Showing posts with label AASL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AASL. Show all posts

Thursday, August 27, 2026

'Media Literacy' Is the Label; Freire Is What They Add; IMLS Funds It

When a librarian says a school is adopting media-literacy standards, most parents hear a narrow skill: can the child tell an ad from a news story, a rumor from a source, a deepfake from a camera?

That skill is real. It is not all they are buying.

Paulo Freire’s method—problem-posing instead of “banking” facts, a teacher-prepared “code,” student dialogue, consciousness of power and identity—is being added onto media literacy.1 You can see the add-on in three places that already touch real schools:

  1. AASL’s National School Library Standards—ALA’s school-library division does not stop at “evaluate a source.” It makes diversity a co-equal foundation and tells learners to judge information by social and cultural context.2
  2. Oklahoma’s information-literacy rule—the old code copied AASL by name; the 2024 rewrite dropped the caption but kept the student-generated topic and “relevant” question as the start of research.3
  3. Project Look Sharp’s librarian training—Constructivist Media Decoding. The flyer says media literacy. The journal articles name Paulo Freire.4

Faith Rogow, founding president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), is sending librarians to that training on Bluesky (pictured top right): Ithaca College, October 6–December 15, 2026, $190, 15 hours, letter to an administrator.5 The post says student-centered inquiry that builds media literacy and information literacy while supporting core content. It does not say Freire. The method papers do.

What Freire added, in plain English

Freire opposed the teacher who deposits facts. He wanted a code (a picture, a scene) that holds a contradiction in the learner’s world, then a dialogue that moves from “what do you see?” to “why is it this way?” The point was not better footnotes. It was political literacy—conscientização.1

He did not sit in the back while children wrote the syllabus. He chose the code and the questions. “Student-centered” meant the child talks. It did not mean the child sets the destination.

Media literacy, stripped down, asks: Who made this? What’s the purpose? What’s missing? Is it accurate?

Freirean decoding asks those questions and additionally treats the answer as a lesson about systems, identity, and who holds power. That second move is the add-on. Watch for it in the standards language, in the state rule, and in the PD, where PD means professional development—the training sessions, courses, and workshops to which districts send librarians and teachers.

1. AASL: media literacy plus Include, plus “social and cultural context”

AASL does not publish a separate book called “Media Literacy Standards” for every state to rubber-stamp. It publishes the 2018 National School Library Standards (second edition announced 2025; the six Shared Foundations stayed).2 AASL’s own Knowledge Quest piece, “Media Literacy & the AASL Standards,” says media literacy is interwoven throughout those frameworks—not a standalone skill.6

If media literacy were only source criticism, AASL could have stopped at Curate and Engage: pick sources, cite them, don’t steal, check accuracy.

It did not stop.

Include is a Shared Foundation on the same level as Inquire. Key commitment: “Demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to inclusiveness and respect for diversity in the learning community.” Learners are to take a “discerning stance toward points of view and opinions” in resources.7 That is already more than “is this article true?”

Engage tells learners to evaluate information for “accuracy, validity, social and cultural context, and appropriateness for need,” and to apply “information, technology, and media” ethically.8

“Social and cultural context” is the hinge. A parent can read it as: know the date, the country, the audience. A Freirean facilitator reads it as: whose identity does this text serve, whose does it harm, what system produced it?

AASL’s 2018 competency chart does not cite Freire. That matters. The official boxes came out of AASL research, older library-inquiry work (Information Power, the 2007 Standards for the 21st-Century Learner), and member process. Calling the pamphlet Pedagogy of the Oppressed is sloppy.

Calling the pamphlet larger than media literacy is accurate. Diversity is not an appendix. Evaluation includes social and cultural context by design. The 2025–26 second edition’s supporting text leans into “equity and culturally responsive practice.”9 The AASL companion book on Include tells librarians that living the standard means unlearning “false narratives” and names white supremacy, institutionalized racism, and “anti-cishet supremacy.”10 That is the profession’s own implementation layer, not a critic’s paraphrase.

So the AASL package parents are told is “library and media literacy” already contains more than source criticism:

Narrow media literacy What AASL adds
Who made this? Is it accurate? Include as a core foundation
Cite and don’t plagiarize Evaluate social and cultural context
Use technology ethically Learner “agency,” inquiry as identity-in-community
  Implementation texts that name supremacy systems

That add-on is what Freirean PD walks through the door.

2. Oklahoma: AASL on the books, then the same shape without the caption

Old OAC 210:15-3-173 did not hint. It cited AASL in the rule (pictured below):

Standard 1: Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge. (American Association of School Librarians [AASL], STANDARDS FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY LEARNER)11

The 2007 AASL dispositions were copied into Oklahoma law. Two of them:

Display initiative and engagement by posing questions and investigating the answers beyond the collection of superficial facts.

Maintain a critical stance by questioning the validity and accuracy of all information.11

“Beyond superficial facts” is the tell. Media literacy can mean: get the facts right. That sentence tells the child the facts are not the point. Freire’s generative theme works the same way. A lesson still looks like research. The real assignment is the conversation the facts are supposed to generate.12

A photograph of that printed page is dated February 19, 2024—the same month the Oklahoma State Board approved the replacement standards.

Old OAC 210:15-3-173 cited AASL.


New OAC 210:15-3-173 (Oklahoma Register Vol. 42, Issue 1; effective September 26, 2024) is a rewrite.13 Oklahoma’s own 2024 Information Literacy PDF says so: an update to the 2007 standards “as currently found in” this code section.14 The AASL name is gone. So are “intellectual freedom” and “divergent perspectives” from the old block. Grade bands and five process labels take their place: Read & Grow, Question & Plan, Research & Explore, Collect & Organize, Share & Reflect. The new text adds misinformation and ethical use of generative AI. Those are media-literacy items.

What did not go away is the Freire-shaped opening move: the topic is not simply assigned.

Grades PK–2, Question & Plan:

  • With guidance, discuss reasons and ways to locate information.
  • Brainstorm and choose a topic.
  • With guidance, generate and discuss possible research questions.13

Grades 3–5: explain why a research topic or problem is “important or relevant”; choose which parts will be researched.

Grades 6–8: open-ended questions about a “relevant topic or problem.”

Grades 9–12: compose effective questions about a topic or problem.

“Brainstorm and choose a topic” is ordinary elementary research language. It is not a secret Freire statute. It is a rule that starts inquiry from the child’s choice and the adult’s “guidance,” not from a closed prompt. That is the form Freire used and the form Constructivist Media Decoding uses. Fill it with “how does a newspaper check a quote” and you have media literacy. Fill it with a Look Sharp identity or climate-justice kit and you have the add-on.

The new high-school band also tells students to identify, analyze, and counter misinformation, and to employ ethical generative AI.13 Countering misinformation is a content fight, not only a sourcing skill. Who defines the “mis-” is the whole argument. A Freire-trained facilitator will not treat that as neutral.

Oklahoma therefore shows the pipeline in one state:

  • Then: AASL 2007 text, including “beyond superficial facts,” enacted as law.
  • Now: AASL caption removed; student-generated “relevant” topics kept; media-literacy words (misinformation, AI) added on top of that inquiry form.

3. Project Look Sharp: the intensive course that names Freire

This is the piece that does not require a close reading of standards-committee minutes. The trainers published it.

Constructivist Media Decoding is a 10-week hybrid course for K–12 librarians and teachers. Live Zoom open and close (October 6 and December 15, 2026, 7:00–8:30 p.m. EST), four modules of self-paced work, optional coaching by Chris Sperry. Hosts: Sperry and Cyndy Scheibe.15 Rogow has been inside the project since before it had a name. She evaluated the librarian pilots. She is promoting the 2026 national section.

Project Look Sharp's Constructivist Media Decoding brochure.

What they say in journals, not on Bluesky:

  • Rogow et al., Journal of Media Literacy Education 17(2) (2025), on the elementary librarian pilot: CMD draws from Paulo Freire’s pedagogy (1985) and Len Masterman; the teacher does not “fill them up with knowledge.”4
  • Sezgin Büyükalaca, Sperry & Scheibe, same issue: CMD was built against the instruction Freire called the banking method.16

Same skeleton as Freire’s culture circle: hold up a document (the code), question it, let the group construct meaning, treat interpretation as shaped by identity and experience.

What they add beyond “who produced this clip?”:

  • Staff page: Sox Sperry, lead lesson writer, keeps Look Sharp focused on social justice, identity and climate disruption.17
  • Flyer “Why CMD?”: integrates with SEL, DEI, PBL (project-based learning (sometimes problem-based learning): students work on an extended project or real-world problem instead of a short, teacher-led lesson); “reaches traditionally disenfranchised & marginalized students”; “shifts polarized thinking.”15
  • Lesson catalog: Media Construction of Social Justice, Media Construction of Global Warming, Black Lives Matter and Climate Change, identity units, “challenging topics.”18
  • ML3—Librarians as Leaders for Media Literacy—with AASL, NAMLE, and an IMLS planning grant: the librarian becomes the person who spreads the method through the building.19

Federal money. In FY 2023 the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Ithaca College / Project Look Sharp $149,748 under the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, award RE-254855-OLS-23, to plan taking ML3 to all 50 states. AASL is named as partner; NAMLE as collaborator. IMLS’s public abstract says “media literacy” and “habits of inquiry.” Look Sharp’s posted proposal includes “a plan for implementing the CMD course online and in schools across the U.S.” and a subaward to AASL. So this is an example of a direct grant of federal money to ALA. During that planning period they say they ran hybrid CMD courses through state library associations and education departments. They later reported IMLS asked for a full implementation proposal. The government’s label is media-literacy training for librarians. The method named in the proposal is CMD—the method whose journal articles cite Freire.20

IMLS awarded Ithaca College / Project Look Sharp $149,748.

That federal planning grant sat on top of earlier private money: about $270,000 from the Booth Ferris Foundation (2021) to build ML3 in New York with the State School Library Systems Association. IMLS paid to nationalize a model a foundation had already paid to invent.20

Fifteen hours, a badge, a letter an administrator can file under “we trained staff in media literacy.” The journal citation file is Freire. The kit list is climate justice and identity. The standards crosswalk is AASL. Part of the scaling plan was on the federal ledger.

That is the add-on in operational form.

How the three pieces fit

Parents are told a single story: kids drown in phones; teach media literacy.

The documents say something longer:

AASL made “media literacy” a thread through a six-foundation library standard that already includes diversity and social-cultural evaluation.
Oklahoma put the 2007 AASL learner standards in the Administrative Code, then rewrote the code in 2024 so the AASL name dropped out while student-chosen “relevant” topics and an inquiry sequence stayed.
Look Sharp trains the librarian who will live in that sequence, cites Freire for the method, and stocks the codes (the clips and kits) with social-justice and identity themes.

Media literacy proper—authorship, purpose, accuracy, missing information—can be taught without that stack. The stack is how “media literacy standards” become a vehicle for Freire’s problem-posing classroom: the child speaks, the adult chose the code, the destination is not a bibliography.

Questions that keep the distinction honest

  • Does this lesson stop when the student can source and verify, or does it continue into who is oppressed by the message?
  • When PK–2 “brainstorms a topic,” who writes the next three questions?
  • Are Look Sharp / CMD / ML3 on the PD calendar? May the public read the kits?
  • In Oklahoma, is staff being trained off the 2007 AASL dispositions that are no longer the code?
  • When AASL Engage says “social and cultural context,” what does the rubric actually score?

If the answer to the first question is “it continues,” you are not looking at media literacy alone. You are looking at Freire’s method wearing a library-standards badge.

ALA's AASL National School Library Standards.
Freire’s method wearing a library-standards badge.


