"The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves." -- John Adams

"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution." -- Indiana Constitution Article 1, Section 6.

"...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." – Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Access to books can help increase reading achievement.

Three research studies have shown that access to books is as strong a predictor of reading achievement as poverty.

The most recent study (Schubert, F. and Becker, R. 2010. Social inequality of reading literacy, A longitudinal analysis with cross-sectional data of PIRLS 2001and PISA 2000 utilizing the pair wise matching procedure. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29:109-133) showed that the home print environment was a strong predictor of reading achievement, even when income, parental education, aspects of schooling, language used at home, and other aspects of the home environment were controlled. The authors concluded that the home print environment was as strong a predictor as socio-economic status (see the references to the other studies below).

What does this mean in the real world? It means that closing or cutting funding to public libraries and slashing school library budgets is counterproductive in the quest to help children grow in reading.

Writing about changes in reading instruction in Milwaukee, Bob Peterson and Stephen Krashen recently wrote:
Research also tells us that the children who do better on tests of reading comprehension are those who have more access to books and who read more. Studies consistently show that better school libraries, those with better collections and with a credentialed librarian are related to higher reading scores. What this means for Milwaukee is that any reading plan has to involve improving school libraries. This is especially important in high-poverty areas, where the school library is often the only source of books for children.
Our school system just eliminated Middle School Librarians, replacing them with non-certified staff. 

~~~

Achterman, D. 2008. Haves, Halves, and Have-Nots: School Libraries and Student Achievement in California. PhD dissertation, University of North Texas. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9800:1

Krashen, S., Lee, SY, and McQuillan, J. 2010. An analysis of the PIRLS (2006) data: Can the school library reduce the effect of poverty on reading achievement? CSLA Journal, in press. California School Library Association.
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