PARENTS FEAR SCHOOL SURVEY COULD LEAD TO TROUBLE

Red flags are waving over what's being asked of school students

Nancy Nelson didn't think much about it when she received a letter
recently from Dorseyville Middle School that said the school would be
participating in the statewide Pennsylvania Youth Survey.

The questionnaire, given every two years since 1989 by the
Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, attempts to measure
drug use and attitudes among kids in grades six through 12.

"I remember receiving the letter, but I really didn't read it very
carefully," said Nelson, of Fox Chapel. "I trusted the district knew
what they were doing."

But when her eighth-grader came home from school a week and a half
later and "proceeded to tell me about this really strange, terrible
test" she'd taken, the red flags started flying.

"When I heard what was in the survey, I was just shocked," Nelson
said.

First of all, even though pupils didn't sign the survey, Nelson didn't
like the highly personal questions about family life. And she also
took issue with the way the survey questions themselves were framed,
especially those dealing with drug and alcohol use.

Instead of asking pupils "if" they had ever tried a certain drug, the
survey wanted to know "on how many occasions" they had used everything
from cigarettes and marijuana to LSD and crack cocaine. Nelson
believes that approach can give nonusers ideas and plants the notion
that drug use is inevitable.

"Basically, it's contributing to the delinquency of a minor," she
said. "[The survey] is a bad apple and shouldn't have been given."

The Pennsylvania Youth Survey will be administered to some 100,000
students in grades six, eight, 10 and 12 statewide by the end of this
month, including about 5,000 youngsters in the Pittsburgh area.

But the survey is just one of dozens of surveys and questionnaires
students are asked to complete each year. Results are used to help
determine the effectiveness of various school programs or assess
pupils' attitudes about everything from drug and alcohol use and
careers to diversity.

And the survey results also can be used to get grant money for
schools.

Schools can use the information to apply for Safe Schools state grant
money to establish or bolster safety, intervention and drug and
violence prevention programs. Since 1995, $122 million has been given
to Pennsylvania schools for safety and violence prevention programs.
The survey responses are used to show a need for the money.

That's one reason Ambridge has participated in the survey in the
past.

"The money has allowed us to come up with some great programs,"
Assistant Superintendent Linda Whitford said. "It's been a really
positive and worthwhile experience. We learn something from them."

Most requests, say school officials, come from graduate students or
professors testing educational theories or looking to study district
programs. Schools also hear from organizations concerned with societal
issues that affect education, such as drug and alcohol abuse, or
district teachers who are interested in pursuing a research question
of their own.

Schools can volunteer to take the survey, and many do, especially so
they can apply for grant money. In addition, a random sample of
schools is selected by the publishing company to take the survey, but
participation is voluntary. These school districts have been asked to
complete the survey this month: Pittsburgh, Avonworth,
Baldwin-Whitehall, Chartiers Valley, Fox Chapel, Keystone Oaks, Mt.
Lebanon, North Allegheny and West Jefferson Hills.

Because surveys take time away from regular instruction, most
administrators said they considered a proposal carefully before
agreeing to administer it.

"There really has to be a value to us," said Velma Saire, assistant
superintendent at Quaker Valley, which participated in the
Pennsylvania Youth Survey's pilot questionnaire in November. "What's
important to someone doing a dissertation might not be so important to
a school."

Pine-Richland Superintendent James Manley said he recently turned down
a request for the district's fifth-graders to participate in the
American Tobacco Survey because he felt some of the questions were
more appropriate for older students.

"I didn't want to plant the seed," he said. "I'd rather not give them
the idea that smoking is something they should be interested in."

North Allegheny Assistant Superintendent Richard Domencic said surveys
should provide some tangible benefit or contribute to the "larger good
for education."

"We're very protective of our kids' instructional time," he said. "So
when we get a request, we have to decide, 'What's in it for us?'"

Pittsburgh Public Schools, which receives about a hundred requests a
year, sends each survey proposal to an internal review committee for
consideration -- a process that can take six weeks or longer.
According to committee Chairwoman Norene Adams, approval hinges on the
quality of the proposed research and its relevance to the district.

But no matter how valuable the results may be to the district or
researcher, by law no survey may violate students' civil rights or
confidentiality.

