Students who enrolled in a “quasi-military” residential program aimed at high school dropouts were more likely than other dropouts to later complete a high school diploma or a General Educational Development certificate, according to a study published by the research group MDRC.
Participants in the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program spend 20 weeks in a residential program and then one year in a mentoring program. The results are based on a survey given to 1,200 young adults about 21 months after they entered the study.
The educational attainment rate for those who completed the ChalleNGe program was 61 percent, compared with 36 percent for the control group. The study also found that both participants and nonparticipants were equally likely to have been arrested in the year before the survey was conducted, but program graduates were less likely to have been convicted of a crime.
