monday curriculum “Violence Prevention Curriculum for Ado-
lescents” was evaluated by looking at suspension data
june 16 1997
morning
session
DEBORAH PROTHOW-STITH
V
iolence is preventable, Dr. Deborah Prothow-
Stith stressed in her address to the conference.
Her belief in this fact stems from her medical
background and her dismay that the modus operandi
at hospitals was to “stitch ‘em up and send ‘em out.”
“I had been trained to include prevention in my
thinking,” Prothow-Stith said. In such instances as
heart disease or lead poisoning, the medical profession
focused on prevention. “It struck me as so unusual
that we were stitching people up and sending them out
as if the violence was inevitable.” She remarked that
the public policy in the United States continues to re-
flect that feeling. “It (the policy) says the best we can
do is respond aggressively (to violence).”
What exactly is violence? The best definition of vi-
olence that Prothow-Stith had heard was offered by a
psychologist at a meeting. His definition was violence
equals “anything you wouldn’t want someone to do to
you.” Prothow-Stith prefers this definition because “it
captures the notion that it is the person receiving the
action or the behavior that is important – that person’s
interpretation of the behavior or action is important,”
she said.
One way that Prothow-Stith knows that violence is
preventable is through statistics. She explained that the
United States has the highest rate of homicides per
year; this rate is four times that of the next country
and 70 times that of the country with the lowest rate.
“If violence were not preventable, these numbers
would be the same across the world,” she explained.
She also pointed out that violence prevention pro-
grams are being evaluated and are showing some suc-
cess. The Center for Disease Control has 14 programs
that they are currently evaluating with “pretty rigor-
ous” scientific evaluations. “The first report came out
in September as baseline indicating that these pro-
grams were having some success and they are expect-
ing subsequent reports,” she reported. Her own
and showed a 70% decline in suspension rates in a
school using the curriculum for three years. “We are
having some individual successes in programs with
materials that deserve your attention and replication,”
she added.
Prothow-Stith concluded by discussing the true
leaders of the violence prevention movement. “I don’t
think the scientists, the educators, the substance abuse
professionals can lead this movement,” she stated. It’s
the family who has lost a member of their family to vi-
olence. “They cut through race, class, geography, ac-
cent, and body size, and polyester versus linen, and all
that junk that gets in the way of us working with each
other the way we need to,” she said. “They bring to
this a passion and a commitment that will spur us as
professionals on in our efforts to do this.”
“We get overwhelmed, we get tired and bogged
down, and we start asking little questions when we re-
ally need big picture answers and they (the leaders of
this movement) can be quite inspiring,” she added.
DAVID HAWKINS
D
avid Hawkins believes that in prevention it’s
important for prevention professionals to adopt
the adage from the medical field that says
“above all, do no harm.” “We must have a strategy
that will lead us to success and prevent us from doing
harm,” Hawkins said.
He pointed out that the history of prevention in
the area of substance abuse and delinquency, particu-
larly in the 1960s, does not show a very strong track
record. “What you often found then were feel good
programs for kids, or information programs for young
people about drugs,” Hawkins said. It was found that
these programs – the drug information programs, in
particular – were not associated with prevention and
reducing substance use in young people.
The programs that do work, according to
Hawkins, have taken a lesson from public health
where people who worked with other problems and
disorders developed a strategy now being called risk
and protective focus prevention. “It’s based on a sim-
ple premise and it should be the foundation for all our
work. If we want to prevent a problem before it hap-
pens we need to know what factors increase risk for
that problem and reduce those risk factors. And we
need to know what factors protect young people
against the development of health and behavior prob-
lems and increase those protective factors,” Hawkins
explained.
Twenty years of research has aided in the under-
standing of what the risk and protective factors are in
terms of preventing adolescent substance use and
abuse. Risk factors include:
! Factors within schools and communities – for ex-
ample, a school that does not ensure the academic
success of all children will contribute to risk for
substance abuse, as well as violence, unwanted
teen pregnancies, and school drop-outs;
! Factors within families – for example, parents who
fail to set clear expectations for their children or
fail to monitor their children in developmentally
appropriate ways will contribute to risk for sub-
stance abuse; and
! Factors within individuals and peer groups – for
example, the earlier a child initiates any of these
behaviors, the greater the risk that he or she will
go on to have problems across his or her lifetime
with violence or substance abuse.
