AmeriCorps Blowup

With a burgeoning achievement gap for minorities and low-income students, and American students performing poorly on international tests, many agree that America needs significant educational reform. For Center for American Progress (CAP) affiliates, at least, the front lines of that reform start with the AmeriCorps.

One CAP panel speaker, Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University, attributed large dropout rates to an “under-resourcing” of high schools, and argued that educators already have proven techniques to fight our dropout crisis. AmeriCorps can provide the “missing link” of person power, he argues.

Balfanz characterized at-risk students as quitting school either due to life events, a lack of motivation, or behavioral problems. The students who are frustrated with school and “stop seeing the point,” known as “fade-outs,” constitute 75% of drop-outs, he argues. “The good news of that is that type of dropout is highly predictable,” he said, adding that “they’re literally saying help me, help me, help me, and [nobody’s listening].” Balfanz argued that “they just need someone to work with every day…to nurture them.”

CAP panelists including Kim Glodeck of EducationWorks, John Gomperts of Civic Ventures and Experience Corps, Jessica Graham of Citizens Schools, Stephanie Wu of City Year, and the Principal of Brookland Elementary School, Donna Pressley, all praised the AmeriCorps for its vital role in education, highlighting essential tasks performed by members such as

• mentoring,

• conflict resolution or mediation,

• monitoring recess,

• and tutoring.

The AmeriCorps is run by the Corporation for National and Community Service and can be divided into three groups: AmeriCorps State and National (ASaN), AmeriCorps NCCC, and AmeriCorps VISTA, with the ASaN receiving a majority of funds. For fiscal year 2008, the federal budget appropriated $374.4 million for these three AmeriCorps programs, with $256.8 million going to ASaN.

A 2006 Washington Post article estimates that non-NCCC AmeriCorps members each cost the government approximately $16,000, whereas as NCCC participants cost the government $27,859 apiece. Much of the NCCC work consisted of “tutoring children, building trails for national parks and building houses for low-income families,” with only 7% of NCCC participants providing disaster relief. In contrast, a 2005 Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) publication, quoting Aguirre International’s (AI) 1999 study, placed the average individual cost of AmeriCorps members at $27,487. AI’s study estimates the “direct service benefits” of AmeriCorps at $27,855 per member (a net benefit toward the outside community of $368, or 1.34%) but concluded that the overall “benefits” must factor in benefits to participants themselves, such as future earnings from education, future earnings from training, and student loan interest saved. With these factors included, Aguirre estimated the benefits at $12,196 per full-time member.

However, it is useful to note that a 2004 longitudinal study (updated in 2007) commissioned by CNCS to measure the impact of AmeriCorps revealed that “the majority of strong positive findings are clustered in the areas of civic engagement and employment.” Furthermore, the positive findings are generally concentrated in attitudinal outcomes,” they continue. The study later states that “there are no statistically significant effects of participation on education or teamwork and other life skills behavior outcomes” (emphasis added). In other words, many of these benefits are ephemeral, and do not necessarily translate into life skills.

These results also reinforce the perspective that the Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards of $4,725 serve simply as another federal subsidy. The CNCS study concludes that “we find that in the short term, AmeriCorps participation has no significant impacts on measures of educational attitudes or degree attainment” (emphasis added). They urge readers to remember, however, that the control group had an additional year to “pursue an education” while AmeriCorps members were serving.

A 2004 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, GAO-02-225, notes that (as of 2004) “more than half of the AmericCorps enrollment growth has come from grants that provide participants no benefits other than the education award.” They continue, “enrollments for these positions increased from fewer than 6,500 in 1999 to almost 16,000 in 2001.” With overall AmeriCorps enrollment at 42,000 in 1999 and approximately 59,000 in 2001, this marks a steady increase in the percentage of AmeriCorps participants exclusively pursuing education awards (15.5% to 27.1% over three years).

CAP speakers also emphasized the use of AmeriCorps members as an “efficient” alternative to hiring new teachers. However, the GAO report estimates that approximately 5% (8,300) of AmeriCorps enrollments between 2000 and 2002 contained discrepancies, the most common of which was that the database listed participants as “still serving while their documentation showed they had exited the program without earning an award.” More disturbingly, the GAO identified “more than 300 participants” between 1999 and 2002 using invalid or defunct Social Security numbers, 170 of which “had numbers for persons listed as deceased.”

Support for the AmeriCorps often takes a particularly partisan nature, and the CAP presentation was no different. Alan Khazei, co-founder of Be The Change, Inc., mentioned several presidents during his presentation, including Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan. While implicitly supporting the liberal presidents’ policies, he mentioned Reagan only to describe how the 1980’s had fostered public perception of the government as a problem. He dismissed this perspective, concluding “but now that’s over.”

Khazei visualized a “massive” increase in the number of AmeriCorps participants, arguing for citizen service extending from kindergarten through retirement, providing “meaningful opportunities to serve at every life stage.” He blamed the initiative’s lukewarm success under Clinton on the lack of a citizen movement. Otherwise, “just think of where we’d be now. We’d be on our way to a million people and we’d be on our way to a [different country],” Khazei said.

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.