The Future of National Service

Passage of the Serve America Act in 2009, reauthorizing the nation's national and community service programs, represented an important milestone. It was the fi rst time these programs and its parent government agency, the U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service, were reauthorized by Congress since the early 1990s. While advocates of national and community service have hailed the passage of this bill as evidence that these initiatives work and will play an increasingly important policy role, this level of enthusiasm is not well founded. Th e role that national and community service will play in public policy in the future is, at best, apt to be a modest one. Th e authors argue that national and community service will continue to underachieve and fall short of the claims made by advocates until it can gain true bipartisan support, clearly defi ne program goals, and produce rigorous empirical evidence demonstrating the impact of these programs.