What is Service-Learning?

Service-learning is an approach to teaching and learning in which students engage in community service to address community needs while building their academic and civic knowledge and skills. Service-learning is for students of all ages and may be organized by K-12 schools, colleges and universities, afterschool and youth development programs, or nonprofits.

About Learn and Serve America

From the 1970s through the early 2010s, service-learning grew tremendously throughout the United States at all education levels, in part because of the efforts of Learn and Serve America, the federal program that from 1992-2011 provided grants to schools, colleges, and community groups to support this educational method. Learn and Serve America, which was administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (now dba AmeriCorps), provided an "on ramp" to a lifetime of civic engagement for more than 1.4 million students each year. In addition to awarding grants, Learn and Serve America provided free resources on service-learning to the public, teachers, faculty members, schools, youth, and youth service groups through the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

Most states utilized LSA funds to support state-level LSA offices, typically located within the state department of education. Learn and Serve America funding supported nearly 600 individual schools, 450 school districts, 985 community colleges, and 240 colleges and universities annually. More than 35,000 K-12 teachers and higher education faculty benefited from direct funding for service-learning each year. See who received Learn and Serve America funding in your state.

This funding contributed to 1 in 4 elementary and secondary schools providing service-learning opportunities to their students. A 2005 survey by the Census Bureau found that 38% of students age 12-18 reported current or past participation in school-based service / service-learning.

Service-learning is a bipartisan issue. Two senators from Minnesota, one Democrat and one Republican, collaborated with Senator Ted Kennedy to sponsor the first iteration of LSA through the 1990 National and Community Service Act. Subsequent reauthorizations in 1993 and 2009 that expanded federal support for service-learning programs also received broad bipartisan support.

A significant setback occurred in April 2011 when Congress passed the fiscal year 2011 budget and eliminated funding for Learn and Serve America, the sole federal funding stream dedicated to service-learning. Congress passed a FY 2011 budget that cut the Corporation budget by $74.6 million. This cut included a $40 million reduction of LSA funding, which effectively eliminated LSA. Although the Obama administration requested $39.5 million for LSA in FY 2012, this request was not funded.

Examples of Service-Learning

CivicTrek is a service-learning program in Alexandria, VA public schools engaging teachers and students throughout the curriculum. Many students in Alexandria schools are new immigrants to the US.

Earth Force, an environmental, civic education and service-learning program, works intensively with schools over time. 

In Washington, DC in the pandemic summer of 2020, The George Washington University students facilitated a program in which they worked with middle schoolers to identify an issue in their school and develop virtual solutions to community issues such as the pandemic, racism and climate change.

Edutopia documented students in Eminence, Kentucky who used engineering and robotics to build a new wheelchair for a student with a disability and students in Montpelier, VT who used science to increase the amount of food their community garden produced.

Service-Learning After Learn and Serve America: How Five States Are Moving Forward shares how Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin continued supporting service-learning programs after LSA funding was eliminated.

The National Youth Leadership Council’s Project Ignition program, funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, engages teens in programs to increase seat-belt usage among their peers.

About Semester of Service & Summer of Service

The 2009 Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act authorized two new Learn and Serve America programs: Semester of Service and Summer of Service. Semester of Service - based on the framework developed by Youth Service America - is an extended service-learning framework (usually lasting at least 70 hours over 10-12 weeks) to engage students in addressing problems of local, national, or global importance and their root causes. The Serve America Act authorizes funding for Semester of Service programs that engage secondary school students for a minimum of 70 hours (at least a third in field-based activities) and provide academic credit.

Funded by Learn and Serve America, Youth Service America's STEMester of Service program supported 92 teachers in 53 schools across 19 states who engaged 9,514 students through Semester of Service activities in STEM classrooms focused on environmental issues.

Also based on YSA’s Semester of Service service-learning framework, the Sodexo Foundation funded service-learning programs in 35 schools focused activities that addressed the issue of childhood hunger.

View public information briefs and full program impact reports from RMC Research’s evaluations of YSA’s Semester of Service programs.

The Serve America Act also authorized funding for Summer of Service programs - based on ICP’s SummerTrek framework - that engage students in grades 6-12 for at least 100 hours over the summer and provides $500 or $750 education awards for each student who completes the required number of hours. Evaluators found Summer of Service participation to be associated with increases in youths' communication, team-building, and community development skills over the course of the summer. Participants became increasingly savvy at taking on leadership roles and building collaborative teams to accomplish real-world tasks. Furthermore, data showed growth in youths' sense of citizenship responsibility, confidence in their abilities to affect change, and desire to participate in future volunteerism.

Why Support Service-Learning?

Decades of research shows - and experience proves - the positive benefits of service-learning for young people, communities, and our democracy.

Impact on Student Outcomes

The National Research Council declared service-learning one of the most effective approaches for engaging students and boosting learning.

Numerous studies have cited the positive benefits of service-learning for young people. Service-learning:

Enhances educational engagement, which can reduce absenteeism, reduce disciplinary referrals, improve student performance and grades, and impact student retention through graduation;

Reduces the achievement gap, with evidence that low-income students who serve outperform those who don’t; and

  • The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts (2006) found that 70% percent of the students who dropped out reported that they did not see the real-world applications of their schoolwork and nearly half felt bored by their classes. 81% percent of survey respondents said that if schools provided opportunities for real-world learning (including service-learning projects), it would have improved their chances of graduating from high school.

  • Engaged for Success: Service-Learning as a Tool for High School Dropout Prevention (2008), which builds on the 2006 report details how service-learning holds the potential to address each of the underlying causes of low graduation rates, while incorporating the strategies most recommended for preventing students from dropping out. Despite the promise and growth of service-learning over the last two decades, there remains a persistent gap between the number of students who want service-learning opportunities and the number who have access to them, and this gap is largest for minority students.

Introduces workforce skills and interests, helping students to develop career networks, job readiness skills, and learn about career pathways.

  • In a Gallup/Microsoft/Pearson study, young workers who learned 21st century skills in high school or college “are twice as likely to have higher work quality compared with their peers”. These skills include knowledge construction, real world problem-solving, collaboration, self-regulation, communications, technology, and global awareness. Of these, real-world problem-solving ranked as the most important factor of higher work quality.

  • A 2020 report from Prudential highlights the career and workforce 21st Century Skill development outcomes of service-learning.

Impact on Community Needs

Students in Learn and Serve America funded programs contributed more than 14 million hours of volunteer service to over 16,000 community-based nonprofits annually.

Students participating in service-learning programs address a wide variety of community needs important to their local communities, the Nation, and the world, including public health, social justice, economic inequity, and climate change. The most common types of projects focus on education (reading to, mentoring, or tutoring younger students), hunger (such as food drives, fundraisers, school or community gardens, and teaching people about healthy eating on a budget), and the environment.

  • A 2019 report from Gallup found that a majority of students would like to spend more time on activities that help them see how their learning relates to real-life problems outside the classroom. However, only 26% of students say they often work on projects with real-world applications.

  • In 2020, a Civic Life survey conducted by Points of Light found that 53% of Gen Z individuals want to get more involved in their community after the pandemic, but need the opportunities to do so.

  • A 2018 report from the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland finds that although youth interest in “doing good” through behaviors such as volunteering is the highest in over 50 years, high school and college student service have been stagnant for the last decade. The percentage of high school and college students who actually serve – 28.5 percent for high school students, and 26.1 percent for college students – is significantly lower than the years right after 9/11. (This decrease aligns closely with the elimination of Learn and Serve America funding.)

  • Independent Sector’s Engaging Youth in Lifelong Service report shows that youth who serve are consistently more likely to donate to charity than others in the same income level. The impact of youth service is much more dramatic when examined in terms of how much adults give. In every income category, those who served as youth give more than those who did not, and this impact increases with income. As the financial resources of a household increase, those involved in youth service give considerably more.

  • A Projects That Work evaluation of YSA’s service-learning grants found that one of the most important factors to service-learning projects being feasible for teachers and students to implement and related to better outcomes is that an expert from a community partner participated in the project so that students could more directly connect their activities to a specific community need.

Impact on Civic Health & Democracy

Recent events in the United States reinforce the importance of greater participation by young people in our nation’s civic life. Numerous studies have cited the positive benefits of service-learning on civic education and engagement. Service-learning:

Increases support for racial diversity, as students express greater acceptance of cultural diversity, report greater trust, acceptance, and ability to communicate with those different from themselves; and

Advances civic education and engagement, as students demonstrate greater interest in continuing to vote and volunteer, discuss political issues with their parents and peers, and believe they can make a difference.

  • The American Federation of Teachers’ Return, Recover, and Reimagine agenda includes a call to increase the emphasis on civics and project-based learning to nurture critical thinking and bring learning to life.

  • The Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy’s first theme is Civic Participation and focuses on the relationship between self-government and civic participation, drawing on the discipline of history to explore how citizens’ active engagement has mattered for American society and on the discipline of civics to explore the principles, values, habits, and skills that support productive engagement in a healthy, resilient constitutional democracy. This theme focuses on the overarching goal of engaging young people as civic participants and preparing them to assume that role successfully.

