STUDENT DRUG TESTS AREN'T THE ANSWER

The Bush administration thinks testing is the silver bullet for any
problem confronting our young people.

First, the No Child Left Behind Act preached the gospel of
standardized testing to raise student achievement. Now, the Office of
National Drug Control Policy is promoting student drug testing as the
solution to drug abuse. More than $25 million has been earmarked in
the 2006 federal budget for such programs.

At School Drug Testing Summits this spring in Dallas, St. Louis,
Missouri, Pittsburgh and Portland, Ore., drug czar John Walters and
deputy Mary Ann Solberg hyped drug testing as a way to deter young
people's use of everything from alcohol to marijuana.

Scientific evidence, however, contradicts their claims. The largest
peer-reviewed study of student drug testing clearly stated that it does not
deter use. A University of Michigan study in 2003 included four years of
data from 722 middle and high schools and nearly 100,000 students. A
follow-up report included data from seven schools with random drug testing
of their entire student body. The findings were the same. Said researcher
Lloyd Johnston: "Schools are very pressed for funds, and ... the results of
our investigation raise a serious question of whether drug testing is a
wise investment."

That was the conclusion of the school board in Guymon, Okla., too. In
2002, the board dumped a random drug-testing program for athletes and
students in extracurricular activities after just three years. "We're
a small district, with 2,400 students, and we were spending $18,000 to
$24,000 a year on testing," said school board President Scot Dahl.
Testing picked up a few positive results and might have deterred a few
students, he said. But there were unintended consequences: Students
focused on beating the tests, sometimes with dangerous strategies.
Dahl said one parent told him, "I caught my daughter drinking Clorox."

Legally, schools may conduct random drug tests. The U.S. Supreme Court
in Earls v. Tecumseh upheld random drug tests of students
participating in after-school activities. But Earls didn't trigger a
rise in student drug testing -- just 19% of schools have programs. And
teen drug use has been gradually declining since 1996. So why is the
Bush administration peddling drug testing?

The overriding concern of educators these days is to meet the
near-impossible goals set by No Child Left Behind. Pushing student
drug testing as a panacea for teen drug abuse not only ignores good
science. It also diverts attention and resources from the real
education challenges that communities confront.