More evidence from the past

About three years ago I provided evidence of the above use of media literacy as political literacy. It comes directly from school librarians themselves saying it themselves on a podcast called School Librarians United. So listen and learn, and notice she came to an ALA school librarian conference specifically to get training on how to indoctrinate kids using political literacy. ALA has been teaching this for years:

 


Endnotes

  1. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970/2000), on banking education, problem-posing, codification, and conscientização. The 1985 work cited by Look Sharp authors is Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1985).
  2. American Association of School Librarians, National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (Chicago: ALA Editions, 2018), https://standards.aasl.org/. Second edition announced 2025; Shared Foundations unchanged.
  3. Compare prior Okla. Admin. Code § 210:15-3-173 (AASL 2007 text) with current § 210:15-3-173, as amended by Oklahoma Register, Vol. 42, Issue 1 (Sept. 16, 2024), effective Sept. 26, 2024, https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/oklahoma/OAC-210-15-3-173.
  4. Faith Rogow, Barbara Crossman, Michele Coolbeth, and Jennifer Balk, “Constructivist Media Decoding in Elementary School: Media Literacy Instruction Across a School Year,” Journal of Media Literacy Education 17, no. 2 (2025): 125–139 (CMD “drawing from Paulo Freire’s pedagogy (1985)”).
  5. Faith Rogow (@insightersed.bsky.social), Bluesky post promoting the Project Look Sharp national CMD course; course dates and price from Project Look Sharp, “Our PD Offerings,” https://www.projectlooksharp.org/our-offerings.php, and the October 6–December 15, 2026 course flyer (looksharp@ithaca.edu; inquiry deadline Sept. 29, 2026).
  6. Len Bryan, “Media Literacy & the AASL Standards,” Knowledge Quest 47, no. 1 (Sept./Oct. 2018): 39–44, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1190637.
  7. AASL, Standards Framework for Learners, Shared Foundation II, Include (Think domain: discerning stance toward points of view), https://standards.aasl.org/framework/.
  8. AASL, Standards Framework for Learners, Shared Foundation VI, Engage (Think domain: evaluate information for accuracy, validity, social and cultural context, and appropriateness for need).
  9. AASL, “Evolving Standards for an Evolving Profession: Introducing the Second Edition of the National School Library Standards,” Knowledge Quest, Sept. 29, 2025, https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/evolving-standards-for-an-evolving-profession-introducing-the-second-edition-of-the-national-school-library-standards/.
  10. Sample from AASL Shared Foundations series on Include (ALA Editions), discussing unlearning “false narratives” and naming white supremacy, institutionalized racism, and anti-cishet supremacy as part of implementing Include, https://alastore.ala.org/sites/default/files/book_samples/9780838919170_sample.pdf.
  11. Okla. Admin. Code § 210:15-3-173 (text in force until the Sept. 26, 2024 amendment), “Standard 1: Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge (American Association of School Librarians [AASL], STANDARDS FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY LEARNER).” The commercial page okrules.elaws.us/oac/210:15-3-173 is unstable. Use instead: neighboring OAC 210:15-3-172 (Oklahoma adopted AASL’s 2007 Standards for the 21st-Century Learner as the Information Literacy PASS); Justia Part 21 index, https://regulations.justia.com/states/oklahoma/title-210/chapter-15/subchapter-3/part-21/; the pre-2024 OSDE compilation of Title 210 Part 21, OSDE Title 210 Part 21 PDF; and the author’s February 19, 2024 photograph of the printed AASL-citing page. Current text only: Cornell LII § 210:15-3-173.
  12. For the generative-theme classroom sequence (ordinary lesson as vehicle for political dialogue), see James Lindsay, The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire’s Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education (Orlando: New Discourses, 2022), and New Discourses, “The Theft of Education,” Nov. 9, 2022, https://newdiscourses.com/2022/11/the-theft-of-education/, crediting SEL expert Jennifer McWilliams. Cited here for the method description, not as evidence of AASL’s drafting history.  See video after Endnotes.
  13. Okla. Admin. Code § 210:15-3-173 (current), Grades PK–2 through 9–12, https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/oklahoma/OAC-210-15-3-173.
  14. Oklahoma State Department of Education, Oklahoma Academic Standards for Information Literacy (2024), stating the 2024 standards update the 2007 standards previously found in OAC 210:15-3-173, https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/osde/documents/resources/educators/OAS%20Information%20Literacy%202024.pdf.
  15. Project Look Sharp, National CMD Course flyer and “Our PD Offerings,” https://www.projectlooksharp.org/our-offerings.php.
  16. Ayşe Aslı Sezgin Büyükalaca, Chris Sperry, and Cyndy Scheibe, “Using Media as a Source in Lessons: Media Literacy Methodology and Constructivist Media Decoding,” Journal of Media Literacy Education 17, no. 2 (2025): 140–146 (CMD contrasted with Freire’s banking method).
  17. Project Look Sharp, staff biography for Sox Sperry (curriculum writer; focus on social justice, identity, and climate disruption), https://www.ithaca.edu/looksharp?action=about.
  18. Project Look Sharp lesson and kit lists, including Media Construction of Social Justice, Media Construction of Global Warming, and “Black Lives Matter and Climate Change: What’s the Connection?,” https://www.projectlooksharp.org/ and https://www.projectlooksharp.org/featured-topics.php.
  19. Project Look Sharp, “ML3: Librarians as Leaders for Media Literacy” (AASL, NAMLE, IMLS planning grant), https://www.projectlooksharp.org/?action=ml3.
  20. Institute of Museum and Library Services, award RE-254855-OLS-23, Ithaca College (Project Look Sharp), Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, FY 2023, $149,748, https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/re-254855-ols-23. Full proposal as posted by IMLS: https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/project-proposals/re-254855-ols-23-full-proposal.pdf. Award record: https://www.highergov.com/grant/RE-254855-OLS-23/. Ithaca College announcement: https://www.ithaca.edu/news/expanding-media-literacy. Booth Ferris Foundation funding for the 2021–23 New York ML3 pilot (about $270,000) is described in The Ithacan, Nov. 13, 2023, https://theithacan.org/51337/news/project-look-sharp-uses-grant-to-expand-media-literacy-initiative-nationwide/, and on Look Sharp’s ML3 page. Look Sharp’s January 2025 ML3 newsletter describes the IMLS planning period and a requested implementation proposal: https://www.projectlooksharp.org/newsletters/ML3_national_2.pdf.

