LANCASTER - With a steady scrub with his cloth, 15-year-old Luis Cruz is proving not all learning takes place in the classroom. Cruz is learning to be conscientious, polite and hardworking as he meticulously scrubs a stair-stepper machine at the Lancaster Racquetball Club.

The eighth-grade School District of Lancaster student from the Buehrle Alternative School works and trains at the fitness center through a program called service learning.

Public schools here in Lancaster County and across the country offer service learning programs, where kids go into the community to work and volunteer in exchange for high school credit.

"It's helping others out," said Cruz, his eyes fastened to his work.

But a national survey released Thursday warns of the pressures on service learning from new federal and state test standards.

A nonprofit organization called the National Youth Leadership Council polled 2,000 principals across the country to see if special programs like service learning are being cut or reduced in the face of the new No Child Left Behind Act.

Local school officials want to resist that pressure because they believe in service learning. But they realize the new standards might make that impossible.

In addition to the Lancaster School District, Cocalico, Hempfield, Penn Manor, Conestoga Valley and Columbia are among other districts offering the program.

"I believe in service learning so much," said Buehrle teacher Geoff Hauck. "It teaches kids responsibility. It gives them a chance to give back to their community."

Hauck said the kids feel it is a privilege to be out in the community working and they show it by being respectful and well-behaved.

"But to be honest, we have had to curtail it a little bit to concentrate on the academics for the test scores," Hauck said.

The Penn Manor School District has had a service learning program for eight years.

"I think the concept of service learning is a good one," said high school principal Jan Mindish. "It gives students a chance to experience helping other people.

Mindish said Penn Manor students often volunteer in district elementary classes or local nursing homes.

"It develops their people skills and gives them a real world experience that makes them feel good about themselves and gives them some direction about what they might want to do and what they might not want to do," she said.

But Mindish said the district is tightening the rules about who can qualify for service learning under the pressure of satisfying new, tough federal and state test score standards.

Chris Fry, a Buehrle student, said he loves going out on service learning assignments.

"It's fun, we get to work out," he said while applying some elbow grease to a cleaning project. "We're helping out here by working." Hauck, Fry's teacher, likes to call service learning a "symbiotic" relationship where the kids and the community settings both benefit from each other.

"There's so much they learn out here," he said. "They are a bunch of beautiful, wonderful, intelligent kids.

"I believe service learning brings out the best in them," he said.