Three decades ago, a panel appointed by then-U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell issued a scathing critique of America's schools in a report titled A Nation at Risk. It triggered an avalanche of top-down and bottom-up reforms that engulf public schools to this day. While the achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and their white peers has narrowed, and high school graduation rates are climbing, the achievement gap between poor and rich children has widened significantly......

.......Research and real-world experience show that student interventions focused on fortifying social and emotional skills can help improve academic performance and behavior in school and beyond. If asked which American institution embraces this robust commitment to the academic and social development of young people, the U.S. military is probably the least likely to come to mind. Yet the military enjoys a well-deserved reputation for reaching, teaching, and training young people who are rudderless and drifting through life.

One military initiative that offers guidance to young people is the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program. A civilian intervention program devoted to turning around the aspirations and life prospects of high school dropouts, it treats academic and social development as coequal objectives. The basic experience consists of a 22-week residential stint on a military base.......

.......A random-assignment evaluation by the nonpartisan education and policy-research organization MDRC provides convincing evidence that ChalleNGe works. Roughly two years after graduating, cadets were much more likely than members of a control group to have obtained high school diplomas and GED certificates. They were also more likely to have received vocational training, earned college credits, or enrolled in college. And 58 percent of participants held jobs, compared with 51 percent of nonparticipants. They also earned an average of 20 percent more annually.

Although MDRC reported no significant differences in criminal activity or civic engagement, there are promising indications from some sites that ChalleNGe may help curb teenage pregnancy....

......An MDRC survey of ChalleNGe graduates in conjunction with its three-year report revealed that, like other young people their age, they labored to gain and maintain their footing in a job market ravaged by the Great Recession. Nevertheless, the interviewees recounted enthusiastically how ChalleNGe enabled them to break habits and generate profound, positive changes in their attitudes, expectations, and self-confidence. ChalleNGe convincingly demonstrates the value of investing in a new educational paradigm for deeply disengaged students who are ill-served by public schools, as we know them......

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