A Critique of the Dare Program
A Critique of the DARE Program The DARE drug prevention program takes ranked officers into schools and has sessions with the kids or teens about drug prevention . DARE has been around since 1983 and started in Los Angeles (Lohman, 2010, par. 2). This program was designed at first to help students be aware of illegal drugs and to resist peer pressure. Now, DARE has expanded to not only its original purpose, but also to help awareness about abuse, online safety, and gangs (par. 2). DARE has since then expanded to many states including Florida. DARE requires the Police Departments of each town to fund and participate in the program (Lohman, 2010). One critique of the program is its financial requirements. Each police department that has a DARE program is trained and has to fund themselves either by local or private funds (par. 4). The program itself is 17 weeks and has 45-60 minute sessions taught be police officers or other qualified teachers (par. 17). The officers are paid through state funding as well. Funding for these programs is not cheap and requires a lot of support from multiple sources. For this reason and many others states are abandoning these DARE programs from their schools (Lohman, 2010). The states still provide funding for these if they seem important to them. According to the Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA), the DARE program can continue to be funded, but cities applying for federal grants (par. 6). Another reason some schools have abandoned the program is its effectiveness. Its effectiveness has been highly debated (par. 7). No one questions that teens must be aware of troubles and consequences of drugs and other issues, but there are questions to the program’s effectiveness. Some positive critiques of the program different evaluations and studies on the program showing that fifth and sixth graders were less likely to smoke than children who did not participate in DARE (par. 24). Also, they found that probation officers found it to be
References: Lohman, J. (2010) Drug abuse resistance education (DARE) program. OLR Research Report. Retrieved from http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/rpt/2010-R-0468.htm