Over the last 30 days, there have been lots of blogs posts, tweets, LM_net postings, etc. over the petition on the White House website started by California librarian Seanean Shanahan. There was a considerable amount of effort put forth by many in our field to get to the need 25,000 signatures. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Seanean should be commended for her efforts. Her petition did garner over 10,000 signatures, which is quite a feat. She took the initiative to try something and I think we should congratulate her for her efforts.
The petition was not without its detractors. There were several who felt the language was just not quite on target for what we needed in our field. There were concerns that just federal mandates were not the answer. They had some valid points, too.
I think there is no doubt that there are more than 25,000 people that believe school libraries are an essential part of the learning ecosystem in our schools. I have no doubt that there are more than 25,000 people that believe for our students to succeed they need a quality school library program stocked with resources in a variety of print and digital resources and staffed by a certified school librarian.
So, when I saw that the petition had not succeeded, the first thought that came to my mind was “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” I know it is possible to get those 25,000 signatures and I think it worth trying again. Over the upcoming holidays, I’m going to write a new petition. My goal would be to get it posted sometime right after the first of the year. I’ll make sure to share on the blog once it is up. I think we start off 2012 with a strong campaign to get those 25,000 signatures and more!
I invite those with ideas and thoughts about what should be included in the petition to post your comments here. Your comments will be important as the petition is put together. We want to send a clear the message to the White House that every child deserves a high quality school library program in this country and provide guidance on how the Federal government can help.
Be ready to mobilize come January to get the word out and lets see if we can build on the work of Seanean to help the White House learn what school libraries and school librarians are all about!
Tags: school library programs · White House petition15 Comments
15 responses so far ↓
Great idea Carl!
some ideas to begin the conversation:
•be positive
•include the concept of the library team: strong school libraries include the certificated school librarian and support staff
•short and sweet
Thanks!
Based on some of the comments I’ve read and heard, it needs to be made clear why this MUST be a Federal effort, and why” local control” can’t be expected to succeed where it has already failed so often.
Thanks for the praise! I wish we could have gone farther, but many didn’t seem to understand why I was a little harsh with my “mandate” request. My only reminder to you, and one that I had to tell people over and over who complained that I hadn’t put enough in the petition, is that there is a character limit. I spent quite a bit of time editing, revising, cutting my original request because of that limit and, by the time I was done, there were only 5 characters left to use. So do what you can, but remember that there’s limited space to say what you want, let alone why you want it. And that is what seems to have burned mine down in the end.
when one considers that we have far more school libraries than we have teacher librarians present at each school site, the time has come to have at least one teacher librarian present on staff at every school site in america. Start with the person, and we will rebuild the place in time. But if we lose the person, the expertise of the teacher librarian, then the cycle of information and digital illiteracy will be complete.
Include “Common Core,” “Information Literacy,” “Transliteracy” and “Digital Citizenship.”
Dear President Harvey,
Thank you for leading the way and agreeing to re-wordsmith a White House petition about school libraries.
The cruel inequity of what Dr. Doug Actherman calls the “haves, halves, and have nots” (1) has to change. Hopefully this new petition will help.
Since you say our goal will be to “send a clear the message to the White House that every child deserves a high quality school library program in this country and provide guidance on how the Federal government can help,” it might be worth reminding the White House that, at the private school the President’s daughters attend, there are 3 libraries with at least 3 librarians (2) and the ratio of students to library staff there (1:373) is 60% lower than the national average (1:916) and 1,274% lower than the ratio in California (1:5,124) (3).
President Obama says in his Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (4):
“Every child in America deserves a world-class education.”
As Dr. Stephen Krashen asserts, research shows that a world-class school library makes a huge dent in that world-class education.
References:
(1) http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9800/
(2) http://www.sidwell.edu/about_sfs/index.aspx
(3) http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/lb/schoollibrstats08.asp
(4) http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/blueprint.pdf
(5) http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/protecting_students.pdf
“What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it thinks about education.”
- Harold Howe, former U.S. Commissioner of Education
Time for America to step up and state exactly what it thinks about education.
You want to be number 1? Prove it.
There should be a certificated teacher librarian in every public school K-12. A minimum of one teacher librarian. Krashen, Curry-Lance. Exactly how many studies do they need for this “research based” decision?
If the Feds can pay for Title I they can pay for librarians. And the local districts and local schools should not be able to redirect that funding to any other purpose. No taking the money for a librarian and buying football uniforms instead. No “sharing” a librarian between two or three schools.
In my opinion, such a petition should address the need for librarians in terms of economically disadvantaged children. In my school library it is the children of poverty, children with English language deficiencies, and children who “need extras” that frequent the library for books, help with research, and computer access that they do NOT have at home. A certified school librarian is their equalizer. I think many in our profession have forgotten this important role, focusing instead on our need to be tech-savvy. In this political and economic environment, we might get more internal and external support if we marketed ourselves as advocates for the underdogs and the underserved.
Also, an official tagline may be beneficial — Occupy School Libraries, anyone?
Make sure that the link takes you directly to the petition and you explain step by step how to complete the application. I think what was wrong with the last one is that it was so hard to complete. I spent at least 20 minutes following the steps to complete the petition and could not accomplish it. It just has to be easier if you want to get more people to sign it.
Is there any date on school library programs in other countries? We are always compared to Japan, Scandavis, etc., and come up short. Yet, our so-called experts fail to look at those countries and incorporate their strategies. Instead, we insist on reinventing the wheel over and over, via expensive “consultants” and speakers- and to no avail. I know that a contingent from a school in China visited our school last year. I looked at the brochure they left and my jaw dropped. The facility was incredible-INCLUDING THE LIBRARY and technnology opportunities. Shouldn’t we at least be competing educationally with China?
Call to action — ask us for help if you need “foot soldiers’, Carl.
Great idea, Carl. This crowdsourced option is a wonderful chance to take the initial petition as formative rather than summative assessment of things!
In line with our national advocacy plans, I would love to see the tenor of this shift from “give us jobs” to, “Give our kids great opportunities to engage robustly with world-class ideas. To do that, we need great librarians with great skills and budgets to acquire people and resources.” I recognize, though, that space is limited.
I am also curious to know how many other federal mandates there are for staffing in K-12 public schools. Aren’t most of those mandates set by accreditation agencies, not USDOE? We need to know that, because if there is no precedent for mandating staffing by Washington, we may be picking a less-effective target.
Finally, while I know many of us have been knocked around and bruised over the last 10 years by the ever-continuing onslaught of budget cuts, this is ultimately about bigger issues in education. We’ve been privileging the acquisition of low-level, fact-based skills at the peril of higher-order thinking. We have pressure from people who believe that having a class size that breaks the fire code has no impact on learning. Art, music, and P.E. have also been cut, and sometimes in communities where there are little to no local alternatives (e.g., Little League, classes at an art museum, private music coaching). The bigger issue here is that our children are not getting the well-rounded education that they deserve.
Our future rests on the shoulders of our children. Why are we as a nation so emphatic that they do not deserve adequate funding? Librarian loss feels to us like a disease, but I would argue that it is a symptom of a far larger, systemic problem. We, and our colleagues in counseling, special subjects, and support staff, are canaries in the coal mine.
Thank you to Seanean for starting this conversation and to Carl for picking up the ball.
I think the words “literacy” and “college and career readiness” need to be prominent in our petition. 21st-century skills and technology could also be part of the statement.
I agree with Becky - a focus on equity is important.
The petition should also note that professional school librarians work, not only with students, but also with teachers to improve student learning outcomes. (Teacher improvement is a hot topic!)
Using components from the SKILLs Act could tie these two initiatives together: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/advleg/federallegislation/eduleg/skillsact/index.cfm
Thanks for asking, Carl.
In these days of hectic schedules and countless things to get done, anyone who is a target of a petition (the WH, librarians, parents, etc) needs to be shown what is in it for them. In other words, why should I care? Always appeal to people’s most selfish interests. For the WH, it would be a future generation with subpar critical literacy skills, potentail lack of respect for information and public institutions, and lazy attitude where the popular search engine brands are the only thing that separate people from household pets when it comes to fidning credible information. Good luck getting the public to support an important but nuacned government policy in that environment! LAck of school libaries (and decent education in general) in turn creates a mediocre workforce with questionable parenting abilities and possible loss of motivation and means to ge tinvolved in their communities.
Also, connecting school libraries to the school in general is key; there is not enough room to have libraries as yet another part of public ed that needs our attention and $.
Thank you for your efforts. And a thank you to Seanean for getting this project off the ground. I think Marie (#5) is right about using the terms she listed. The emphasis on the common core to highlight our connection to standards is key, and information literacy skills in evolving information-rich environments cannot be stressed enough, imo.