 2.5 million individual assessment results from 1,389 schools. Researchers found that where schools maintained higher and more stable staffing levels, the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) data revealed higher school proficiency rates. Proficiency differences between no-LMS and full-time LMS conditions were small to moderate but critical with respect to meeting AYP targets. Effect sizes were consistent across grade spans and subject areas and also consistent with those found in other state impact studies. The researchers recommend future studies including addressing issues of causality with stratified random samples of students using propensity-score match techniques based on logistic regression and creating indices of contribution by weighting the ANCOVA-based proficiency differences.