A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

                 FOR RELEASE                   Contact: Jim Bradshaw   February 21, 1997                    (202) 401-1576   

A four year look at drug education programs running from the 1991 and 1992 school year to 1994 through 1995 found that there are promising approaches which can improve the effectiveness of drug prevention efforts. These approaches include: using prevention programs that are based on research; delivering programs with more consistency; and providing teachers with new techniques to reach students.

The study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, followed 10,000 fifth and sixth graders in 19 school districts for four years, tracking their drug use habits and the types of drug prevention programs to which they were exposed.

In his State of American Education address Tuesday, Riley declared that making schools safe and drug free was one of his highest priorities.

"Achievement can only occur if we have schools that are safe and drug free," Riley said in his Atlanta speech. "An unsafe school is a failing school. Children cannot learn if they are surrounded by drugs and violence. Today, we are confronted by the fact that eighth grade drug use is up for the fifth year in a row."

In response to the release of this report, Riley added, "We take these findings very seriously. Clearly the current effort is not enough. We must be more effective in reaching students. Parents, schools and the whole country must be involved."

Recognizing that these programs need to be implemented consistently in order to be effective, Secretary Riley has proposed special appropriations language that would require state grant funds from the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act be used according to principles of drug education effectiveness that will be published this spring in the Federal Register for public comment.

The principles are intended to ensure that all school districts implement programs that are designed according to tested, research based drug prevention strategies with a solid assessment component for judging how well the projects are working.

"The strongest theme that emerged throughout our examination of the drug prevention programs in the participating districts was variability ... at least as much variation in the delivery of prevention program components within districts as among them," wrote researchers E. Suyapa Silvia and Judy Thorne of Research Triangle Institute, which conducted the work for the department.

"At all grade levels, teachers varied greatly in the amount of time they devoted to prevention instruction. ... Teachers in a given school did not always use a common set of prevention curriculum materials; but even when they did, they presented or omitted different sections or activities," Silvia and Thorne said in their report, School Based Drug Prevention Programs: A Longitudinal Study in Selected School Districts.

They noted that drug education experts believe that inconsistent or incomplete delivery of the prevention curriculum is one of the main reasons even those approaches that have proven effective under test conditions may not show positive results when implemented elsewhere.

Other findings:

• Student results were somewhat better in districts where prevention programs had greater stability over time and in districts with more extensive program components, including support services, but effects were small.

• Few schools employed approaches that have been found effective in previous research (such as those that teach children how to resist or deal with the powerful social influences for using drugs and those that correct misperceptions of peer drug use) -- perhaps because of their cost in terms of teacher training and staff time.

• Attitudes among fifth and sixth graders toward illicit substances -- as well as their actual levels of drug use -- were highly predictive of their attitudes and drug use levels four years later.

• Students who reported positive school experiences were significantly less likely to use drugs than their peers who had negative experiences with school.

• Activities associated with lower drug use included sports and exercise, volunteer work, and spending more than two hours per day on homework. Spending more time on video games or watching television was associated with greater drug use.

• Alcohol was the most widely used illicit substance for students at any grade level, and it was also the first drug that most students tried.

• One third of the students surveyed had drunk alcohol (more than just a sip) before or while in grade five. Eighteen percent of eighth graders and 24 percent of ninth graders reported being heavy users of alcohol.

• Given the small impact of programs reported in this study and the rise in student drug use nationally, larger social influences need to be addressed in rethinking drug prevention efforts. Wide variations in student drug use in the different communities studied suggest that research should explore alternative models that can influence social norms affecting student behavior.

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