Teachers must carefully revise their curriculum so that learning is experiential, and students must help determine community needs. Actual costs of developing a service-learning program can be relatively small, especially if service activity takes place within the school. Community partnerships are a critical element in successful service-learning activities. Community-based organizations can lend expertise in a specific issue area. Adult volunteers can drive students to service sites.
Businesses can provide financial and in-kind support to programs.
Service-learning helps to break down the separation between schools and communities, and youth and communities. Today, schools in all 50 states have service-learning programs. The report documents the dramatic increase in the number of students involved in service programs 900,000 in 1984 to 12,605,740 in 1997. The percentage of all high school students involved in service-learning activities rose from a mere two percent in 1984 to nearly 25 percent in 1997. In Deed's Research Synthesis .