In the Mountain West and Great Plains, college students are taking an innovative approach to entering careers in education: they’re volunteering with high-need schools and increasing the academic engagement of K-12 students. Beginning with a partnership between Colorado and Montana Campus Compacts, the Compact Service Corps AmeriCorps program (CSC) places college students in high-need K-12 schools where they implement interventions to improve students’ academic engagement. The program operates in Arizona, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming, as well. During 2012-2013, CSC placed 3,041 AmeriCorps Members with 859 K-12 schools in the region. These Members taught, mentored, tutored, provided afterschool enrichment, and developed curriculum benefitting 135,900 K-12 students.

Campus Compact’s mission is to educate students for civic and social responsibility, and the CSC AmeriCorps program embeds that ethic of civic and social responsibility into education programs and academic service experiences. With an emphasis on getting things done, the academic service experience of Members is imbued with a greater level of responsibility and ownership because it is a choice to serve the highest-need students in the highest-need K-12 schools in order to become an AmeriCorps Member. K-12 partner schools meet at least one need criterion (Title I, free/reduced lunch over 50%, low/unsatisfactory on statewide test). Innovatively, Compact Service Corps Members receive course credit toward their teaching degrees in lieu of a living allowance or stipend. CSC leverages the academic resources of higher education to support academic engagement of K-12 students, while also equipping Members with practical skills to address real world challenges during their terms of service and beyond.

The Compact Service Corps program impacts thousands of K-12 and college students alike. 90% of AmeriCorps Site Supervisors agreed and strongly agreed that CSC Members increased the academic engagement of the K-12 students they served. That translates to 122,310 K-12 students with fewer referrals, turning in their homework more consistently, participating in academic activities, and moving up the achievement ladder. A CSC Site Supervisor said it best: “The AmeriCorps Member was such a bright light in our 4th grade classroom. She helped my ‘community of poverty’ students become dreamers, global learners, nicer and better students, and helped me help them.”

Compact Service Corps is a transformative experience for participants, as well. Members reported that participation in CSC helped them improve their grades (72%) and provided them a deeper understanding of course content (84%). Looking toward the transition from student to educator, Members agreed that their term of service in CSC gave them professional skills they wouldn’t have learned from traditional course work (88%), and 61% reported they applied for jobs with Title I or struggling schools upon exiting the program. Based on the 2012-2013 program year alone, 1,855 new educators, with hands-on learning and service in high-need K-12 schools, accepted teaching positions in those same schools. Participation in the CSC program creates a pipeline of academic service and engagement to careers in the common good, in which students become Members and Members become professionals meeting our communities’ most critical needs.