U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

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SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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MEETING

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TUESDAY,

AUGUST 22, 2006

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The above-entitled matter convened at 8:30 a.m. in the Barnard
Auditorium, 400 Maryland Avenue, Southwest, Washington, D.C., David
Long, Chair, presiding.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:

DAVID LONG Chair

KIM DUDE Member

MONTEAN JACKSON Member

RUSSELL JONES Member

SHEPPARD KELLAM Member

TOMMY LEDBETTER Member

SETH NORMAN Member

MICHAEL PIMENTEL Member

DEBORAH PRICE Member

DENNIS ROMERO Member

BELINDA SIMS Member

MARY ANN SOLBERG Member

HOPE TAFT Member

HOWELL WECHSLER Member

MEMBER REPRESENTATIVES:

DONNI LeBOEUF Representing J. Robert Flores, Department of Justice

MEMBERS UNABLE TO ATTEND:

FREDERICK ELLIS

RALPH HINGSON

OFFICE OF SAFE AND DRUG FREE SCHOOLS:

CATHERINE DAVIS Designated Federal Officer

WILLIAM MODZELESKI

C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Call to Order 4

Opening Statement 6

Deborah Price

Public Comments 31

Discussion by Advisory Committee Members 37

Closing Comments 133

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

8:39 a.m.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Folks, if we could come on in, we will go ahead and get
started. The others will be here shortly, but we are going to go ahead
and get started.

First of all, I would remind you, if you will take a look at the
schedule for the day, this is a rough outline, especially keeping in
mind the time. Actually, that is a little off. The breakfast actually
went off from 8:00 to 8:40. So there is a misprint up there.

Then, just as we are doing now, we are getting started. Public comment
will be from 8:40 to 9:15, no longer than that. Then discussion for an
hour, 9:15-10:15, by the Advisory Committee, break, then more
discussions and closing, and with adjournment no later than 11:30.

I have already had two or three of you remind me that you have flights
to catch at times that will mean that you will be moving rather quickly
as soon as we are done here.

As we get started today, I think it is important that we give some
framing so that we have at least an idea of where we might be going. So
as we start that, we all understand from our previous conversations and
the emails that we have received as a Committee that, if we go out, we
have a timeline out there, and that is September 8, I do believe. As you
indicated Debbie, at the close of business on September 8th, we need to
have something in writing so that we can put that forward.

We also, as we know, have a conference call that is scheduled on
September 5th. So I am just going clear out to the end for what we are
talking about here and then going backwards. Then we are going to talk
about some of the things that happened yesterday, just as a backdrop.

But before we even get to that, I talked with Debbie last night. If we
could start out with Debbie giving us some thoughts, ideas, concepts, or
any direction, that would be helpful for the Committee from the
standpoint of the Department, and at the same time if you could
incorporate in that your feelings about what, just like a reminder, what
the objective is for this Committee.

MS. PRICE: Let me focus in on an objective for the Committee. Objective
for the Committee for the September 8th interim report would be to give
the Secretary ‑‑ and when I say the Secretary, it means that senior
level who does the process of making the decisions about programs and
budget and looking at issues ‑‑ information regarding the State Grants
Program, regarding, you know, how it is working, what it is doing, but
also to give her insight into what we believe about the future of the
program. I think that is kind of the best way to say it.

Because when Holly talked on our conference call, they are beginning
that process for looking at, believe it or not, the 2008 budget because
all of that starts to play. So these are important pieces of information
that need to be taken in as they go through that process and they look
at this.

So I don\'t know that they are looking for specific, in-depth this is
what we do, you know, all of that at this point, but more an overall
look at the program. It is not the 30,000 view, which my old boss always
‑‑ I always thought, do you ever get off the 30,000-foot view? ‑‑ but it
is more just kind of the view of the program and the understanding and
where we think it should go in the future.

But then we have a report due a year ‑‑ well, next June is the final
report to address all three questions that would be more specific with
specific recommendations and findings.

So this is more of an interim. It is not as specific. It would be unfair
for us to have to ‑‑ I mean we would all be here from now until
September 8th figuring all those details out. So that is not what they
are looking for the 8th, but to have a good understanding of it.

With that in mind, I thought it might be helpful to give some
departmental perspective on all of this, if that is helpful. I have had
the privilege, as I have had my various jobs in my adult life, that I
have never had a job that my heart wasn\'t deeply involved in. It just
happens that I lucked out. I don\'t know that that is the case for
everybody, but I very much feel tied to what the Office of Safe and
Drug-Free Schools does, to those elements that make the school the
climate for education to happen, that kids can go there; they feel safe;
they feel secure. That is just so essential to all of the rest of what
the Department does.

I mean my own little two cents, I always say I feel like we are the most
significant office here at the Department, because if we don\'t work
well, then the rest of the Department can\'t work well. If kids go to
school and feel threatened, they are not healthy; they are not safe;
they can\'t achieve to their maximum achievement. For those few kids who
do it in spite of that, they get a lot of kudos for that.

But, also, I know that one thing we heard repeated over and over
yesterday is the issue of more dollars. There\'s just a basic focus on
dollars that we should be very aware of.

Let me just draw on a piece of paper to emphasize a point. It is unusual
for Congress ‑‑ all of our dollars come from Congress ‑‑ it is unusual
for Congress to really plus-up the overall education dollar. They might
increase it a little bit. They might increase it 5 percent or something
like that, but they are not going to really increase that pot of money.

So if you think of Education\'s pot of money as being this big, and we
will say that right here is the dollars for Safe and Drug-Free Schools.
Now there wants to be a focus on some new initiatives at the Department.
It isn\'t as if those dollars are added to this pot. Those dollars come
from within this pot. The way you get those dollars is you look at those
programs that haven\'t been necessarily effective, or whatever, and have
a large amount of money, and you can draw money from that to fund this
new initiative.

My concern is that whatever we present to the Secretary on the 8th
highlights the significance of the role of what this program does, so
that the value is seen here and dollars aren\'t moved out of it to fund
another initiative. Does that make sense?

So it isn\'t that all of these new initiatives get \"X\" millions of
dollars or billions of dollars, whatever it is, plunked down on top of
what we have. We basically have a pie, and that pie gets split up. It is
just kind of a logical discussion, not discussion, but comments that I
am making, but that is sort of the nature of the beast of the federal
government.

One thing I think is important that we reflect in what we present to the
Secretary is how this program is tied to the goals of this Department.
The Secretary, basically, has three ‑‑ you know, we\'ve got kind of the
five pillars of the President\'s Education Agenda, but the Secretary
often will talk about the three goals or the three priorities of the
Department.

The first is implementing No Child Left Behind and proficiency by 2014.
So educational achievement. We need to reach proficiency in 2014. If
what we are working on doesn\'t aim towards doing that, then it is not
addressing those primary goals.

The same is with the American Competitive Initiative that our children
come out of school competitive; they can go into college; they can get a
job. They are prepared. That we offer rigorous coursework, so that kids
are prepared and they don\'t come out of school and then have to learn
how to study in college. They come out of school prepared.

Another priority of the Secretary is data. If you want your program
funded, give me the data to show me it works.

So those are three areas that are central to the Secretary. I clearly
see how this program falls in line with all of them, but we should
reflect that in what we say to the Secretary and give a clear
articulation of that. Does that make sense?

Do you have any questions about that?

DR. JONES: I have a question.

MS. PRICE: Okay.

DR. JONES: So are we saying that we can\'t request funding, additional
funding?

MS. PRICE: No, I am not saying that. I am not saying that. I am not
saying that at all.

They talked about this some yesterday, but the dollars that have been
provided for the State Grants Program have consistently been going down,
and they have been zeroed out by the Department because they have
received an ineffective rating from OMB.

There is a difference between surveys and scientifically-based research,
and the PART is based on scientifically-based research. There isn\'t
anything we can do about that, because they ask the same PART questions
to every program that they review. The questions do not vary from
program to program. All programs are held accountable for that set of
questions.

But, currently, I seriously doubt that the Labor/HHS appropriation bill
will get out of Congress this year. It will probably be rolled over into
an omnibus.

But at this point, the House has reduced the dollars from 347 to 310,
and the Senate has matched that. It is very unlikely that that number,
when it goes into conference, when they are matching, is going to
change. So that is not good news for this program.

We heard yesterday that the dollars have gotten smaller. So it calls for
people to be more collaborative for sure, and that is the initiative of
those people and those communities that have done that, and they get a
lot of credit for that. I applaud them for that.

But I see great value in the program. We need to be able to reflect
that, so that there is an understanding of the value of the program, so
that those dollars ‑‑ I don\'t know how else to say it ‑- so it gives
the backdrop for those dollars to not be reduced or to be increased.