State guidelines say that no information can be collected from
students without prior informed consent of the child and his parents.
The federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment -- more commonly
known as the Hatch Amendment --- also requires schools to get written
parental consent before students fill out any questionnaire that is
funded with money from the U.S. Department of Education. Consent is
also necessary if the survey asks questions about political
affiliations; mental or psychological problems; sexual behavior and
attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating and demeaning
behavior; income; critical appraisals of family relationship; or
relationships with lawyers, doctors or ministers

School officials can find themselves in hot water if parents feel
proper notification hasn't been given.

In 1995, Gateway School District allowed some of its elementary pupils
to participate in a program called the Pittsburgh School-Wide
Intervention Model developed by Western Psychiatric Institute and
Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh.

Three months into the program, a group of parents claimed that they
had not been properly notified about what kind of research was being
conducted and that their children were enrolled in a "behavior
modification program" without their consent.

In 1997, they filed a lawsuit against the district and Western Psych;
the case is still pending.

"The whole thing boils down to informed parental consent," said the
plaintiffs' attorney, Patricia Henry. "You should tell parents what
you're doing and allow them to make a decision about whether or not
they want their child to participate."

While some schools, such as the Moon Area and Ambridge school
districts, have adopted official board policies that place
restrictions on the kinds of information and data the school may
solicit from students and how parents are to be informed, most rely on
a simple consent form.

What exactly constitutes "informed consent" varies from district to
district.

Quaker Valley, for example, like the Fox Chapel Area and Ambridge
school districts, does not request written parental consent for school
surveys. Rather, they ask parents to notify the district if they don't
want their children to participate.

If Nancy Nelson had read the letter from Dorseyville Middle School a
little more carefully, Fox Chapel Assistant Superintendent John Gorsin
pointed out, she would have seen that a copy of the survey was
available for review in the school guidance office and that she or her
daughter could have opted out of the survey at any time by returning
the attached nonconsent form.

Patricia Henry, however, disagrees with this "passive" approach
because every nonresponse is considered consent, and there are a lot
of reasons why parents don't respond.

"Silence on the part of parents doesn't mean anything," she said.
"Maybe they didn't see it or understand it. Maybe they mailed it back
to the school and they didn't get it."

But some educators argued that it would be difficult to get enough
parents to send back permission forms.

"The response of an opt-in vs. an opt-out would be very, very limited,
and would probably invalidate the survey," said Gorsin. Quaker
Valley's Saire agrees that permission slips would "add another paper
layer" and unless the district hears otherwise, no response indicates
consent.

In addition to drug and alcohol abuse, the Pennsylvania Youth Survey
measures delinquency and gang involvement.

It also provides information on fighting, carrying weapons and driving
under the influence of alcohol.

Results are used to help educators determine the level of use as well
as what causes adolescent substance abuse, school drop out, teen
pregnancy and violent and delinquent acts.

Psychologist and survey expert Arlene Seal, who is also president of
the nonprofit Positive Moves, has a different take. She said surveys
such as the Pennsylvania Youth Survey socialize children into the very
problems the country is trying to prevent. Ask a 10-year-old how old
he was when he started smoking, and the expectation is there that he
will at some point.

"If you take away all the professional filters and look at the
questions in the way a child would, then all you see is the negative
behaviors," she said. "We're creating these images and keeping them
focused on problems."

Seal also sees a problem with definition. What one teen-ager considers
a close relationship with a parent may not mean the same thing to her
peer. "And what if a kid had a fight with her parent that morning and
thinks her mother doesn't understand her? That could alter the survey."

Melanie Gold, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Medicine and director of adolescent treatment at
Children's Hospital, dismisses those fears.

"Reading a group of questions isn't going to dramatically alter a
child's behavior," she said, because children are exposed to every
single one of these issues at some point in their lives, either from
talking to friends or watching TV and movies. The questions, she
added, are not remarkably different from ones asked during a routine
exam by a family doctor.

"Believe me, kids are less offended by this stuff than parents are,"
Gold said.

She suggested that parents look at the surveys as an opportunity to
talk to their children about drugs and alcohol, especially if parents
take the time to examine the questionnaire and question their children
about it afterward.

"Ask them, 'How did you feel about the questions?' " said Gold. " 'Did
any of them make you wonder about certain things?' "