"The Theft of Education":



"ML3: Modern Media Literacy for K-12"; "Our goal is to shift culture":




NOTE ADDED 28 AUGUST 2026:

After this post went up, read the field’s own handbook next to it. Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share, The Critical Media Literacy Guide: Engaging Media and Transforming Education (Leiden: Brill/Sense, 2019), especially pages 11–17, shown below, treat Paulo Freire as a foundation of “critical media literacy,” not as an outside smear. They tie the method to Freire’s conscientização and to reading and writing “the word and the world.” The aim is not only whether a clip is accurate, but power, ideology, identity, and action. That is the add-on this post distinguishes from ordinary source criticism. 

Buy or borrow the book from Brill. For a short public statement of the same claim, see Jeff Share’s UCLA slides: critical media literacy is “a dialogical process for social and environmental justice that incorporates Paulo Freire’s (1970) notion of praxis.” (PDF

If a school board is told media literacy is only “spot the fake,” that is what the critical-media-literacy authors say they are adding.

It's even easy to see what they are adding, with Paulo Freire promoted like a religious deity:




Source: https://criticalmediaproject.org/conferences/?wvideo=rjjqfp1trn


Critical media literacy is a dialogical process
for social and environmental justice that
incorporates Paulo Freire's (1970) notion of
praxis, "reflection and action upon the world
in order to transform it" (p. 36).
Source:
https://media-and-learning.eu/files/2022/04/JeffShare_UCLA_220420.pdf



The Critical Media Literacy Guide: pp. 11-12


The Critical Media Literacy Guide: pp. 13-14


The Critical Media Literacy Guide: pp. 15-16


The Critical Media Literacy Guide: p. 17



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Saturday, August 22, 2026

Librarians Finally Admit the Reviews They Hide Behind Are Useless

School librarians have spent years telling parents, school boards, and courts that every book in the collection was carefully selected using professional reviews. That claim has been the standard defense. “We follow the selection policy. The books have multiple positive reviews from School Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist…”

It was also the shield used against parents who dared to object to s[*]xually explicit material in school libraries. Challenge a book? You’re told the professionals already reviewed it. Object too loudly? You risk being labeled a book banner, a bigot, or worse—and in multiple cases sued.

Now the librarians themselves are admitting, in their own research and on their own podcast, that those reviews cannot be trusted.  Audio, transcript, and journal article available below.

In a 2026 study published by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL, a division of the American Library Association), Books and Barriers: The Influence of Book Censorship on the Role of School Librarians, Their Self-Efficacy, and Well-Being, researchers Misty S. Schattle and Johnny R. O’Connor, Jr. interviewed eleven school librarians in one large Texas district. The librarians reported that collection development now takes far longer because:
“they often feel that the reviews cannot be trusted, requiring the need to read books in their entirety before placement on the shelf.”¹
One elementary librarian put it bluntly:  
“It’s almost like we can’t go on our reviews. I’ve been reading a lot more books.”¹
Dr. Schattle expanded on these findings on the School Librarians United podcast:
“lots of librarians that I talk to were saying that they couldn’t really rely on reviews anymore because… they read a review, but are they gonna get something that is questionable… so they might still find that they needed to read it before it could go on the shelf… they’re just finding that it’s taking so much time… because now you have to read all the books.”²
This is not new. I documented the same problem more than a decade ago.

In 2010, Kalida, Ohio Superintendent Don Horstman removed Lush by Natasha Friend after a fifth grader brought it home. The book contained graphic s[*]xual details. Horstman read it himself and said the glowing professional reviews had omitted those details entirely.³ Similar patterns appear in my 2011 post on incomplete reviews⁴ and my 2009 post on a Kentucky superintendent overriding ALA lists.⁵

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been even more direct. In August 2026 remarks, he stated that the librarians are the ones responsible for the presence of “dirty, filthy, and vulgar books” in school libraries, that they know what is on the shelves while many superintendents and teachers do not, and that the American Library Association trains librarians and considers such material “just fine.”¹⁰

Librarians themselves have used the same defense when suing parents. Amanda Jones, who filed a high-profile lawsuit against parents who criticized materials in her library, has stated: “As a professional librarian, I use professional reviews about where we place books in the library.”¹¹ Her justification for the books she selects rests on the very reviewing sources that Schattle’s research and the librarians she interviewed now say cannot be trusted to flag “something that is questionable.”

Meanwhile, the American Library Association itself continues to elevate those same professional reviews. Through its Unite Against Book Bans campaign, ALA created “Book Résumés”—documents packed with awards and glowing professional reviews, designed to be handed to boards and review committees.⁶ The résumé for Gender Queer is a perfect example: starred reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal, YALSA and Rainbow Project lists, the Alex Award, and more. What it carefully omits is any actual content from the book.⁷

At the same time, ALA’s official policy forbids the rating systems that do document content.

The 11th edition of ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Manual (2026) is explicit. On page 8 it notes that school boards and lawmakers use ratings produced by “religious and political groups” to limit access to library books and control what is added to school libraries. Chapter 7 contains an entire section on rating systems and states:
“Using, enforcing, or approving of ratings systems violates the Library Bill of Rights.”
It further warns that rating or labeling materials based on assumed age-appropriateness “may be perceived as restricting access.”⁸

On page 145 the Manual specifically addresses the sites parents actually use:
“websites like BookLooks.org and RatedBooks.org often use legal-sounding language to falsely imply that certain books that do not comply with their moral or religious beliefs are illegal and ‘harmful to minors.’ … Their claims are false and have no basis in law. Libraries should not use ratings from these sites to justify removing books from their collections, limiting access to library resources, or making decisions about what books to purchase for library collections. … publicly funded libraries should not use private content rating systems to restrict access to materials. This policy should apply to all users, including children and young adults.”⁸
Kelly Jensen at Book Riot has likewise dismissed BookLooks, RatedBooks, and similar sites as “unprofessional, biased book reviews” and “politically-driven.”⁹ Tools such as RatedBooks and the National Book Rating Index (NBRI) that actually catalog explicit content are rejected, while the professional reviews that leave librarians unsure whether a book contains “something that is questionable” remain the approved standard—until parents notice the problem, at which point the response is often a lawsuit.