MS. SOLBERG: You know, there is a lot of scientific research that shows
the connection between drug use and poor standardized test scores, for
example, the Kids Count Survey from the State of Washington.

MS. PRICE: You need to use your microphone.

MS. SOLBERG: There is a lot of scientific research that connects low
standardized test scores, the inability to learn, with drug use in a
school building. That is a backdrop that certainly we can build on. I
don\'t think that we need to ‑‑

MS. PRICE: And I don\'t think that is in question. The question that is
asked is, is this specific program the cause of reduction of drug use?

MS. SOLBERG: I would think the question would be more ‑‑

MS. PRICE: And I agree ‑‑

MS. SOLBERG: It\'s not let\'s find it. Let\'s improve the program, so
that, in fact, the program affects drug use. I don\'t think that we have
to talk about, which seemed to be implied, do we need this program.

MS. PRICE: Yes, I think we need the program though. I don\'t think it is
saying anything negative about the program when you say let\'s make the
program be even better. It is not eliminating the program. It is, what
about this program needs to ‑‑ that\'s one reason why I was so pleased
to see the question about the strengths of the program in there, in what
we are answering, because that is significant that we focus on what are
those strengths and communicate those.

But what about it needs to be even better? I don\'t think the answer to
being even better is just dollars, but what is the most effective way
that we can use these dollars to get the most effective outcome that
students are reaching their educational ‑‑ that brings them in line with
reaching their educational achievement?

DR. WECHSLER: There are three bullets listed explaining why the PART
score was ineffective. The first two relate to performance measures.
Since then, a lot of work appears to have been done.

MS. PRICE: A lot of work.

DR. WECHSLER: Is there any communication with OMB? Do you have a sense
whether this is satisfactory to them, whether these first two bullets
have been appropriately addressed in their eyes?

MS. PRICE: Well, the OMB is looking at the program again. It is in the
process of what is referred to as re-PARTing, because we have done some
very significant things regarding performance standards. We have
implemented many elements that give it an opportunity to reflect what
the program is doing, so addressing those data issues, addressing some
research issues. So it is in the process of being re-PARTed.

When you develop your performance standards, you develop them in
relationship with OMB. I mean you can\'t just make a performance
standard and then OMB says, \"That one really stinks. We\'re not using
it.\" I mean that is done in a collaborative way.

So we have worked with OMB. We have developed performance standards that
we believe are significant and can show that the program is meeting
those standards. But it is still OMB that is ‑‑ you know, our hands are
off of it when OMB is doing the re-PART.

But, Bill, go ahead.

MR. MODZELESKI: Debbie, one of the major issues we face here is the
cause and effect. It is something which we struggled with and, to be
honest with you, we don\'t have the answer for it.

Yesterday you heard from, whether it was Clarence or the state people,
about how they have data showing that basically their programs have been
effective. We do have data showing that over the course of the past
several years drug use has gone down, and in places where there was a
Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, drug use has gone down.

The problem is that we don\'t know whether or not drug use has gone down
because of that Safe and Drug-Free Schools intervention or whether it is
a new principal that came in or whether parents got onboard and they
started to come to school. So there could be a whole other group of
variables that have come into play that basically have caused that to go
down.

The flip side of that is that you may have the same program, and three
or four years from now ‑‑ and Mary Ann knows this ‑‑ basically, if you
look at monitoring the future or any other data, you see it is a cycle.
It goes up; it goes down; it goes up; it goes down, sometimes over a
10-year period, a 15-year period.

So at a certain point in time we could expect drug use to begin to
increase again. I mean, again, that is the social science of up-and-down
figures.

At that time, if we are not careful, then we could flip that around and
say that the reason it is going up is because of, again, the Safe and
Drug-Free School Programs, whatever it is.

What we have not been able to do is to tease out that program, whether
it is a \$1500 program, a \$15,000 program, or a \$15 million program,
because there are so many other things going on in schools.

Even yesterday, I forget which one of the presenters was talking about
the difficulty in getting control schools because control schools now
are also doing all of these various things.

So that is one of the major problems that we face, is trying to get
that. If you begin to talk about evaluation of that data, you are
beginning to talk about very, very, very high cost.

Now I just want to correct one thing. That is that the data that went
over to OMB was not only our data, but it was the state data. So OMB had
the opportunity to review our data, the state data, and the local data.
All of that was reviewed and basically found not to be sufficient to
their standards to basically say that this program is the cause and
effect.

So this is not us not sending the data over. I mean all the data that
has been collected has gone over to OMB for their review.

DR. KELLAM: Yes, I just wanted to make the following thought: In a
sense, Safe and Drug-Free Schools is a likely pigeon for a question
about, is anything working? All of the services we have in health and
human welfare, welfare systems, whatever they are, suffer from the same
lack of real understanding of whether they are working, for whom they
are working, under what circumstances, with how much fidelity, and so
on.

The fact of the matter is that we are on the edge of being able to
really define a whole new structure of how research and services can
interrelate so that they have something to do with each other. Part of
the problem we have is we have some tools that, if we don\'t take
advantage of, will disappear, like information systems disappeared in
public health. They went away because antibiotics came along; you
didn\'t need to have information systems about who had syphilis. There
are all kinds of histories in the back of mental health registries that
went away.

There is an enormous investment now in the assessment of kids learning.
In fact, those information systems make an enormously powerful sampling
frame for communities, for planning, for all kinds of things. Adding a
few elements about data on drug abuse would enlarge that information
system.

From that framework, we can make partnerships that have not existed
between researchers and educators and people who are concerned about
community programs of various kinds, including drugs.

So it seems to me that if it hadn\'t been for OMB, we would still be in
need of sitting here, and we could be pioneering a whole restructuring
of how we find out what works for which kids under what circumstances in
the real world.

It strikes me that that is really what we are facing. There are some
really very concrete things to do. Thank goodness there ain\'t enough
money because money ain\'t the answer to that problem. It is
restructuring how, when I, as a researcher, go to work, who are my
partners; who determines the research questions; how do we set up
information systems and buy into information systems that really already
are being paid for?

So I think we\'ve got a very important opportunity here. I think we
should take advantage of it and shouldn\'t be defensive at all, but,
rather, in fact, you can say that nothing has been proven to work. What
we are going to do is take a bull by the horns.

I could keep going. The Dutch government put \$14 million into ‑‑ Euros
rather, which is \$20 million ‑‑ into putting together public health
research/institute partnerships. Fourteen million bucks just to get it
going.

So I happen to sit in on the reviews of those applications, and people
began coming in really designing how they would work, how often they
would be. I was struck by one of the people who said yesterday that he
meets once a year with some research group that he is partnering with.
How about once a week, folks? You know, we are talking about how we can
really restructure the way we do research, its relevance to practice,
and how that needs to be institutionalized. I think this is an
opportunity to do that.

I don\'t think it is money. I think there are some basic things we could
advise Ms. Spellings on about what might, in fact, be worth debating.

MS. DUDE: I find this whole discussion so frustrating from a
practitioner\'s point of view because I am one of those people out there
talking with students every day and doing presentations many times a
week, trying to get them to make better choices on a college campus, but
I also work with the local public schools.

The problem is, in my opinion, my humble opinion, is that we need to
change our paradigm in what we determine, how we define effectiveness.
If we put all of our eggs in the cause-and-effect basket, we are going
to fail because, no, I can\'t prove that my at-risk youths have gone
down because of me. I can\'t prove that, and I will never be able to
prove that.

I don\'t care how great a researcher is, they can\'t prove that ‑‑
because it isn\'t just one program that does it or one particular
presentation. It is the combination. It is the little aha moments that
are created throughout the year that these practitioners are creating
for these students. So it is very difficult to create a
cause-and-effect.

The problem is, within education, for example, we have test scores; we
have all those kinds of things that are very measurable. You either got
an \"A\", you got a \"B\", or you got a \"C\". Or on your ACT, you got a
30 or you got a 28. Those are fairly measurable.

But when it comes to prevention, how do you prove what you prevented
from happening because it didn\'t happen? So the problem is we are
trying to create an apples-to-apples comparison when they aren\'t apples
to apples, in my opinion.

The way of measuring whether or not you have had an impact on a student
are the very things that we heard yesterday, like increased class
attendance, decrease in marijuana use, decrease in alcohol use. We heard
that.

But then we hear the researchers say, oh, we\'re not effective. That
just makes my blood boil. I can\'t tell you how much it makes me angry.

NIAAA did the same thing on college campuses where it said most of what
all we are doing is ineffective, and yet many of us ‑‑ we\'ve got a ton
of students not using and we have some students who occasionally screw
up, and then we\'ve got some students who have some significant
problems. All those students need to be dealt with in totally different
ways, and a good, comprehensive program will help make that happen, but
you can\'t expect a school to have a good, comprehensive program on
\$1500.

Yet, we throw them \$1500 and expect them to show cause-and-effect
relationships? That is an unrealistic expectation, but it doesn\'t mean
that we then take away that \$1500, because with that \$1500, then comes
at least something has happened.

We need to do what we can with what we have at the time. It bothers me
that we will have to deal with these same criteria that a math class is
having to deal with, and a math class it is so easy to determine. You
either know how to do it or you don\'t. You either know how to solve
this problem or you don\'t.

I would say even to that ‑‑ and I know I\'m rambling because I haven\'t
talked yet (laughter) ‑‑ even when we were just saying that it could be
because of a new principal, you know, maybe the fact that their drug use
went down was because of a new principal, well, I would say math scores
depend on the quality of the teacher. So you can have all the
appropriate instructions and all this kind of stuff, but if the teacher
doesn\'t connect with the students, then they are not going to learn.

So I mean there are so many variables that I would say, even your ACT
score, even your grade point average, I don\'t know that you can
absolutely show a cause-and-effect relationship.

So I would like us to ‑‑ I mean I do research all the time or at least I
hire grad students who can, because I don\'t know how to. I hire grad
students who know how to do this research all the time, and yet, still,
I have people say, \"Yes, but can you prove that you were the reason
that happened?\" No, I can\'t. So then money is taken away or money is
not given because I can\'t show a cause-and-effect that I would venture
to say nobody can do.

So I would like us to consider changing the paradigm on can we fit into
the same category as everybody else. Maybe we have no choice, but then
we have to figure out a way to either help other people understand that
nobody can live up to those expectations or figure out a different way
to package it, so we show that we have a way of showing that we are
making an impact.

All sorts of people yesterday showed how they are having an impact. I
felt great after hearing that, but then when the three researchers
talked about it being ineffective, it just, as I said, made my blood
boil because, how can both of those things be true, unless we are
looking at things in a totally different way?

CHAIRMAN LONG: We will go to Hope, and then I am going to shut this down
because what we are doing is Debbie has just indicated to me that she is
done with her opening statement.

(Laughter.)

Then we will get to the communication, public comment, and then we will
come back to ‑‑ I think we are getting into really the first segment. We
just kind of spilled over a little bit. So if we will bear with Hope and
then we will go to public comment and then get back to the discussion.

MS. TAFT: Two quick things: Sometimes I feel like the Safe and Drug-Free
Schools Program is held to a different standard of evaluation or
effectiveness than other programs are. One of the things that feeds into
that is a recent statement that I read by James Towey, who is the former
person in the White House who dealt with faith-based initiatives. He
said that his blood would boil when he thought about the federal grants
to recipients such as the National Head Start Association and the
Catholic Charities, who had no ability to show that the programs that
they implemented really worked.

I know for a fact that every Head Start facility in the country doesn\'t
send in data; it doesn\'t evaluate what they do. So why does every
little Safe and Drug-Free School Program have to do that?

The other is maybe we are trying to evaluate the wrong thing in a
micromanaged way. I think back to the National Adolescent Longitudinal
Study that was released a couple of years ago that had some very
important findings on what kept kids from using alcohol and drugs or
help them succeed as adults over a long term, one of which was
connectedness to school and connectedness to family. Maybe it is those
kinds of things that we should be measuring instead of what the
researchers seem to be focused on.

MS. PRICE: Let me just respond real quickly.

I think that is a good point. It really is the PART/re-PART/OMB process
is in concrete. There are processes in concrete. This is how they are
reviewed.

But those performance standards that you develop really can be crucial
in developing those standards so that you allow the program to meet the
standard, not that you skew it so that you get a standard so low that it
meets it, but that it legitimately can address it. We have tried working
very hard with OMB to develop those standards.

But the comment about the Head Start, that is an example, and it is a
very good example, that even when programs don\'t show that they\'re ‑‑
and now I honestly can\'t say that I know whether Head Start is, you
know, what their status is, but I will use them as an example just out
of the blue.

But they may be ineffective, but Congress thinks something about Head
Start, so they put the money in. It isn\'t the agency that implements
that program that identifies the dollars; it is Congress.

Congress has funded the State Grants Program even after the PART review
showed it to be ineffective. So there is an example that the odd process
that we have for dollars is there. Congress gives it to them; we
implement them. They decide how much we get to implement.

It is one of the beauties of our nation. It is one of the frustrations
of our nation.

We have a few what is called earmarks that we have to implement all the
time, that if I could sit here and list them, you would just be in
stitches laughing at, what on earth is Education implementing these for?
But we just get to do it because that\'s what we get to do.

The dollar process, it is not the best. It is not the ideal, but I do
think in the overall that trying to provide dollars and to be a good
stewards of those dollars, that the structure sets it up to be able to
do that as much as possible with all the flaws that are there.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Public comment?

I have a question now, so I will have to ask. That might be a moot point
until I ask this first question.

Is there anyone from the public that wishes to comment?

Okay, you\'ve already got the answer. I didn\'t see the microphone. So I
didn\'t know how we were going to do that. So Catherine has a microphone
over here.

Would you please ‑‑ this is being recorded ‑‑ if you would give your
name, where you are from, and if you have any written remarks, after you
are done, if Catherine could have a copy of that, please?

MS. JOHNSON: Mona Johnson from Washington State, Office of the
Superintendent of Public Instruction. These comments are not from me.
They were actually given to me by Dr. Ellen Morehouse yesterday. Many of
you saw her reaction after the research presentation, so she had some
comments that she wanted to share.

So I don\'t know if I need to take the time to read them, but I will
give them to you, Dr. Long, and ask that you share them, unless you
would like me to read them.

Okay, this is from Ellen Morehouse on behalf of her comments related to
the research presentation.

\"I would like to provide a response to the question that Mr. Ellis
asked the Research Evaluation Panel as to why there was a discrepancy
between the positive findings presented by the state and local panels
and this panel.

\"Ellen Morehouse\'s findings were based on 51 secondary schools, 18
middle schools, and 33 high schools. If Chris Ringwalt\'s questionnaire
had been sent to the 18 middle schools, it is possible that it may have
been answered by an experienced health teacher in the building or the
chairperson of the physical education and health committee. Either of
these individuals may have indicated that they are not using one of the
programs that is on the list, even though 5 of the 18 are in buildings
where there is a full-time or part-time staff person implementing
Project Success, which is on the list.

\"In addition, the other 13 middle schools and 27 of the 33 high schools
are using the Westchester Student Assistance Program, which was a
National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse Model Program in 1984
and is the prototype or big sister of Project Success and the
Residential SAP. While many Student Assistance Programs nationally are
converting to Project Success, they are still referred to as SAPs.

\"Finally, Chris Ringwalt\'s study was limited to middle schools, and
many LEAs use the Safe and Drug-Free Schools for evidence-based
programs. In the elementary and high schools, for example, life skills
training is one of the most researched and widely-replicated effective
universal prevention programs. It is usually implemented in sixth grade,
and in many LEAs the sixth grade is still in the elementary school.\"

So those are Ellen\'s comments for the Advisory Committee.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you very much.

Is there anyone else from the public who wishes to make a comment? Yes?

MS. TRAYWICK: Good morning. My name is Penny Deevers Traywick. I
represent, I guess, a lot of hats at this point in my life.

I started out with Safe and Drug-Free when it began back in the eighties
and I was a local coordinator in the State of Alabama. Can you tell?

(Laughter.)

I live here. I live in northern Virginia at this point.

But through that experience of coordinating that Safe and Drug-Free
Schools Program in the State of Alabama for many years at the Department
of Education, I learned a lot. I learned a lot. Retired there in the
year 2000 and began to work in a lot of different areas. I have most
recently been working with the Southeast CAP that you heard a little bit
about yesterday that is funded under CSAP, the Center for Substance
Abuse Prevention. Presently, I am the Governor\'s Rep for Safe and
Drug-Free in the State of Alabama.

As I listened yesterday, though ‑‑ and what I am here today as is the
Vice President of the National Student Assistance Association. You heard
those terms yesterday a lot. You heard the words \"student assistance.\"
You\'ve heard from Mona again this morning. I know some of you may not
realize or know anything about Student Assistance Programs.

I think I just wanted to make a clarification. We hard about components
yesterday of a Student Assistance Program, different components. We want
you to know that Student Assistance Programs is just a framework. It is
a framework for the continuum of services for social and academic
problems in our schools. It is a school-site-based program that we, as a
national association, promote non-components of, not just one or two
that you may have heard yesterday. So I think that is my clarification.

I would like to just run over those non-components real quick. I brought
them because I would probably forget one or two if I stood up here and
tried to remember them.

The non-components, beginning with a school board policy; staff
development program awareness, which you heard a lot about yesterday;
internal referral process; problem-solving team and case management;
student assistance evaluation, a major component; educational student
support groups; cooperation and collaboration of community agencies ‑‑
you heard a lot about that yesterday also ‑‑ and the integration of
other school-based programs.

I will send you to your email addresses a little bit more information
about that from our Association. We had our Executive Director here
yesterday. Lou Rush was here. He could not be with us today, but in
place I am here and thought I would just share that with you. I wanted
to clarify a little bit for you.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you very much.

Is there anyone else that wishes to make public comment? Anyone else?

(No response.)

No? Okay, thank you very much.

We will then go back to the next area on the agenda, and then we will
start to get back into discussion, but I want to frame it a little bit.

Think about this: We have talked about the September 8th and the
September 5th. So we can only accomplish so much this morning, but we
will be getting back together by writing email and also through a
conference call on September 5th, as was mentioned earlier.

So we are certainly not trying to finish up this morning, but we want to
get as many thoughts out there as possible, so we can start to put a
framework together for that 8th. So I would like to have you think about
it from this standpoint:

To think about what the function ‑- first, just two things ‑‑ first of
all, what is the function ‑‑ I\'m just going to go through the outline
and then we can go backwards ‑‑ what is the function of the school? What
are we trying to do in education? Then to prioritize those things.

Then the second thing would be then, after we do that, let\'s talk about
how is that delivered. How do we deliver that?

Then we can even ask questions in that segment like, should this be for
everyone? Should we take a look at the formula? So we can ask all kinds
of questions. I am just trying to give some general areas. So if we
start with the functions of those schools or those roles, I am just
going to go one step further and then we can get into the dialog.

We heard a lot of things yesterday. We have heard a lot of comment, of
course, from folks on this Committee. It boils down to things like this:
that we want environments where our students are connected, where they
respect each other. Then we heard other people say yesterday that the
thing that we have to really pound away at would be achievement, and
that is our single goal or objective.

I am going to submit this, and then only for the sake of starting the
conversation. My background is curriculum instruction. We do a
tremendous amount of work in achievement. We are very successful at it.
As I said, we work very hard at it.

But having said that, that is not our No. 1 objective because we can\'t
get at that in our schools in our county, in our State, unless those
children are connected and are respected and they feel safe.

So we heard different things yesterday, but just for the sake of this
discussion again, I am going to submit that the first priority would be
that those children be safe and that we have safe places for those
youngsters to go, a safe and nurturing environment. We hear that all the
time, but where they can go, so that we can get to the achievement.

So having said that, I am going to stop. Let\'s try to focus for right
now ‑‑ and I know, because there is a lot of interest in different
things on the Committee, we will weave in and out and that is fine, but
I am just trying to give some structure to what the first part of the
discussion will be. We can talk about what you feel the function of the
school is in priority order. I just mentioned one or two. That is up to
you. I just wanted to start it off.

Does that make sense?

DR. JONES: Yes. Yes, that is a tough question. But, yes, I think safety
is important because we know that children that are not safe and
children that are traumatized are at greater risk for academic, social,
as well as many other problems.

In fact, we\'ve got tons of data to actually demonstrate that. Bill
knows this firsthand. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network has
produced tons of data saying that children who are traumatized, can, in
fact, incur great distress. In fact, we know that children that are
sexually abused, for example, not only have lower IQs, but it has been
shown that they have smaller brains. So we know that trauma has a very
massive impact.

I just came back last week from a week in New Orleans working with
crisis workers, talking with parents, et cetera. We know how distressing
that has been and how it is going to continue for some time.

So I think that, indeed, safety is a No. 1 priority. But, given that, I
just want to piggyback on something that Shep was saying before. Thank
God for OMB because I think it is holding us accountable for monies that
are being spent, energies that are being put into activities, and
children whose lives may or may not be changing, aspects of their lives
changing.

Kim, I can appreciate where you are coming from because I don\'t think
you can always demonstrate cause-effect relationships. But I don\'t
think it has to be an either/or. I think that there is some gray there.

You made kind of a joke yesterday: Is it light or particle? That was a
question that Einstein had asked in terms of how light moves, and it
wasn\'t either/or, but it was both. Sometimes I think it can be both.

I think one way of kind of getting at that is it is kind of a paradigm
shift, but maybe looking at kind of a tiered system where there are
different types of evaluation done, different criteria for different
programs that are being carried out. Maybe at the top of that would be
empirical research. Then maybe at another level it would simply be
evaluation.

In fact, Bill, it is kind of similar to what we are doing within the
Network, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. You might want to
speak to that. But it is kind of a tiered system that not everyone is
being evaluated with the same standard. There are researchers. There are
clinicians. There are people, grassroots things going on, all of which
are playing a very important role in assisting children prior to,
during, and following traumatic events. So it is kind of a tiered
system.

It is really an epistemological question. It is, how do you measure
knowledge? Does it have to be all research-based? Does it have to be
pre/post tests, et cetera? It really depends on how you measure that. I
think there are different ways of looking at that.

Kind of going back to what Shep said, it is not all about money. I had
an opportunity to serve on an Advisory Committee at the CDC for five,
six, seven, eight years and also was Chair of the Science and Program
Subcommittee. That is the group where we evaluated all of the grants
that came into the CDC, et cetera.

We raised a question in terms of how to enhance the quality of research
that is being funded. We talked about a system. It is called Consort.

In fact, that is the system that is used to evaluate clinical trial
studies. It looks at internal-related, the external-related. It really
gets to cause-effect. That is still being worked on.

Again, that can be very effective. But I think that we are talking about
a paradigm shift where I think research plays a very important role,
where I think that what is being done can be evaluated. I think that one
way of really moving this thing forward is partnering.

We always talk about silos and that kind of thing. Well, I just heard a
number of very good things from folks yesterday in terms of the benefit
of partnering. I have got some specific suggestions that we can talk
about at some point.

Again, I don\'t think it is all about money. I think that it does
require a paradigm shift. I think that the tier system may be
appropriate here. Some things can be measured using solid research, and
maybe some things can\'t. But I think those kinds of things need to be
talked about in detail.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Again, let me try to frame this. If we can talk first
about the function of our schools, then we will start to put all these
things underneath. But if we can get to that point and then you can
arrive at an agreement on that, then we will start to lay out \"then
what are those things?\" under each of those headings that you think are
most important. That will start to give us some meat to the structure.

I\'m sorry, we had Michael and then Tommy.

MR. PIMENTEL: Thank you, Doctor.

Again, if you all remember, the last time we got together I did not
speak until the last day, and I am doing so once again with you. I want
to apologize ahead of time in that I may not have all the doctorates and
things like that. My title is \"Chief.\" If you go back into what a
chief is, and that is that you are kind of overseeing the tribe, and I
mentioned to you all that, whenever I served on this Committee, that a
light went on that I need to accept each of these children in our
schools as my own. I take that to heart.

I have a daughter, a biological daughter, who has MS. It appalls me when
people treat her like a statistic because to me she is my life; she is a
smile; she is everything in the world.

I want to piggyback on Dude. Okay, cool. I applaud you. I think we need
to start understanding that the standards need to be held at those
community levels.

There are things that are working in little, bitty Brownsville, Texas
that have whole different values than what I am experiencing in San
Antonio or you are experiencing in California.

The question that is before us is, how do we, as a Committee that is
serving in an advisory capacity to the Secretary of Education, look at
the future of state grants and not cloud the issues with the details of
the operational aspects of these programs, because those need to be left
with the communities?

I don\'t know where I am going with that other than to say we have a
challenge ahead of us. I don\'t want it to get so far out of scope that
we have lost sight of what it is about. What it is about is not a
statistical set of data. It is about a living, breathing child in our
classroom who needs to be safe in order to learn.

Thank you.

MR. LEDBETTER: When we look at the Committee itself, we are challenged
to look at Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and how do you separate the two?
I find it difficult to separate the two if we try to find a definition
of a safe school, and is there such a thing as a drug-free school? Those
are tough questions.

I am not certain that there is such a thing as a drug-free school
anymore. I am not sure that one exists. I am realistic enough because I
deal with it on a daily basis. And how bad is the drug problem? If you
have one student who is using drugs, you have a bad problem. But just
how bad is the problem nationwide? In my community, it may not be as bad
as it is somewhere else.

What is the nature of the problem? When we look at drugs, 10 years ago,
15 years ago, at the beginning of my career, we looked at alcohol and we
looked at marijuana and that was it. But today it is cocaine; it is
heroin; it is you name it. I mean it is prescription drugs. It is every
type of drug that is out there. What will be there 10 years from now
will be different than what is there today.

