Maximizing Leadership: Chapter 7 | School Librarian Leadership

Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy was published by ALA Editions in June, 2018.

Chapter 7: Assessment

“Our opportunity—and our obligation to youth—is to reimagine our schools, and give all kids an education that will help them thrive in a world that values them for what they can do, not for the facts that they know” (Wagner and Dintersmith 2015, 222).

Assessment must always be conducted in the service of learning. When educators conceive of learning as an on-going journey that students and educators take together, they can keep their focus on assessments as measures of both students’ development and educators’ effectiveness. School librarians can maximize their instructional leadership by developing assessment tools, assessing student learning outcomes, and reflecting on the effectiveness of their instruction with a trusted colleague. These activities lead to evidence-based practice.

During coplanning, classroom teachers and school librarians must determine “how” knowledge, literacies, skills, and dispositions growth data will be collected, analyzed, and used to improve schooling for future ready students. Educators use formative and summative assessments and reflection activities to measure student growth. The formative assessments monitor student growth and provide students with timely feedback so they can improve their work. Formative assessments also inform educators’ subsequent instructional decisions. Educators use summative assessments at the end of an inquiry unit and are often represented as final project grades. Reflective activities integrated throughout the inquiry process help students understand their own learning process and improve their ability to transfer learning to new contexts.

Rather than using traditional standardized, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blanks tests to assess students’ content knowledge, educators use performance-based measures to assess how students apply future ready learning in real-world, authentic contexts. “The integration of authentic learning tasks with diagnostic assessment and project monitoring is a powerful education instrument for [instructional] change and student achievement” (Moreillon, Luhtala, and Russo 2011, 20). The effectiveness of performance-based assessments is determined by how well students can use them to guide their learning process and self-assess their progress as well as their final product or performance.

What you will find in this chapter:
1. A Rationale for Why School Librarians Must Collect Student Learning Outcomes Data;
2. A Plethora of Assessment Tools and a Sample Analytic Rubric;
3. School Librarian Self-Assessment Criteria;
4. A Challenge for Building a Positive School Climate and a Culture of Collaboration.

School librarian and library program evaluation and self-assessment must be based on rigorous criteria. Performance reviews must be designed to guide and improve school librarians’ practice. As a result, it may be necessary to modify district-level evaluation tools to reflect school librarians’ vital contributions to student learning, educator development, and school culture.

Works Cited

Moreillon, Judi, Michelle Luhtala, and Christina Russo. 2011. “Learning that Sticks: Engaged Educators + Engaged Learners.” School Library Monthly 28 (1): 17-20.

Wagner, Tony, and Ted Dintersmith. 2015. Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era. New York: Scribner.

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