Results of South Carolina School Library Impact Study Now Available

From the South Carolina Association of School Librarians Web Site:

The South Carolina School Library Impact Study has been completed. During the SCASL conference in March 2015 a concurrent session was held to inform members of the study results.

The findings are available in two reports.
Reports
Phase 1: How Libraries Transform Schools by Contributing to Student Success: Evidence Linking South Carolina School Libraries and PASS & HSAP Results (79 pages; PDF)

Usable responses from 787 schools to the South Carolina School Library Survey provided data on:

• Numbers of librarians and library assistants
• Library expenditures, both total and per student
• Hours per week librarians spend teaching information literacy (combining reported data on collaborative planning, collaborative teaching, and independent teaching)
• Circulation of library resources, both total and per student
• Size of library print and e-book collections
• Numbers of computers available to students in libraries as well as elsewhere in schools
• Average number of group visits to libraries per week

Phase 2: How Libraries Transform Schools by Contributing to Stdent Success: Evidence Linking South Carolina School Libraries and PASS & HSAP Results, Phase II (52 pages: PDF)

The second phase of the South Carolina study, which is the focus of this second report, is an analysis of data collected in surveys of South Carolina school administrators, teachers, and librarians and test results from the state’s Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (PASS) for elementary and middle school students. While high school educators are included in the overall survey analysis, their sample size was insufficient to examine the relationships between their survey responses and test results from the state’s High School Assessment Program (HSAP) for high school students. Where possible, the accuracy of responding educators’ assessments of library teaching of standards was checked against actual state test results by standard.
Notably, this is the first state in which such a study has been conducted where this type of validity check has been possible, owing to the ready availability of standard-level test results.

SCASL also released this infographic.

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, Reports, Resources, School Libraries