CAN WE BUY SAFER SCHOOLS?

WASHINGTON -- The tragedy last week in Littleton, Colo., has left some in
Congress searching for a legislative response. But before they create new
programs or increase financing for existing ones, lawmakers should look hard
at the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act, the primary Federal program that
finances violence-prevention projects in the public schools. Hundreds of
millions of dollars are being spent on activities with little or no record
of success. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton Administration's main adviser
on drugs, publicly criticized the program last year, telling The Los Angeles
Times that it does little besides "mail out checks."

General McCaffrey's frustration is understandable. Enacted in 1986 as a
school-based drug-prevention program, the $566 million Safe and Drug-Free
Schools Act is plagued by wasteful spending, minimal oversight and an
ever-expanding mandate.

A report last year in The Los Angeles Times found that instead of
subsidizing programs that are known to work, grant money was used to pay for
questionable activities like motivational speakers, puppet shows, tickets to
Disneyland, dunking booths and magic shows.

The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of
Colorado has surveyed more than 400 violence-prevention programs used in
schools and communities and found that most had not been subjected to
credible evaluations or had no record of effectiveness. This includes such
fashionable approaches as conflict resolution, peer mediation and individual
counseling.

The Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina spent four years
evaluating prevention programs financed by grant money from the Safe and
Drug-Free Schools Act and reached the same conclusion. One high-profile
program, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, turned out to be
associated with more reports of drug use among high school students.

In many instances, information on how states are spending their money is
spottily recorded and lacking in specifics, partly because states that
receive financing are required to report on their progress only once every
three years.

The failure to support effective drug-prevention programs takes on greater
importance given the conclusions of a study released last week by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, an office within the Department of Health
and Human Services. While other studies have linked drug use to violence,
this study found that people who use
marijuana sometimes are prone to aggressive behavior even after they give up
the drug. This highlights the importance of programs that keep children from
trying drugs in the first place.

Last October President Clinton announced he would "overhaul" the Safe and
Drug-Free Schools program. The reforms he favors include composing
directives that will call for school districts to spend their grant money on
what he loosely defined as "research-based" programs.

This is a step in the right direction, though the long-term value of the new
Federal directives is questionable. The new guidelines would support not
only programs with a record of effectiveness, but also those holding out the
"promise of effectiveness." That loophole guarantees additional spending on
methods of prevention that have not been tested.

Drugs have not been implicated in the violence in Littleton, but drug
prevention has been the goal of much of the anti-violence work sponsored by
the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program.

If that failure is any indicator of how similar programs will fare, more
stringent demands must be placed on school authorities to spend the money on
prevention strategies with a track record of success.

Matthew Rees is a writer at The Weekly Standard.