D.A.R.E. IN Illinois

AN IMPACT EVALUATION OF THE REVISED 1994 CORE CURRICULUM
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Prepared by: Illinois State Police Academy
Program Delivery Bureau
Linda H. Icing, Bureau Chief

This evaluation was supported by a grant from the Illinois State Police to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Points of view expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the funding agency. Dr. Dennis P. Rosenbaum of the University of Illinois at Chicago served as project director for this evaluation.

Introduction

D.A.R.E. is a seventeen week drug prevention curriculum targeted at fifth and sixth grade students and taught by specially trained law enforcement officers. The curriculum introduces the negative impact drugs have upon a person and offers students a basis to make informed decisions regarding their own non-drug use. The curriculum offers life skills which students will need to be productive citizens within society. D.A.R.E. is a cooperative effort between law enforcement agencies, educators, students, parents and the local community. The D.A.R.E. program was created in 1983 through collaborative efforts between the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Unified School District. Through this union the D.A.R.E. program has become the largest and most popular drug prevention curriculum introduced in the world. D.A.R.E. reaches more than 80 percent of all school districts nationwide, and an estimated 18,000 law enforcement officers have received training in the D.A.R.E. curriculum.

The D.A.R.E. program was first presented in Illinois schools in 1987 and to date has reached an estimated 824,575 Illinois students. A revised core curriculum was introduced during the 1994 fall school semester. The revisions to the core curriculum were derived from past research and previous evaluations. These findings identified short falls in the curriculum regarding the shifting philosophy in education. With the refocusing of the education philosophy from a lecture oriented approach to a cooperative learning and a more hands on approach, the D.A.R.E. program adapted the same principles into its curriculum. The revisions are geared to bolster students' interpersonal and social skills, while strengthening drug refusal skills or the ability to say "no".

Methodology

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the revisions in the curriculum, the Illinois State Police in conjunction with the University of Illinois at Chicago, Center for Research in Law and Justice, conducted one of the first independent evaluations of the revised core curriculum. The primary objective of this research was to evaluate the D.A.R.E. revised core curriculum's short term effects on Illinois students' attitudes, beliefs and behaviors with regards to illegal drugs, alcohol tobacco use and violence. The methodology used to procure these findings was derived from a random sampling of northern Illinois schools, and included a sample design with racial balances, environmental influences and family income. Each school was placed either in the control group or experimental group. The participants who took part in this evaluative survey were given a 44-question pre-test to measure attitudes and behaviors regarding alcohol, tobacco, law enforcement, violence and family. The same 44-point questionnaire was given as a post-test. The pre-test and the post-test were given to both the control and experimental groups as close to the same time as logistically possible.

Design

A random sample of 40 schools in the Northern portion of Illinois was selected for the research design. The environmental settings of the chosen schools included 14 urban, 16 suburban and 10 rural schools. Careful consideration was taken to keep the following variables consistent: metropolitan status, racial composition and family income. The schools within this sample were either assigned to the experimental group or the control group. The experimental group was comprised of schools scheduled to receive the revised D.A.R.E. curriculum in the fall of 1994, and the control group was to receive D.A.R.E. in the spring of 1995. Each school was matched with a partner school which encompassed the same variable makeup. Due to an internal validity screening process at the conclusion of the evaluation period, the random sample group was comprised of 24 schools and included 1,309 students. The final panel of students included one-third African American, one-third Hispanic, 21 percent White and the remaining 10 percent to other ethnic groups; approximately 50 percent were females. The majority of the sample group was made up of fifth grade students. Approximately 6 out of 10 students resided in urban areas, 23 percent in suburban areas and the remaining 16 percent in rural areas. The experimental group encompassed 46 percent of the sample population and the control group contained the remaining 54 percent.

Research Findings

The results of the evaluative research on the short term effects of non-drug use and exposure to the revised D.A.R.E. core curriculum are consistent with the stated hypothesis. Exposure to the D.A.R.E. program did have significant impact on students short term use of drugs. The test measures indicated many of the attitudes and beliefs regarding drug use were changed. The following results were statistically significant when test measures were compared between the experimental and control groups.