Pubdate: Sat, 22 Sep 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Mary Pilon

MIDDLE SCHOOLS ADD A TEAM RULE: GET A DRUG TEST

MILFORD, Pa. - As a 12-year-old seventh grader, Glenn and Kathy 
Kiederer's older daughter wanted to play sports at Delaware Valley 
Middle School here. She also wanted to join the scrapbooking club.

One day she took home a permission slip. It said that to participate 
in the club or any school sport, she would have to consent to drug testing.

"They were asking a 12-year-old to pee in a cup," Kathy Kiederer 
said. "I have a problem with that. They're violating her right to 
privacy over scrapbooking? Sports?"

Olympic athletes must submit urine samples to prove they are not 
doping. The same is true for Tour de France cyclists, N.F.L. players, 
college athletes and even some high school athletes. Now, children in 
grades as low as middle school are being told that providing a urine 
sample is required to play sports or participate in extracurricular 
activities like drama and choir.

Such drug testing at the middle school level is confounding students 
and stirring objections from parents and proponents of civil liberties.

The Kiederers, whose two daughters are now in high school, are 
plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Delaware Valley School District, 
with the daughters identified only by their first initials, A. and M. 
The parents said that mandatory drug testing was unnecessary and that 
it infringed on their daughters' rights. (For privacy reasons, they 
asked that their daughters' first names not be published.)

A lawyer for the school district declined to comment, citing the 
pending litigation.

It is difficult to gauge how many middle schools conduct drug tests 
on students. States with middle schools that conduct drug testing 
include Florida, Alabama, Missouri, West Virginia, Arkansas, Ohio, 
New Jersey and Texas.

Some coaches, teachers and school administrators said drug-testing 
programs served as a deterrent for middle school students 
encountering drugs of all kinds, including steroids, marijuana and alcohol.

"We wanted to do it to create a general awareness of drug 
prevention," said Steve Klotz, assistant superintendent at Maryville 
School District in Missouri. "We're no different than any other 
community. We have kids who are making those decisions."

There are no known instances of a middle school student testing 
positive for performance-enhancing drugs like steroids or human 
growth hormone. The few positive results among middle school students 
have been attributed to marijuana, officials said, and even those 
cases are rare.

Maryville's drug-testing program, which includes most of its middle 
and high school students, begins this fall after officials spent 18 
months reviewing other programs in the state, Mr. Klotz said. In the 
fall of 2011, Mr. Klotz said, the school board conducted a survey of 
parents, and 72 percent said that a drug-testing program was 
necessary. The cost will be $5,000 to $7,000 a year and will come 
from the school's general operating budget.

"Drug testing is a multibillion-dollar industry," said Dr. Linn 
Goldberg, head of the Division of Health Promotion and Sports 
Medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University. "They go to 
these schools and say it's great. But do the schools actually look at 
the data? Schools don't know what to do."

Drug testing for high school athletes, which has been around for 
years, was deemed constitutional in a 1995 United States Supreme 
Court ruling. Some districts have expanded their drug-testing 
programs in recent years to include middle school students.

In 2003, the Department of Education started a program that offered 
federal money for drug testing in grades 6 through 12, and the last 
of the grants will be closed out this fall. The program, following 
the outlines of the Supreme Court decision, allowed testing for 
students who participated in school activities, or whose parents 
chose to enroll them.

In the 2004-5 school year, an estimated 14 percent of public school 
districts conducted some form of random drug testing, according to a 
Department of Education report. But middle school testing is not 
thoroughly tracked by officials.

The nature of drug-testing programs at the middle school level varies 
by school district. In general, an outside testing company conducts 
the tests under contract with school authorities. Students are 
generally given little, if any, advance notice and are pulled away 
from class and asked to urinate in a cup - unsupervised, to comply 
with privacy laws.

Specimens are sent to a laboratory, and parents and students are 
notified of any positive result. Some schools require a second test 
to confirm a positive result; in others, parents may request a 
challenge to a result, sometimes for a fee. Results are generally not 
shared with law enforcement.

Punishment for a positive test can range from a warning to removal 
from a sports team or an activity.

"It starts early with kids," said Matthew Franz, who owns the drug 
testing company Sport Safe based in Columbus, Ohio, and is a member 
of the Student Drug-Testing Coalition, an organization of 
drug-testing proponents. "You want to get in there and plant these 
seeds of what's out there and do prevention early. The 11th and 12th 
graders, most of them have already made a choice. But the eighth 
graders, they're still making decisions, and it helps if you give 
them that deterrent."

But some experts doubt the effectiveness of such testing.

"There's little evidence these programs work," Dr. Goldberg said. 
"Drug testing has never been shown to have a deterrent effect."

In 2007, Dr. Goldberg published the results of a study of athletes at 
five high schools with drug testing and six schools that had deferred 
implementing a testing policy. He found that athletes from the two 
groups did not differ in their recent use of drugs or alcohol.

"I think you have to look at the reason for testing," Dr. Goldberg 
said. "With Olympic testing, it's to weed out the people who are 
cheating. If you're using drug testing to weed out a problem in kids, 
you need to get them in therapy. But it doesn't reduce whether or not 
kids use drugs."

Some coaches and school administrators, however, say the dearth of 
positive tests is an indication that testing is working effectively 
as a deterrent.

"We don't want to catch students," said Jerry Cecil, assistant 
superintendent of the Greenwood School District in Arkansas. "We want 
them not to be using. We don't consider this community to have a big problem."

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in 1995, some districts have been 
challenged in lower courts.

The American Civil Liberties Union won a settlement last year relying 
on California's stricter state privacy laws that prevented the 
schools from conducting random drug testing for students in 
nonathletic activities absent a reasonable ground for suspicion. The 
district, in Redding, Calif., discontinued its program as part of the 
settlement.

Not all parents oppose testing of middle school students. Daniel 
Alef, the father of an eighth-grade swimmer in Santa Barbara, Calif., 
said he would support testing at his son's school.

"Kids today grow up too quickly and have access to way more 
information," he said. "But in the end, I think it goes back to the parents."

In Pennsylvania, the Kiederers are waiting as their case, filed by 
the civil liberties union in the Court of Common Pleas of Pike 
County, works through the legal system.

Last year, they won an injunction preventing the district from 
enforcing its policy and allowing their daughters to participate in 
extracurricular activities.

"They're losing their rights every day and you ask yourself, what are 
we teaching the kids?" Glenn Kiederer said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom