Youth CareerConnect: Building College and Career Pathways for High School Students, Technical Report

This technical report provides details on the impact study's data, samples, methods, and analyses. The report includes:

1. An overview of the YCC program and key features of the impact study design.
2. An overview of the districts, data, and samples available for the study.
3. Describes the construction of the outcomes and samples used, the process for identifying treatment and comparison/control groups and their baseline equivalence, and the analytic approach to estimating and interpreting impacts.
4. Discusses the checks for the robustness of the analysis results by providing results from the sensitivity analyses conducted.
5. Provides data tables for the impact report.

The evaluation of the YCC program used an implementation study and an impact study involving both a quasi-experimental design and a randomized controlled trial. The studies assessed what impact YCC had on critical milestones typically obtained in high school and at momentum points associated with education and employment success.

The research questions were:

1. What is the impact of the YCC program on school attendance, credit accumulation, proficiency in English language arts, and algebra progression?
2. Does the impact of the YCC program vary by (1) key student characteristics (prior academic achievement and low-income status); (2) program experiences (receiving an internship, having a mentor, and completing an individual development plan, or IDP); or (3) cohort of students?
3. What appears to be the impact of the YCC program on high school graduation, staying in school, school engagement and satisfaction, positive behavior at school, postsecondary credits earned during high school, educational expectations and knowledge, work-readiness skills, paid work experiences, and reduced substance abuse?

(The report is 112 pages long.)

Overall, the YCC findings indicate small positive impacts on student outcomes.

Results of the implementation study suggested that schools in which grantees implemented the YCC program provided students with a diverse set of services and activities that can be organized into three program components:

1. Preparing students for both college- and career-included services and activities such as an integrated academic and career-focused curriculum, postsecondary education supports, and work-readiness training.
2. Connecting students with career-track employment, including school-based connections (for example, mentoring, having guest speakers from work, and preparing for the workplace) as well as work-based connections (e.g., field trips to workplaces, job shadowing, internships, and apprenticeships).
3. Offering supports included offering students individualized academic and career counseling, small learning communities, and academic and non-academic supports.

An impact study was also performed on the YCC program. Key observations from this study include:

1. The primary analysis demonstrated that school attendance increased by nearly a percentage point from about 90.7 to 91.5 percent.
2. The program accelerated the accumulation of credits for high school graduation, and the increase is equivalent to moving a student at the 50th percentile up to about the 54th percentile.
3. There is some evidence that the program may increase students’ proficiency in English language arts, but there is no evidence of increased completion of algebra coursework.

The study also found that while there were few differences in impacts among subgroups based on prior academic achievement and low-income status, impacts were more substantial for students who participated in an internship, had a mentor, or completed an individual development plan.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2019
• Author(s): P. Burkander, N. Maxwell, M. Shiferaw, M. Jacobus, A. Vigil, C. Tilley, A. Harrington
• Organizational Author(s): E. Dillon, H. Inanc, P. Schochet
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies