Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Principals and administrators rely heavily on this kind of theory when talking about the success of their programs, perhaps because they have nothing else to rely on. No major studies have managed to gauge the effect of these programs on drug use. (One pilot study in Oregon has claimed that student athlete drug use is reduced 25 percent by random testing, but the study is only partially complete.)
Even at Rushville -- the only school in Indiana that continued testing students while the Northwestern case was in the courts -- six years of drug testing have had no quantifiable impact on student drug use. "The numbers have gone nowhere, if the truth be known," says Fred Smith, who tracks the program and student drug use surveys for the local Drug Free Schools program. Instead, he believes that the program is successful because he hears, word of mouth, that there are fewer parties. Of course, he says, "Here in Rush County, drug use wasn't rampant anyway" (a fact that causes some to question why drug testing was implemented in the first place).
Talk to the students at these schools, however, and you'll hear anecdotes explaining why there hasn't been a measurable change: Many kids are still doing drugs, but have become very wily about not getting caught. As the local teenage boys in Rushville report, kids at Rushville High have gotten quite devious in their drug taking, what with the potions and mixes. For example, the kids say that Rushville students are well aware that the drug testing trailer pulls up every month, and they time their drug binges accordingly: The day after the truck comes is apparently a popular time to smoke dope. For weekend binges, the students pick drugs that won't linger in their systems until Monday, such as abundant quantities of alcohol.
This is exactly what has happened at Northwestern, say students there. "When they instituted drug testing at Northwestern, marijuana went out the door. It became alcohol, because it gets out of your system faster," Reena Linke reports. "People get wasted all the time, even during the week."
Under these circumstances, drug tests are little more than an expensive means of finding out if students are smoking cigarettes or pot, but very little else. Every other drug that kids might be experimenting with on the weekends -- including the most dangerous drugs, like heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy -- will be out of their systems by Monday.
Opponents of testing also point out that by testing only the students who are in extracurricular activities or sports, the school fails to challenge kids who are most likely to be experimenting with drugs. Students who participate in wholesome extracurriculars like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes or the Future Homemakers of America are the ones who are being singled out for testing, even though drug use is often more common among the kids who loiter in the parking lots, don't sign up for extracurricular activities, don't go to the prom and thus don't get tested.
"People who don't have anything to do are the ones who do the drugs; it's not the ones out at sports," notes Northwestern senior Jason Kirton. In fact, the fear of drug testing could easily deter troubled students from joining the extracurricular activities -- yearbook, sports, band -- that might direct them away from drugs and toward more rewarding pastimes.
Meanwhile, say students, drug testing makes a mockery of drug education. Instead of putting money into programs that might teach kids long-term lessons about the dangers of drugs, schools are relying on expensive drug testing programs that merely teach students that they need to pass certain tests at certain times.
As Kirton puts it, "Instead of giving them excuses not to do drugs, why don't you give them reasons not to do drugs? What about all the other things kids are faced with? Are you going to give them a test they have to pass for that, instead of a reason to say no?"
Even Ed Lyskowinski, the superintendent of Rush County Schools, a genial man who wears an American flag pin and a bottle-brush haircut, agrees that drug testing is not really teaching kids why they shouldn't do drugs. But there's only so much schools can do, he says. "I'm not sure drug testing will address the root reasons kids do drugs," he says. "We're addressing a symptom. We're mirrors of society, and these are societal problems, and schools are only one of many ways to address societal problems."
There are teens at Rushville, such as soccer-playing senior Jamie Winters, who say that the testing has chilled the impulse to try drugs and given her an excuse to deny peer pressure. "People say, 'Come on, it's no big deal,'" she explains. "We say, 'Yeah it is. There's too much riding for us to do that.' I think it cuts down drug use maybe 50 percent, people who cut down because they are afraid their parents might find out."
But Winters and her friends -- clean-cut and academically responsible cheerleaders and athletes -- are probably the kids who weren't going to be running out to toke up every weekend anyway. A different group of boys from the school, all of whom were eager to talk about how commonplace drug use is, laughed when asked if the program had any impact on their drug use.
If anything, the programs seem to give defiant teens even more motivation to thumb their noses at authority. Kirton, an ardently Mormon 19-year-old with the boyish countenance of a model out of Abercrombie & Fitch, reports: "If kids want to do drugs, they'll do it anyway. The only impact testing has had is to make students mad and angry and competitive with the school, to try to get away with things without them knowing. They make destructive choices about drugs because they think this is a way to get back at the school: 'They think they know me, but they don't!'"
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