University Librarian Bill Mayer cautioned a panel of congressional aides about the consequences of insufficient library support for elementary and secondary schools at a congressional hearing Oct. 17.
The hearing was in support of a pro-library amendment for the ongoing overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The proposed amendment aims to develop more school library programs for students to learn research skills, according to the American Association of School Libraries.
Mayer believes this legislation, while not immediately applicable to universities, is critical in the long run.
“The consequences of not supporting these very critical early-on skill sets amongst the students in elementary and secondary schools have consequences that are quite dramatic at the other end in terms of college and career preparedness,” Mayer said.
He said learning effective research skills at an early age are important to undergraduate and career success.
“If it’s not for the work of the [elementary and secondary] school libraries ensuring that students today have these key literary skills, it’s too late by the time they reach [the university level],” Mayer said.
The ESEA was originally passed in 1965 and was overhauled in 2001 to embrace President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, according to the Department of Education website.
Three school librarians, including Mayer, a parent and an assistant superintendent of a school district attended this event, according to AASL.
Mayer became involved with this effort via a recommendation for the AASL from Dorcas Hand, director of Libraries at the Annunciation Orthodox School in Houston, who he worked with previously.
Alex Hodges, assistant director for Library Instruction and the librarian for AU’s School of Education, Teaching and Health, agreed with Mayer’s views on the amendment, called the SKILLs act.
“The more you learn early-on, the easier it is for you to progress and use the research material to write the papers, to make those value judgments that your professors want you to make and the more higher-order thinking that you can do,” he said.
Mayer said AU has helped area secondary schools teach research education.
“[AU is helpful] especially if [these secondary schools] don’t have libraries of their own ... or even credentialed librarians,” Hodges said.
Mayer said the need for the SKILLs Act is imperative since libraries typically receive budget cuts.
“[The] first place many districts look to, and universities too unfortunately, when they cut their budgets is the library budget,” he said.
Cutting funding for elementary and secondary schools will have an impact on future college students, according to Hodges.
“If you don’t have the people there who know the resources and who also know the infrastructure of the school or the infrastructure of information, the students are not going to be able to come to college and move on beyond college in the way we want them to,” Hodges said.
