Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) is one of the most popular prevention strategies utilized to educate children about the impact of drug and alcohol abuse. According to Dr. Herb Kleber, chairman of D.A.R.E. America’s Scientific Advisory Board, D.A.R.E. currently reaches twenty-six million children a year in 75% of all school districts (D.A.R.E. 2005). It has also been implemented in more than fifty foreign countries.
The underlying philosophy of D.A.R.E. is that exposure to information regarding the impact of drug and alcohol abuse coupled with skills training in areas such as self-esteem and decision making during the formative years will significantly reduce the likelihood that a child will experiment with and possibly abuse drugs and alcohol. D.A.R.E. seeks to improve the lives of children through the cooperative efforts of law enforcement, schools, parents, and the community. It has thrived, in large part, due to generous donations from the business community, private foundations, and government (D.A.R.E. 2005). Corporate sponsors include General Mills, Polaroid, Sam’s Club, and Warner Brothers. Private foundations that contribute to D.A.R.E. include the Horn Foundation, the American Express Philanthrophic Program, and the Brener Family Foundation.
The U.S. Departments of Defense, Justice, and State are among government agencies that have provided funding.
Origins of D.A.R.E.
D.A.R.E. was the result of the dedication of a parent whose child struggled with drug addiction. Daryl Gates, better known as the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (1979-1992), was frustrated by the prevailing wisdom toward the problems associated with drug abuse. Gates’ frustration led him to approach the Los Angeles County School Board for support (Gates and Shaw 1992). The board agreed and Gates instituted the first D.A.R.E. program in 1983 in fifth grade classes within the Los Angeles County School District. The combination of Gates’ motivation and a leap of faith by the board transformed an idea of a concerned parent into a national program. Less than a decade later, the D.A.R.E. program was operational in all fifty states (U.S. House of Representatives 1990; Wysong, Aniskie-wicz, and Wright 1994; Rosenbaum et al. 1994; Harmon 1993).
The D.A.R.E. Curriculum
The traditional D.A.R.E. program involves the use of uniformed law enforcement officers within the public schools to provide instruction to middle school students. The curriculum was developed by Dr. Ruth Rich, a curriculum specialist with the Los Angeles Unified School District (Lundman 2001; Harmon 1993). The foundation for the original D.A.R.E. curriculum was Project SMART (Self-Management and Resistance Training), which was designed by researchers at the University of Southern California (Lundman 2001; Harmon 1993) to instruct middle school students regarding resistance to drugs and as such served as an excellent model from which to develop the D.A.R.E. curriculum. Moreover, the programs are philosophically similar in their belief that children can be taught the necessary skills that will enable them to resist drugs and alcohol.
In essence, D.A.R.E. is an instructional program designed to teach students the skills necessary to resist the lure of drugs, alcohol, and violence. As such, D.A.R.E. is quick to distinguish itself from other programs that use scare tactics to convey their message. Moreover, while uniformed officers provide D.A.R.E. instruction, officers are not in the classroom to perform law enforcement-related functions. For example, officers do not elicit information from students regarding family or friends who may be involved with drugs or other criminal activity. In addition, the D.A.R.E. curriculum does not include specific information regarding the mechanics of drug use.
The traditional D.A.R.E. curriculum is delivered over a seventeen-week period during the academic year (Lundman 2001; Rosenbaum and Hanson 1998/ 2003). Students receive instruction for fifty-minute periods once per week by uniformed law enforcement officers. Officers are required to undergo intensive training prior to certification as a D.A.R.E. instructor. Training is intended to provide the officers with a foundational understanding of the D.A.R.E. program, skills necessary to relate to children in the classroom environment, and basic educational strategies. The traditional D.A.R.E. curriculum includes topics such as resistance techniques, the consequences of drug abuse, stress management, self-esteem enhancement, role modeling, assertiveness, and personal safety (D.A.R.E. 2005; Lundman 2001; Rosenbaum and Hanson 1998/2003).
