cannabisnews.com: DARE Program: Sacred Cow or Fatted Calf?





DARE Program: Sacred Cow or Fatted Calf?
Posted by CN Staff on February 01, 2004 at 13:21:06 PT
By Julia C. Mead
Source: New York Times 
Hampton Bays -- "Are you ready to rock?" Police Officer Theresa Tedesco shouted into the microphone. In thunderous unison, 300 sixth graders at Hampton Bays Elementary School shouted back, "Yes!"Parents and some grandparents packed the bleachers and lined up along the walls for the Jan. 23 ceremony put on for graduates of DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. The students turned cartwheels, performed a rap song and took turns reciting lines in skits they wrote themselves. The first-place finishers in an essay contest each read their winning submissions.
The essays, like the hand-drawn posters hung on the gym walls, offered variations on a single theme: that tobacco, illegal drugs and violence are dangerous. It's the central message that thousands of students across Suffolk are taught each year in the DARE program.Suffolk is not alone. The DARE America curriculum, developed two decades ago by members of the Los Angeles Police Department, has been adopted by 80 percent of all schools nationwide. It puts uniformed officers in elementary and middle-school classrooms to teach about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol, controlled or illegal drugs and violence. The officers also propose ways to help students resist the temptation to experiment or to act out aggressions, and they provide warnings about the consequences if they don't.But there's a catch: numerous studies across the country, including one in Suffolk two years ago, cast doubt on DARE's effectiveness. Its graduates are no less likely to use drugs than other children, the studies have concluded.Nevertheless, the program remains enormously popular. So popular, in fact, that any suggestion that it be replaced with a more effective or less expensive program tends to raise howls of protest from parents, school officials and the police. As a result, Suffolk lawmakers girding to do battle with a projected $250 million budget shortfall in 2005 are reluctant to take any overt jab at DARE, even though it costs the police department nearly $3 million a year. "We suspect that there are gaping holes in the program and that it may not be cost-effective, but legislators are politicians," said one Suffolk legislator, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used. "No one's going to risk their political future by doing anything other than standing up with the parents. Parents vote."Other legislators said that asking school districts to help bear the cost of DARE has never been more than talk. "The schools are up against a rock and a hard place already," said Joseph Caracappa, the Legislature's presiding officer. "And it would just shift the tax burden from one district to another."Steve Levy, the new county executive, was elected on a reform platform that called for a soup-to-nuts evaluation of all county spending and promised aggressive change wherever he found waste and inefficiency. Although the police department's budget is squarely in his crosshairs, Mr. Levy declined last week to say that DARE was.What Mr. Levy would say was that within a month his staff would begin looking at ways to use DARE officers for other police work during school vacations. He also said that the new police commissioner, Richard Dormer, would help evaluate DARE itself for possible improvements and that civilian teachers might be used in parts of the program. "We're believers in the concept, but we have to find the best implementation," Mr. Levy said. "It will likely stay in place through the rest of this school year as it is. If there are changes, they'll take place in September."In an echo of a recommendation made two years ago by a countywide study, he said those changes could include moving some DARE officers out of elementary schools and into high schools. The program might also be extended to both the lower and higher grades. "We may have to experiment to find the best age bracket," he said.Most Suffolk schools customize DARE America's curriculums and pick and choose which grades to use them in. Some, like Hampton Bays, use the program only in one grade, typically the fifth or sixth. Dr. Lee Koppelman, the executive director of the Long Island Regional Planning Board, said the board's 2001 study looked at schools across Suffolk and at the incidence of drug abuse among DARE graduates. It concluded, as studies elsewhere have, that the program was ineffective in the long term."You can't have a 10-week session in sixth grade and expect it to have enduring, lifelong qualities," Dr. Koppelman said. "We found it was generally effective while the students were in the program, but in terms of lasting impact, it didn't measure up. If I had my druthers, it would be taught from fifth through 12th grade. That would be a real opportunity to address addictive behavior."Asked what became of his study, he replied, "Nothing."Mr. Dormer, the new police commissioner, was noncommittal about DARE, saying only that he planned to evaluate the program with one eye on the 2005 budget.DARE America has countered criticisms by revamping its curriculum for middle-school students, compacting what was a 17-week course into 10 weeks and trying to make it more realistic, said Sgt. Enrico Annichiarico, the head of the Suffolk Police Department's DARE office. He supervises 28 officers, 6 of them with teaching degrees, who work in about 180 schools.Sergeant Annichiarico said the new curriculum placed emphasis on the seventh and ninth grades, which he called a sign that DARE America was "keeping up with the times" and was responding to criticism about not addressing the needs of older students who are more at risk.Bemoaning the lack of any frank public discussion of DARE's shortcomings, Dr. Koppelman said its widespread popularity was "part of the problem."School administrators like DARE because it allows them to send out an anti-drug message at no cost to their districts. Police departments pay most of the costs, and the local P.T.A. typically covers the incidentals, like the DARE T-shirts given to every graduate and for pizza for the graduation party."It really is a good deal for the district," said Marc Meyer, the acting principal of Hampton Bays Elementary School. Mr. Meyer, like officials in other districts, said he had heard about but had not read studies critical of DARE. "I have to admit that my view is skewed because I love the program," he said.Other school officials said they had never studied its effectiveness and had no intention to do so. "We've never discussed that," said George Leeman, the Hampton Bays school board president. "We've always supported its continuation."Parents say they like DARE because they believe their children's enthusiasm is a sign that they are getting the "Just Say No and Mean It'' message.Dorothy and John