Should High School Students Have To Complete Community Service Hours To Graduate

Requiring students to accept part in customs service to graduate from high school can actually reduce their later volunteering, new research suggests.

Maryland'due south statewide requirement that all students consummate 75 hours of service learning by graduation led to significant boosts in 8th grade volunteering—generally in school-organized activities—but information technology actually decreased volunteering among older students, leading to a potential loss in long-term volunteering, co-ordinate to a written report previewed online by the Economic science of Teaching Review in June.

"If this is for school, how do nosotros know [students] are because this every bit community service, rather than only homework for school?" said the report's author, Sara E. Helms, an banana professor of economics at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. "1 of the interpretations that is more than convincing is, perchance we are substituting this [requirement] for beingness self-motivated. Does it dilute the point value of volunteering?"

Service learning—in which students appoint in projects and activities to improve their communities or address social issues—has become more popular in the past decade. In 2011, 19 states allowed districts to award credit toward graduation for volunteering or service learning, and vii states allowed districts to crave service for graduation, according to data collected past the Education Commission of the States. In 2001, simply seven states allowed high school credit for service.

Districts on Lath

While Maryland remains the merely country to require universal service learning as a condition of graduation, the District of Columbia school arrangement began requiring 100 hours of community service in 2007, and several other big districts, including Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia, also require community service for graduation.

Service learning has been growing in popularity. More states and districts are adopting policies to incorporate service learning into their requirements for high school graduation.

SOURCES: Teaching Commission of united states of america; Education Week

If Ms. Helms' interpretation is right, the new findings undermine some of what proponents have argued makes service learning so pop. Prior studies have found students who volunteer more oft tend to be higher-achieving, more engaged in their communities, and less prone to risky behaviors as adolescents. Moreover, service learning in particular has been constitute to meliorate students' date in schoolhouse and reduce their gamble of dropping out, and Maryland's policy was touted as a style to help students "develop every bit citizens," Ms. Helms said.

"I'm pro-service learning," she said in an interview. "However, I think it matters how nosotros implement it. What you hear over and over in the literature is, don't require service learning; give incentives. We get very nervous about requiring people to do something because it'south good."

Early Boosts

The written report used student data from Monitoring the Future: A Standing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of Youth, a nationally representative annual survey of 8th, 10th, and twelfth graders, to compare Maryland students' volunteering trends with those of other American students during the aforementioned fourth dimension catamenia.

From 1991 through 2011, nearly three in 4 American high school seniors reported doing community service at to the lowest degree a few times a yr, with 31 percent volunteering at least monthly and 12 percent volunteering weekly. Among 8th graders, 65 percent volunteered at least a few times a year, 26 percent volunteered monthly, and 10 pct volunteered weekly.

Ms. Helms graduated from high school in Maryland ii years before the service requirement was enacted for the class of 1997. She recalled family conversations about how her younger brothers would meet the criteria.

"It was pretty controversial when information technology was put into place," she said. "Information technology was a mixed bag. You hear stories where students got involved with something because they had to complete service hours, and it changed their life and they went into social justice to endeavour to stop poverty—and and then you lot hear the stories of, 'Oh, my dad's friend let me do something to assistance out,' " Ms. Helms said.

In each year, the students were asked as part of the Monitoring the Hereafter survey to report how oft they had volunteered: never, a few times a year, at least monthly, at to the lowest degree weekly, or nearly daily.

In the start years afterward the Maryland policy took effect in 1993, the proportion of the state's 8th graders who reported weekly volunteering increased nearly six percentage points compared with the time before the requirement. The increase dropped to 3.two per centum points higher up pre-requirement levels by 1998, however, and to only 2 percentage points above pre-requirement levels by 2010.

The proportion of 8th graders volunteering at to the lowest degree monthly initially rose by 7.4 percentage points in the early years, compared with the pre-requirement level.

But at that place was no significant difference between the volunteering of Maryland 8th grade students and those in other states, suggesting that some of the increase could have come from a general trend toward more service learning.

It was a different story amid older students. Before the requirement, Maryland seniors were 7.viii percent points more probable than students nationally to be engaged in service activities—driven primarily by rising service activities among boys and following a national tendency of more volunteering during that time. Afterwards the service requirement, Maryland seniors were 9.two percent points to 17.4 percent points less likely to volunteer from 1997 to 2011.

That contrast is particularly notable because national volunteering among twelfth graders rose during the same time.

R. Scott Pfeifer, the executive director of the Maryland Association of Secondary Schoolhouse Principals and a former principal of Centennial High Schoolhouse in Howard County, Physician., cautioned that the findings may underrepresent subtler volunteer activities amidst older students considering students may exist better able to recall and written report official school-related volunteer activities, such as those they would pursue during heart school.

"There's a ton of volunteering that goes on," he said, but "kids are social animals. They may not think of their activeness in National Accolade Society of bringing food to the old-age home every bit volunteering."

'Part of the Culture'

Service learning, Mr. Pfeifer said, is "part of the culture now; it's pretty routine. In terms of the actual graduation requirement, looking for systematic means that groups of kids and classes tin fulfill that requirement just works for everybody. Information technology doesn't get to that individual volunteerism, merely it works."

Both Ms. Helms and Mr. Pfeifer agreed that schools' service-learning programs crave planning and time for students to reflect on their experiences in order to exist meaningful.

Mr. Pfeifer argued that the service-learning requirement is non intended to be primarily almost building civic character.

"Some people might have thought this would build up an private sense of volunteerism," he said. "I don't think information technology ever actually achieved that focus, considering there's a bureaucratic nightmare that could come up from that. So instead we've used it tied to the curriculum."

And equally a tool for engaging students in different subjects, from history to environmental science, Mr. Pfeifer argues that the state's service-learning requirement has been a success.

"Without it, there'd be something lacking in every i of our schools that's in that location now, a focus," he said. "There'd be something missing if [the service requirement] wasn't at that place."

Sarah D. Sparks

Sarah D. Sparks covers pedagogy research, data, and the scientific discipline of learning for Education Calendar week.

A version of this article appeared in the August 21, 2013 edition of Education Week as G-12 Community-Service Requirements May Discourage Student Volunteering