Pubdate: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 Source: Inquirer (PA) Copyright: 2001 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc Contact: 400 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19101 Website: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/home/ Forum: http://interactive.phillynews.com/talk-show/ Author: Maureen Fitzgerald Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/dare.htm (D.A.R.E.) FINDING NEW WAYS TO JUST SAY NO Despite Revisions, Some Schools Are Opting Out Of DARE To Try Antidrug Alternatives. For 10 years, Collingswood police officers have stood in the town's fifth-grade classrooms, lecturing about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. And for 10 years, they have followed the same DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) workbook used by 36 million children nationwide, giving 17 lessons on topics such as how to resist peer pressure and different ways to say no. But as the DARE graduates ascended through high school, the local police were still hauling in teenagers for drinking on weekends. A survey indicated that the number of students drinking and using drugs in Collingswood had actually increased in the previous five years. And they were starting earlier, with 28 percent of eighth graders reporting they had been drunk in 1998-99, compared with 11 percent in 1995-96. "It wasn't enough," said Patrolman Steve Rydzewski, who has taught DARE for the last four years. It was unrealistic, he said, to think lessons for 10-year-olds would be enough to prevent beer bashes in high school. Collingswood is one of a handful of communities across the country that are dropping the DARE program, to replace it with a more comprehensive program aimed at reaching students from first grade on up to 12th. Although DARE is used in 75 percent to 80 percent of the nation's school districts, its worth had been increasingly challenged by parents, researchers and government officials. In the last two months, reports from the surgeon general and the National Academy of Sciences found the program ineffective. In the past, DARE officials staunchly defended their program. But last month, DARE America announced a major revamping and expansion, acknowledging its programs were outmoded. "It wasn't working as well as it should, or as well as it needed to," said Herbert D. Kleber, the chairman of DARE's scientific advisory board, which studied the program and met with its major critics over the last several years. The revised DARE program, funded through a $13.7 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will be introduced to 50,000 schoolchildren in six cities this fall. The program will be expanded from its traditional base in fifth grade to include seventh and ninth grades. Police officers will still visit classrooms, but they will use updated teaching and prevention methods. They will have students work in groups to research the drug ecstasy, instead of listening to a lecture. Or they will use neuroscience imaging of brain slices to show what drugs can do to the circuitry of an adolescent brain. After a two-year test run and a subsequent evaluation, the curriculum will be offered nationwide. DARE, founded 18 years ago by the Los Angeles Police Department, is a voluntary program between schools and police funded primarily by the departments, which donate the time of the DARE officers. "We looked at DARE and found the content may not be right, but it is the largest-scale distribution system in place in the nation," said Nancy J. Kaufman, vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "We can fix the content. DARE is our best possible chance of delivering the message." Collingswood is one community that will be not be delivering the DARE message in elementary or high school. It is developing and delivering its own drug-prevention program, called Sunrise. The program is a collaborative venture that resulted from meetings of borough, police and school officials with parents and the staff of Genesis, a counseling center in the borough. "Our thinking is you need more than a DARE program in the schools," said Gabe Guerrieri, executive director of Genesis. "We need the school, the police, the town and the parents to be on the same page, working together, following the same plan." Besides DARE, there were already efforts and programs in place - including a substance-abuse counselor and health-class discussions - but no single thread running through so everyone could work together, Guerrieri said. Sunrise, also partially financed by Robert Wood Johnson, will begin full scale in the fall, offering drug prevention in the schools in grades one through six. In the middle and high schools, the program will shift to a more intensive intervention program. For instance, if students are caught drinking beer or using drugs, they will have the option of entering a counseling program with their parents instead of facing a criminal complaint and a school suspension. "We're hoping to reach the kids who use and abuse pretty heavily," Guerrieri said. "We know we've got a lot of kids who are opening themselves up for addiction problems." To be successful, he said, the program must change attitudes: from the younger students who hear that everyone drinks in high school, to the high school students who drink or do drugs to fit in, to the parents who believe that high school drinking is a rite of passage. "Some parents say, 'It's just a phase. Let the kids alone.' Or, 'I'm teaching my kid to drink responsibly,' " Guerrieri said. "But I say, if I expect my kids to drink, they will drink." The elementary program is being tested this year, with psychotherapist Michele Rattigan accompanying Rydzewski to fifth-grade classrooms in the hope that her presence will make the class more effective. "DARE teaches facts and statistics," said Karen Hoisington, Sunrise program director. "We are hoping that instead of teaching facts in a book, we will challenge their assumptions, and teach them to think." In the fifth-grade classroom at Zane-North Elementary School the other day, there was a glimpse of how the class might be different under the new program. During the lesson, the students were asked if they would change themselves to fit into a group. The expected answer was no - they would be true to themselves. Most of the children answered as expected. But one girl raised her hand and said, "It depends." Rattigan asked her to explain. "I want to be on a basketball team," she said. "And I might have to practice harder and get better to make it." That launched a discussion about how not all peer pressure is bad, that often friends and teammates can inspire positive change and help one another through rough spots. Over the years, Rydzewski has taught the peer-pressure lesson to hundreds of youngsters. He has taught the different kinds of peer pressure: friendly, teasing, direct. He has taught all different kinds of ways to resist the pressure of peers. But the idea that peers can also pressure friends to stay out of trouble, that peer pressure can be good, was not in the DARE curriculum. "In four years," he said, "it never came up." - --- MAP posted-by: Terry F