To protect adolescents from substance abuse it is
important that they develop bonds with their schools,
their neighborhoods, and their communities. “The re-
search on protective factors has shown over and over
again that youngsters exposed to high levels of risk
who turn out to be healthy, productive members of
their communities share a similar experience. They de-
velop a bond with an adult or a group in their commu-
nity, their school, their church, or their neighborhood.
That bond – feeling close emotionally and feeling com-
mitted to positive lines of actions – turns out to pro-
vide the motivation to live according to standards of
healthy behavior,” Hawkins said.
Three conditions must be present in any social
group or any organization in order for adolescents to
develop a bond to that group, according to Hawkins.
They are:
1. There must be the opportunity for active involve-
ment with the group; the opportunity to be an ac-
tive contributor to the group.
2. Young people must be given/taught the skills to be
successful in the opportunities that are provided;
and
3. There must be a consistent system of recognition
or reinforcement for skillful performance.
Lastly, Hawkins discussed the importance for indi-
vidual communities to assess their levels of risk and
protective factors. Each community has a unique pro-
file of risk and protection. This profile must be as-
sessed and understood before implementing a strategy
that has been designed to address that very profile.
“If we are going to be successful in prevention, we
can’t focus on only one half of the equation. We can-
not focus simply on reducing risk and we cannot focus
simply on building assets or protection. We must do
both,” Hawkins said.
monday
june 16 1997
afternoon
session
DR. LLOYD JOHNSON
D
r. Lloyd Johnson of the Institute for Social Re-
search at the University of Michigan authors
one of the most widely quoted studies on ado-
lescent drug use, the Monitoring the Future study.
NIDA has funded this research project since 1975 and
because of that experience, Johnson reported to the
conference his knowledge of the trends and the causes
of these trends in adolescent drug use.
Johnson presented the recent statistics on teen drug
use which include an increase in cigarette smoking and
marijuana use. “Things have started to happen very
recently with the youngest children and I’m sorry to
say that one of these is a rather sharp increase in ciga-
rette smoking,” Johnson noted. He also reported that
heroin use has been increasing, but there has been a
rather gradual, but important, decline in alcohol con-
sumption.
Through the studies findings, one can begin to un-
derstand why these changes are happening. The num-
ber of kids who associate a great risk with being a
regular marijuana user has begun to fall off in recent
years, as well as kids’ disapproval in marijuana use.
“This is quite a change (from the 1980s) because they
don’t see it as dangerous and they’re less likely to dis-
approve of its use,” Johnson said. The important thing
to remember from these statistics is that “drug use
fluctuates a great deal over time and that means it is a
behavior that can be changed.”
An interesting factor in this current upswing in
drug use is that it is specific to adolescents. This is un-
usual because normally all age groups move in parallel
with each other. According to Johnson, there are dif-
ferences in growing up in America today from five to
ten years ago and these differences could be the reason
for this current trend. They are:
! There are fewer users nationwide. – There is less
opportunity for kids to learn informally what are
the consequences of using drugs.
! The belief that we won the war (on drugs); its over.
– After the decline in drug use in the 1980s, sectors
of society pulled back their efforts.
! Kids know about a whole smorgasbord of drugs
they can use and these drugs are available.
! There was a 93% drop in network news coverage
of drug-related issues from 1989-1993.
! A good portion of parents don’t talk to their chil-
dren about using drugs (according to their kids).
! Schools had less money for prevention programs.
In other words, “all forces began pulling back and
simultaneously one sector began singing the praises of
drugs – the music industry,” Johnson said. And that’s
where he sees the biggest implication for prevention.
“The entertainment industry must clean up its act. The
portrayals of cigarette smoking in movies has become
outrageous,” he adds. He also believes that schools
have to have a sustained effort and parents must con-
nect with each other to help begin a downward trend
in teen drug use.
DR. GILBERT BOTVIN
I
t is the dawn of a new day in prevention because
for the first time in history “we have the tools
available to us to prevent drug use,” Dr. Gilbert
Botvin, Director of the Cornell University for Preven-
tion Research announced.
“The statistics show that we can’t arrest our way
out of this problem, but we’ve proven that prevention
can work,” Botvin said, and now there is new recogni-
tion that prevention needs to be the foundation of our
national drug control policy. “We are at a watershed
in knowledge on prevention,” he added.