  • The proposed Civics Secures Democracy Act includes “service learning and student civic projects linked to classroom learning” as an evidence-based practice eligible for funding.

  • The Youth Helping America Report (2006) found that participation in school-based volunteer service, and especially service-learning courses with several quality elements, was found to have a strong positive relationship with several measures of civic engagement, including their stated likelihood of future volunteering, their sense of personal efficacy, and their interest in current events and politics.

  • Building Citizenship: How Student Voice in Service-Learning Develops Civic Values found that when students have real responsibilities, challenging tasks, helped to plan the project, and made important decisions, involvement in service-learning projects had significant and substantive impacts on students’ increases in levels of efficacy and belief in their own competence, political attentiveness and participation, and attitudes toward people who are different from themselves.

How to Invest in Service-Learning?

In order to increase participation in service and civics in the US, we recommend the reinstatement of Learn and Serve America at AmeriCorps (Corporation for National and Community Service) to support service-learning organized by K-12 schools, community organizations and higher ed institutions. Eligible applicants include: State Education Agencies, Local Education Agencies, State Service Commissions, and nonprofits.

National Commission on Military, National and Public Service Recommendation

The bipartisan, congressionally-appointed Commission issued its final report in March 2020 and recommended the creation of a Service-Learning Fund to be housed at CNCS with an appropriation of $250M annually to award competitive grants to SEAs, LEAs, IHEs, State Service Commissions, and nonprofits to develop and implement service-learning programs for K–12 and postsecondary students across the country , including:

  • $100 million for Summer of Service programs for students in grades 6–12;

  • $100 million for Semester of Service programs for students in grades 9–12; and,

  • $50 million for service-learning programs in public schools and institutions of higher education.

The Coalition for Service-Learning endorses the recommendations and the new legislation proposed by the Commission, one way to ramp up youth service-learning quickly is to appropriate funds for the authorized Learn and Serve America programs in the Edward M Kennedy Serve America Act.

We recommend modifications in keeping with NCOS including the targeting of half of funds to under-resourced schools and communities and the waiver of match requirements to those grantees.

Now is the time to reinstate and expand Learn and Serve America programs at AmeriCorps to support service-learning organized by K-12 schools, community organizations, and higher education institutions.

Ready to Engage: Perspectives of Teachers and Parents on SEL and Service-Learning

This new report finds that more than half of parents and teachers surveyed say social & emotional learning and service-learning are equally important to academic instruction.

Key Findings:

  1. Parents and teachers endorse a holistic view of education and success.

  2. Parents and teachers view SEL and service-learning as having a reciprocal, mutually reinforcing relationship.

  3. Implementation of SEL and service-learning opportunities in schools continues to lag behind demand from parents and teachers.

  4. Schooling has undergone a transformational shift since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, making the need for SEL and service-learning even more essential educational pillars.

  5. Troubling opportunity gaps for rural and low-income students exist, and the pandemic has had a disparate impact.

Paths Forward:

  1. Create a new vision of student success that prioritizes the whole child.

  2. Expand access to service-learning opportunities - including reinvesting in Learn and Serve America programs.

  3. Promote the development of adult capacity and strengthen SEL and service-learning knowledge among educators.

  4. Support integrated SEL and service-learning state learning standards and competency benchmarks backed by funding and resources for full implementation.

  5. Build integrated workforce preparation models that embed SEL and service-learning.

Members of Congress Support Investment in Service-Learning in the FY22 Budget

Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez has submitted a Dear Colleague letter on behalf of herself and Representatives Don Beyer, Suzanne Bonamici, Anthony G. Brown, Danny K. Davis, Jared Golden, Raúl M. Grijalva, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Lucy McBath, Mary Gay Scanlon, and Elissa Slotkin and to the House Appropriations committee requesting this funding in FY22.

“We respectfully request that you include a $250 million annual appropriation for a Service Learning Fund in the FY22 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). The CNCS will administer this Fund through the Learn and Serve America program as authorized by Subtitle B of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The letter also includes report language to direct 50% of funds to economically disadvantaged communities and 5% to Tribes.

While this funding may seem small in the context of America’ s broader education system, it sends an important signal to education leaders throughout the nation. … Dedicated resources are essential for the success of service-learning programs.

We hope you will support this appropriation to reestablish Federal support of service-learning programs and provide students across the Nation opportunities to engage in community service to address genuine needs while building their academic and civic knowledge and skills.”

Who is the Coalition for Service-Learning?

The Coalition for Service-Learning includes more than 160 organizations representing schools, youth serving nonprofits, higher education institutions, and commissions on service across the country.

6 Coalition Organizers

42 National Organization Members

116 State & Local Organization Members