I think that there are problems. I sat here yesterday and I listened to
‑‑ I sort of got mixed signals sometimes because there was some very
strong advocates of the program who were saying that we had great
statistics to show that the program worked. Then we had the researchers
who came in who said that the statistics didn\'t show that the program
worked.

I wanted to ask Chris Ringwalt a question and we ran out of time. So I
went and I talked to him afterward. One of the comments he made was that
‑- he talked about the list, which was referred to here a moment ago by
the young lady from Washington.

But he said that the list would be changing. So I felt like there was
more to it. So I went and approached him afterward and asked him, and he
said that, yes, the list will be changing.

I told him, I said, \"Did I understand that some of the programs that
you threw out and did not consider were programs that were not on the
list?\" And he said that\'s correct.

I said, \"Well, if the list is changing, will some of those programs
that were thrown out in your research be considered and be put on the
list later?\" He said that\'s exactly right.

So I asked him, I said, \"Does that mean that some of those programs
that were not considered were more effective than some of the programs
on the list?\" He said that, yes, that\'s why some programs that were on
the list will be coming off and some other programs will be added to the
list.

Well, I shared that with Deborah. I got mixed signals.

We are looking at statistics, and you mentioned accountability. Those of
us involved in education, accountability is not a new word to us. It is
something that we have had to deal with for years.

I think that my concern is, how can this program be fairly evaluated and
how can we hold all the programs accountable in a fair manner? To me,
that is the biggest issue that we are looking at.

I don\'t hear anyone saying that the program needs to just be thrown
away, or I haven\'t heard that. What I am hearing is that the program
has some problems and we need to look at the program or we need to try
to find ways to deal with those problems.

But I am like Dave; if a school is not safe, whatever learning takes
place in that building is not the type of learning that the mothers and
the fathers of those communities send their children to school for. I
think the safety is a very big issue.

I heard about programs yesterday that have great results with safety. I
heard about concerns. The gentleman from Los Angeles, the gentleman from
Denver, they talked about the concerns they have about safety.

I think that we need to look at this program and we need to find a way
to fairly evaluate the program where OMB will be happy with the results.

I heard about the programs where there was a lot of matching money
yesterday that went into the programs. Maybe that is an avenue that
would be good to look at with the program also, because if the programs
are important, if the programs are making the kind of successes, if they
are creating the successes that we are hearing about within the schools,
maybe they are important enough that all of the schools across the
United States can start finding that matching money to go with those
programs, so that those programs can grow.

I am not sure what the solution is, but I am convinced that the programs
are beneficial. Can we say that it is because of the programs? In part.
How can we measure that? I don\'t know. I don\'t think that is possible
to say that it is strictly this program that causes the changes.

If the drug program is not increasing within the schools, that is a
measure of success. In today\'s world, that is a measure of success. If
safety within the schools remains the way it is now, and we don\'t have
an increase in violence within the schools, that is a measure of
success. I mean we are making headway there.

Now to say that schools need to show a 5 percent decline per year or a
10 percent decline over a period of years, I don\'t know if any program
can guarantee that. I really don\'t. I don\'t know if it is possible.

But a combination of programs is the best way for us to go. It appears
to me that this program has created some combinations of some programs.
Now how can we get all the departments working together? I have no clue.
That is why we have people at this table who have backgrounds in other
areas.

But I know that the schools in this nation are at peril. They are.
Statistics ‑‑ we talk about No Child Left Behind. As a building
administrator, on a daily basis, the academics and the instructional
programs are what come first. If we are to meet our accountability goals
in the academic arena, then we have to have a safe environment; we have
to have a drug-free environment, and so forth, to do it. Without it, we
will never reach 100 percent by 2014. It will never happen.

So all of these things fit together. How does it all fit in the big
picture? You know, this is one piece of the puzzle, but it is an
important piece. I think that we need to find a way to be able to say
that this program is fairly evaluated and that it is accountable for the
tax dollars that go into it.

MS. PRICE: I just want to insert one thought, and I agree. I think
whatever that term of what we believe the school should be, and we have
been saying, \"safe,\" when I think of that term, it means much more
than the word \"safety\". It means drugs are not in the schools ‑‑ that
makes a child unsafe ‑‑ and alcohol. So it is a comprehensive word.

If that is the case, we may need to reflect that somehow in there.
Because with all of the focus on Homeland Security and the different
things, I sometimes say, \"preparedness\"; schools need to be prepared,
and then everyone focuses on just the disaster or crisis.

So, as I am thinking of the word \"safe,\" I really think of it as a
comprehensive word. If we all do that, then we should reflect that in
what we send forward. Because I think we could spend a lot of time
identifying all of the issues that make that environment the correct
environment for students to attend school and to learn.

MS. TAFT: Sometimes I think that we maybe even ought to go a little bit
further on the definition of what, a little broader on the definition of
what schools are in the business of doing. To me, it is schools are in
the business of working with parents and communities to make sure that
our children become responsible, caring, competent, capable adults.
There\'s a whole lot of components into that, but that is really the
essence of a lot of longitudinal research on how you get people to
adulthood safely and capably, and the resiliency research.

Maybe we ought to be looking at the components of this research that has
been done by the federal government on a longitudinal basis that tells
us what goes into raising that child to become a competent and caring
and responsible adult, such as resiliency research will tell you time
and time again that it is not the program that makes the difference; it
is the person who implements the program.

Yet, we are so focused on the program, the pieces, that we have missed
the piece that is most important to the child, which is that caring
adult in their lives. I don\'t want us to lose fact of that.

Maybe we need to think about the definition of safety because there is
no way that the Safe and Drug-Free School Program is going to be able to
fund every Homeland Security issue that comes up. Maybe we need to work
on defining that safety as the interpersonal safety of the children and
adults that are in that school or some other definition that carves out
the piece that we feel like we can impact with a little bit of
reasonableness.

DR. SIMS: I just wanted to put a couple of points out there, following
up on some of the comments made yesterday. I guess in Dr. Reuter\'s
presentation, when he was giving the summary of the findings of their
research in terms of effectiveness of the programs that were in place,
in his slide he said that they coded that as positive, meaning that
there was some potential there of the programs, the actual programs that
were being implemented within the schools, but there were a number of
different criteria that were being looked at.

When you looked at the overall set of criteria, the program was deemed
ineffective because it was falling down in some areas, one being the
administrative aspects of the program and insignificant findings on the
targeting of resources, and the capacity, improving program capacity.

It seems like if you are thinking about having some reassurance that
what you are doing is working, if you can show positive things on all
the different criteria, then that is going to help to triangulate the
overall set of information around this one outcome of, are we making a
difference for these kids?

So one of my questions is, since these initial findings came out all
those years ago, and now that the rePART is going on, what things have
been put in place to help the programs improve on these specific areas
that were showing some of the problems? Specifically, have there been
efforts to provide specific technical assistance to the program
participants? Has a website been set up with best practices? Tips for
setting up partnerships and collaborations?

A lot of the presentations we heard yesterday, the success was around
partnerships and the leveraging of funds. Some communities may know how
to do that very well. Some communities may not be doing it that well,
and they could learn from each other if there were venues for them to
interact and exchange their specific ideas.

The gentleman from CADCA talked about how that is one resource
available, but that is just one. What is the role of the Office in
providing specific resources to the programs around those kinds of
things?

Then the other issue that was mentioned a couple of times yesterday, but
we didn\'t delve into it, was around sort of the transfer of funds
across different title programs with these different numbers. A couple
of people mentioned how, when that was done, that allowed the program to
choose, the participating state agency or local agency to choose a
program that was not on the list kind of thing, not one of the effective
programs.

So it seems that when resources are moved around to the different
programs, what should take precedent should be the one that has actual
principles of effectiveness tied to it. So Safe and Drug-Free Schools,
if they are a specific criteria, maybe that should trump a choice that
you might make if you lump your money somewhere else.

I don\'t know. We didn\'t really talk about that yesterday, but it seems
like we should at least have it out on the table as something to
consider for specific kinds of recommendations we could give to the
overall program.

MS. PRICE: Regarding the transferability of funds, when No Child Left
Behind was developed, there was a real focus on flexibility and allowing
schools and community to use dollars to address the specific needs of
their school, of their school districts. So flexibility has been
incorporated throughout No Child Left Behind.

One of the areas that it is is in Title IV, which is in the State Grants
Program. A school district can choose to move up to 50 percent ‑‑ am I
correct? ‑‑ 50 percent of their Title IV dollars, so their State Grants
dollars, from Title IV into another title, into Title I, into Title V.

When those dollars transfer into that program, that specific program,
its function is different than Safe and Drug-Free Schools. It has its
own criteria for how those dollars, then, can be spent.

So, also, a school district does not need to ask permission from the
Department of Education to transfer those dollars. That is a right that
they have. They get to do that if they deem that appropriate.

They are not accountable to the Department to identify that they did it.
Often, we do know that it is not a requirement. Is that correct? Okay, I
just want to make sure I am saying it correctly.

So one of the beauties of the State Grants Program is its flexibility,
but also inherent in that flexibility comes complications with those
dollars are still, you know, the 100 percent of the dollar still has to
comply with those principles of effectiveness.

So there are some complications that came with the legislation in
showing the effectiveness of the program that are just inherent in that
legislation. Transferability is one of them. So it has both its
strengths and its weaknesses.

DR. SIMS: It seems like, then, when you are trying to judge the overall
program, at least if you had a better understanding of the full
landscape of where those resources went, you can then try to make better
sense out of what is going on.

MR. MODZELESKI: Debbie, Belinda, there is a very small amount of money
that is actually transferred. It is a very small percentage.

I mean while Debbie is right, the law permits the waiving out and
utilizing it, we are talking about a fraction of these dollars. We
thought that there might be a lot, but there is not.

That is the good news, is that whatever goes out has no impact on the
total, whether it is \$300 million, \$500 million, \$600 million. So it
has not been a large percentage of funds.

DR. JONES: Yes, I was going to say, how about the first part of her
question, which I thought was very good, the feedback loop?

MS. PRICE: Right. I mentioned it yesterday, that in that piece that we
gave you on kind of information regarding the State Grants Program, that
final page does talk about those improvements that specifically worked
regarding rePARTing to address. We can go into more information about
that.

Bill?

MR. MODZELESKI: You could probably take a half a day, Russell, to go
over the changes over the last, say, five years that the Office has
taken to improve ‑‑ it is not only the quality of the State Grants
Programs, but the delivery of services overall.

Training/technical assistance, we spend, oh, probably \$10 million a
year on various training and technical assistance efforts. We have a
discretionary grant program dedicated merely to provide funds to states
to improve their overall data collection and analysis system.

We do a conference every year, every other year, where we bring in over
1,000 people to help get this out. We have listservs. We have
newsletters.

Best practices is part of what we do. It is an everyday way of life, is
promoting best practices.

Just as a point of clarification, to correct Chris, who, unfortunately,
is not here, is that we have said repeatedly there is no list. We don\'t
subscribe to any list.

What we do say is that there are ‑‑ Donni\'s agency, basically, has
worked with Del Elliott in Colorado on the Blueprint Series. So you have
the Blueprint Series. Belinda\'s organization, as Zili said yesterday,
had the Red Book with grants in the Red Book. CSAP has, unfortunately, a
list is the best way to talk about it. Howell\'s organization has
listing of groups and programs that work. The Executive Branch with
Helping America\'s Youth has another grouping of programs.

So, rather than say just go to this list, what we say is that all of
these programs have a degree of research behind them that shows that
they have been effective if implemented to a degree of fidelity, to a
high degree of fidelity. So adopt those programs, not any one list.

I mean, basically, if you have something that we know that works and you
can show/demonstrate that it worked, that is what we want you to engage
in.

We are in a process right now of looking at, conducting research to see,
unlike, well, in some ways the list, but we want to expand beyond that.
Because what we recognize is that the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
Program, what occurs at the local level is not just about curricula.

I think that Hope Taft is right. I mean this is about mentoring. This is
about connections. This is about changing the culture and climate at
school. This is about linking kids with adults.

You are never going to find on any list a program that says let\'s link
kids with adults. I mean so we need to find a way to get beyond just a
curricula-type program because we also are cognizant of the fact that
this is not only about money; this is about time.

As teachers and principals find that there is less time to do these
things, we can\'t just get them off the table. We need to replace them
with activities that really work.

By the way, what we do believe is that connections and mentoring
programs and programs that basically teach kids trust, respect,
character, all of those things have an impact not only on the
individual, but also on the school. They trickle down and they affect
alcohol use; they affect drug use; they affect violent behavior.

So part of the trick here is to move away just from the silos of
programs which historically have just dealt with drug prevention or just
dealt with violence prevention and begin to look at broader-based
programs that tend to address a whole range of problems that kids face.

I would be willing to bet that Tommy, the kids that come into his
Dean\'s Office, or whatever the case may be, come in with a whole host
of problems. You know, the kids are manifesting ‑- you know in your
practice ‑‑ the kids are coming forward with a whole host of problems.

If we continue to just put bandaids on these problems and try to fix one
problem at a time, we are never going to be successful. So we are
looking at a broad-based, comprehensive approach in programs and
activities.

In some ways, I think ‑‑ and this is the difficult part ‑‑ I think
schools are ahead of the researchers. As a matter of fact, I know
schools are ahead of the researchers. We are far ahead of the
researchers because we recognize the problems and we are struggling to
fix them. Researchers are still years behind in trying to come up with
some answers for basically: Is what they are doing working?

If we had to merely ‑‑ and this is the trick here ‑‑ if we merely had to
follow where the researchers are, we are going to be stuck in five years
or ten years. So there is a time lag here, and it is an unfortunate time
lag. So part of it is also trying to figure out, how do we bring the
researchers along with us to make sure the researchers are doing what we
want, what is important to us?

I have talked to some people around the table about Chris\' research. To
some extent, it is that, you know, that is not of particular interest to
us. If it is not, then part of the message is that we ‑‑ I mean not
\"we,\" but all of us, Debbie and ourselves ‑‑ we need to be sending a
message to researchers as to what is important to us to make sure that
Tommy has a school that is effective and that basically operates
smoothly and freely and safely in a climate and culture that really is
conducive to learning.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Shep has been patiently waiting over here.

DR. KELLAM: I have been actually listening.

(Laughter.)

I have to say I feel like two or three of us maybe feel like we should
come at this conversation from a how-do-we-connect-up perspective.

The research that we heard was probably ‑‑ and these are friends of
mine; at least two out of the three of them are very close friends ‑‑
they didn\'t connect with us.

Everybody in the morning was really talking about evaluation and how
important it is, how important even at the local level. How do you know
what you are doing when you go to work matters? Should you be doing
something else that would matter more?

With all of the interest in evaluation, it seems as if the research
panel ‑‑ I had some skepticism in the first place about how that was
going to work in our group. Certainly, the rest of the panels I thought
were incredibly informative, but the research panel illustrated how far
away the research that they described was from the practice that we go
and do every day.

I say \"we\" because we have a partnership with Baltimore City Public
Schools where we go and sit down with the Board and School Commissioners
and the Superintendent, and they say, \"What research questions are you
paying attention to? How can we help you do your mission?\" That is what
a partnership could be like.

Our research establishment is nowhere near that. I can tell you we get a
lot of research grants because review committees aren\'t ‑‑ scientific
review committees are aware that that is needed, that you have to have a
partnership in order to do randomized trials.

We have 95 percent of the parents agreeing to have kids randomized, and
school districts, you know, everybody is behind it, because we are
asking questions they want us to answer.

\"How do you make reading scores go up?\" is a very important question.
Whether you teach phonemic awareness or every kid is different is really
a very important question.

The question is, how close can the researchers come in a new stage of
work to the people doing practice? We have tools, incredibly expensive
tools. No Kid Gets Left Behind has an whole assessment system,
information system, which tells you where things are problematic or
where they are not so problematic.

What we have not learned, and need to, is how to use these assessment
systems, develop these partnerships between researchers and
practitioners such that the practice is driving the research. It is
asking the questions that need to be answered in order to function.

In some crazy way, the Food and Drug Administration does that. It is
goofy because it ends up taking money from the drug companies and doing,
requiring ‑‑ I mean it is all complicated.

We have an opportunity, I think, to develop a whole new structure. I
think that what we need to do is to say to people, \"Safe and Drug-Free
Schools is fundamentally important to the school\'s mission. Socializing
kids and mastery of the basic educational tasks that includes behavior
is the way you get the self-esteem; it is the way you protect against
drug abuse.\"

And this, by the way, comes out of epidemiologically-based longitudinal
studies. We need to focus on the developmental trajectories and say:
What are the early issues? How could you get in early?

You can\'t do that from an ivory tower. You have really got to
understand and sit in with the school district people.

By the way, child welfare should be better connected to school
districts, and public health should be better connected to school
districts. We are talking about restructuring the way research, which is
highly funded, needs to be less isolated and more integratable into the
practice process.

Now I have got down here about five things I think we could do, none of
which would cost a hell of a lot of money, if any. I hope we all have
lists of stuff like that. I think that there are plenty of things that
we could do.

It is not going to be inside Safe and Drug-Free Schools, inside the
program. It is going to have to do with: What is IES? What are the links
between IES and Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the community level?

Should we not be stimulating researchers like we did with land grant
colleges or something? Should we not be stimulating some research groups
to sit inside Tommy\'s office and his school district and say, \"How can
we help you understand what is working and for whom?\"

That kind of partnership is part of a new structure because we are not
getting the bang for the buck out of the research dollar. We are not
getting the bang for the buck. We don\'t know what we are getting out of
many of the program areas. We need to know more, and we need to bring
this new structure to bear. It is really designing a whole new structure
for a lot of things, not just Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

DR. JONES: Yes, am I next?

MS. SOLBERG: I couldn\'t agree with you more, absolutely.

I have a question, first of all. If you have already said this, I
apologize, but I missed it.

When did the PART material go in for rePARTing?

MS. PRICE: It is in the process of being rePARTed right now.

MS. SOLBERG: So they are working on it? When do you expect the results
of score?

MS. PRICE: February.

MS. SOLBERG: In February? So that is significant for this group.

Secondly, both Kim and Tommy sparked this comment. Cause and effect and
cooperation \-- there are a number of federal programs, not as large in
scope, but similar in function that I think we need to consider, Weed
and Seed, the Drug-Free Communities Program, a number of Justice
programs, that attempt to change not only the individual, but also the
community in which the program operates.

There are some rather clever evaluations that are in the process looking
at stages of development and expecting different results at different
stages ‑‑ giving a school district who decides to launch a meth program
two years to actually report on the results of the meth prevention that
they are working on.

Those programs so far have some pretty decent PART scores. I wonder if
it might not be worth our while to invite either an administrator or an
evaluator or a team of evaluators who are working on creating these
out-of-the-box, new programs to come and present to us, because there
are some ways of linking cause and effect or linking a number of causes
and effects, of which you are a part that equals the total result.

So I would really recommend that we consider speaking with some of the
other agencies in town and inviting at least comments from them on how
they are dealing with the exact same problem. Because everybody is
reinventing the wheel. If we put all of our heads together and all of
our very small pots of money together, we might come up with a system.

No. 3, those programs are also, several of them are also using online
evaluation tools. Those tools allow the local ‑‑ and, you know, we are
talking about the local control, the local cause and effect ‑‑ to
somehow have an effect on the larger entity.

If, in fact, an online system could be created where there was a whole
menu of things to report on, then we would capture, first of all, what
everyone is doing. I don\'t believe that currently we are capturing
that.

Ohio is a wonderful State. The State of Washington is doing a fabulous
job. But I talk with states that are really having trouble getting their
arms around what to do.

We would hear from all states. You would better be able to target the
technical assistance, et cetera, that you do. I think that we would see
some rather significant overall results.

So I would recommend that we consider also some kind of a reporting
tool, so that we don\'t have individual states creating what they think
is a significant evaluation, but everybody works for the same goals that
will allow individuality. So that the state can define their problems;
the community is able to define their problems, but they fit in in some
way with a rather flexible menu that we have created.

DR. JONES: Yes, Mary, I second that. I think that is an excellent idea.

As I listen to comments around the table, I really hear this whole
concept of we have to think outside of the box, I mean as partnering. We
are not going to get the job done without partnering and going beyond
the walls of the Department of Education. It just ain\'t going happen
because there are limited funds.

But just a couple of just basic ideas:

One, we are talking about evaluation and that kind of thing. There are
graduate programs in every state around this nation with very competent,
bright researchers, graduate students that would love to work on these
kinds of projects, that would love to do the kind of evaluations that
need to be done, that would love to sit in principals\' offices, for
example, to determine what is it that they are doing that is working, et
cetera. A relationship with the American Psychological Association, for
example, would be wonderful.

There are students that would love to do research who can\'t gain access
to target populations. I am at a land grant university, Virginia Tech
University. I was educated at a land grant university, Penn State. Those
universities are out in the middle of nowhere, literally. In terms of
getting clients, it is very difficult.

It is difficult to get these kids to come into our clinics to do the
kinds of things that need to be done. Even more so, what we know ‑- that
was 30 years ago ‑‑ what we know now is most people don\'t come to our
clinics. The people who need help don\'t come to our clinics. But where
do they come? They come to school; they have to come to school.

Partnering the American Psychological Association with many of the
initiatives that are being done here, many of the schools where this is
being done, I think it is a wonderful idea. I think the APA would jump
at it. Graduate students would jump at it.

Master\'s theses, dissertations, they have to be done. What an excellent
opportunity. It is no cost to school systems. It is not taking time away
from administrators, et cetera. That is just one suggestion.

Another just real quick suggestion: We had an excellent panel talking
about safety and that kind of thing in the afternoon, partnering with
Homeland Security, partnering with FEMA. Our group, we have gotten over
approximately half a million dollars from FEMA to do research looking at
the impact of children and fire. Those kinds of monies, those kinds of
dollars are there. There is millions of dollars in Homeland Security and
in FEMA. In fact, I have even heard the term \"billions of dollars.\"

Why not develop partnerships to move the mission of this initiative
forward? It is partnering. It is gimbling, as we talked about yesterday.

MS. DUDE: Maybe it is a naive question, but it seems to me that over the
period of time that this funding has occurred that the scope of what we
are expected to deal with has broadened. Yet, the pie that you describe
has certainly not gotten any bigger. It has gotten smaller. Yet, some of
the issues we are supposed to deal with, like safety, whether it be
terrorism, whether it be hurricanes, or whatever, it seems to me that
there are other departments that should be funding those efforts, as
opposed to Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

So it is a naive question. Why do we need ‑‑ I don\'t know why I\'m
including myself in this \"we\" ‑‑ but why does the Safe and Drug-Free
Schools budget have to accommodate those needs, instead of FEMA or
someone else?

MS. PRICE: I don\'t know that I can answer that as articulately as would
be needed, but the legislation, the Title IV legislation, that
articulates this grant is our dictate to what we do. It talks about
drug, alcohol, violence reduction. In there, it says we should have a
crisis plan; every school should have a crisis plan to get their
dollars.

Even though drug, alcohol, and violence reduction are specific terms, in
a sense, they are also very broad terms. So these are what those dollars
should be used for.

Now FEMA, that is a whole other pot of money and whole other agency that
is funded under a whole other program. As much as we would like to see,
and I think as much as the federal government is trying to focus in on,
instead of pockets of agencies doing their thing and not collaborating
together, but collaborating ‑‑ and we\'ve got some great collaboration
going on with the folks at this table. ONDCP we work with all the time,
HHS, Justice. You know, our Safe Schools/Healthy Students is a joint
collaboration of those three.

But some of it is what the legislation provides. We have this pot of
money to address these issues in the specific manner in which the 20 to
the state, the 80 percent to the LEAs, distributed to the LEAs, is in
this fashion. Individual school districts can work toward collaborating
and getting other dollars in, but it is not a function of this program
to do that. It doesn\'t mean it wouldn\'t be a good idea, but we work
within the legislation that we are given and the parameters around that.

One thing I might just want to offer, I think that we have gotten some
specific suggestions that I think are very good. I think for the
long-term report to the Secretary next June, that putting some rubber to
the road on those would be really significant. I don\'t know that that
is what they are looking for in September, but more of an understanding
of the value of the program, of what are some areas that need to be
addressed.

Reauthorization of No Child Left Behind comes up next year. If you look
at this program, what about this program could be better in legislation
that makes it a better program? If we could get some broad
understanding, broad concepts with some focuses on it, I think it would
be really helpful for the September 8th report, if that is helpful.

MS. JACKSON: Yes. We have been talking a lot about the function of
schools and No Child Left Behind. Again, when we take a look at the
public school model, it was meant and built to serve the public.

As we heard a lot of presentations yesterday discuss the challenge of
teachers doing more, of classrooms, schools, and districts trying to
ensure that we have highly-qualified and trained teachers to do the
academics, to deliver the academics to our children, as well as keeping
our schools safe ‑‑ and, again, safe is a very broad term ‑‑ and
drug-free.

So the Office of Drug-Free Schools for me for well over a decade has
been a major player with the Department of Education in providing that
additional support that schools have needed to address and assess and
provide a link between services to schools and to students and their
families and the community. So there has been a lot of partnering that
has been going on for years.

The Student Assistance Program, which we heard spoken about briefly this
morning and some yesterday, has been also a component that the Office of
Safe and Drug-Free Schools for many of our districts have picked up and
have been providing services to our school districts and our schools to
assist children and keeping those students in schools.

