The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program that serves young people ages 16 to 18 who struggle to complete their high school credential. This annual report covers program data and analysis of cadets who enrolled at one of the 39 Youth ChalleNGe sites in 2023. Recommendations are offered for program and site leadership to continue to enhance the program and its success.

National Guard Youth ChalleNGe

Program Progress in 2023–2024

Stephani L. Wrabel, Jennie W. Wenger, Linda Cottrell

ResearchPublished May 27, 2025

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program that serves young people ages 16 to 18 who are struggling to complete their high school credential. This is the ninth report in an annual series that RAND researchers have issued. The prior annual reports cover 2015 through 2022. Each annual report documents the progress of cadets who entered Youth ChalleNGe during specific program years and then completed the program. This report covers the program for cadets who enrolled in the program during 2023, with some follow-up on cadets who entered in 2022.

For this report, the authors drew primarily on administrative data collected and provided by the 39 Youth ChalleNGe sites operating in 2023. They also drew from existing literatures and external data sources as appropriate. Limitations to consider include documented inconsistencies in data from individual sites and potential misinterpretation of or misrepresentation within the provided cadet daily schedules. Recommendations are offered for program and site leadership to continue to enhance the program and its success.

This report is intended for Youth ChalleNGe program staff and personnel providing oversight for the program, who may benefit from a highly detailed understanding of site-level operations and the variation across sites. Policymakers and researchers, especially those interested in designing effective youth program initiatives, may also find interest in this report.

Key Takeaways

  • Youth ChalleNGe’s numbers of applicants, cadets, and graduates continue to trend upward, though the program still operates below pre–coronavirus disease 2019 levels.
  • Most graduates seek out additional educational opportunities after program completion.
  • Sites become cost efficient when there are at least 150–175 graduates per year, which is the size at which the majority of sites operate. Some of the difference between small and large sites is explained by fixed costs; staffing is partially a fixed cost. However, the difference in costs between small and large sites is not directly proportional to the number of participating cadets.
  • Sites allocate approximately 37 percent of a cadet’s week to the program’s core components; approximately 53 percent of time is allocated to sleep, meals, and other structural aspects of meeting the cadet’s needs; and what remains are time blocks that could not be tied back to a core component of Youth ChalleNGe.
  • Cross-site analyses suggest substantial variation in how sites allocate time to the program’s core and structural components. For example, some sites provide cadets three times as much academic instruction as other sites do.

Recommendations

  • Program leadership should continue working toward collecting data on the high school completion status of Youth ChalleNGe graduates.
  • Program leadership should track external trends in high school completion and youth labor market opportunities.
  • Youth ChalleNGe sites should review cadet daily schedules to ensure accuracy and completeness.
  • Youth ChalleNGe sites should ensure that the allocation of cadet time aligns with key priorities.

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Wrabel, Stephani L., Jennie W. Wenger, and Linda Cottrell, National Guard Youth ChalleNGe: Program Progress in 2023–2024. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2120-2.html.
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This research was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and conducted within the Personnel, Readiness, and Health Program of the RAND National Security Research Division.

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