So the position is now fully circular:
  • The professional reviews ALA has long promoted as the gold standard for selection and defense of books are admitted by ALA’s own researchers (in an AASL journal) to be inadequate. Librarians say they can no longer rely on them and must read the books themselves.
  • The rating systems that actually describe s[*]xual content, language, and other details are denounced by ALA as illegitimate tools of “religious and political groups.” Using them violates the Library Bill of Rights.
  • ALA’s Book Résumés lean on the same professional reviews while omitting the content those reviews fail to flag.
  • When parents point out the resulting problems, some librarians sue them for defamation while continuing to cite the very reviews now acknowledged as unreliable.
Either the approved reviews work, or they don’t. If they don’t—as Schattle’s study and the librarians themselves now say—then the tools that do provide useful information about content are the ones ALA explicitly forbids, precisely because those tools can be used to keep inappropriate material away from children.

I spoke with Brooke Stephens, founder of RatedBooks.org and the National Book Rating Index (NationalBookRatingIndex.com). RatedBooks creates reports based on a content rating scale that uses the book’s own excerpts to justify each rating. The National Book Rating Index aggregates nearly 38,000 reviews from multiple sources and can be searched for free or used by librarians to process entire library inventories and generate rating reports on matched titles. The more the ALA defends giving mature content to minors while declaring professional reviews inadequate and parent-created rating tools illegitimate, the more obvious the need for these resources becomes. Stephens is both amused and grateful for the free publicity the ALA has given her work. She sees their rejection of transparent content rating systems as further diminishing any remaining need for the organization itself.

Parents who challenged books and were attacked for it were right. The professional reviews were never the rigorous safeguard claimed. They were a convenient shield. ALA still promotes that shield through Book Résumés and selection policies while simultaneously declaring the more accurate content ratings off-limits and supporting legal action against those who notice the gap.

The result is predictable: children retain access to material that even the librarians selecting it now say they cannot trust the reviews to identify—and, as Lt. Gov. Patrick noted, the librarians are the ones who know what is on those shelves.

NOTE ADDED 23 August 2026:

This article will have a followup article about teachers who truly are trusted experts and who truly care for teaching children, instead of indoctrinating them, like the requirements American Library Association added to all the various state Freedom to Read Acts and Right to Read Acts.  These teachers who truly care were directly vilified by American Library Association and its librarians, such as by Amanda Jones who is suing me for defamation calling one of them "a menace and a bully."  The only menace is to ALA as people wake up and realize the emperor has no clothes, something that Misty S. Schattle described in detail when we learned librarians have to read all the books for themselves.  Then when teachers do read all the books for themselves and decide some books are inappropriate for schools, they are vilified and sued, such as by PEN America, a partner with ALA in "Unite Against Book Bans."  So stay tuned for the upcoming post.

Endnotes:


1. Misty S. Schattle & Johnny R. O’Connor, Jr., “Books and Barriers: The Influence of Book Censorship on the Role of School Librarians, Their Self-Efficacy, and Well-Being,” School Library Research 29 (2026), https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/schattleandoconnor.pdf.

2. Dr. Misty Schattle, “Censorship’s Impact on School Librarians and their Libraries,” School Librarians United with Amy Hermon, Episode 372, August 21, 2026, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/censorships-impact-on-school-librarians-and-their/id1434321470?i=1000784807311.

3. “School Excoriates Book Reviews that Fail to Disclose ‘Graphic S[*]xual Details’ in Books for Children; Lush by Natasha Friend is ‘Wildly Inappropriate’ for Certain Children,” SafeLibraries, December 16, 2010, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/12/school-excoriates-book-reviews-that.html.

4. “False Censorship Claims Exposed by WSJ Author Attacked for Exposing Truth About Young Adult Books; Meghan Cox Gurdon Decries Incomplete and Uninformative Book Reviews,” SafeLibraries, June 8, 2011, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/06/false-censorship-claims-exposed-by-wsj.html.

5. “Kentucky School Superintendent Exposes False Cries of Censorship; Removes Educationally Unsuitable Books from Curriculum Despite Being on ALA’s List for Reluctant Readers,” SafeLibraries, November 30, 2009, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2009/11/kentucky-school-superintendent-exposes.html.

6. Unite Against Book Bans (American Library Association initiative), Book Résumés, https://bookresumes.uniteagainstbookbans.org/.

7. Book Résumé for Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Unite Against Book Bans / ALA, https://bookresumes.uniteagainstbookbans.org/wp-content/uploads/kobabe_GenderQueer_20240214.pdf.

8. American Library Association, Intellectual Freedom Manual, 11th ed. (ALA Editions, 2026), pp. 8, 145 (and Chapter 7 on rating systems). See also ALA’s related “Labeling and Rating Systems: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.”

9. Kelly Jensen, “BookLooks, RatedBooks, and Other Unprofessional Book ‘Review’ Sites to Know: Book Censorship News, January 10, 2025,” Book Riot, January 10, 2025, https://bookriot.com/booklooks-ratedbooks-and-other-unprofessional-book-review-sites/.

10. “Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Opposes Explicit Books In Schools, Pleas for Parents to Act to Get These Books Removed, Calls Out School Librarians,” SafeLibraries, August 20, 2026, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2026/08/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-opposes.html (quoting Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s remarks holding school librarians responsible for the presence of explicit materials and noting ALA’s role in training them).

11. Maggie Heyn Richardson, “Livingston Parish’s Amanda Jones landed in a national fight about book banning. Now, ‘That Librarian’ Has Written a Memoir,” 225 Magazine, August 8, 2024, https://www.225batonrouge.com/our-city/livingston-parishs-amanda-jones-landed-national-fight-book-banning-now-librarian-written-memoir (quoting Amanda Jones: “As a professional librarian, I use professional reviews about where we place books in the library.”).