Capuano, whose daughter Amanda, 11, graduated from the Hampton Bays DARE program on Jan. 23, said that the program helped students resist peer pressure, encouraging them to think about the possible consequences of drug and alcohol use and to choose positive alternatives, like sports."It puts in the kids' faces what can happen if they make bad choices," Mrs. Capuano said. "Some parents don't know how to do that."Her husband said: "We both quit smoking 10 years ago, and we talk to our kids about the mistakes we made. But I also tell them that, because we didn't have DARE when I was a kid, we didn't know that we had choices."They conceded their daughter was probably too young to experience real temptation. "But it's a good influence," Mr. Capuano said. "It's another opportunity for her to make a good decision."Besides, his wife added, "The kids think it's cool to be in DARE."Police officials are equally enthusiastic about DARE. "Putting a uniformed officer into the school helps build relationships with the kids, with the community," said David Hegermiller, the chief of the Riverhead Town Police Department. "Police departments certainly do get a lot of public relations mileage out of that." Although he was aware of the criticism of DARE, he and other police officials called the program the one "proactive thing'' that departments can do to fight violence and drug and alcohol use. Everything else, they said, amounts to reactive mopping up after the damage has been done."The parents go crazy if anyone talks about stopping it," Chief Hegermiller said. "They like the contact between the officer and the kids, too, but when I talk about putting officers in the schools in some other capacity, they start screaming. It doesn't make sense to me because I see them as the same thing."But Dr. Koppelman said he found that DARE's message and its widespread popularity provide little more than a false sense of security and an unearned opportunity for parents, the police and educators to be self-congratulatory. "The kids like it because they get recognition and having a police officer in the classroom is a novel thing," he said. "And parents whose kids don't have drug problems to begin with think that DARE is responsible. But the real serious problem is that behind all the fun and recognition and hoopla is a valid concept that hasn't been allowed to work because it isn't pounded into these children throughout the educational process. Like anything else, it wears off." Source: New York Times (NY)Author: Julia C. MeadPublished: February 1, 2004Copyright: 2004 The New York Times Co.Contact: letters nytimes.com Website: http://www.nytimes.com/Related Articles:Just Say No Again - Reason Magazine http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18254.shtmlBeyond The Blackboard: DARE's Failure http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16964.shtml
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Comment #4 posted by john wayne on February 02, 2004 at 01:04:02 PT
simplicity will suffice here
Cops are in schools scaring up drug-bust business.The kids in the DARE programs are future fodder for the medical-prison-industrial state.They ought to call the program FFA.Future Fodder of America
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Comment #3 posted by E_Johnson on February 01, 2004 at 14:04:36 PT
People did NOT LEARN from the Cold War
""You can't have a 10-week session in sixth grade and expect it to have enduring, lifelong qualities," Dr. Koppelman said. "We found it was generally effective while the students were in the program, but in terms of lasting impact, it didn't measure up. If I had my druthers, it would be taught from fifth through 12th grade. That would be a real opportunity to address addictive behavior."
"The Soviet government directly controlled the education and employment of every person in the Soviet Union. From kindergarten to the university, students were relentlessly educated against the addictive behaviors of capitalism.What did they do?The kids who had all of this constant education smuggled in Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Levis at the risk of heavy terms in prison. When they got old enough, they brought the government down by refusing to go along with it anymore.Now they have a black market that is the most powerful in the world. Russians can buy new movies in the market before they hit the screen in the US.
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Comment #2 posted by E_Johnson on February 01, 2004 at 13:57:39 PT
What a cushy job
"What Mr. Levy would say was that within a month his staff would begin looking at ways to use DARE officers for other police work during school vacations."But if they have to do actual police work, won't most of them quit?
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on February 01, 2004 at 13:55:51 PT:
This conversation takes place every day
Parent: (X), have you learned anything in DARE class?(X): Yes...(and regurgitates the propaganda by rote, almost sing-song tone.)Parent: That's good. Now, I don't have to talk to you about it, do I?(X): No, not really.6 hours later:(X): Hey, don't bogart that joint!This is the only reason why parents are so supportive of DARE; they don't want to handle the messy chore and the frightening possibility that they may be queried about their own recreational drug usage:*Parents say they like DARE because they believe their children's enthusiasm is a sign that they are getting the "Just Say No and Mean It'' message.*and:*"The parents go crazy if anyone talks about stopping it," Chief Hegermiller said. "They like the contact between the officer and the kids, too, but when I talk about putting officers in the schools in some other capacity, they start screaming. It doesn't make sense to me because I see them as the same thing."*In short, parents prefer that they be able to pay police to do a an emotionally and intellectually uncomfortable job that BY RIGHTS AS PARENTS they should perform themselves. The cops like it because they get to preen...and it gets them away from dangerous work like chasing known murderers down. The pol gets to look as if there's something being done about something that would not be a problem save for stupid legislation.And the kids? They may not be able to properly spell words like 'cynicism' or 'hypocrisy', but they learn the underlying meaning of those words by seeing the mechanics of the action involved in operation. And they learn something else; they must learn to lie to protect themselves, because to be honest and give their opinions when they go across the grain of the expected answer is to invite censure. An entire generation has grown up mildly schizoidal and deeply mistrusting of authority figures.Now, imagine what kind of society such children will create for themselves...AND FOR THEIR PARENTS.Oh, America...WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOURSELF???????
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