Twenty years of research has provided a fountain
of knowledge for understanding what works in pre-
vention and what doesn’t work. The traditional ap-
proaches – including information dissemination, scare
tactics, and affective education – show limited effec-
tiveness. “We know the causes of drug abuse and how
to prevent it and therefore there’s no excuse for devel-
oping prevention programs that are based largely on
ideology and intuition,” Botvin said. It’s time to move
to approaches based on sound science, he added.
These approaches must target known risk and pro-
tective factors and use general prevention principles
derived from research. Based on these principles, an ef-
fective prevention program should:
! Target middle high or junior high school students;
! Use a comprehensive approach;
! Teach drug-resistance skills, personal and social
skills, and enforce the anti-drug norm;
! Emphasize skills training teaching methods (most
effective are those that are interactive);
! Include 12 to 15 class sessions in year one and
have at least 2 years of booster sessions;
! Standardize the intervention with detailed lesson
plans and student materials;
! Emphasize quality control; and
! Be evaluated and refined periodically.
Botvin’s program, Life Skills Training (LST), fo-
cuses on comprehensive life skills by training students
in drug resistance skills, self management skills, and
general social skills. Using a variety of teaching tech-
niques, it can be taught by outside health professionals
or by teachers or peer leaders. Botvin recommends
using people who are indigenous to the school. And
Life Skills Training works. Evaluations indicate that
LST shows initial reductions of 40-75% lower levels
of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use.
“We’ve come a long way in the area of prevention.
Our initial challenge was to develop effective preven-
tion approaches that were promising, to test them rig-
orously, and to demonstrate that they work. We’ve
done that,” Botvin said.
Now, he says, these programs must be rolled out
and scaled up. People in communities must be con-
vinced to use these approaches. “If we do that, we can
wrestle this bear of a problem to the ground and we
can make progress in the area of drug abuse preven-
tion.”
MATHEA FALCO
M
athea Falco is delighted that prevention is hav-
ing its day in Washington. “It has been the
stepchild of the federal drug policy for at least
two decades,” Falco said, and now they are acknowl-
edging the primary importance of prevention.
 Even though most Americans strongly support pre-
vention, they aren’t sure what it is and they aren’t sure
that it really works, according to Falco. They need
proof. And therefore, “behavior change is the bottom
line. Without it you can’t really prove success.” This
proof is not just about political support. “It’s really
about giving people out there an opportunity to make
real choices in their communities about programs that
affect them and their families,” she said.
Research is necessary because it gives people the
information needed to choose appropriate programs.
That’s where Falco’s book, Making the Grade: A
Guide to School Drug Prevention Programs, comes in.
Making the Grade sought to show what are the ingre-
dients needed to make a program work. After exten-
sive assessment reviews of the content and the extent
of the coverage of the 47 most widely used drug pre-
vention programs, Falco discovered key elements of ef-
fective programs – the ingredients or principles of
successful programs.
She realizes hers is not the only list of principles of
effective prevention programs. “More and more are
springing up all over. It’s good because it may lead to
operating standards,” Falco said. “It’s just the kind of
clarity and focus we need in the field to be able to sus-
tain long-term political support and funding for pre-
vention.”
tuesday
june 17 1997
luncheon
session
JOSEPH CARTER, BOSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT
T
he city of Boston experienced a crisis in the area
of youth violence in the early 1990s, but by rec-
ognizing partnerships and collaborations that
focused on intervention, Joseph Carter, a superintend-
ent in the Boston Police Department, explained how
the community turned things around.
From 1989 to 1990, Boston saw a huge emergence
in youth homicide. In 1990, there were 152 youth
homicides and firearms were used in the majority of
these incidents. Kids were dying and people were
frightened, Carter reported. However, the official re-
sponse to this problem was slow. The belief that once
you acknowledge the problem of gangs, you’ll frighten
the community, prevailed. Denying the existence of
these gangs prevented the police from coming up with
a coherent plan. The only thing they could do was to
intensify investigations aimed at stepping up the pres-
sure on the gangs.
There were two flaws to this approach, Carter
said. The pressure was applied too broadly and the po-
lice were going alone. “Everyone was struggling for
answers, but in isolation,” Carter said. “Criminal jus-
tice and law enforcement agencies were not on the
same page. We were not in touch with the community
in a strategic way and we lacked a common mission.”
Finally the community came together to address
this crisis. It began with the development of an anti-
gang violence initiative unit in May 1990. The city and
police together recognized the problem of gangs as a
distinctive and serious issue. Then came the Safe
Neighborhoods initiative where police and the proba-
tion department collaborated and shared roles. From
this, Operation Nightlite was born. Components of
Operation Nightlite included tailored terms of proba-
tion and customized curfews for individuals, especially
those high-risk individuals. With Operation Nightlite,
innovations at the neighborhood level were getting re-
sults and parents liked it, Carter said. It was time for
the police to take the vision further.
“Same cops, same neighborhoods” became some-
thing of a slogan for the police department, as the de-
partment made the move to decentralize the drug
units. These experienced anti-drug units were at the
service of the community, as they kept the same cops
patrolling in the same neighborhoods. “It got us off
the merry-go-round of the next car to the next call by
priority.”
The police department’s operating principals were
now focused on partnership, problem-solving, and
prevention. In 1995, the police commissioner com-
mandeered a mobilization project to develop a road
map for community policing in Boston. Over 400 peo-
ple, including clergy, business leaders, labor officials,
elected officials, and the police, formed 16 teams. Ac-
cording to Carter, the commissioner’s charge to the
teams was: “I’m determined to shift the department to
a neighborhood orientation. Through the strategic
plan, you – the community, along with the police –
identify the priorities.”
“It was the most inclusive and thoughtful planning
we had ever done,” Carter reported. The result is that
in 1997 crime in Boston is down to a 30-year low;
there were 7,566 fewer victims of violent crime in the
last year; and not one child under the age of 17 has
been killed with a firearm in Boston since July 10,
1995.
Carter summarized the lessons the Boston Police
Department learned and emphasized they can be ap-
plied anywhere. “Our problems probably sound a lot
like yours. If our programs are different, the players
involved are certainly found in every community. We
have no magic.” Those lessons that Carter pointed out
were:
! You have to mobilize everyone who has an interest
in the problem.
! You have to be comprehensive in your approach
and smart in every way.
! To be credible on enforcement, you must be credi-
ble on prevention and vice versa.
! Kids, at every level of risk, can smell a phony.
And lastly, partnership is not only the right thing
to do, but it’s the way to do things right.
“Beyond the virtue of collaboration is its practical
necessity, no one can do it alone. Partnerships always
yield positive outcomes that we never could have pre-
dicted, let alone achieve in our individual camps. Only
by working together can we change for the better,”
Carter said.
tuesday
june 17 1997
afternoon
session
D.J. IDA
C
ollaboration is truly a gift when implementing
prevention programs in schools according to
D.J. Ida, Director of Child and Adolescent Serv-
ices for the Asian Pacific Center for Human Develop-
ment in Denver.
Research is critical when choosing a prevention
program, but implementing the program requires
many things before it can be successful. “Being able to
design programs and do evaluation is only half of the
battle. If you don’t have a solid structure, if you don’t
have all the pieces in place to be able to pull this to-
gether, you can have the best program in the world on
paper and that’s where it’s going to sit,” Ida said.
Ida works with the Asian population in Denver,
particularly with high-risk youth, where she sees
emerging problems. Many kids are involved with Viet
Pride gangs and they are fighting and “ditching
classes.” A key issue with these youth is that, in Col-
orado, adolescents can be tried as adults at the age of
14. The kids Ida works with generally are not natural-
ized citizens until they are 18, and so, “you must keep
them in the juvenile justice system. Otherwise when
you cross over into the department of corrections,
you’re guaranteeing deportation,” Ida explained.
Ida recognized the need for collaboration as she es-
tablished an after-school program for these high-risk
kids in Denver. A partnership between her center, the
school, the students, and parents had to be developed.
Her program’s evaluators were also involved at the
very beginning.
Including these key players can first occur by con-
ducting focus groups. With focus groups, one can
learn what others see as the problems, what are the
causes of those problems, and what are possible solu-
tions to the problems. As partnerships are forming, Ida
stresses the need to not only include those people you
want at the table, but those you do not want there, in-
cluding those who may want to sabotage the program.
She sees two reasons for this. “First it gives you the
opportunity to watch them and second, if you have
them at the drawing board with you, it is no longer a
turf battle.”
Other key pieces Ida found as reasons for success-
ful implementation were: having the program on-site,
working closely with the school’s principal, having
both academic support and curriculum-related activi-
ties dealing with substance abuse and use and violence,
and having an on-site bilingual parent advocate.
Lastly, she added how important the role of evalu-
ation is when implementing a program. “Because they
were there at the very beginning, it avoided the we ver-
sus they situation. And therefore, we were asking the
same questions.”
