DARE-ING TO RETHINK DRUG CLASSES

Program May Move To Higher Grades

DARE, the most widespread and popular drug prevention program in the
country, isn't nearly as effective as it could be in Colorado Springs.

A task force of educators from the four city school districts - and the
police sergeant in charge of overseeing DARE in Springs elementary schools
- - have come to this conclusion after two years of study.

Members point to national research that sharply questions the impact of the
lessons, delivered by police officers and aimed at teaching youngsters how
to resist peer pressure and exposing the dangers of violence, smoking,
drinking and drugs through lectures and role-playing. And there is evidence
that local fifth-graders - the only students who take part in DARE - aren't
getting the message. When these students move on to middle school, they are
suspended and expelled for drugs, weapons, fighting and other offenses at
higher rates than even high school teens. So school boards in Colorado
Springs School District 11, Harrison School District 2, Academy School
District 20 and Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 will decide soon
whether to make small - or big - changes to DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program.

Right now, boards are being asked to tinker with the timing of the program
and extending the sessions.

But within a year, they could face very different questions: Should
students be taught DARE lessons at all?

Or could another prevention program, or perhaps an amalgam of programs,
better serve Springs students?

There is a lot at stake in the answers.

More than 64,000 students attend schools inside the city.

And schools offer DARE as the main line of defense against dangerous
behavior like getting high or bringing a gun to school.

Police Chief Lorne Kramer put it this way to the District 11 school board
last week: "This is a major policy decision."

Kramer and the task force agree that the program needs to change. The first
recommendation is to move DARE from elementary schools to middle schools
this fall.

Under the plan, presented last week to board members in Districts 11 and
Harrison, the 17-week DARE program would be taught to sixth-graders instead
of fifth-graders.

Because the number of schools targeted would shrink from 67 elementary to
16 middle schools, police officers would have time to teach "booster"
sessions at least twice a year to kids in grades 7 and 8.

Supporters hope these extra lessons will strengthen students' ability to
resist peer pressure, the not-so-subtle squeeze to experiment and misbehave
that skyrockets among young teens.

"What we are doing right now is saying to kids 'Stay away from drugs,
here's your T-shirt, and good luck in middle school,'" said Sgt. John
Taylor, who oversees DARE for the city.

"DARE is a good program - don't get me wrong - but we need to be in the
middle schools. That's where kids are getting pressure to use drugs. That's
when they're experimenting. That's where they're getting into trouble.

"So what we want to say is 'Here's your T-shirt. And if I see you with a
cigarette in your mouth, or I hear you're doing drugs, I'm going to be here
in your school next year to make sure you stop.'"

While this is the argument officials in District 11 and 2 will struggle
with during the next few weeks, the DARE discussion is different in Academy
School District 20 and Cheyenne Mountain School District 12.

The District 20 board won't decide whether to move the program to middle
schools until it decides whether to fund DARE at all.

This year, all non-academic programs in the district must be run through a
tough new budget process, which will be completed next month.

In District 12, the conversation about DARE has taken a different shape
altogether.

DARE is already taught to sixth-graders, who attend elementary schools.
There are no plans to move the program.

But there is a proposal to expand drug prevention efforts into the junior
high.

At their January 26 meeting, Cheyenne Mountain school board members will
decide whether to assign a police officer to the school to serve as a
mentor and teach DARE-like lessons, as well as patrol the high school, for
the rest of the school year.

Caryl Thomason, a task force member and the assistant superintendent for
Cheyenne Mountain, explained the citywide focus on extending the reach of
drug prevention this way:

Just like a diet, DARE requires reinforcement to truly work. If there's no
follow-up or feedback, kids will forget or ignore what they learned.

"It's just like anything else. If a program isn't constant, you're going to
drop it after three weeks," Thomason said.

"We need more specific, continuous drug prevention across the system."

Research seems to bear this out.

An Ohio State University study showed that students who had DARE lessons in
two or more grades were more likely to stay away from drugs.

A new national report and a December article in the education journal Phi
Delta Kappa also stress the importance of follow-up.

Even DARE officials agree. Most schools that teach DARE do it in grades 5
or 6. Now, DARE America, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit that created the
program in 1983, will ask Congress for $50 million in grants so schools can
continue the program in the upper grades.

But the timing or intensity of DARE isn't the only issue.

Several reports have surfaced in the last five years showing that DARE is a
weak antidote against drugs. One such study was commissioned by the
National Institute of Justice, which found no differences in reported drug
use in 1994 between students who had, and those who didn't have, DARE classes.

Research in Illinois and Indiana has shown that the program had little or
no long-term effect on student drug or alcohol use. In fact, the 1991
Indiana report found that the only difference between high school seniors
who had or hadn't taken DARE classes in earlier grades was that teens
enrolled in the program used hallucinogens more than their program-free peers.

Local research, conducted by University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
professor Richard Dukes, is more promising.

On one hand, Dukes' 1995 study of DARE showed that the city's program
didn't have long-lasting effects. But Dukes also found that the program is
more effective here than in other places, especially for teen-age boys.

Given these somewhat mixed messages, the task force is just beginning to
research other drug prevention programs, which have mushroomed in the last
decade.

The group has three choices: Stay with DARE, go with another set of
lessons, or write its own.

Members say they could pull the best elements from several programs, fold
in Colorado's new academic standards, then add in a pinch of developmental
"assets," or positive influences on children, which are the subject of a
citywide campaign.

Whatever the task force recommends, school boards must agree on one
approach if they want police to lead the lessons.

Sgt. Taylor said it would be too difficult and too expensive to train
officers to deliver one program in District 11, another in District 12,
another in District 20 and yet another in District 2.

But this decision is months away.

All that's certain now is that some educators and police are no longer
wedded to the idea that DARE is the only drug prevention alternative.

"What we need," said District 20 student services director Pete Cicatelli,
"is a program that makes sense and really works for kids."