DROP DARE, URGES SHOREWOOD PANEL

Schools committee concludes anti-drug-abuse program is ineffective

The Shorewood School District has all but abandoned DARE, the police-taught
anti-drug program used in 78% of the state's schools, after a study
concluded that it might be worse than not having any anti-drug effort.

"It was kind of like discovering that the emperor had no clothes," said
Cecilia Hillard, a member of a Shorewood committee that studied the issue
and a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin who has done extensive
research on the effects of drug abuse.

"The data were so strong that either DARE has no effect, or that in suburban
communities like Shorewood it could be worse than having no program at all."

The Shorewood committee, consisting of teachers, staff and parents, has
recommended that DARE, which is given to students in the fifth, sixth and
seventh grades, be replaced with Life Skills, a program published by
Princeton Press, for the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The middle school
years are the core age group for any anti-drug program.

A minor component of DARE would continue to be taught by police to
third-graders in three sessions. The committee is considering what materials
will be used in other grade levels, but DARE materials are not likely
candidates.

The committee rejected DARE, an acronym for Drug Abuse Resistance Education,
saying it has been shown to be ineffective and "the materials for
intermediate school are simplistic to the point of being insulting to our
students." They also criticized the materials as dull and the emphasis on
criminal justice consequences as too narrow.

Shorewood's action on the DARE program is unusual locally but not unique.

Cedarburg has dropped all but a small portion of DARE; Wauwatosa has
established a committee to look at its effectiveness; Cudahy has a less
extensive program taught by police and, in Whitefish Bay, it is "on life
support."

"We were asked to cut it from 17 to 12 weeks because of academic demands,"
Whitefish Bay Police Chief Gary Mikulec said. "It cannot be pared down any
more and still be considered a DARE program."

According to a consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction,
78% of the state's more than 400 school districts have DARE programs, and
only a handful have abandoned it.

In Waukesha County, the program is overwhelmingly accepted and supported. It
continues to thrive in the county's public and parochial schools and neither
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher nor Menomonee Falls Police
Officer Richard Schwabenlander, president of the Waukesha County DARE
Officers Association, has heard of any efforts to replace or scale back the
program.

"My biggest complaint has always been that people expect way too much out of
the DARE program," Bucher said. "When it doesn't solve all adolescent drug
and alcohol problems, they declare it a failure. It's just not the silver
bullet and it is not meant to be."

The program was developed in 1983 by former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl
Gates and the public school district there.

For nearly a decade, the program has been by far the nation's most popular
anti-drug effort, the primary means of trying to prevent children from
becoming involved with drugs, alcohol, tobacco and gangs.

But it has had its critics, both conservative and liberal, and many
communities -- notably Seattle, Oakland, Calif., and Columbus, Ohio -- have
opted to use other drug education programs. Those communities also
questioned whether DARE was the most effective program.

James A. Holstein, a sociology professor at Marquette University and a
Shorewood committee member, brought together the major research on drug
abuse prevention programs for inclusion in a report to school officials.

"There are no published reports in peer-reviewed, scientific journals that
find DARE to have generalized positive effects on student drug, alcohol and
tobacco use," he said in his report to the Shorewood School Board.

Several studies found that it has had no effect on general drug use and is
less effective than other programs that are available. The only literature
of DARE's effectiveness came from DARE-produced literature, "but there is
reason to be skeptical since the pamphlet does not report technical
information," Holstein said.

Perhaps the most damning study was done over a period of several years by
the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Not
only were there no long-term positive behavioral effects found but "the
study also shows that suburban students in communities like Shorewood appear
to exhibit a 'boomerang' effect. That is, students exposed to DARE appear to
be more likely to be involved with drugs than students not exposed to DARE,"
Holstein said.

Holstein's report did not include statistics from the Chicago study, but in
looking at Shorewood drug surveys, he drew the same conclusion about the
"boomerang" effect.

A self-reporting survey of drug, alcohol and tobacco use by Shorewood high
school students was done in 1992. Those students had not been through the
DARE program. Holstein compared the results of that study to the results of
a 1995 survey of high school students, who would have been DARE graduates.
He found a higher incidence of alcohol, drug and tobacco use in the students
surveyed in 1995, a finding not inconsistent with the University of Illinois
study.

For example, 90% of the Shorewood seniors surveyed in 1995 said they had
tried marijuana and 23% said they used it more than 40 times a year. Nearly
8% of the seniors and 7% of the juniors said they felt they were "hooked" on
drugs or alcohol, all significantly higher than those surveyed in 1992.

If the bulk of the research has panned DARE, it has still continued to be
the program of choice nationally. Holstein quotes Richard R. Clayton, a
professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky who has studied the
program, to explain this apparent contradiction:

DARE is the program of choice "because it makes all important groups
(parents, teachers, administrators, police, politicians) 'feel good.' "

The Shorewood committee members said that having uniformed police officers
in the classroom created a rapport beneficial to police as well as to the
rest of the community. But the curriculum was a problem.

The committee began meeting last August and its members had considerable
expertise in the field. The membership included Holstein, the Marquette
University sociologist; Hillard, a researcher on the effects of drug abuse;
a child psychiatrist, a psychologist, a social worker and the coordinator of
Shorewood Responds, a community program that deals with the use of alcohol,
tobacco and drug abuse by minors.

They decided to look at the curriculum for the program in the same way they
would look at a curriculum for math, English or anything else taught in the
district.

"From then on we were looking at it as scientists," said Hillard. "But we
are also parents and we were looking at what would be best for our kids."

DARE was one of five programs assessed. It was also the only one not
endorsed by the National Council on Drug Abuse as an effective program.

Of the 16 criteria the committee used to evaluate the programs, DARE fared
better than the others in only one category -- the inclusion of community
and parents. Overall, it got the lowest grade of the programs examined.

DARE supporters complain that because of its prominence, DARE has been put
under the microscope in a way that other programs have not. Could Life
Skills just be the untested program du jour, one that will soon be deemed
ineffective?

Hillard says that may be true of some of the more than 100 programs
available, but Life Skills has been studied more than any program other than
DARE.

Life Skills approaches a broader range of behaviors and decision-making
situations. DARE, she said, emphasizes the negative consequences of
decision-making, largely from a criminal justice viewpoint. Life Skills
emphasizes all the possible choices and possible consequences, with legal
ramifications viewed as only a part of that, she said.

Still, there is a place for police involvement in the schools, according to
Shorewood school authorities.

"There is a role there for them and we hope they will participate," said
school Superintendent Jack Linehan. "But this is a wonderful example of
local control, of a community deciding what is best for its schools and its
students."

Shorewood Police Chief Robert Surdyk said his department has found that the
DARE officer's participation in the program not only helped deliver the
anti-drug message but also enhanced the relationship between officers and
the students.

"We have a liaison officer in the high school but he doesn't get a lot of
walk-ins who just want to say 'hi' to Officer Friendly," Surdyk said. "There
are a lot of kids who come up to the DARE officer just to talk, years after
they've finished the program."

Betsy Thatcher of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett