AR: Accelerated Reader and Accurate Reflection? A Collection Assessment of the Accelerated Reader Collection at an Elementary School in North Central North Carolina.

This study describes the analysis of a North Carolina elementary school's Accelerated Reader collection. The analysis was conducted to determine both the sufficiency of the collection to support an active Accelerated Reader program and the accuracy with which the fiction titles reflect the school's student demographic. The total number of titles owned in support of the AR program makes up only 19% of the total media collection, and only 36% of Renaissance Learning's recommended number, with an overwhelming majority of these titles being fiction. Examining the main characters in fiction AR titles in relation to the student demographic information from the 2002-2003 school year shows that a huge discrepancy exists between African American (35 titles) and Caucasian (404 titles) characters, even though the student body contains 46.9% African American students. Girls make up the majority (52.4%) of the students, but the majority of the books have male main characters (51%)