RESISTING DARE

Drug Abuse Resistance Education sounded like a good idea at the time:
Send police officers in uniform into classrooms of fifth- and
sixth-graders to describe the dangers of drug and alcohol use they see
out on the street every day and persuade young people to abstain.

Two decades of experience, though, have shown that DARE wasn't such a
good idea after all. Not that intentions weren't the best -- but the
program evidently just doesn't work. Still, some schools in 95 percent
of North Carolina's districts disregard the conclusions of researcher
after researcher and continue opening doors to DARE officers.

That stubbornness is beginning to hurt. DARE may not cost the schools
(as opposed to police departments) money, but it costs students' time,
and wasting time feeds the perception that administrators are lax
stewards of school resources.

Fifth- and sixth-graders need math, science and reading. While they
might need the skills to resist drugs, they don't need a program shown
to have no lasting effect on drug use. As precious as class time is in
a 180-day school year, pulling students out of math to listen to DARE
officers hardly makes sense.

School administrators who insist that DARE is effective in the face of
considerable evidence to the contrary make it seem that they don't
care whether a program works or not, if they're already using it and
it doesn't cost the schools money. Voters harboring suspicions about
such attitudes cast enough "no" votes last June to defeat a bond issue
for new schools in Wake County. For the sake of all children consigned
to DARE in crowded classrooms, let's use their time better.