Hear the Admission:


Listen to the librarians themselves discussing how professional reviews can no longer be trusted, followed by a transcript of what they said:



Transcript:


Amy Hermon:
[Y]ou know, these attacks on their collections were happening. 

Dr. Misty Schattle:
So what I found, and you have to keep in mind, this was a, this was, very much a small group of people. They were eleven librarians that I spoke with from one district, so you're talking about a very tiny population. But, they all found that their collection development processes were taking far longer than they ever had before. So, they, you know, we, we, all, as librarians, we, we read reviews, that's what we do, because unfortunately, as much as we would love to, we cannot read every book, there's just way too many out there. But I was finding that, that lots of librarians that I talk to were saying that they couldn't really rely on reviews anymore because, you know, they didn't know, were they going, you know, they read a review, but are they gonna get something that is questionable, um, you know, like, and then so they would, they might read a review and they might get something but then they might still find that they needed to read it before it could go on the shelf, or maybe they were going to public libraries and trying to find books so they could read them before they bought them. But then, you know, they're, they're still like, they're just finding that it's taking so much time, so much time that they don't have, right? And collection development, it's, it's a lengthy process anyway. Right? I mean well, maybe not, if you don't have much money to spend it don't take much time. But, if you, if you have a decent budget, you know, I, I, I don't know a single school librarian anywhere that's been like, "well, I had all this money to spend, so I was just buying whatever." I mean, nobody does that.

Amy Hermon:
Uhhh, (laughter) I, I was gonna say, back in the, uh, the ESSER days when we had ESSER funds, uh, after the pandemic, ah, there was something that I was aware was never gonna happen again in my career, but it involved a, a very small window of time and spending an amount of money that I could, could barely believe this was actually happening, it was like winning the lotto or something. But um, no, but I, I think that especially when you talk to people for whom they are not rookie librarians, these are not rookie librarians, you're dealing with people who are, in some cases, seasoned, they are veterans, they, they, this is not their first rodeo. They have built a collection repeatedly and you'd like to think that at some point you get better at this, and and you start to trust your, um, your judgment as a professional, and the longer you do this, in. The hope is that you become more confident in the decisions that you're making and you're not second-guessing yourself. But when somebody calls into question what you're doing, all of a sudden that hyper scrutiny that, that is imposed on, on the collection that we're building, this becomes an absolute, colossal, e-, e-, expensive time that we have to, to use, just to satisfy, uh, community members who have made it their life's mission to upend whatever sense of normalcy we have in our spaces.

Dr. Misty Schattle:
Yeah. It, it's just, you know, it's just crazy to me, like, I don't know. We have these degrees and, you know, we, we want to do our job, but sometimes it, it's hard, just finding the time to, to do all of the, the reading of, you know, all the books, because now you have to read all the books.

Amy Hermon:
So, I regularly hear from school librarians that there aren't enough hours in the day to do our jobs. We arrive before school early, we work through  lunch, we stay late. I'm already aware that there are, uh, a number of us who have extended calendars where we have built in days where we are working either, ah, before the school year starts or well into, uh, after the school year ends. Our professional training, our judgment, apparently isn't good enough when it comes to selecting the books that we oversee. And it's just, it's not just insulting, the burden that we now have to satisfy, uh, uh, somebody's expectations of, of how we are, are, you know, supposed to be doing our jobs.

Dr. Misty Schattle:
Yeah. I think it definitely makes that harder, because, like you said, we have training for this, we go to school to, to learn how to develop collections, and, you know, I, I'm sure you did as I did took classes on collection development, but not just that, I took children's literature, I took young adult literature. I mean, I enjoyed them. Honestly I was exposed to books I probably would've never picked up on my own. And I know, like, even now looking back, looking back at those classes, I can still, you know, recall some of those books that I read in those classes back in 2007. I can say, you know like, I know that I've put specific books that I read because of those classes in specific children's hands, because that was what they needed at that moment. I've always said that my most favorite part of my job as a school librarian was connecting kids with that just-right book for them. With that book that they didn't know they needed, but they needed.

Amy Hermon:
At Wayne State University, we had to pick two of the three categories, so we had, there was a young adult course, a middle grade course, and a, ah, children's, ah, literature. And these were actually the three classes that overlapped with our School of Education. And, so that was really interesting. And I'll never forget, it was the, you know, the, the assignment was legend, it was the hundred book project. And the hundred book project, the expectation was is that we would familiarize ourselves with a hundred books during the semester and write up synopses and, and all sorts of, ah, write ups and, and critical reviews, and, and, you know, we thought it absolutely daunting at the time, but now that I think about it, it was ay, some of the most memorable activities I did and I really, really enjoyed it.

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

IMLS is the Latest Target of American Library Association with Kelly Jensen Smearing It As Doo Doo

Kelly Jensen does doo doo smear on IMLS
Kelly Jensen uses hate and projection to smear IMLS (United States Institute for Museum and Library Services).  IMLS gets smeared like doo doo, because this is one underhanded, disgusting technique ALA uses to push its efforts to indoctrinate children in schools and libraries using the taxpaying public's money to do so.  

Kelly Jensen's doo doo references, themselves a form of projection, start right in the title of her latest IMLS hit job, the first significant word:
Oh look, she censored the word in the title by using an asterisk, but it's spelled out right there in the URL.  So it's okay for kids and URLs but not for Book Riot by Riot New Media:
In fairness, she did use the word in the text, in one of many efforts to smear IMLS:
"further enshittifying democracy, rather than serving the American citizenry."
And these people are supposedly "trusted experts" for children, set into law by ALA's "Freedom to Read Act" that ALA is spreading across America and the federal government.  

School librarians are not trusted experts.  If anything, they represent the "ensh*ttification" of public education throughout America, and the scatological reference is just more projection.