PATRICK HOWLEY
P
atrick Howley is a consultant to schools and
businesses working with the development of
collaborative teams and using the Myers-Briggs
type indicator to teach how to build self-esteem, listen-
ing skills, and interpersonal group dynamics.
 Working with the Yale School Development Cen-
ter, Howley implemented “Summoning the Village,” a
program designed to protect children from violence
and fear. This project works because it begins to pull
people together, Howley said; it included teams from
the police executive research forum, the community of
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina (which in-
cluded police, the school system, mental health practi-
tioners, and parents), and his center.
Summoning the Village is a program designed to
move from crisis intervention to prevention and from
a fragmented approach to a comprehensive and inte-
grated approach. The collaborative effort involving the
school teams, the mental health clinicians and the po-
lice provided the major components of the program.
Critical in this was the fellowships “where police
could meet with the clinicians and learn from the clini-
cians” and vice versa.
Including the mental health team provided insight
in many ways. Child development is divided into six
mental pathways: physical, language, psychological,
ethical, social, and cognitive. “It’s the whole child we
need to look at. If you just look at cognitive develop-
ment, our belief is we’re not going to address the needs
of children and eventually that will effect achievement
if there are problems in any of the other areas,” How-
ley said.
In implementing Summoning the Village, Howley
saw both successes and problems. The successes in-
cluded the development of cohesive relationships be-
tween the teams, extensive collaboration between the
teams, and teams learning from one another about
working with children. Police also began to be viewed
as friends and counselors, and therefore, students and
staff felt safer.
The training for the complex roles the teams had
to play was one of the problems Howley faced; it was
inadequate. There was too much to learn at first; peo-
ple needed time to build the skills for these roles. He
also found that low parent involvement was an obsta-
cle to the success of the program.
The coordination of several organizations and the
complex level of relationships were things “that the
project struggled with from the beginning.” And com-
munication is critical. “We’ll service children better
when we communicate what it is we’re doing in the
community,” Howley said.
wednesday
june 18 1997
morning
session
FEDERAL COORDINATION EFFORTS
AND RESOURCES FOR SCHOOLS
OFFICES FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME
The Offices for Victims of Crime is an agency
within the Justice Department and is administered
through the Crime Victims Fund, which gets its funds
from fines and penalty assessments leveled against fed-
eral criminals. Ninety percent of their budget goes to
the states to support state compensation programs as
well as victims assistance programs. One way the Of-
fices for Victims of Crime can help with prevention in
the schools is through its victims assistance programs.
According to Director Aileen Adams, there is a grow-
ing recognition of the need for school-based victim as-
sistance programs, not only to provide direct services
to victims of crime, but also to support prevention
programs, such as mentoring. Another educational de-
vice that this agency works with is the victim impact
panel, which helps kids understand and put a human
face on crime. The Offices for Victims of Crime also
has “Healing Arts, Healing Minds,” a multipurpose
curriculum for adolescent victims of violent crime that
can be used in middle and high school settings. Com-
munity crisis response is another area that this agency
is looking to expand to the schools. It is working
closely with the Department of Education to provide
trainings for schools so that they can develop the ca-
pacity to respond to crises.
OFFICE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE AND
DELINQUENCY PREVENTION (OJJDP)
The cooperative relationship that exists between
the OJJDP and the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Pro-
gram is the most natural of linkages, Deputy Adminis-
trator of the OJJDP John Wilson said, because both
agencies are concerned with the development of Amer-
ican children into healthy and law-abiding citizens.
Three important guides that OJJDP produced are Con-
flict Resolution Education, A Guide To Family Educa-
tional Rights, and the Youth Out Of The Mainstream
initiative. This agency is also doing a lot of work with
education in the anti-drug area, including school-based
gang prevention programs, a family strengthening pro-
gram, basic school safety, school-based mentoring pro-
gram, hate crime educational curriculum for middle
schools, as well as working on initiatives for kids with
learning disabilities.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
(HHS)
The Secretary’s Initiative on Youth Substance
Abuse and Prevention was created as a response to
goal number one of the National Drug Control Strat-
egy, which is to educate and enable American youth to
reject illegal drugs and use of alcohol and tobacco. Di-
rector of the Initiative, Bob Denniston, explained that
the primary goal of the initiative is to reverse the up-
ward trend and reduce past month use of marijuana
among 12-17 year olds by 25% by the year 2002. This
agency plans to achieve this goal through three com-
ponents: 1) a state incentive grant program, in which
85% of the funds are for community-based programs;
2) its five regional centers, which support state efforts
with technical assistance and training; and 3) by rais-
ing public awareness and to counter the pro-drug mes-
sage. Specific programs that have been launched by the
Initiative are Girl Power and the Reality Check cam-
paign. Other programs that are forthcoming are Get
Involved with Youth and Media Smarts.
OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY
(ONDCP)
ONDCP recently passed a 5-year budget, securing
its commitment to drug prevention as well as drug re-
duction. “What we really feel is that we have to create
a norm where drug use is not acceptable,” Ricia
McMahon, Senior Advisor to the Director for Demand
Reduction, said. It is important to have the funding
streams not only just be parallel but to interact and to
complement each other, McMahon said, and in that
vein, ONDCP is working to help organizations meld
at the state level. Current efforts from the ONDCP in-
clude working with pediatricians to focus on children
with at-risk behaviors and factors at even younger
ages than before; creating an alliance called Service
through Prevention which, among other things, adopts
a school and provides mentoring and after-school pro-
grams and helps DARE; and negotiating with the Pub-
lic Relations Society of America to agree to focus its
energy on media and public relations work and ask the
companies it works with to give no-drug messages in
the next three years.
PRESIDENT’S CRIME PREVENTION COUNCIL
The 1994 Crime Act is the foundation for the Pres-
ident’s Crime Prevention Council, which states that at
least one-sixteenth as much money in the bill be allo-
cated to prevention, as for enforcement and other as-
pects. It also was a way to create “one place where
these agencies and departments (involved with crime
prevention) could sit down at the table and talk about
and look for ways to work together,” Jean Nelson, di-
rector of the council, said. The most primary effort of
the agency is to assist with community-based organiza-
tions, getting the information these organizations need
to them, and to coordinate what the community and
the council can do together. The President’s Crime Pre-
vention Council has a comprehensive catalog of crime
prevention materials and also a 5-page brochure,
“Crime Prevention at Your Fingertips,” which answers
the most frequently-asked questions posed to it.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
COORDINATION EFFORTS
SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS
The School Improvement Program has a number
of different and diverse programs associated with it.
These programs cover three major areas that are essen-
tial to the work of drug and violence prevention in the
schools, according to Arthur Cole, Director of the pro-
gram. These areas are equity, professional develop-
ment, and technical assistance. Examples of the
programs include the Magnus School Assistance Pro-
gram and the Eisenhower Professional Development
Program. Cole would like to see prevention become
more central to these other programs and sees three
ways to strengthen the existing ones.
1. Get involved at the project design and develop-
ment stage.
2. Make sure that there are priorities associated with
prevention in these programs.
3. Coordinate the activities with professional devel-
opment.
CHARTER SCHOOLS PROGRAM
The number of home schoolers is growing by leaps
and bounds in this country and that number is peaking
right now. Both parents and teachers are leaving the
public school system. Why? “Parents, teachers and
others are looking for other options because they want
to be in environments that are safe, healthy and drug
free. People just have to have that. And they are look-
ing for any option, including taking their kids out of
school,” John Fiegel, director of the Charter Schools
Program said. The Charter Schools Program is a small
movement; there are only between 450 and 500 Char-
ter Schools nationwide. What makes this a unique sit-
uation is that a charter school is accountable for its
performance. There is a higher level of commitment
needed to operate a charter school. This is because the
charter schools are a contractual agreement with the
public authorities; if they fail, they are closed and
therefore, they are accountable. “This is a dynamic
that is important for children. They don’t see adults
passing the buck; they see adults accepting responsibil-
ity and the children accept responsibility themselves
because they are also part of the school governors,”
Fiegel said. He believes that the connection of empow-
erment and accountability is something other schools
need to investigate. “What you have is more of an
ownership of the school and you put yourself on the
line. They’re saying we can outperform the public
schools and if we don’t, then close us down,” Fiegel
added.
DIVISION OF SPECIAL EDUCATIONS PROGRAM
This agency is responsible for the implementation
of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA), which is a federal special education law that is
22 years old. There are two broad activities that en-
compass what the agency does. One is to enforce and
implement the federal special education law, which in-
cludes an early intervention childhood program, and
entitle children with disabilities to public education,
which includes individual educational planning and
parental due process. The second broad activity is to
fund research and demonstration projects. Early inter-
vention is essential in the work of the Division of Spe-
cial Education Program, director Thomas Hehir said.
“The earlier we intervene the less likely we are going
to have school-related problems.” Research has
proven to his agency that kids who have trouble with
early reading, if they do not get appropriate interven-
tions, are going to have problems later with behavior
in school. It has also learned that teachers know the
children in kindergarten, first, and second grades who
exhibit very different behavioral patterns. “Those kids
need to have behavioral interventions early on to
change those patterns of behavior,” Hehir added. The
reauthorization of IDEA provides for the following:
! Greater discretion given to the schools to remove
kids who bring weapons or drugs to schools to al-
ternative placements, but these students must con-
tinue receiving educational services.
! An affirmative requirement that there is a behav-
ioral intervention plan for all children who have
disabilities and exhibit behavioral problems.
! The same high standards of education for other
children will be required for children with disabili-
ties.
OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
The Office for Civil Rights enforces several laws
that prohibit discrimination in education. Title IX and
Title VI are the most prominent of these laws. “If a
school does not adequately address even the more sub-
tle forms of harassment, they can create a climate that
fosters the more violent forms in the school and the
greater society,” Howard Kallem, the agency’s director
said. Racial-based or sexual-based conduct becomes
harassment when it is sufficiently severe, pervasive, or
persistent so as to interfere with or limit the ability of
a student to participate in or benefit from the services,
activities, or privileges provided by a school. All too
often schools don’t pay attention to such harassment,
Kallem says. Schools should take action to prevent the
harassment from occurring in the first place. They
should let its employees and students know in age-ap-
propriate ways what conduct is acceptable and what
isn’t and what they should do if they experience or see
such conduct. “When it does occur, the school should
take swift action to stop it, to correct its effects, and
prevent it from occurring again,” the director added.
The Office for Civil Rights has developed guides for
schools on both racial and sexual harassment and their
staff is available for technical assistance in this matter.
The agency also conducts workshops on sexual and
racial harassment and can identify sources for curric-
ula in this area.
COMPENSATORY EDUCATION PROGRAMS
The Compensatory Education Programs are
funded through Title I with an $8 billion budget. It has
reached three-fourths of the elementary schools in
14,000 school districts and two-thirds of the country’s
high schools; “it is very pervasive,” says Mary Jean
LeTendre, the program’s director. Its programs focus
primarily on the children most at risk and, because of
its pervasiveness, it has “provided tremendous oppor-
tunity for intervention,” LeTendre noted. “We expect
now for the first time – we truly, honestly believe –
that the at-risk children can reach high standards.”
When the legislation was reauthorized in 1994, its
focus changed from fixing the child to fixing the
school. “If schools provide instruction where kids are
going to achieve in ways that they can achieve, we’re
going to have fewer and fewer of these children who
fall between the cracks,” the director added. Title I in
the past was a program that focused on supplemental
services like providing assistance with reading or
math. The emphasis is now on extending time. “In-
stead of pulling kids out, we are going to keep kids in
school. It’s a way of giving them extra learning, while
at the same time providing them a safe environment,”
LeTendre said. Two programs help in this area. One is
empowerment zones, where schools can receive match-
ing funds for extended time programs. The other is
schoolwide programs for schools that have a 50% or
above poverty level. This program gives the school the
opportunity to serve all the children, recognizing that
with this level of poverty, normally, only a few of the
children would be impacted.
OFFICE OF EDUCATION RESEARCH AND
IMPROVEMENT
The National Institute of Education of At-Risk
Students is part of the Office of Education Research
and Improvement. This agency has been conducting a
review on reaching Goal 6 of the National Educational
Goals, which is concerned with making all schools
safe, disciplined, and drug-free. Its study of the re-
search includes reviewing the academic focus of school
programs, seeing that firm and fair rules are consis-
tently enforced, and to see if there is a code of per-
sonal ethics – an ethic of caring – between school staff
and students. There is also research from its Southeast
Regional lab on reducing school violence which in-
cludes a review of building resiliency skills, prevention
strategies, and crisis management. Another recent re-
search paper was written on school-based crime pre-
vention programs. This includes a review of different
studies on various kinds of prevention programs. Some
of these programs had an individual focus, such as
mentoring; some were more school environment
change strategies, like organizational development or
effective fair and firm disciplinary standards.--