While the traditional D.A.R.E. program has been received well, ongoing evaluation of program effectiveness has led to curriculum modifications. Such actions demonstrate the willingness of D.A.R.E. to continually evaluate and modify its program in order to best meet the needs of the children who participate. The new D.A.R.E. program is designed to address not only substance abuse but violence prevention as well. According to D.A.R.E., the new program is designed to assist the educational system with ”ever-evolving federal prevention program requirements and the thorny issues of school violence, budget cuts, and terrorism” (D.A.R.E. 2005). In addition to the inclusion of violence prevention and terrorism, the modern curriculum minimizes the use of traditional lecture-based instruction and emphasizes the use of group exercises such as role playing and group discussions. The modern reliance on group techniques is believed to enhance the ability of children to develop skills that facilitate positive social interaction, coordination, and critical thinking skills (D.A.R.E. 2005).
The role of law enforcement officers is also modified in the new D.A.R.E. program. Traditional D.A.R.E. programs utilized officers in teacher-mentor roles, whereas officers are now trained to function as coaches for the children in the program. Officer coaches are trained to assist children in the development of skills using ”refusal strategies in high-stakes peer-pressure environments” (D.A.R.E. 2005). In addition, modern D.A.R.E. officers are also certified as School Resource Officers.
Evaluation and Results
Despite generous funding and continued development of the D.A.R.E. curriculum, researchers and policy analysts continue to debate the effectiveness of D.A.R.E. and other drug prevention programs. The ongoing debate is fueled by rising rates of drug abuse among adolescents and young adults. As such, the question most policy makers and parents want answered is whether drug prevention programs work.
Moreover, with the passage of the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act (1986) and the more recent Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act (SDFSCA), Congress is also concerned with the effectiveness of school-based drug and violence prevention.
There have been numerous studies designed to evaluate the effectiveness of drug abuse prevention programs. Due to its widespread popularity, D.A.R.E. receives much of the critical attention. Interestingly, despite its popularity, many evaluation efforts have questioned the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. program (Dukes, Stein, and Ullman 1997; Wysong, Aniskiewicz, and Wright 1994; Rosen-baum et al. 1994; Becker, Agopian, and Yeh 1992).
However, researchers have noted the methodological flaws present in many of the evaluations. Such flaws diminish the scientific rigor of the designs and therefore potentially undermine the results. For example, Rosenbaum and Hanson (1998/ 2003) suggest that most of the prior evaluations are ”. . . of limited scientific value because of their weak research designs, poor sampling and data collection procedures, inadequate measurement and analysis problems.” They also note the failure of prior research to evaluate the impact of school-level effects on youth who are exposed to drug prevention programs. Rather, previous studies tend to limit their analysis to individual-level variables that may ”lead to overly liberal estimates of program effects.”
In response to the identified flaws that plagued prior evaluation efforts and with a desire to obtain valid information regarding the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. curriculum, Rosenbaum and Hanson (1998/ 2003) designed a six-year multilevel analysis of D.A.R.E. programs in Illinois. In an effort to remedy many of the methodological issues present in prior evaluations, the analysts utilized a randomized field experiment with one pretest and multiple posttests. Eighteen pairs of elementary schools (rural, urban, and suburban) were included in the sample. Each school was matched with a similar counterpart (in terms of type of school, ethnic composition, number of students with English proficiency, and number of students in low income families) to form the pair. Schools were assigned either to a control group that did not provide the D.A.R.E. program or to an experimental group that did.
The primary means through which data were collected was the administration of a survey instrument to students. Surveys were administered to participants over a six-year period and thus allowed the analysts to perform a longitudinal evaluation. The survey instrument specifically included items designed to assess the drug use behaviors of students, attitudes toward the use of specific drugs, onset of alcohol use, perceived benefits and costs of using drugs, self-esteem, attitudes toward police, peer resistance skills, and other measures.
Like other studies, the Rosenbaum and Hanson evaluation did not find that exposure to D.A.R.E. instruction resulted in long-term drug use prevention. However, the study revealed that the primary effects of D.A.R.E. were realized in the two-year period following participation in the program. As such, additional drug prevention programming in subsequent school years may enhance the long-term effects of the initial training. In addition, the authors found that D.A.R.E. had the most significant impact on urban as compared to suburban children. The authors suggest that this difference may be attributed to the amount of time that D.A.R.E. officers spent on school campuses. The authors suggested that the officers spent considerably more time on campus in urban schools, which in turn provided children more opportunity to bond with and relate to the officers.
The Future of D.A.R.E.
Despite the ongoing debate regarding the long-term effects of D.A.R.E., its future looks bright. D.A.R.E. continues to enjoy widespread community and parental support and as such has not declined in number or strength. Moreover, with the modification of the curriculum, continuing evaluation is needed.
