An interview with William Modzeleski, director of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program at the U.S. Department of Education.

Modzeleski says that comprehensive school/community-based strategies are being adopted to prevent drug and alcohol abuse in schools, including programs that are steeped in research and have demonstrated an impact on changing student behavior. Modzeleski was interviewed by Jim Fuller.

Question: What strategies are being used to prevent the use of alcohol and drugs in our schools?

Modzeleski: The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program is the major program of the federal government designed to help schools prevent alcohol, drug abuse, and violence in schools. It's the only program that provides funds directly to the state education agency, and in turn to local school districts around the country.

About 97 percent of the school districts in the United States actually receive funds from the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program for drug prevention, violence prevention, and school disciplinary programs -- programs basically designed to create safe havens for learning and prevent alcohol and drug use among children.

Historically, schools have utilized these funds and other funds from the state government and local entities to develop programs such as DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) or "Here's Looking At You 2000" to provide children with information regarding alcohol and drugs.

More recently, however, the programs have evolved from being just providers of information to what we call social skills-building programs. These programs actually provide kids with the skills necessary to not only better understand the issues related to alcohol and drugs, but also the social skills necessary to prevent them from taking drugs or using drugs when other kids try to get them involved in alcohol and drug use.

But even more recently, I'd say that where we are now is that we're evolving. This has been an evolutionary process, and right now programs are looking at a much broader-based comprehensive strategy for drug and violence prevention. We clearly understand the very significant role for schools in issues related to drug abuse. But if we're going to be successful in our efforts to combat drug use in this country we need to get the family involved, we need to get the community involved, and we need to get the schools involved.

So our strategy has really been to develop what we call school/community-based strategies that look at this from a much more global perspective.

Q: The Department of Education for several decades has supported programs such as "Just Say No" or DARE, where police officers visit the schools to talk about drugs. Are these programs being replaced?

A: They're being replaced, for the most part. On July 1, 1998 we issued a rule called the Principles of Effectiveness, whereby we stated that all schools utilizing Safe and Drug-Free Schools funds really had to follow four principles:

• One, they had to do an assessment of the problems they were facing
  in their school;

• Two, they had to, with the help of students and the community, set measurable goals and objectives;

• Three, they had to use research-based programs, and programs that we knew had some measurable results or effectiveness in reducing alcohol and drug abuse; and

• Four, they needed to conduct evaluations.

Schools are beginning to recognize that and are beginning to back away from some of the more simplistic programs that were very well intended, and I think served their need years ago. But at this point in time, I think we've learned a lot from research and we're moving towards the implementation of programs that are steeped in research, and have been demonstrated to have an impact and effect on changing behaviors and reducing alcohol and drug abuse.

Q: What is the current state of drug and alcohol use in our schools?

A: First of all alcohol is by far the most widely used substance among kids. Its use has gone up and down, but right now it's being used at a very unacceptably high level. As for drug use, marijuana is by far the most popular drug among kids. However, overall illicit drug use over the past year has shown a slight decrease among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. But this slight decrease was preceded by five years of steady increases, which were preceded by about a decade of steady decreases. So this is a cyclical issue in which we've seen increases followed by decreases.

What we also know is that if we can change the behavior, the attitudes of kids regarding alcohol and drugs, after about a year, we see that drug use actually goes down. So we're buoyed by the fact that as we look at the attitudes of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in regards to illicit drugs, we firmly believe that this one-year decrease in drug use last year will continue for a couple more years.

I think there are other actions and activities, such as the media campaign that the Office of National Drug Control Policy is undertaking, which will help foster and reinforce positive attitudes, rather than negative attitudes that can lead to further use of alcohol and drugs.

Actually, I don't think alcohol and drug use is a serious problem in our schools. I think that we've done a very good job of curtailing it in the schools. Every school in this country has policies against illicit drug use, against alcohol use, against the possession, use, sale, transfer, distribution, purchase, storage of illicit drugs and/or alcohol. So clearly, on the policy front, we're in the right place. Every school has banned it.

Secondly, while we do know that drugs and alcohol come onto campuses, I think that we've done a great job in getting teachers and administrators to clearly recognize the fact that there's no place for alcohol and drugs on campuses. They shouldn't be accepted. They shouldn't be tolerated there. We have a significant number of schools developing zero tolerance policies for alcohol and drugs in schools.

We feel that teachers are becoming more attuned to these issues, more aware of the relationship between alcohol use and education, teaching, and learning. That's an important point. I think that, from the education perspective, we clearly understand that kids who use illicit drugs or engage in the use of alcohol cannot do their best as students, and as we move towards creating higher standards for learning, as we move towards really improving our educational system to ensure that all types of students meet the high standards set by states, there's no room for alcohol and drug use.

So on the school front, I think we're doing a good job. There's always room for improvement. I think that we have to continually strive to ensure that kids get the message that alcohol and drugs are not to be tolerated.

Now, alcohol and drug use in schools, that's one issue. The broader issue is, are we doing a good job in preventing overall alcohol and drug use? And I think that that story is mixed. We have a large school system in this country. We have 53 million students going to school, and I don't think that any of us are going to sit here and say that all 53 million are marching off to school every day without abusing alcohol or drugs. We have seen some declines this past year. We hope that those declines continue for the next couple of years. We think we're on the right road. We think, with more comprehensive programs, with linking schools up with communities, linking all of that with a national campaign that gets parents and students to recognize that this type of behavior is unacceptable, that we will continue down the right road.

Q: You've mentioned stronger school policies and better teacher-student relationships. What do you think is really the key to preventing drug and alcohol use among students?

A: I think that prevention starts very early on. I think that we can't wait until high school or junior high school or even fifth or sixth grade for prevention. I think that the best way to prevent alcohol and drug abuse is to start in the family, before kids come to school. Mothers and fathers need to talk with their children about not only alcohol and drug use but what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable behavior, what is unacceptable behavior. This goes for a variety of behaviors, including but not limited to alcohol and drug abuse. The best prevention is setting out rules and standards very early on.

I think that the school's role is to reinforce that. I don't think schools can serve as surrogates or substitutes for parents. The parents have to really start that, and then it's reinforced by the community, reinforced by the school. If that message is not clearly coming from home, it's very difficult for teachers to turn around what is said or done in the home.

There are things that schools can do. I think that the Secretary of Education often talks about the issue of connectiveness. That's an important issue -- connectiveness meaning that what we need to do is a better job of connecting youth to adults -- whether it's a mentoring program; or whether it's smaller class sizes where teachers clearly recognize everybody in their classroom; or whether it's smaller schools where nobody falls through the cracks, and kids have opportunities to engage in sports, the arts, and the academic side of things; or whether it's through teachers who are professionally trained to recognize warning signs of kids getting into trouble, of kids using alcohol and drugs, and to relate to that.

Prevention is not merely putting a program in a school for one hour a week for 15 or 20 weeks and saying, "Now we've done our prevention." Prevention is a lifestyle, prevention is a process, prevention is a strategy, prevention has to start early and has to run through everything we do throughout the school year. If we don't do it that way, we're never going to be successful.

Q: Are school programs trying to get this message across to parents -- about being more connected with their kids?

A: As I said, parental involvement is critical, and the entire Department of Education is looking at ways to get parents more connected to the lives of their kids. President Clinton and the First Lady have talked about this repeatedly.

And the issue here is not only for parents to be spending more time with their kids, but more quality time. There's a beautiful television ad on drug prevention produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. You have a young boy eating his cereal at the kitchen table, and the father sitting there reading a newspaper, and for 45 seconds there's absolutely no conversation. And the ad says: "You've lost an opportunity to talk about this issue." And I think that says it all. That dad is spending time with that boy. But we need to look at the quality of the time parents are spending with their children.

And it's not only parents. We also have to look at other social institutions that have been created in our society to help. Such as churches, athletic teams, and youth-serving organizations, like boys and girls clubs -- all of these are part of the fabric. I don't want to say that this is just about parents or this is just about schools. This is about the community in which parents and schools play a key role. There are a lot of other groups and organizations out there that really need to get engaged in the lives of families, in the lives of kids, and the more we can get that engagement, I think the better off we're going to be.

Q: Do you think it's going to be possible to give increased individual attention to students when some of our large high schools enroll as many as 5,000 students?

A: The Department of Education is not saying to take our large schools -- those with as many as 5,000 or 4,000 students -- and knock them down with a bulldozer. I think what we need to do is look at these schools that are already large schools, and work on creating schools within schools. How do we create mechanisms so we can transform these physically large schools into much smaller schools?

There are ways to do that, whether you do it through a grade structure or through schools within schools -- there are clearly ways in which you could create a feeling of being in a small, intimate school where nobody falls through the cracks, even in a facility that has a large number of kids.

Q: Are we spending enough money for these programs?

A: I would clearly say that we, collectively -- including the federal, state, and local governments, as well as community groups and organizations -- are probably not spending enough on the issue of prevention. We're not putting enough time and money and effort into it.

I think the second part of that question is that not only are we collectively not spending enough, but we're probably not always spending it on the right things.

So we have to look at how do we get more resources into prevention and early intervention, but we also need to look at making sure that what we spend the money on is of quality. It's sort of like buying an appliance. You don't want to buy an appliance and have it break down after a year. Let's buy the right one. Let's buy something of quality.

I think we have to say the same thing when we serve kids. It's not merely a program, but let's make sure the program works, and make sure the program is a quality program so that it is of some value to the community and to the child.

Q. Are you optimistic about being able to tackle the drug abuse problem in the future?

A: Very optimistic about the future. I think that we're learning more from research, and I think that we know more today than we knew five or 10 years ago; and I think there's more of a willingness on the part of communities to look at this as the complex problem that it is, and to work with the entire community to solve the problem rather than having merely one or two people in the school system looking at how to solve the problem.

Also, we have more and more school systems looking at this from a school/community perspective and saying this is more than just a curriculum issue. We have to do more than just put somebody in a school for an hour a week or whatever the case may be, and there is a willingness to basically attack this problem from a broad-based, comprehensive perspective.