The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program for youth ages 16-18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. Participating states operate the program, which began in the mid-1990s, with supporting federal funds and oversight from state National Guard organizations. RAND's ongoing analysis of the ChaileNGe program has two primary objectives. The first is to gather and analyze existing data from each ChalleNGe site on an annual basis to support the program's yearly report to Congress. This RAND report, the third in a series of four annual reports, documents the progress of program participants (or "cadets") in 2017-2018. The second objective of this project is to identify longer-term metrics for the overall effectiveness of the program, including ones that will help determine how site-level differences influence program effectiveness. In addition to preparing this year's annual report, the RAND study team also undertook several analytic efforts that address components of the ChalleNGe program. These additional analytic efforts are intended to address gaps in data collection, particularly around long-term outcomes, and better understand program design and implementation issues (for instance, how to improve the mentoring component). This report includes a review of a few of the analytic efforts the study team developed over the past year in support of the ChalleNGe program, including a benchmarking analysis aimed at developing realistic goals and expectations for ChalleNGe participants. Book jacket.