Libraries and testing

The library and librarians are a wonderful resources in schools.  Often this resource is not available during state testing.  Many school libraries are used as testing locations, therefore are closed for all of or most of testing.  The librarians themselves are often used as test administrators or proctors.  This means that neither the physical location of the library nor the librarian themselves are of use during the testing block.  My school is one of theses schools.  My library has been closed for 55 days thus far this year for testing.  That is more than 30% of the school year.  We were used as a location for all of the SOL's and the WIDA (ELL) test.  Each day there were SOL's the library staff was assigned to run testing sessions.  This made it impossible to teach lessons at all.  There was no way to even be able to work with classes in their own classrooms.  This article speaks to the amount of time school libraries were closed in Florida.  In one county 1 in 4 school libraries were closed for more than 40 days in the year.  While it is comforting to know that these closes are happening in other places, it is no less upsetting.  A study of NM libraries indicated that out of 100 librarians responding most had at least some closures due to testing.  It is interesting that the majority were closed for less than 20 days.  This make me wonder if there is not as much state testing as there is in Virginia.  While these closures are common place, it needs to be noted that this impacts all the members of the school community.  Students do not have access to book, teachers do not have the option to teach with their librarians, everyone misses out on research help, book recommendations and more.  I often wonder if these closures happen because administration does not see and understand the value of having a certified librarian and an open library or if there is "no other option."  School Library Media Research points out the massive impact the library closures have on students and student achievement.  I can only hope that sharing information like this with administrators will help to reduce the amount of closures and the amount of time spent proctoring.