Grow Detroit’s Young Talent: Multi-Cohort Analysis and Completion Rates
Grow Detroit’s Young Talent (GDYT), Detroit’s citywide summer youth employment program, serves as an introduction to the workplace for thousands of youth across Detroit every year. By providing youth the opportunity to cultivate professional skills and gain job experience, GDYT aims to both set individual participants on stable career pathways and propel the broader city’s continued economic resurgence.
Key findings
- In the years following participation, GDYT youth from the 2015, 2016, and 2017 cohorts were somewhat more likely to be enrolled in school, take the SAT, and graduate from high school compared to non-participating applicants; they are also less likely to be chronically absent. Though modest in size, these differences are statistically significant.
- Three-quarters of 2017 GDYT youth completed their work commitments by working at least 102 hours. The remaining 25% of youth exhibited higher rates of baseline chronic absenteeism and were more likely to be older and male. Note that youth may not complete for positive reasons (e.g. starting college, participating in sports camp).
- Youth who completed GDYT outperformed those who work but did not complete across our academic outcomes. We must interpret these results carefully, however, as we know youth who do and do not complete their work commitments differ in a number of important ways before they ever participate in GDYT (see Finding #2).
