Georgia

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Georgia has long emphasized the connection between service-learning and improving literacy, with strong connections to the federal Title One initiative. In 2003-2004, the state began working with 13 Title One schools and made a three-year commitment to help get them off the "needs improvement" list.

Contents

History

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Networks of Support

Service-learning falls into the “learning support” category within the Georgia Department of Education. Georgia’s State Service-Learning Advisory Committee meets quarterly, and is comprised of teachers, representatives from the 16 Regional Education Service Agencies, the League of Professional Schools, higher education, two nonprofits, current grantees, and a representative from each of the Georgia Department of Education’s major offices. It promotes sustainability by providing support for school administrators new to service-learning and advising the Department of Education on how best to organize and implement service-learning across the state.

The ten Advisory Committee teachers also serve as Service-Learning Ambassadors, functioning as peer mentors for teachers at schools receiving three-year Learn and Serve grants. One Ambassador, a school administrator, shadows principals for several days at grantee sites to offer ideas and support.

Professional Development

Subgrantees develop program goals at a week-long summer training institute, held at Epworth by the Sea on St. Simon's Island, giving the more than 100 teachers and administrators an opportunity to develop deeper understandings of quality service-learning and how it fits within their curricula. Participants must arrive with their school’s annual Adequate Yearly Progress data and School Improvement Plans. Institute staff facilitates data analysis and helps participants leave with plans for service-learning experiences for the upcoming school year that meet each school’s needs. Department of Education scholarships fund this experience for more than half of the participants.

Site co-directors and administrators consult, check progress, and receive additional training at Leadership Institute meetings five times each school year. Site co-directors meet once a month via teleconference.

Evaluating Progress

In 2006 the team from Georgia State University, which conducts annual Learn and Serve programming across the state, identified the five strongest programs. Their report, “Georgia Academic Learn and Serve Evaluation Highlights Five Outstanding Programs,” explains how teachers and administrators implemented programs to foster improved academic outcomes for their students. Evaluators marked the dramatic improvements that these five sites made in terms of Adequate Yearly Progress, reading and math test scores, and reduced absenteeism.

Policy Support

Service-learning is becoming more integrated into the curriculum in Georgia. Several local school systems require service-learning and receive regular training from the Department of Education. Georgia Learn and Serve partnered with leaders in alternative education to focus on reducing the state’s dropout rate. This is an overarching goal of the Department of Education, which is developing longitudinal data to see the relationship between participation in Learn and Serve service-learning programs and students’ decisions to complete high school.

Learn and Serve

Georgia Learn and Serve offers two types of funding to 32 subgrantees working with over 23,000 young people. Funds are intended for school-wide programs, rather than individual classrooms. One year of implementation funding is granted to schools with previous service-learning experience and one year, first-time grants are available to subgrantees new to service-learning. Three-year grants focus on secondary schools having difficulty making Adequate Yearly Progress as determined by NCLB.

The first year is devoted to training, with subsequent years focused on implementation and, finally, modification and evaluation of programming. Subgrantees receive $30,000 for implementation during the second year and $10,000 in both the first and third years of the grant cycle. [1]

All grantees must have two co-directors in their building, ensuring ability to manage the funding paperwork. The co-directors share programming, funding, and evaluation responsibility with an advisory committee including administrators, teachers, students, at least one nonprofit organization and one business partner, and parents.


Youth Contributions

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Examples of Quality Service-Learning

References

  • ^  Tolbert, Myra. "Academic Service Learning in Georgia: The Missing Piece of the School Reform Puzzle." Georgia Learn and Serve.
  • Cairn, Rich, Henning, Anna, and Neal, Marybeth. 2005. "State Profiles" in Growing to Greatness 2005. St. Paul: National Youth Leadership Council.
  • Schultz, Nate. 2008. "State Profiles" in Growing to Greatness 2008. St. Paul: National Youth Leadership Council.

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