The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

The Teaching Librarian Volume 10, no. 3 13 ering and documenting our own evidence at the local school and district level. Dianne Oberg reminds us that research done closer to home is more likely to be considered and per- haps to be viewed as trustworthy. To make your school library program count and be accountable we need to take a hard look at the research findings, assess where we are and decide what we need to do…set some achievable goals and develop an action plan. (Koechlin and Zwaan 2003) It is the responsibility of every teacher-librarian to become very familiar with the history of research in our program area. Investigate the work of these key researchers in North America: l Mary Gaver l Keith Curry Lance l Stephen Krashen l Jeff McQuillan l Ken Haycock l Dianne Oberg SSEELLEECCTT RREESSEEAARRCCHH FFIINNDDIINNGGSS Information empowered: The school librarian as an agent of academic achievement in Alaska (1999) How school librarians help kids achieve stan- dards: The second Colorado study. (2000) Measuring up to Standards: The impact of school library programs and information literacy in Pennsylvania schools. (2000) l Academic achievement is higher in schools where the teacher-librarian engages with classroom teachers to col- laboratively plan and teach curriculum programs, which integrate information lit- eracy skills. l Flexible scheduling is a strong indicator of higher test scores l Where networked computers link school libraries with classrooms and other instructional sites, students earn higher test scores. l Better test results are also achieved where there is a quality collection of resources which supports curriculum needs and which is accessible to students and teachers all day. l Leadership involvement on the part of the teacher-librarian has a strong impact on collaboration, which in turn is an indica- tor of student success. l Library program development (staffing, collections, expenditures) and technology are strong predictors of student achieve- ment regardless of other factors including socio-economic. The Power of Reading by Stephen Krashen. (1993) l Voluntary reading is the best predictor of reading comprehension, vocabulary growth, spelling ability, grammatical usage and writing style. l Access to school libraries result in more voluntary reading by students. for today's teacher-librarians Koechlin Keith Curry Lan ce Dianne Oberg