This is a reprint of an article that originally appeared in 2005’s Growing to Greatness, an annual report on the state of service-learning from NYLC. The article was originally written by Peter C. Scales, Ph.D and Eugene C. Roehlkepartain.
In a time when schools are forced to make difficult choices in their curriculum to respond to both budget cuts and high-stakes testing, new research challenges the assumption that service-learning is a useful, but not essential, educational strategy for low-income students and schools. Indeed, this new research offers correlational evidence that service-learning may be particularly beneficial educationally for low-income students and schools, making it an important, though overlooked, strategy for closing the achievement gap in American schools. As part of the Growing to Greatness™ initiative, several existing datasets were analyzed to more deeply explore the relationship between service-learning and academic achievement, particularly in low-income schools and among low-income students. Our intent is to shed a bright light on this question: Could service-learning play a role in improving achievement in schools that serve low-income students, thus helping to address a long-standing and pressing priority for equity in educational achievement?
The results reported here suggest service-learning may be an especially valuable pedagogy to principals of low-socioeconomic status schools, in part because it may be linked to higher achievement generally and to reduced achievement gaps among higher- and lower-income students. These findings are reinforced by a broad range of existing research on developmental approaches to student success as well as research on the academic effects of community service (i.e., service not intentionally connected to the curriculum) and service-learning, which we also review here. This research builds on the Growing to Greatness 2004 survey of school principals. It also sets the stage for research being planned for 2005 that will examine these dynamics through an in-depth study of schools that engage in service-learning. When completed, this research will provide important new insights into the ways in which service-learning contributes to student success from a developmental, multi-dimensional perspective.
Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap
Over the last 20 years, policy makers and practitioners have worked to raise achievement levels and reduce achievement gaps through several broad school reform approaches. Most recently, the curriculum standards movement and its associated yardstick, the standardized test, have become the dominant force organizing American education (Olson, 2000). With the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act, there has been considerable debate regarding whether the emphasis on standardized achievement tests is undermining providing educational strategies that meet comprehensive developmental needs (see, for example, Oakes, Quartz, Ryan, & Lipton, 2000). For example, the press to prepare children for later school success can result in an over-emphasis in preschool children on structured learning versus play as the best developmental vehicle for growth in learning orientations and abilities (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2003).
A complementary approach to meeting the challenges of improving achievement for all young people focuses on emphasizing human development, or developmental attentiveness, as a core strategy. Most visibly exemplified in the middle school reform movement and in the growth of “full-service schools,” the developmental attentiveness approach links school reform with the developmental needs of children and adolescents, and the broader community environment. The central premise of this approach is twofold:
- Restructuring the school experience to provide a better “fit” with the developmental needs of children and adolescents will lead to greater achievement for all (Eccles et al., 1993); and
- All elements of the young person’s environment (family, peers, and community) play both independent and intertwined roles in contributing to positive development (Benson, Leffert, Scales, & Blyth, 1998; Greenberg, Weissberg, O’Brien, Zins, Fredericks, Resnik, & Elias, 2003).
Certain kinds of school restructuring practices do appear to make a difference in boosting achievement and in narrowing achievement gaps (e.g., Felner, et al., 1997; Lee & Smith, 1993; Newmann, Lopez, & Bryk, 1998). In an examination of a subsample of more than 8,800 eighth graders from the 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study, Lee & Smith (1993), found that reduced or eliminated departmentalization, team-teaching, heterogeneously grouped instruction (i.e., no tracking), and a general restructuring composite (e.g., exploratory classes, use of cooperative learning) had a significant positive impact on school engagement and achievement. Felner et al. (1997) found similar results for developmentally responsive practices such as cooperative learning in a major study of middle schools.
Benson and colleagues have reported that building students’ Developmental Assets is a promising approach for promoting school success. Developmental Assets are 40 “building blocks” for positive child and youth development arrayed into eight categories of Support, Empowerment, Boundaries and Expectations, Constructive Use of Time, Commitment to Learning, Positive Values, Social Competencies, and Positive Identity. One of the 40 assets is “service to others,” the frequency with which students contribute volunteer service in their communities.
The number of Developmental Assets students experience is positively related to greater school attendance and higher self-reported grades, with the findings consistent in majority middle-class and white samples (Benson, Scales, Leffert, & Roehlkepartain, 1999) and majority poor, urban samples of youth of color (Scales et al., in press), and across racial/ethnic groups of students (Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). In a longitudinal study, Scales, Benson, Roehlkepartain, Sesma, and van Dulmen also report that students with a greater numbers of assets in the middle grades have higher actual GPA’s three years later in high school (in press).
Academic Effects of Service-Learning
Because it represents an “authentic” approach to teaching and learning, the use of service-learning as a pedagogical practice appears to have the potential to help meet both the academic and broader developmental goals of education reform. Why might service-learning “work” to promote school success?
Newmann, Wehlage, and Lamborn (1992) noted the impact on student engagement and achievement when curriculum engages students in the construction of knowledge, ownership of the cognitive work, and authentic connection to the “real world” and community. Service-learning is a primary example of engaging students in such “shared inquiry,” meaningful decision-making, and integration of classwork and community life (Zeldin, 2004), all of which work to support disadvantaged students in both their academic and community involvements. In recognition of such relations, the Center for the Study of Social Policy (2003) recommended that states make voluntary service-learning programs available statewide, one of only three data-supported recommendations made for promoting youths’ community connections. Billig’s (2004) extensive review of the literature found consistent positive relations between service-learning and academic success, though the number of studies is limited.
In an analysis of a longitudinal sample followed from middle school (6th-8th grades) through high school (10th-12th grades), Scales, Benson, Roehlkepartain, Sesma, and van Dulmen found that students who in middle school reported experiencing a cluster of six particular Developmental Assets, including service to others, were more likely than students with less experience of those assets to report high grades in high school (in press). Specifically, for every point higher students scored on this “connection to community” asset factor in middle school, they were three times more likely in high school to have a B+ or higher GPA. Additional analysis by Scales & Roehlkepartain (2004b) found that service to others during middle school was significantly related to the number of Developmental Assets students reported three years later.
Service-learning — partly through its effects on students’ sense of community and positive school climate — may especially help to increase the engagement and motivation of disadvantaged students. Brandeis University researchers found that service-learning’s academic and civic impact was greater for lower-income, minority, and more at-risk youths (Center for Human Resources, 1999). Additionally, a Search Institute evaluation of the National Service-Learning Initiative and the Generator Schools Project concluded that students who were most at risk or more disengaged from school when they got involved in service-learning saw positive changes during the time of their involvement. By the end, they were more likely to:
- Believe they were contributing to the community
- Be less bored than in traditional classrooms
- Be engaged in academic tasks and general learning
- Be more accepting of diversity (Blyth, Saito, & Berkas, 1997).
Despite the apparent enhanced value of service-learning to disadvantaged students, low-income students tend to have fewer service opportunities. Kielsmeier, Scales, Roehlkepartain, and Neal (2004) found that only 29 percent of high-poverty schools in the United States offered service-learning in 2004, versus 36 percent of other schools; and only 26 percent of students participated in low-income schools, versus 32 percent in high-income schools. Thus, it appears that an important resource for reducing the achievement gap — service-learning — is greatly underutilized in schools serving low-income students.
New Findings Suggest the Academic Value of Service-Learning
The existing research in school reform, positive youth development, and service-learning all point toward the potential of service-learning to be an important pedagogical strategy for increasing school success, particularly among students from low-income families and those in predominantly low-income schools. This existing research set the stage for a series of new analyses that focus specifically on these relationships. We present the key findings here, which, in turn, set the stage for future research. None of these new analyses show cause and effect relationships. It is possible that, regardless of their poverty status, students who are already more academically motivated are more likely to participate in service-learning. But the consistency of the new findings across different datasets is interesting and promising.
Finding #1: Involvement in service appears to contribute to lessening the achievement gap, with low-income students who serve doing better academically than students who do not serve.
Involvement in service to others is related to a number of academic achievement variables, according to new analyses of Search Institute’s aggregate database of 217,000 6th through 12th graders in public schools across the United States who were surveyed during the 1999-2000 school year. (Service-learning participation was not measured in this survey.)
Furthermore, though low-income students generally struggle more in school than higher-income students, those low-income students who serve others on a regular basis appear to do as well as or better than higher income students who do not serve on many measures. In other words, service of only one hour per week among lower-income students was related to significant reduction of the gap in achievement-related assets between higher and lower-income students.
Though both groups of low-income students skipped more days of school and had lower grades than either set of higher-socioeconomic status students, low-income students who serve others reported significantly fewer missed school days and significantly higher self-reported grades than low-income students who did not participate in service. For example, only eight percent of low-socioeconomic status students without service reported getting “mostly A’s”, whereas 11 percent of low-socioeconomic status students who did service had high grades, a considerable 38 percent difference among low-socioeconomic status students by whether or not they served.
That community service alone, without necessarily being connected to service-learning, has these positive relations to academic variables is quite promising. If service is embedded within a genuine and comprehensive program of service-learning that intentionally connects and integrates curriculum and real world contributions, it seems reasonable to suspect at least comparable, if not greater, impact.
Finding #2: Service-learning quality matters: Students who participate in “deeper” service-learning experiences appear to do better than students with just brief (few hours to a few days) exposure to service-learning.
A community-level study of Developmental Assets included self reported exposure to service-learning programs during the past school year. Of the more than 5,000 students surveyed in Colorado Springs, only 18 percent had at least a few weeks of service-learning (what we defined as having “deeper” service-learning), compared with 21 percent who had a few hours to a few days. The majority of the sample (61 percent) reported no service-learning at all. In this sample, results were more mixed, potentially due to the small sample size in some analysis cells, so results should be interpreted as preliminary. Service-learning exposure appeared to be associated with smaller gaps between low- and higher-income students for regular attendance, achievement motivation, school engagement, reading for pleasure, and, especially, for bonding to school. Indeed, low-income students with service-learning were at comparable levels with higher-income students, with or without service-learning, on these measures. Thus, service seems to have a positive relation to reducing the school success gap between students from lower and higher-income backgrounds.
Furthermore, low-income students who did not report service-learning involvement were generally lower in these academic success outcomes than both higher- and low-income students who participated in service-learning. For example, low-income students who also had deeper exposure to service-learning had the second-highest percentage of any group on the “bonding to school” outcome (63 percent), bested only by higher-income students with deep service-learning exposure (71 percent). In contrast, among students without deep exposure to service-learning, just 53 percent even of higher-income students, and only 48 percent of low-income students indicated that they were bonded to school. It is important to note that this analysis did not find a reduced gap for homework or self-reported high grades based on service-learning participation.
Finding #3: Principals in low-income schools are more likely than other principals to believe service-learning has a positive impact on students’ school success.
Principals of urban, high poverty, or majority non-white schools appear to believe that service-learning can have academic power in students’ lives. They are significantly more likely than other principals to judge service-learning’s impact on attendance, school engagement, and academic achievement to be “very positive”. Moreover, principals of schools that have all three characteristics — urban, high poverty, and majority non-white student population — also are more likely than all other principals to consider service-learning to have a very positive impact on attendance, school engagement, and academic achievement. Most of the difference in these results is that principals of majority African-American schools that are also low-socioeconomic status are the most likely to see such positive effects from service-learning.
Finding #4: Urban schools, majority nonwhite schools, and poor schools that offer service-learning appear to be as likely as other schools to provide high-quality opportunities and comprehensive supports.
As noted, the 2004 survey of principals found that urban, majority non-white, and poor schools are less likely to provide service-learning opportunities than schools in other types of communities. Those schools that do offer service-learning, however, appear as likely as other schools to offer elements of high-quality programs.
Given their more limited resources, one might expect that schools serving low-income students would have fewer supports in place for service-learning. In reality, though, the opposite may be true. Although there are no significant differences by poverty level for six of the supports, high-poverty schools are more likely than schools with more affluent student populations to:
- Have a written policy encouraging or requiring service-learning;
- Have full-time coordinators;
- Provide support for teachers to attend training; and,
- Provide extra planning time for service-learning teachers.
The differences on these specific supports are considerable enough that, across all 10 of these supports, high-poverty schools also have a higher average level of supports (3.75 out of 10) for service-learning than do other schools (3.04 and 2.89 for low-poverty and medium-poverty schools, respectively). Another sign of stronger support for service-learning in high-poverty schools may be evident in the finding that the schools also appear to be more likely to provide school-wide service-learning. Among high-poverty schools, 35 percent provide schoolwide service-learning, compared to 20 percent for medium-poverty schools and 21 percent for medium-poverty schools.
Strengthening the Case for Service-Learning
In the midst of current budget constraints and emphases on high-stakes testing, one might argue that service-learning is “on trial.” Is it worthy of investment? Does it make a difference in improving the educational outcomes for students, particularly those who struggle the most? Mounting evidence, though incomplete, suggests that, yes, it is and it does. But the evidence is still limited and less than ideal. For example, all of the results presented here are correlational, not longitudinal. Thus, cause-and-effect relations among the variables cannot be established (though this article makes rational inferences, based on theory and the accumulating research). Nevertheless, the “circumstantial evidence” from our three different datasets (along with the previous research cited) suggests the promising conclusion that service-learning programs may contribute to the key achievement goals of American education today: higher achievement and equity of achievement across student groups.
In the short term, these findings could be useful in making the case to school administrators and policy leaders to continue — or strengthen — their commitment to and investment in service-learning, particularly as a strategy to contribute to closing the achievement gap between low and higher-income students.
