Actually, there are two points that I saw in the article which highlight ‘some of the activities of librarians do within their schools to make these students perform so much better in school’ as you requested.
- teaching the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, and
- teaching inquiry-based learning.

You can see the information in the section titled “The role of the school library program and academic standards”. The information mentions “dramatically higher scores” and students being less likely to score below basic.

Also, I think you are correct that the “cataloging and shelving” activities you mention do not make the difference in student achievement. That is probably why schools where the full-time librarians have support staff do better than where there is no support staff (because the support staff would be doing the cataloging and shelving type activities and the librarian would be spending more of his/her time teaching the 21st century skills and inquiry-based learning activities that make the difference).

Everything a school librarian does affects students’ achievement that enables life-long access to information they needed to survive.
Schools currently are most concerned with meeting the standardized tests and a good librarian makes sure to know the standards covered on each grade level, reads through the tests and matches them to benchmarks, and adjust her lessons to include using the test question vocabulary to connect to the lesson being taught. Examples:
Identifying the title connects to identifying the main idea
Table of Contents connects to tables and databases
Processes to finding what you want
Using indexes or encyclopedias connects to alphabetical order.
Identifying types of media connects with reading fiction and nonfiction material connects to purpose: informational, entertain, opinion pursuade.
Modeling reading and identifying main idea, setting, and characters helps students comprehend test questions and learn the life-long reading skills that will make our future citizens productive.
Aside from testing, co-ops with teachers are very effective. But more important,
just borrowing books teaches a child the decision-making, accessing information, and the evaluation processes. And citizenship that includes using the internet/computer as a tool and valuing respect behavior on public property . School librarians foster students desire to learn.

I think that what Lance and Kachel share in their article is really nothing new, nor groundbreaking in any sense of teacher-librarianship research and advocacy. We KNOW that TLs matter to achievement in schools. WE—teacher-librarians and our few external advocates—but that’s about it.

But here’s the real problem: we don’t have the ears of those we need to have. We need to get these articles and this research into the journals of the real educational decision-makers: administrative officers. Hartzell is so on the money in his belief that when we publish in TL-oriented magazines and share with our administrators it really comes across as only self-serving. So true!

It’s not about WHAT, but really a question about WHERE…

Would it not be more powerful and productive to get these sorts of articles and TL-related research into administrative officer magazines (for example, Phi Delta Kappa)? Go where they decision-makers go to advocate for change in school libraries and a re-valuing of teacher-librarian role?

I feel as though these types of articles (and their related research) only speak to the choir when they appear in magazines like SLJ, LMC, and Teacher-Librarian.

Keep the research coming, but remember that we need to get the word out to the folks that make staffing and financial decisions, and in most provinces in Canada (and I would suspect in most US states); that we need to grab the ears of the school principal and superintendent and bend them a little bit more.

Just some thoughts (for what they are worth!).

Keep up the amazing work!