Well, I would be remiss to not jump into this one...even though the young people with whom I've worked have been few (I'm more post secondary), we do see a lot of 18-24s which really have the same mindset, in my opinion. So, I'll comment as well:
I have always had issues with high schoolers not wanting to do the outside work. Not wanting to study, or finish up labs, etc.
A lot of the 18-24 year old crowd are the same way. Competing priorities, plus not wanting to miss out on "fun/friends/etc" tends to get in the way of being career motivated. Most young people have no idea what they want to do in their career, so some of that lack-of-commitment comes from indecision about whether they want to invest the time.
We are making it mandatory that this group of fall students take the ITF+ certification test (pass or fail) before moving into the A+ course. Again, I am new to the org and the org is relatively new. I haven't looked into CloudEssentials, but I will now.
Our college tried something like this and it didn't work out well. Failure rates were around 90%. We basically made taking the exam 20% of the overall grade. Take it and get 10%, pass it and get the other 10% - which meant to get an "A" in the course meant passing the certification. Students were basically SAP'ing out and drops were increasing. Senior management decided this was not conducive to maintaining a functional school / profit margin, so the practice was discarded.
In the end, certification came to students who actually wanted it, intrinsically. Extrinsic motivators (positive or negative), simply do not work as intended. Even young people that sign up for Computer Training aren't as hungry for it. And it's that hunger that drives them to put the video game controller down, get off Discord, and focus on their studies.
High school in this case and in my opinion, is no different.
Overall, I am not a fan of the entire Renaissance-style of education that the US Department of Education holds so dear. Putting people through CompTIA courses who are more adapted for being something else is a waste of time, energy, and resources. Education needs to start by assessing what young people, even in Primary or Secondary, are more adapted to do. If we want to actually build a technical workforce, early, we need to identify the kids that want that and focus on them.
Not a popular opinion, I know, but pushing kids into a career they are neither willing nor able to do is, in the end, self-defeating.
My two coppers in this. Your mileage may vary.
/r