D.A.R.E. PROGRAM COULD LOSE FEDERAL FUNDING UNDER NEW POLICIES

Some anti-drug efforts called ineffective

Many school districts in Texas and around the country may have to replace or
rethink their drug education programs over the next two years because of
recent action by the U.S. Department of Education.

The federal agency has just said no to spending hundreds of millions of tax
dollars on programs deemed ineffective in keeping kids off drugs. This year,
the government will spend $556 million on anti-drug programs, including $40
million in Texas, through its Safe and Drug-Free Schools initiative.

The most widely used program in Texas schools could be affected by the new
policies. The controversial D.A.R.E. program - Drug Abuse Resistance
Education - is used in more than half of Texas school districts but did not
make a list of programs researchers have labeled effective in reducing or
preventing drug use among young people.

D.A.R.E., used in Plano and several other North Texas districts, has been
criticized as ineffective and too restrictive. It is funded by a variety of
sources, but the $345,000 spent annually by its statewide group to train
police officers to teach its program comes from federal funds.

The main program used in Dallas schools isn't on the list, either, but
officials said it shouldn't be affected because it does not use federal money.

Law Enforcement Teaching Students - or LETS - was developed by the Dallas
Police Department and Dallas school officials. Several other area school
districts also use it.

"This is going to impact most of what everyone does," in terms of school
anti-drug programs, said Kay Beth Stavley of the Texas Education Agency.

Under rules that went into effect this month, the Department of Education
will require school districts and other agencies that receive federal money
to prove within two years that their programs reduce drug use among students.

School districts will have to tackle the tough job of scientifically
justifying their current programs; choose programs that have already been
accepted as effective; or find a new source of funding.

Schools that don't use federal money or those that already use proven,
effective programs won't have to change, said Ms. Stavley, Texas coordinator
for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program.

For others, "the reality is that schools need to seriously rethink what
they're doing, really look at where their dollars are going, what's the best
use of their funds," she said.

The education agency has given school and state officials a list of programs
that experts say have been proven effective by testing and research.
Education officials stress their list is partial and preliminary, intended
only as a guide to school officials.

D.A.R.E. leaders say they have been consulting with federal education and
Justice Department officials about what it would take to get their program
on the recommended list.

"We are putting in place research to prove our effectiveness," said Dave
Williams, statewide coordinator of the Texas D.A.R.E. Institute.

Officials with Fort Worth and Arlington, which use D.A.R.E., say they are
reviewing their participation in that and other drug programs.

"All our drug programs will be reviewed except those found to be
research-based," said Roy Griffin, coordinator of drug prevention programs
for Fort Worth schools. His district uses a variety of anti-drug programs in
various grades, including D.A.R.E., which is paid for by the Fort Worth
Police Department.

When proven programs are available, he said, he questions continued use of
curricula that may not work.

"If you know there's something that works and you're not using it, whose
fault is that?" he said. "It's like saying we're going to try a new reading
program for two years. If it doesn't work, we've lost two years of teaching
children to read."

William Modzeleski, director of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, said the U.S.
education agency became concerned "as we began to see drug use [among young
people] go up again after decreasing for a decade, going up for four or five
years in a row. We wanted to take a careful look at how our dollars are
being spent."

The effort to make drug programs accountable comes at the same time as a new
$195 million government anti-drug advertising campaign that is delivering
stark messages about the dangers of drug abuse through newspapers, the
Internet and broadcast media. Experts said it may take as long as three
years to determine this effort's effectiveness.

For federally funded programs in U.S. schools, Mr. Modzeleski said, grant
recipients must move beyond rating programs by popularity to judging them by
results.

In North Texas, school officials, police officers and parents whose children
have been through various anti-drug programs talked about how well-received
the programs are and how beneficial they thought it was for police officers
and students to interact in school. But they had little grounds for
comparing programs and little hard data about how the programs affected drug
use.

"I really feel the kids need all the kinds of information they can get,
wherever they can get it," said Brenda Barnes, whose daughter, Lindsey,
participated in D.A.R.E. at Short Elementary in Arlington.

"I know Lindsey talked real often about the police officers who taught the
program. I would rather my kids find out these kinds of things through a
great source than on the streets."

