The New D.A.R.E. Program

Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention

Inside the 21 st Century School House

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program, the pioneer prevention effort founded in Los Angeles in 1983, is going high-tech, interactive, and decision-model-based. Gleaming with the latest in prevention science and teaching techniques, D.A.R.E. is reinventing itself as part of a major national research study that promises to help teachers and administrators cope with ever-evolving federal prevention program requirements and the thorny issues of school violence, budget cuts, and terrorism.

Gone is the old-style approach to prevention in which an officer stands behind a podium and lectures students in straight rows. New D.A.R.E. officers are trained as "coaches" to support kids who are using research-based refusal strategies in high-stakes peer-pressure environments. New D.A.R.E. students of 2004 are getting to see for themselves -- via stunning brain imagery -- tangible proof of how substances diminish mental activity, emotions, coordination and movement. Mock courtroom exercises are bringing home the social and legal consequences of drug use and violence.

                                  Charlie Parsons

                              D.A.R.E. America President and Chief Executive Officer

"New D.A.R.E. is setting the gold standard for the future," says Charlie Parsons, President and Chief Executive Director of D.A.R.E. America, "Prevention inside the 21 st century school house will need to be effective, diverse, accountable, and mean more things to more people, particularly with the safety issues that have emerged since Columbine and terrorist alerts. That's one reason why every New D.A.R.E. officer is also being trained as a certified School Resource Officer (SRO)."

With research showing that adolescents, in particular, need to be involved in the learning process, experts shifted the focus in the new D.A.R.E. curriculum to include officer-facilitated work, discussion groups, and role-playing sessions. New D.A.R.E. is about giving kids the skills and information they need to make good life choices.

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