A lot of progress is being made on this project.  Here are a few updates:

• At this writing, 448 Pennsylvania school librarians have responded to our appeal that they volunteer themselves and nominate (or recommend) up to 3 administrators and up to 5 teachers with whom they have worked.  We would like to have many more Pennsylvania librarians respond to that appeal ASAP, preferably this week.  If you are from Pennsylvania (nobody else please!) and are a school librarian, please respond to one of the multiple requests you have probably had by now.  (If this is the first you are hearing of it, consult the PSLA Facebook page.)  Individuals from all three educator groups will be surveyed starting in early March to obtain qualitative data about their perceptions of their working relationships and their self-assessments of how library programs contribute to teaching 21st Century skills as well as state and Common Core Standards.
• In recent weeks, the three surveys of librarians, teachers, and administrators have been pretested, and they are now ready to be released.  Individual emails requesting participation in the appropriate survey will be sent to everyone for whom we have received an email address.  Watch for these messages, most likely in the second week of March.  If you nominated administrators and teachers, please encourage them to participate.  And remember, all of this data will remain confidential.
• Data from last year’s School Library Study have been analyzed with PSSA reading and writing scores.  School library data encompass staffing, staff activities, hours open and flexible scheduling, information resources, technology, library visits, and expenditures.  Test scores for all students, economically disadvantaged students, Black and Hispanic students, and IEP students were analyzed separately.  The first results from this phase of our research will be reported at the upcoming PSLA conference.

For official information about this project, visit its own website.