Why Invest in Libraries

WHY INVEST IN LIBRARIES
Stephen Krashen

This paper is based on a presentation to the Los Angeles Unified
School District Board of Education, Febuary 11, 2014. The actual
presentation lasted about five minutes and is available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAui0OGfHQY.

To discuss libraries, several important results from educational
research will be of use.

POVERTY COUNTS

The impact of poverty on educational achievement has been
documented again and again. Poverty means, among other things,
inadequate diet, lack of health care, and lack of access to books.
Each of these has a powerful impact on achievement (Berliner,
2009; Krashen, 1997). The best teaching in the world has little
effect when children are hungry, undernourished, ill, and have
little or nothing to read.

Martin Luther King recognized this: "We are likely to find that the
problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the
elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is
first abolished" (King, 1967). Research done since 1967 has
confirmed that Dr. King is right: (Baker, 2007; Zhao, 2009;
Ananat, Gassman-Pines, Francis, and Gibson-Davis, 2011).

FREE VOLUNTARY READING IS THE MAJOR CAUSE
OF LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Free voluntary reading is reading because you want to, self-
selected reading for pleasure. Awide range of studies have
confirmed that free reading is the major factor in literacy
development.

Sustained silent reading (SSR) studies: In SSR, a short period is set
aside for self-selected reading, with little or no accountability.
Students who participate in these programs consistently
outperform comparison students on measures of literacy, especially
if the program is given sufficient time to run (Krashen, 2004;
2007).

Multivariate studies allow researchers to determine the impact of a
predictor controlling for the effect of other predictors, that is,
assuming that other predictors have no effect on each other. In
multivariate studies, free voluntary reading has been a consistent
winner, successful predicting scores on the TEOFL test among
ESL students, as well as other measures. Traditional instruction
has not done well in these studies (Gradman and Hanania, 1991,
Constantino, Lee, Cho and Krashen, 1997, Lee, 2005).

Case histories are valuable when we have a lot of them; then we
can see what factors successful cases have in common. In case
after case, free voluntary reading is given credit for academic
success and for the development of higher levels of literacy.

The cases include Goeffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem
Children's Zone, who tells us: "I loved reading, and my mother,
who read voraciously too, allowed me to have her novels after she
finished them. My strong reading background allowed me to have
an easier time of it in most of my classes" (Canada, 1995, p. 89).

Liz Murray, who grew up under extreme poverty, relates that she
only showed up for school just before the spring exams, in order
see what the tests would be like. She says she owed her education
to her dad's habit of borrowing library books from all over New
York City and never returning them: "Any formal education I
received came from the few days I spent in attendance, mixed with
knowledge I absorbed from random readings of my or Daddy's
ever-growing supply of unreturned library books. And as long as I
still showed up steadily the last few weeks of classes to take the
standardized tests, I kept squeaking by from grade to grade." (from
Shanahan, 2010). (For additional cases, see Krashen, 2004.)

CHILDREN OF POVERTY HAVE VERY LITTLE ACCESS
TO BOOKS.

Children of poverty have very few books at home, live in
neighborhoods with few bookstores and inferior public libraries,
and attend schools with inferior classroom and school libraries
(Krashen, 2004). Thus,

THE MAJOR SOURCE OF BOOKS FOR CHILDREN OF
POVERTY IS LIBRARIES.

In fact, libraries are their only chance.

LIBRARIES CAN MAKE UP FOR THE EFFECTS OF
POVERTY

The results of a series of multivariate studies suggest that access to
a good library can balance, or can make up for the effects of
poverty on reading achievement. These studies are reviewed in
Krashen (2011) and I present one here in detail.

Krashen, Lee and McQuillan (2012) analyzed the results of the
2006 PIRLS test, given to ten year old children in 40 different
countries. Children took the tests in their own language, and tests
were of equal difficulty regardless of language. Table 1 presents
the results.



Table 1: Multiple Regression Analysis: predictors of achievement
PIRLS 2006 reading test
Predictor Beta p
SES 0.41 0.005
independent
reading 0.16 0.143
library: 500
books 0.35 0.005
Instruction -0.19 0.085
r2 = .61

The important data are the beta's – the larger the beta, the stronger
the effect. Clearly, poverty (SES) is the strongest predictor,
consistent with many many previous studies: Higher socio-
economic status meant better performance. The percentage of
students allowed to do self-selected reading during the school day
was a positive predictor, but of modest strength, consistent with the
SSR research reviewed above.

The third predictor, percentage of children with access to a school
library with at least 500 books, was not only positively related to
reading scores, but was nearly as strong as the negative effect of
poverty: In other words, the school library had a strong positive
effect which balanced the impact of poverty's negative effect. This
result makes sense: A major reason children of poverty have low
reading test scores is because they have little access to books.
When we supply access, in the form of libraries, they read about as
well as children from more affluent families.

The final result is that those receiving more direct instruction in
reading actually did somewhat worse on the reading examination.




LAUSD

Poverty: The child poverty rate for the US is 23.1%. This is very
high, the second highest among all advanced economy countries
(UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2012), This is the major
reason for our unspectacular performance on international tests:
When researchers control for the effet of poverty, American
children score near the top of the world (Carnoy and Rothstein,
2013).

Finland, which always scores at or near the top of the world in
reading achievement, has only 5.3% child poverty.

Eighty percent of LAUSD children live in poverty, the second
highest of all big cities in the United States
(http://laschoolreport.com/how-lausd-compares/).

Access to books. The high rate of poverty among LAUSD means
little access to books, among other major problems. For LAUSD
students, libraries are of little help.

Public Libraries: In the library category of the America's Most
Literate Cities study (Miller, 2013), Los Angeles public libraries
ranked near the basement: Los Angeles public libraries ranked
69th out of 77 cities.

I was not able to find data on holdings in Los Angeles Unified
school libraries, but the figures on school librarians are alarming.
Several studies confirm that the presence of a certified librarian is
an independent predictor of reading achievement (e.g. Lance and
Hofschire, 2011). In the US, there is one school librarian for every
916 students. California ranks last, by far, in the US, with a ratio of
approximately one school librarian per 5,124 students (California
Department of Education, 2012). LAUSD has one certified school
librarian for every 6,500 students (based on data from Ratliff,
2014).

The TECHNOLOGY solution

"Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor the last the lay the old aside."
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism. (From Rogers, 1983).

It is often suggested that technology can solve the problem of
access to books, through high-powered computers with internet
access and through e-books and e-book readers.

It appears to be best to be a "deliberate" early adopter, not the very
first to use innovations (Rogers, 1983). Deliberate adopters wait
until basic problems are solved and prices go down. This is
sensible practice in educational technology. There is, at present,
no evidence supporting the current technology fever that has
gripped the schools, stimulated by the requirement that all testing
related to the Common Core be online.

In The National Education Technology Plan (US Dept of
Education, 2010), the US Department of Education insists that we
introduce massive technology into the schools immediately,
because of the "the pressing need to transform American education
...", even if this means doing it imperfectly: Repairs can be done
later: "... we do not have the luxury of time: We must act now and
commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go." In
other words, we should all be super-early adoptors.
But jumping in without proper preparation wastes our students'
time and will cost more money in the long run. The cost of
connecting all students to the internet, of providing up-to-date
computers for all students, the constant upgrading and replacement
as the computer industry makes "progress" as well as repair of
glitches will run into the billions, and will only increase in time.
And all this is happening with no pilot studies, no clear data
showing the new technology will help students, and, as far as I
know, no plans to do such studies.
In contrast, we already have an astonishing amount of evidence
that providing access to interesting, comprehensible books has a
strong impact on literacy development. Given access to interesting,
comprehensible books, most students will read them (Krashen,
2001, 2004), and when they do, their vocabulary, grammar, writing
style, vocabulary and knowledge of the world will improve.
The conservative, careful and fiscally responsible path to
improving literacy is by investing in libraries and librarians, and
delaying massive investment in technology until there is good
reason to believe that it will really help.
References
Ananat, E., Gassman-Pines, A., Francis, D., and Gibson-Davis, C.
2011. Children left behind: The effects of statewide job less on
student acbievement. NBER (National Bureau of Economic
Research) Working Paper No. 17104, JEL No. 12,16.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17104
Baker, K. 2007. Are international tests worth anything? Phi Delta
Kappan, 89(2), 101-104;
Canada, G. 1995. Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of
Violence. Boston: Beacon Press.
Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests
Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Washington DC:
Economic Policy Institute. 2012. http://www.epi.org/).
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 2012, ‘Measuring Child
Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the world’s rich
countries’, Innocenti Report Card 10, UNICEF Innocenti Research
Centre, Florence.
Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors
and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the
Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit.
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;
California Department of Education 2012. Statistics about
California School Libraries.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/lb/schoollibrstats08.asp
Constantino, R., Lee, S.Y. Cho,K.S., Krashen, S. 1997. Free
voluntary reading as a predictor of TOEFL scores. Applied
Language Learning, 8,111-118.
Gradman, H., and Hanania, E. 1991. Language learning
background factors and ESL proficiency. Modern Language
Journal, 75, 39-51.
King, M.L. 1967. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or
Community? New York: Harper & Row,
Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational
Leadership 55(4): 18-22.
Krashen, S. 2001. Do teenagers like to read? Yes! Reading Today
18(5): 16
Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann, and Westport, CONN: Libraries Unlimited (second
edition).
Krashen, S. 2007. Extensive reading in English as a foreign
language by adolescents and young adults: A meta-analysis.
International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 3 (2): 23-29.
Krashen, S. 2011. Protecting students against the effects of
poverty: Libraries. New England Reading Association Journal 46
(2): 17-21.
Krashen, S., Lee, S.Y. and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is the library
important? Multivariate studies at the national and international
level. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 8(1): 26-36.
Lance, K. and Hofschire, L. 2011. Something to shout about: New
research shows that more librarians means higher reading scores.
School Library Journal 57, 28-33.
Lee, S. Y. 2005. Facilitating and inhibiting factors on EFL writing:
A model testing with SEM. Language Learning, 55(2), 335-374.
Nillei, }. 2u1S. "Ameiica's Nost Liteiate Cities, 2u1S."
http:¡¡web.ccsu.euu¡ameiicasmostliteiatecities¡2u1S¡iankby
categoiy¡libiaiies.asp
Shanahan, K. (2010). Review of Liz Murray, Breaking Night,.
Retrieved November 23, 2010, from
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Night-Forgiveness-Survival-
Homeless/product-
reviews/0786868910/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_3?ie=UTF8&showViewp
oints=0&page Number=3.
Ratliff, M. 2012. Supporting Educational Equity and Student
Achievement through Expanded Access to Libraries. Resolution
presented to the Los Angeles Board of Education, February 11,
2014.
Rogers, E. 1983. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: The Free
Press.
United States Department of Education. 2010. Transforming
Education: Learning Powered by Technology. US Department of
Education, Office of Educational Technology.
http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010
Zhao, Y. 2009. Catching Up or Leading the Way? American
Education in the Age of Globalization. ASCD: Alexandria, VA.;