EDUCATORS SAY DRUG TESTING WILL STAY RARE

Reaction: Few School Districts Conduct Such Programs. The Go-Ahead From The
Supreme Court May Not Change That.

Thursday's Supreme Court decision permitting the drug testing of all
students who sign up for extracurricular activities will protect the
prerogatives of school boards while having little practical effect in U.S.
school districts, say education officials across the country.

A 1995 Supreme Court decision upheld drug testing of student-athletes. This
one clearly allowed such testing of all extracurricular participants, from
band members to academic decathletes.

But only a tiny percentage of school districts nationwide--surveys put the
number at 5% or less--perform testing of either group. Most have eschewed
the tests, saying random testing of students is costly, ineffective or
invasive of privacy. With a national consensus against random drug testing
of students, supporters and opponents of Thursday's high court
ruling--affirming a testing policy in a rural Oklahoma school
district--agreed that it would hardly disrupt the lives of American
students. Some principals and education officials point to surveys
suggesting that students active in extracurricular activities are less
likely to use drugs.

"As a practical matter, the decision makes no good sense," said Hal
Kwalwasser, general counsel for Los Angeles Unified School District, which
does not conduct random testing. "I think very few schools will find great
utility in merely testing those in extracurricular activities.... I can't
imagine the utility of testing members of the chess club."

The true power of the 5-4 decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas,
lies in reaffirming that American students are, legally speaking,
second-class citizens--a popular view in superintendents' suites.

The decision carved out an exception to the 4th Amendment, which prohibits
unreasonable searches and seizures, for students regardless of whether they
do anything to create suspicion of drug use. In the same way, corporal
punishment of students remains constitutional, though state legislatures
and school boards typically ban it.

"It's a very important decision because it means school boards and
communities get to make the policy in these areas," says Edwin Darden, a
senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Assn., which filed an
amicus brief in support of the Oklahoma district's testing policy. "Tests
are costly to operate and they take time to administer, but this preserves
that option for local communities."

Darden was not alone in praising the ruling but declining to endorse
student drug testing. "It has proven to be useful in some schools," said
Bush administration drug czar John Walters, "but that's not going to be the
case in many districts."

Even Graham Boyd, director of the drug policy litigation project at the
American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the students who
unsuccessfully challenged the Oklahoma district, said losing the case would
not lead to significantly more testing in schools.

While criticizing the decision for "reducing student privacy rights to that
no better than prisoners," Boyd said he expected testing to remain "quite
rare, not really for legal reasons but common sense reasons."

Some American schools began limited drug testing of some students in the
1980s. Banning High in Wilmington famously started a random program for
athletes after cocaine overdoses by two football players in 1986 but
quickly dropped it. After the Supreme Court declared testing of athletes
constitutional in 1995, hundreds of schools nationwide started programs of
their own.

The concept never caught on in big cities. A spokeswoman for the Los
Angeles County Office of Education said she was unaware of any county
school district that tested students randomly. Three years ago, Miami-Dade
County Public Schools, the nation's fourth-largest district, started a
pilot testing program but soon dropped it, citing a lack of money.

Experts say most existing testing programs are targeted to suspected users
or are voluntary. Drug testing is more common in Catholic and other private
schools, at high school sports powerhouses where boosters pay for the
testing of athletes, and in rural communities worried about the influx of
big-city drug culture. In court, the most important cases on school drug
testing have come from challenges to testing regimes in small towns in
Oregon, Indiana, Colorado and, now, Oklahoma.

"We want to encourage rather than discourage" extracurricular participants,
said Chicago Board of Education general counsel Marilyn Johnson, expressing
the prevailing big-city sentiment. "They do better in school and stay in
school that way."

Some superintendents and principals were bracing Thursday for renewed sales
pitches from companies that market low-cost drug testing kits. One such
firm, Lifepoint Inc. of Ontario, had incorporated the Supreme Court
decision into its marketing by Thursday afternoon.

But the nine justices of the high court, whether they support testing or
not, were careful not to endorse such testing.

Concurring with the majority in upholding drug testing, Justice Stephen G.
Breyer was hardly enthusiastic. "I cannot know whether the school's drug
testing program will work," he wrote. "But in my view, the Constitution
does not prohibit the effort."

In a sarcastic dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--noting that the school
band, the Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America could
be tested under the upheld policy--mocked fears of "out-of-control
flatware, livestock run amok, and colliding tubas."