School librarians revisited: grounds for hope?
I wrote about the school librarian as an endangered species a few years ago. Has the trend started to change? In 2000, America’s public school faculties had more than 54, 000 librarians and media specialists. By 2015, that number had declined to fewer than 44,000, a drop of about 20%. About half of that decline has happened since the 2008 recession. The loss of school library positions eased somewhat in academic years 2012/13 and 2013/14, but then returned to the post-recession rate. Meanwhile, student enrollment has grown by 7%. Some districts have an even greater disparity. Denver, for example, saw a 25% increase in student enrollment at the same time it reduced the number of its school librarians by 60%. In general, schools that serve minorities and the less affluent have borne the brunt of the cuts. The schools, in other words, that have the most challenges with low reading scores and difficulties with information technology have shed the very people best prepared to help the efforts of classroom teachers. Some districts have had second thoughts.
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