D.A.R.E TO IMPROVE

Schools Should Find Drug-Prevention Programs That Work

Parents of school-age children would love to believe DARE - Drug Abuse
Resistance Education - really works.

They've seen the T-shirts, the bumper stickers, the curriculum, maybe
even helped their son or daughter write a DARE essay. The message and
the method of delivering it sound right: Specially trained police
officers lead a 17-week program designed to teach students, mainly
fifth- and sixth-graders, how to resist peer pressure to experiment
with tobacco, alcohol and other drugs.

DARE has been immensely popular with parents, but also with school
officials, police and politicians.

Unfortunately, many critics say DARE doesn't work. That was the view
expressed at a Friday meeting in Birmingham of family court officials,
drug treatment experts and youth advocates.

"If the point is we use evidence-based programs, and the evidence
shows that DARE doesn't work, why are we spending money on DARE?"
asked John Sloan, chairman of the Justice Sciences Department at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Why, indeed? A raft of studies in recent years questions the value of
the nation's most popular drug-prevention program in public schools.

The Los Angeles Police Department began DARE in 1983, and the program
spread quickly. But as early as 1994 came signs there was less to DARE
than meets the eye.

A U.S. Justice Department-sponsored study by the Research Triangle
Institute concluded that DARE has a "limited to essentially
nonexistent effect on drug use." In a 2003 report, the U.S. General
Accounting Office reviewed six long-term evaluations of DARE. It found
that there were "no significant differences in illicit drug use
between students who received DARE ... and students who did not."

In 2001, a panel of experts for the U.S. Department of Education
reviewed 124 drug-prevention programs and rated nine as "exemplary"
and 33 as "promising." DARE was neither.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act mandates that states spend money
only on programs that research has shown to be effective. While DARE
has been retooling its program in the wake of bad reviews and the loss
of school systems and government funding, it has not yet been given a
federal seal of approval.

Yet by some estimates, anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of the
nation's school districts continue to use DARE. Many systems in the
Birmingham metro area have DARE, including the two largest, Jefferson
County and Birmingham. The Sheriff's Department used a $25,000 grant
to help pay for eight school resource officers who teach DARE in 27
schools, Capt. Jennifer Kimble said. Birmingham police employ six
officers who teach DARE, and city schools recently spent $28,000 on
DARE T-shirts and graduation ceremonies with a state grant, a
spokeswoman said.

Local systems would be wise to look for better, more effective
alternatives to DARE. Money is too scarce and youth drug use too
critical an issue to waste on a program that doesn't work, especially
when there are programs that do.

Schools should DARE to improve.