Service Learning in an Age of Standards - Industry Overview

School Administrator, August, 2000 by Terry L. Pickeral, Judy Bray

Whether service can survive as a useful instructional tool may hinge on how it is assessed

"The new standards have to do with application of basic learning. Students take things that at one time they simply memorized and instead take them into real-life settings. The graduation standards offer the opportunity for every student and teacher to bring learning to a higher level. Application, synthesis, analysis and integration of information are what real learning is all about."

Jim Grimmer, a teacher of philosophy at Richfield High School in Richfield, Minn., articulates one view of the connection between service learning and academic standards. At a time when academic standards, along with assessments and accountability, represent the big-dog reform across the country, educators would do well to follow Grimmer's example in identifying and articulating those connections.

According to the National Dropout Prevention Center's "Special Report on Standards, Assessment, Accountability and Interventions," published in 1999: "States are implementing standards-based reforms in reaction to the failure of past efforts to produce educational environments that ensure high academic achievement for all students."

National polls consistently show public support for standards, according to Achieve, an independent, bipartisan, not-for-profit organization formed in 1996 by governors and corporate CEOs. The latter share a powerful belief that high academic standards, demanding tests and performance accountability can push schools and students to much higher achievement.

"The basic idea of standards-based reform is to create clear, consistent, challenging goals for student learning, and then to make educational practices more coherent by deliberately using those goals to guide both instruction and testing. Standards also serve a purpose of communicating to the public what students are expected to know and be able to do at key checkpoints during their education," according to Achieve's "1999 National Education Summit Briefing Book."

While standards in the abstract have great appeal, implementation really has just begun. A recent Public Agenda study finds that in spite of the fact that 49 states now have what they consider to be tough academic standards for students, little change is evident in teachers' expectations or classroom practices. In this context, where does service learning fit?

A Genuine Priority

Service learning, as defined by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993:

* Helps students learn and develop by participating in thoughtfully organized service that is conducted in and meets the needs of communities;

* Is coordinated with an elementary school, secondary school, institution of higher education or community-service program and with the community;

* Helps foster civic responsibility;

* Is integrated into and enhances students' academic curriculum or the education components of the community service program in which the participants are enrolled; and

* Provides structured time for students or other participants to reflect on the service experience.

Several provisions of this definition suggest academic enrichment as a priority, but the fourth provision makes it unambiguous. Viewed another way, standards answer the question, "What do we want students to know and be able to do?" while service learning allows students to demonstrate their knowledge (what we want students to know) through direct service (what we want students to be able to do).

The growing trend to infuse service learning into the K-12 curriculum, schools and communities was documented recently by the National Center for Education Statistics in a March 2000 report, "Youth Service Learning and Community Service Among through 12th, Grade Students in the United States: 1996 and 1999."

Among the findings

* Over the past 10 years, legislative initiatives have galvanized a growing national emphasis on increasing students' involvement with their local communities and linking this service to academic study through service learning.

* Approximately 9 percent of all high schools in 1984 were using at least some service-learning activities. In 1999, 32 percent of all public high schools had service learning.

Evidence suggests that service learning helps students acquire academic skills and knowledge. According to Daniel Weiler and colleagues in their 1998 report, "An Evaluation of K-12 Service Learning in California," students in more than half of the schools they studied with high-quality service learning showed moderate to strong gains on student achievement tests in language arts and/or reading, engagement in school, sense of educational accomplishment and homework completion.

Service-learning participation was associated with higher scores on the state test of basic skills and higher grades, the studies showed. in addition, 83 percent of schools with service-learning programs reported that grade-point averages of participating students improved 76 percent of the time, according to Joseph Follman, who researched service learning in Florida for the Center for Civic Education and Service at Florida State University. In addition, middle and high school students who tutored younger children as part of their service-learning programs increased their own grade-point averages and test scores in reading/language arts and mathematics and were less likely to drop our of school, according to another study.