69´«Ã½

69´«Ã½ & Literacy

What the Numbers Say About the Drop in School Librarians

By Gina Tomko & Eesha Pendharkar — April 27, 2023 2 min read
Trish Belenson, the librarian at Bella Vista Elementary School, returns books to the shelves at the library in Oakland, Calif. on Jan. 30, 2019.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print
Email Copy URL

Over the course of the pandemic, thousands of districts across the country reported losing dozens of school librarians, amounting to an overall loss of more than 1,800 full-time school librarians, which was a 5 percent drop compared to before the pandemic.

That’s according to a report by the School Librarian Investigation—Decline or Evolution?, otherwise known as the SLIDE project. The project tracks school librarian employment trends based on federal data. The analysis includes data over the past decade from more than 13,000 school districts across 46 states and the District of Columbia.

The 1,800 number is almost certainly higher, according to SLIDE, since data from four states—California, Illinois, New York, and Utah—were either unavailable or unusable because of inconsistencies for SLIDE’s analysis.

The decline in school librarian employment predated the pandemic, according to a 2022 report by SLIDE. It found that, between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 school years, districts lost more than 1,000 librarians. The pandemic not only exacerbated the losses, but also increased inequities in students’ access to school librarians, the report found.

During the 2020-21 school year, more than 10 percent of the country’s public K-12 students—at least 5.6 million—attended school districts that don’t employ any librarians to manage the catalog and help students navigate available resources, according to an analysis of federal data by the SLIDE project researchers.

The loss of librarians is not because of an overall decrease in school staff, according to the SLIDE report. At the same time that districts were losing librarians, they might have been gaining other employees. Of the districts that reported losing school librarians, almost half gained teachers, nearly 2 out of 5 gained school or district administrators, and a third gained instructional coordinators.

Related

Photo of librarian pushing book cart.
Wavebreak Media / Getty Images Plus

The losses of school librarians impact mostly non-white districts, and districts with larger percentages of economically disadvantaged students, the report found.

Pandemic-related librarian losses were almost twice as likely to occur in majority-Black districts as in other districts, the report found.

The poorest districts were not only most likely to lose librarians, but also most likely to gain them. However, the losses always surpassed the gains, amounting to an overall decline.

The shrinking of school librarians is not just related to school funding, according to the SLIDE project. This data indicates that over the course of the pandemic, staffing money was directed toward administrators, rather than toward teachers and librarians.

Gina Tomko is the Art Director for Education Week and a Brand Ambassador, working to elevate visual journalism.
Eesha Pendharkar was a reporter for Education Week covering race and opportunity in education.

Events

School & District Management Webinar Crafting Outcomes-Based Contracts That Work for Everyone
Discover the power of outcomes-based contracts and how they can drive student achievement.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in 69´«Ã½
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by 
School & District Management Webinar EdMarketer Quick Hit: What’s Trending among K-12 Leaders?
What issues are keeping K-12 leaders up at night? Join us for EdMarketer Quick Hit: What’s Trending among K-12 Leaders?

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.

Read Next

69´«Ã½ & Literacy Opinion Boys Don't Love to Read. Could This Former Teacher Be on to Something?
Boys are falling behind in reading. Books with military-history themes may help reverse this trend.
7 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week
69´«Ã½ & Literacy Is Handwriting a Lost Art? What One College’s Kerfuffle Over Cursive Can Tell Us
Since 2014, there’s been a resurgence of cursive and handwriting education.
6 min read
A photograph of a close up of cursive handwriting that is undecipherable
E+
69´«Ã½ & Literacy Quiz Quiz Yourself: How Much Do You Know About Student Literacy Data?
Answer 7 questions about the importance of student literacy data and how to collect and use it.
69´«Ã½ & Literacy 69´«Ã½ Interventions for Older 69´«Ã½ May Be Missing a Key Component
Many older elementary and middle school students still struggle with foundational reading skills.
6 min read
An illustration of a high school student looking in to an open book with black, gray, and red letters circling about around him.
iStock/Getty