Pubdate: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 Source: Times-Picayune, The (LA) Copyright: 2003 The Times-Picayune Contact: http://www.nola.com/t-p/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/848 BREAKING TAMMANY'S TABOO St. Tammany school officials have agreed to allow students to be surveyed about drug and alcohol use in the fall in response to a federal mandate, and that's a step forward for a school district that shot down the idea in the past. But the St. Tammany sixth-, eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders won't fill out the same state-commissioned survey that students in every other school district in Louisiana will answer. Instead, they'll be taking another survey, Smart Track, which School Board members deemed less intrusive. That's unfortunate. The state's Department of Health and Hospitals Office of Addictive Disorders uses the biennial drug survey data to help design prevention programs. Because St. Tammany's survey will be different, its data won't be as useful in that effort. Allen Ward, program manager for the Office of Addictive Disorders, said that the Smart Track test doesn't provide as much information about the age of first use or about underlying causes of substance abuse. Those are shortcomings that could hamper St. Tammany officials in finding effective prevention strategies. Questions in the Smart Track survey are not as detailed as those in the state-sponsored Communities That Care Youth Survey. The state survey, for example, asks students to check categories for frequency of use for alcohol and various drugs that range from never and one to two times on the low end to more than 40 on the high end. The Smart Track questionnaire provides more generalized categories such as "never," "seldom," "sometimes," "frequently" and "often." But the fuzzier nature of the Smart Track poll is what appealed to St. Tammany officials. Some School Board members have suggested that the state survey could leave students with the impression that heavy drug use is normal. It's difficult to see the difference between suggesting that drugs might be used "often" or that they might be used 40 times. Both are clearly an extreme. Moreover, the fear that such questions will be perceived as an endorsement just isn't reasonable. In 2000, the last time the St. Tammany School Board rejected the state test, board members objected to questions dealing with students' family life and domestic violence. The Smart Track test was deemed more acceptable because it didn't probe those issues as deeply. But home environment is certainly a valid area to explore in trying to understand why young people turn to substance abuse. It's also an area that should be of concern to school officials and state health officials. The School Board's unwillingness to participate in past surveys has meant that schools and parents haven't had reliable information on how widespread drug and alcohol use is among students. That kind of ignorance is dangerous, and it's distressing that it took the threat of a loss in federal money -- to the tune of $4 million -- to persuade the School Board to explore student drug and alcohol use. But perhaps the Smart Track test will help St. Tammany officials overcome their jitters and in another two years, they'll be ready to fall in line with the rest of the state. - --- MAP posted-by: Alex