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2009
 | Some board members may be new to the concept of data-driven decision-making, but it’s become part of the culture for other districts. |
In This Issue
If adequately supported, school librarians—or teacher librarians, as they are called in California—are vital educational leaders on campus who update educators’ and students’ research skills in an era of ever-changing technology. But many education policymakers don’t actually know what good teacher librarians do, school library advocates claim, so library programs are especially vulnerable to budget cuts when the state backs cash-strapped schools into tight fiscal corners such as the ones they’re in now.
A recent study of more than 130 ninth-graders in five high schools spread throughout the state revealed some interesting information: Most of them (three-quarters) said they liked school, and more than 80 percent saw getting an education as important to their futures. They understood the challenges they might face on the path to graduation (bad grades, poor attendance, pregnancy, drugs and more), and yet they remained hopeful that their academic futures would yield positive results.