Trusted expert Kelly Jensen is an awarded hero of American Library Association with a Presidential Commendation from ALA's American Association of School Librarians (AASL).  That means she's a trusted expert for ALA itself.  ALA librarians award each other, like they award books they want kids to read, like Gender Queer.  Awards are given to people and books for the most kids harmed or the best potential to harm kids.  This is sort of like "Library Girl" Kendra Sunderland won multiple awards from the adult entertainment industry.

School librarians generally are not trusted experts for school children, given they are trained no book is ever inappropriate for any child and given the vocal ones are uniformly opposed to America and capitalism, like the one suing me who published on Bluesky, "THE REVOLUTION IS OVERDUE," but I digress.  So many other cases, other librarians, I should write a separate story about it.


Back to Kelly Jensen, here is the doo doo level of her AASL Presidential Commendation arguments against IMLS:
  • the perfect encapsulation of how the Trump Vance administration is hellbent on destroying an agency dedicated to sharing and protecting truth, facts, and information
  • the regime's obsession with and dedication to AI is about bowing to technocrats and further ensh[*]ttifying democracy, rather than serving the American citizenry
  • The Trump Vance regime
  • No one in the current regime
  • IMLS is an arm of propaganda for the Trump-Vance regime
  • The IMLS Freedom Trucks stole over $14,000,000 from U.S. taxpayers, intended to serve public libraries and museums, and funneled it directly into the pockets of the right-wing private corporation PragerU
  • the Freedom Trucks, which the regime claims celebrate America’s shared cultural history in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary
Maybe if she keeps saying "regime" often enough it will become the truth?  She's a "trusted expert" after all, with a Presidential Commendation.  She writes "regime" 20 times in her one screed.  Here's more:
  • a history and philosophy of whitewashing history
  • It is infuriating to see that states with lower literacy levels, where schools have become the most targeted by partisan politics (past and present), where books and texts filled with facts and history have been yanked off the shelves "to protect the kids," and where money is being stolen from public schools to fund the private education of the already-wealthy are the ones getting the "treat" of Freedom Trucks
  • These Trucks further lie to some of the most vulnerable about this country’s history and further the propaganda that the regime hopes they’ll continue to swallow down without question
Here's where she calls everyone stupid if they allegedly lack "critical" skills:
  • Too many of those who will hop aboard the trucks lack the critical literacy skills (of all kinds) to ask questions.
This gutter level of argument and projection goes on and on for the remainder of the hit piece.  I'll skip it now.

Contrast that writing with real journalism, real reporting, presenting many of the same issues, but without the hate and projection:
"Top Library Advocate: Backing Drag Queen Story Hour Supports Parental Choice," by Susan Crabtree, RCP Staff, RealClear Politics, 3 March 2026.

Also, Kelly Jensen takes a victory lap that she supposedly forced IMLS to change its home page.  She writes on Bluesky: 
Yes, indeed, the IMLS home page is back to what it was before they spit out AI slop on it last week. 
Guess what works?  Exposing, amplifying, shaming, and pushing back.
Pure propaganda.  First, IMLS likely corrected things on its own.  Second, Kelly taking a victory lap is a joke.  Last year she wrote an article that had absolutely zero effect on IMLS.  She leaves that out of her fakery.  Last year she wrote "The Latest From IMLS and What You Need to Prepare For Right Now," and all that exposing, amplifying, shaming, and pushing back made no difference.  Though back then she used administration 4 times and no regimes.  Now that she's using 20 regimes, that made the difference.  She's a trusted expert on her own delusions of self worth.

Besides, how good is Kelly as a "trusted expert" on IMLS if she brags about and recommends other librarians block federal government accounts on Bluesky?
"Mom, what did you do on your Friday night?" 
Well, I spent it blocking federal departments and agencies on Bluesky, like in any other normal f[*]cking reality.




I'm looking forward to what the new IMLS will do for America.

How about you?

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Plainview ISD TPIA-FOIA Request

Plainview ISD
2417 Yonkers St
Plainview TX 79072
806-293-6000
10 May 2023

Via email to: ivan.monarrez@plainviewisd.org, rosie.licerio@plainviewisd.org

PROJECT CODE: PLAINVIEW ISD TPIA REQUEST #001

Dear Plainview ISD TPIA Officer:

This is a noncommercial FOIA request from a member of the news media for electronic production of documentation per the Texas Public Information Act, §6252-17a et seq. (TPIA), to this email address, to my attention, using the above-referenced research project code.

TPIA requires that you "promptly produce" the requested records unless, within 10 days, you have sought an Attorney General's Opinion. If you deny any or all of this request, please cite each specific exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information and notify me of the appeal procedures available to me under the law.

All documentation should be produced as PDFs or CSV files, with the exception of photographs (which should be JPEG), audio files (which should be MP3), and video (which should be MP4 or MOV). If documentation files are too large to transmit in an email, transmit them to me either using a free file sharing service (such as Dropbox) or by sending multiple emails (as many as needed).

I seek the following numbered categories of documentation for my research pursuant to news articles and a book I am writing that has interest and value to the public:

1) Documentation of a listing of all materials in the school’s library or libraries that are for the educational use of school children. This could be a printout of a database containing all records of what books or other learning materials are contained within the library or libraries. Do not include any records of a personal nature about any individual. Librarians or media specialists maintain databases that comprise such lists. This should be a simple export to a computer file of the records contained in that database in comma separated variable format. I expect this export to take at most five minutes.

2) Documentation of a listing of all materials in the school’s library or libraries online databases like SORA, OverDrive, EBSCO, Gale, etc., that are for the educational use of school children. This could be a printout of a database containing all records of what books or other learning materials are contained within the library or libraries online resources. Do not include any records of a personal nature about any individual. Librarians or media specialists maintain databases that comprise such lists of what’s available online. This should be a simple export to a computer file of the records contained in that database in comma separated variable format. I expect this export to take at most five minutes.

3) Documentation of the "status" of the "Texas Educator Certificate" of each librarian or media specialist. I expect this export to PDF to take at most five minutes per employee and that such information would be available from https://tealprod.tea.state.tx.us/ECOS-External/EcosOnline/VirtCert

4) Documentation of each librarian and media specialist’s curriculum vitae (CV). I expect this to take at most five minutes per individual.

5) Documentation of each librarian and media specialist’s membership in American Library Association (ALA) and ALA’s American Association of School Librarians (AASL). I expect this to take at most five minutes per individual.

6) Documentation of each librarian and media specialist’s membership in Texas Library Association (TXLA) and TXLA’s Texas Association of School Librarians (TASL). I expect this to take at most five minutes per individual.

7) Documentation of each librarian and media specialist’s attendance online or in person of all ALA and AASL events, including the name of all events attended. I expect this to take at most ten minutes per individual.

8) Documentation of each librarian and media specialist’s attendance online or in person of all TXLA and TASL events, including the name of all events attended. I expect this to take at most ten minutes per individual.

9) Documentation of the presence of the following book within the school libraries, school classroom libraries, and any other collection of books within the school: Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. I expect this to take at most five minutes per library.

10) Documentation regarding the following book within the school libraries, school classroom libraries, and any other collection of books within the school: Flamer by Mike Curato. I expect this to take at most five minutes per library.

11) Documentation of the presence of the following book within the school libraries, school classroom libraries, and any other collection of books within the school: This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson. I expect this to take at most five minutes per library.

12) Documentation of the presence of the following book within the school libraries, school classroom libraries, and any other collection of books within the school: This Book Is Gay by James Dawson. (This request is framed this way merely to avoid gamesmanship in responding to the previous question.) I expect this to take no time at all if the above is honestly answered.

13) Documentation of lists of recommended books provided to teachers by the school’s librarians and media specialists. I expect this to take at most five minutes per individual.

14) Documentation of any financial donations or gifts or awards to the school system by ALA, AASL, TXLA, TASL. I have to ask this since ALA makes a habit of influencing local communities with quiet money. In Highland Park, TX, for example, Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), an ALA entity now with Texas connection Dorcas Hand on the board, gave $5,000 dollars to local advocates of ALA’s political positions. See page 10: http://www.ala.org/aboutala/sites/ala.org.aboutala/files/content/governance/officers/eb_documents/2014_2015ebdocuments/ebd12_12_exec_dir_rpt_11dec14.pdf. I expect this to take at most five minutes.

15) Documentation of all communications of the school librarians and media specialists from the date of the incident of the first graders forcing another first grader to engage in oral sex while another first grader filmed the event to present. I expect this to take at most five minutes per individual given to super limited time nature of this request.

I am a reporter on library matters where I publish on SafeLibraries®. As such I may publish anything you send me. Thus, I ask that all fees for the production of TPIA responses be waived: "If a governmental body determines that producing the information requested is in the 'public interest' because it will primarily benefit the general public, the governmental body shall waive or reduce the charges." "Shall," not "may." Source: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/2018-06/PIA_handbook_2018_0.pdf 194; Gov’t Code § 552.267(a). That this is a matter of public interest is evident by the international media attention the school has received as a result of the first grader being raped in school by other first graders in a manner consistent with the visual images displayed in school books like Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Flamer by Mike Curato, and This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson.

Where emails are involved, also provide the BCC as well as the CC and the TO. As you know, BCC is for the convenience of the sender, not for circumventing public information laws. If senders/recipients include distribution lists the school created, then please provide the document that lists the individual recipient email addresses in any distribution list; again, distribution lists are for the convenience of the sender, not for circumventing the law. Further, if school business has been conducted via the use of personal emails, then please provide those emails as well. Conducting school business on personal emails is not a valid means for circumventing TPIA.

Any document written or recorded is included as well. That includes voice mails, audio recordings, video recordings, transcripts or minutes of any public meetings. School board executive session recordings or minutes are not included in my request if they have not already been made public.

Written or recorded documents also include those made in any telephonic, electronic, or physical meeting with anyone acting on behalf of any library association such as the ALA. ALA trains librarians that written or recorded documents from ALA-provided trainings, meetings, conferences, etc., are ALA proprietary and may not be released publicly. That ALA claim is false. TPIA controls, not ALA. If a public employee attended anything at public expense, then anything learned/recorded at such an event or as a result thereof has been made public and is discoverable under TPIA no matter what ALA claims. The public has a right to know what business has been conducted at public expense, especially where the school goofed, allowing a first grader to force another into oral sex.

Be clear ALA top leadership uses personal email to direct librarians to destroy public documents precisely to prevent production under state sunshine laws like TPIA. Example from the private email of the current Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Esq., of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom: “Subject: URGENT - must delete all documents related to 17 Dec crisis communications workshop .… Remove these from your servers today and destroy hard copies. This is an attempt by two individuals to obtain privileged information …. we cannot allow anything from 17 Dec to be produced in response to FOIA.” See: “Librarians Ordered to Destroy Public Documents Revealing Homophobia at American Library Association and Crime in Libraries,” by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries®, 26 April 2018, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2018/04/librarians-ordered-to-destroy.html

To bring it home to Texas, TXLA advises librarians to use personal emails as well, precisely to attempt to evade Texas law, precisely to keep parents in the dark, precisely about the sexualization of their children in school, and here we are with first graders acting out something they’ve obviously seen somewhere—while librarians are trained to hide public records from the public:

Kleinman, Dan. “School Librarians Train to Violate FOIA Law to Keep Parents In the Dark About Sexualizing Children.” SafeLibraries® (blog), December 5, 2022. https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2022/12/school-librarians-train-to-violate-foia.html.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

NOTE: If anyone wishes to contact me privately/confidentially, perhaps to provide some of this documentation, use SafeLibraries@pm.me.

Sincerely,

Dan Kleinman



NOTE ADDED 19 MAY 2023:

Kleinman, Dan. “Click Here to Give Now to FOIA Fees for Plainview ISD Texas by Dan Kleinman.” GiveSendGo.com, May 17, 2023. http://www.givesendgo.com/HiddenInPlainview.