Key predictors that affect graduating from high school among disadvantaged youth in WIA

The subject of academic achievement is of high importance to today's leaders. Practitioners in the field have spent decades examining ways to decrease the achievement gap for disadvantaged youth. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA), a federally funded program that helps students graduate from high school while preparing them for the workforce, is just one of many programs that have been created to assist in this effort. Using 2004-2013 student participant data from the Contra Costa County and City of Richmond California Workforce Development Boards, this study finds that students who were offenders, pregnant or parenting, or runaways were less likely to graduate than students without one or more of these barriers to success. Furthermore, students with the * aforementioned barriers were also more likely to come from a low-income background. This paper is designed to assist WIA professionals in the local area address programmatic changes using an evidence-based approach, by providing insight into the individual participant attributes that contribute to the high school dropout rate in the community it serves.