The unified national voice that provides active leadership to advance
academically rigorous service-learning.
Legislative Talking Points
The National Coalition for Academic Service-Learning (NCASL) enthusiastically supports the Engaging
Students Through Service Learning Act to improve student achievement and increase teacher
effectiveness through engaged learning opportunities. This legislation can create systemic change that
will transform our schools and communities.

Service-learning is an effective pedagogy for addressing the issues facing our schools today.
Service-learning is unique in that it helps students acquire knowledge and skills in a hands-on
way (shown to be a critical component for many learners). It can strengthen instruction,
increase academic engagement and achievement, reduce dropout rates, and enhance the civic
engagement of students.

69% of all students who drop out of high school state that they leave school because they find
classroom learning uninteresting and the classroom curriculum unrelated to their real lives.

Students learn best when they are actively engaged in meaningful and challenging learning
experiences that encourage higher order skills development, critical thinking, and problemsolving.

Service-learning promotes factors that mediate students’ educational success, such as greater
motivation for school, engagement in learning tasks, and propensity to engage in pro-social
behaviors.
o Wisconsin students in Grades 6-8 who participated in service-learning were more
academically engaged than their peers and more likely to take pride and responsibility in
their school. They also had higher ratings than their peers on measures of 21st century
skills, educational aspirations, and STEM content area interests and abilities.
o
o
About 420 grades 3-5 students throughout Illinois who participated in service-learning
classes demonstrated statistically significant gains in academic engagement, acquisition
of 21st century skills, feelings of belonging and pride in their schools, developing an ethic
of service, and social-emotional learning skills such as self-management. About 1,316
students in grades 6-12 in Illinois showed statistically significant gains in their academic
engagement, academic competence, aspirations to pursue postsecondary education,
acquisition of 21st century skills, social-emotional learning skills such as conflict
management and self-control, civic dispositions, and support for their schools. They
also gained work experience and specific skills in reading, writing, math, and science.
Nearly 700 students located in 12 middle schools throughout the United States who
participated in the Youth Service America science-technology-engineering-math
STEMester of Service had statistically significant gains in their academic engagement,
academic competence, aspiration to pursue advanced coursework or careers in STEMrelated occupations, and STEM-related knowledge and skills.
o 1,650 students in Ohio in grades 6-12 who participated in service-learning had
significantly higher gains than their peers on measures of academic engagement,
academic competence, school attachment, aspirations, acquisition of 21st century skills,
and environmental stewardship.

Test scores on state assessments for students who participated in service-learning are higher in
reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, and science than non-participants.

High school students in service-learning scored higher on state reading achievement tests than
non-participants.

Service-learning students in Grades 9-12 in Wisconsin had significantly higher ratings of
postsecondary aspirations than comparison students. Service-learning students at the high
school level were more likely than their peers to agree that they would graduate from high
school, continue their education beyond high school, and graduate from a postsecondary
institution.
Teachers who use service-learning as a teaching strategy in their classrooms achieve better
results in a variety of academic and behavioral categories than those who don’t. They are also
more effective, challenged, and energized, and more likely to remain within their chosen
profession.


Despite all the existing evidence of the positive impact of service-learning, only an estimated
24% of the approximately 53.3 million K-12 youth in the U.S. are given the opportunity to
engage in any kind of service-learning experience, a decline from 32% in 1999. And schools in
high poverty areas are even less likely to employ service-learning as a teaching strategy,
although research has shown that this is a particularly effective pedagogy for use in such
schools.

There is a need for a rigorous and focused initiative to demonstrate and broadly propagate the
idea that high-quality service-learning can enhance teacher effectiveness, improve student
learning and educational success, and positively affect school climate. State Education Agencies
are the only entities with comprehensive, statewide responsibility for the quality of learning
within a state.

Authorizing a National Center for K-12 Service-Learning to expand opportunities for students to
engage in high quality service-learning that promotes achievement in academic subjects,
incorporates 21st Century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration,
integrates content knowledge and use of technology, enhances school climate and civic
engagement, and improves post-school outcomes.
o This national demonstration program would support state education agencies’ efforts to
enhance teacher quality, offering guidance and support for infusing service-learning into
pre-service teacher education and on-going professional development and mentoring.
o It would increase the capacity within each SEA to support effective implementation of
service-learning pedagogy across key state education initiatives.
o The program would also help individual districts and schools, especially low-performing
schools, to develop service-learning opportunities that address the dropout crisis and
increase student achievement.