D.A.R.E. is only one of many programs that could be affected by the new
federal policy. But long-standing criticisms of D.A.R.E. are in part
responsible for the new policy.

Launched in 1983 in Los Angeles, D.A.R.E. is the largest and oldest and one
of the best-known drug education programs operating in American schools.
D.A.R.E. says its program is taught to 26 million U.S. schoolchildren and 9
million in other countries. The set curriculum is taught, usually in fifth
grade, for an hour a week for 17 weeks by uniformed police officers.

Plano Officer Jody Privett, a D.A.R.E. instructor, said the presence of
uniformed officers is one of the program's strengths.

"The way most people I know in D.A.R.E. look at it is, any prevention
[effort], whether D.A.R.E. or some other class, is great," he said.

But numerous studies over the last several years have found D.A.R.E. and
many other programs have done little or nothing to reduce or prevent drug
abuse by children and teens.

D.A.R.E. officials take exception to those studies. At the same time, they
say they are commissioning their own studies to show it does get results.

In Texas, "we're doing a sampling evaluation," said Mr. Williams of the
state D.A.R.E. Institute. The study, by an outside firm, will look at drug
use by children who have taken D.A.R.E. classes compared with those who haven't.

Other critics object to D.A.R.E.'s use of student pledges to abstain from
all drugs and alcohol and the program's teaching that drug use of any kind
is bad.

Larry Nickerson of Fort Worth said his daughter, in a discussion of other
school matters, volunteered that she didn't like D.A.R.E. because of the
required pledge and because "the D.A.R.E. people continually harp on not
using drugs and she already knows that, so why do they keep saying this over
and over?"

Mr. Nickerson said he dislikes D.A.R.E. and would like to see the nation
rethink all of its drug policies. He said he had not discussed his feelings
with his daughter.

College student Lee Johnson, 21, took D.A.R.E. classes in sixth grade in a
small town in Illinois. During the course, she said, rumors circulated that
the instructing officer was himself a drug user. According to local
newspaper articles, the officer resigned after being suspended and
investigated for "improprieties" amid allegations of marijuana use.

When she has kids, Ms. Johnson said, she will not let them participate in
D.A.R.E.

Of more than 40 kids in her sixth-grade class, she said, "I don't know of
any kid . . . that didn't try drugs at least once. And some, maybe half,
sell and/or use today. And I don't live in L.A. or anything. I live in your
typical small-town U.S.A."

She said she believes her classmates' decisions about drugs were influenced
by what happened to their D.A.R.E. instructor.

"A lot of what I heard was, 'How can you believe in something when the
person teaching you is doing the opposite?' " she said.

A number of cities, school districts and police departments around the
country have dropped D.A.R.E. because of concerns over its lack of proven
results and other issues.

"D.A.R.E. is an excellent program," said Sgt. Brent Caughron of the Cedar
Hill Police Department. But the city now uses other programs instead.

Dallas police Sgt. Mike Marshall credits D.A.R.E. with being a
groundbreaker, "the program everybody learned from."

But after a few years of the early anti-drug programs, he said, police and
school officials "found we were educating some very smart drug users. We
were teaching kids how to recognize drugs, how to use them. Over a period of
years, we decided that wasn't the best thing to do."

LETS, used most in Dallas schools, was developed about 12 years ago to
incorporate more "life skills," which D.A.R.E. also now includes.

He said he has been told LETS "is one of the few programs taught in schools
that consistently gets outstanding reviews for quality and content. But as
to whether they [those schools] have an increase or decrease in drug use, I
don't know."

A quote from one of the scores of Web sites concerning D.A.R.E. sums up the
problem in measuring drug abuse prevention and the attitude toward such
measurement that the Department of Education rules seek to address.

"How do you prove a crime was prevented? How do you prove D.A.R.E. classes
kept youth from using drugs?" the D.A.R.E. supporter wrote. "How do you
catch a moonbeam?"

Not everyone is convinced that the new federal guidelines will bring about
substantial changes.

Glenn Brooks is director of justice programs for the criminal justice
division of the Texas governor's office, which distributes about $8 million
of the federal drug education money.

"I've been around state and federal stuff a long time," he said. "This may
turn out to be wonderful or it may turn out to be nothing."

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett