As part of the national Future Ready Librarians initiative at the Alliance for Excellent Education, Mark Ray and Shannon McClintock Miller serve as national advocates for school library programs and librarians. Mark and Shannon began their library advocacy careers in school libraries. For eight years, Shannon was the district librarian in Van…

Enlightened administrators realize that school librarians still play a pivotal role for students, guiding them through search processes and helping them find appropriate, reliable, vetted resources in print and digital format for research and other classroom projects. This article describes how important the role of information navigator is…

The 2022 edition of the Annual Condition of Education Report (COE) marks the 33rd edition of the report. For over 30 years, the Department has published the COE in order to provide education stakeholders critical data about the status of Iowa's education system. The 2022 COE includes a wide variety of content including information about Iowa's…

The 2021 edition of the Annual Condition of Education Report (COE) marks the 32nd edition of the report. For over 30 years, the Department has published the COE in order to provide education stakeholders critical data about the status of Iowa's education system. The 2021 COE covers a wide variety of content including information about Iowa's…

Over the last year, "School Library Monthly" ("SLM") has challenged school librarians to "nudge toward inquiry" through the "SLM" blog-driven submissions compiled by Kristin Fontichiaro. Iowa took up the challenge! This article describes how teacher librarians across Iowa teamed with classroom teachers to…

For over 30 years, the Department has published the Annual Condition of Education (COE) report in order to provide education stakeholders quality information about the status of Iowa's education system. The 2020 COE covers a wide variety of content from information about Iowa's students, schools, educators, administrators, performance and school…

Data and information are critical tools of school improvement. They are the foundation for making informed education decisions for our schools, districts and the state. The 2019 edition of the Annual Condition of Education Report (COE) marks the 30th edition of the Iowa Department of Education report. Much has changed in the past 30 years since…

So, what if one lives in a remote, rural area, but still has important knowledge and insights that others might benefit from learning? What if one is the only school librarian for multiple districts, and one just cannot justify the time to travel to a regular, traditional class meeting These are questions that school librarians in Iowa, as well as…

Rural schools in high-poverty areas are often understaffed. This descriptive phenomenological study examined fourth-grade state research projects in high-poverty rural Iowa schools to reveal the influence of school librarians' staffing levels on student learning of research skills. To determine evidence of students' critical literacy, ethical use…

Data and information are important components of school improvement. They show how schools are changing and how students are progressing. Providing and interpreting data is one of the critical functions of the Iowa Department of Education. The annual Condition of Education report provides valuable data about students, educators and school…

For the forty-second time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes. Volume 1 contains papers dealing…

A funny thing happened in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the way to passing a $46 million school bond during the 2000-01 school year. Through the use of a scientific telephone survey, school district officials determined residents were more than happy to upgrade their school libraries, but were significantly more tight-fisted when it came to improving…

A qualitative case study highlighting one rural Iowa elementary school provided insight into the issue of small schools without library programs as they are preparing to meet the Iowa reinstatement of the requirement for school library programs. The site was purposefully chosen because it has been operating without a school library program or…

To support school media centers and services in Iowa, guidelines for the development of district and Area Education Agency (AEA) media programs are proposed. The complementary roles and functional responsibilities of the school districts, the regional AEA's, the State Department of Public Instruction Media Program, and higher education in Iowa are…

These guidelines for weeding library media collections are addressed to elementary and secondary school library media centers and to community college and vocational school library resource centers in Iowa. The publication includes some philosophy about weeding, and specific guidelines are summarized in bold-faced type for ease of use. The…