For every student, we all know, that we lose from schools, that is
funding for that school and that district, as well as it is an increase
to my partner here next to me, the Department of Juvenile Justice often,
where our students have nowhere else to go.

For many of our students, coming to schools and feeling safe, sometimes
it is the only place that they have to come and feel safe. Student
Assistance Programs has been a way of providing students that return to
school with that opportunity to be reconnected and re-engaged.

So I think the functions of our schools has broadened and has changed,
as well as over time it has had a restructuring in and of itself to take
a look beyond just the school and really link with the community. I
think that is challenging when we don\'t have Student Assistance
Programs and other opportunities to do that. I don\'t think our teachers
and our principals always have that opportunity to take on that role.

Also, Student Assistance Programs have provided an opportunity and a
mechanism for bringing to the table to teachers and schools and school
boards and administrators some of the things and the presenting problems
that are going on in our communities. So that has been another component
that often some of our teachers and our administrators aren\'t aware of
what is going on with our students.

So I think it is important that we not forget that the functions of the
schools, and, again, with NCLB, that without Title IV, I am not sure how
any of the other components could be carried out if our schools were not
safe and if they weren\'t drug-free and we weren\'t addressing dropout
and truancy and many of the other issues that affect most of our
students.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Perfect timing. It is now 10:15, and we will be taking a
break. We will come back and start right at 10:30.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 10:18 a.m. and
went back on the record at 10:37 a.m.)

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay, if we could please come back together, we have,
let\'s say, about 50 minutes and then we will pull it together for
about, I was going to say five minutes, and as I thought, that might
take an hour.

(Laughter.)

As we said earlier, the point now is not to come to conclusions. It is
to lay things out, which you have been doing.

I talked to several people at the break. If we look at it this way: Try
not to put those in neat little categories, but two or three people said
to me, you know, things were laid out there; some of them I hadn\'t
thought about. Now some of the things are starting to fold together. If
we can just continue to do that, so that when we get together for our
conference call, that then there will be some semblance of order.

Along with that, I had mentioned earlier, and then I was talking with
Hope here, but I thought, when we started, two things about the function
of schools and then, secondly, about the delivery system. All of a
sudden, those minutes turned into hours, and we\'ve got about 45 or 50
minutes left.

If we could, for the sake of the discussion of the delivery system, I
had even mentioned to Hope maybe we can get to it now. As I thought
about that, I am not sure we can because I think we have to continue
what we are talking about.

So in preparation for that conference call and the delivery system
aspect of it, if we could send something out like we did before with
some ideas from the Department, and then if any Committee members have
any additions to it, which I thought worked well last time, then you can
just add it to the basic structure of the discussion on the delivery
system. Then that will be for the second part.

For the first part, we will have to tie this all together, too. That is
going to take ‑‑ we are all going to get on airplanes here in about an
hour ‑‑ so that is going to take some time together, as you know, from
the standpoint of staff, so that there is some coherence at that
conference call also, which is coming up very soon. Here we are on the
22nd, and that is the 5th. So that is going to come right to us.

I just want, as we start, to just mention something. It is just
rhetorical. But the other part of this, I was sitting listening. We all
come from different areas of the country and different jobs. One of the
things, the elephant that just kept ‑‑ oh, good Lord, I just gave away
my party affiliation (laughter) ‑‑ the elephant in the room is, I think
a lot of this is political. Let\'s lay it out there, that the things
that we are talking about are going to be voted on by Members of
Congress.

So some of the things that we are going to be presenting in the way of
creation or creativity is going to be to have the representatives from
Congress from your areas, wherever that happens to be, that there are
some things that are said in a way that will allow them to get off some
of their thought process right now, whatever it might be, and vote yes.
That is the way it is.

So some of the things we are going to talk about, yes, it has to be
created from the standpoint of the approach and differences. Some of it
will have to be even how it is said, even though some of those outcomes
might still then be the same, if that makes sense.

But I think we have to also remember that as we are putting all of these
things together, because they are political animals. In a discussion
last night, I was talking to somebody who said, \"We\'ve got five
Members of Congress from our County, just because of the size, and they
are all up for re-election.\" That also has to be a part of the formula.

So we don\'t have to beat that to death, but we all know it and we have
to think about that as we start to put all these things together. Okay,
enough said on that.

If I could ‑‑ well, why don\'t we do that in the wrapup? Maybe if we
take about, let\'s take about another 30-35 minutes of discussion and
then I am going to ask you for some consensus on just a few of the
items. I don\'t think it is going to be very difficult. I have been just
writing things down as you have been talking and just trying to see if
we can pull some of this together, but I will do that way at the end.

So if we can continue the discussion, we will stop at about a quarter
after and then try to tie some of these things together with consensus.
Okay?

Does anyone remember where we were? Hope?

MS. TAFT: I just over break thought of a couple of things. Maybe what we
really need to do is kind of go back to basics.

I remember in the late eighties when the Drug-Free School Program was
first started, and it was just the Drug-Free School Program. Then, all
of a sudden, it became the Safe and Drug-Free Program because I think
Congress was aware of the influence of drugs and alcohol use on safety,
and that is what they meant by safety, sort of that interpersonal safety
that related to either a parent\'s alcohol and drug use or a child\'s
alcohol and drug use on the rest of that school environment.

So I really think helping us come to some sort of a definition of what
\"safe\" means in the Safe and Drug-Free School Program might be helpful
in our goals of getting back to the basics of what the program is all
about.

One of the things that I also think is really important, and I heard it
yesterday, I know that we are all around the table because of our
passion for this program. If we undermine the passion at the local
level, if we don\'t reinforce that passion, if we don\'t continue to
validate what the local people are doing, it doesn\'t matter how much
money you have given them; they are not going to do anything. They are
going to burn out, and then there is going to be nothing.

So somehow or another, we need to show support in a strong way for local
efforts and how they tie into academic achievement.

Then if we could change the formula or the funding system in some way,
because we know that actions follow money, and tie just a little bit of
an incentive into what we want to see what happens, which may be to
reflect collaboration or getting matching money or in-kind services or
tying in the local university or having a Student Assistance Program, or
doing joint evaluations with other activities going on in the community
that affect people, such as the Drug-Free Communities Grants or the
Strategic Prevention Framework Grants, or the Weed and Seed Grants.

I mean all of these grants are reinforcing to each other in a community.
Local people get really kind of distressed when they are doing five
different reports for the same amount of money, and it is the same five
people around the table all the time.

So how can, at the federal level, we look at collaborating and having
one set of criteria do for all of the programs and save people some time
and money in the process that could be better used in making those
connections, in getting those caring adults into people lives, into
kids\' lives, particularly that we really know make a difference?

So that is kind of where I am now.

DR. JONES: Yes, I agree also. The notion of safety, how broadly defined
it is, I think that is important.

DR. WECHSLER: I think there is an incredibly fundamental issue that this
group must discuss, debate, and soon come to a conclusion of its opinion
on. Yesterday we heard a spirited debate in which two different sides
were presented. The researchers sided with the folks who did the PART.
The third objection they had was the funds are spread too thinly to
support quality interventions. I don\'t know where I stand on that, but
I think we need to come up with our opinion on whether the status quo of
getting grants to every LEA in the country, whether that is something
that could be maintained, given the ongoing funding cuts.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And I think that is an excellent point, Howell. I think
that that should be one of the basic tenets that we talk about on that
delivery system because then it starts to get into that, but that might
even be the first question that we approach on that subject.

MR. LEDBETTER: Since the initial meeting we had, some of the discussion
at the initial meeting was about the fact there was very little money
and it was spread so thinly with the program as it now exists that it
was very difficult to achieve the results that they were looking for.

Yesterday nearly everyone who came in, in one way or another, said that
they needed more money to make the programs work better. I asked Deborah
if the legislation would require or would allow ‑‑ we are looking at
ways to improve the program and one of the problems is the funding. Now
if the money from the federal government is shrinking, and you look at
what inflation has done to the dollar, it has shrunk more.

One of the ideas that I have kicked around with a couple of people is
redesigning the State Grants Program where the money that goes to the
states, that it not be any flowthrough money, where it flows from here,
from the federal government, to the state, and then it flows directly
through the state to the LEAs; that there be some requirement on the
part of the LEAs to participate in the program, that they have to be
able to leverage some money or provide some matching money to take part
in the program.

Yesterday I heard about school systems that received \$1500, was all
they received. If that school system knew that they could come up with
another \$1500 to get that \$1500, then they have \$3,000, we have
doubled the amount of money in the program.

I know that there are three school systems in the Huntsville, Madison
County, Alabama area that participate in the program. I believe the
Huntsville, Madison County, Chamber of Commerce, we could build a
relationship with them, a partnership with them, and we could come up
with the money to participate in the program. I believe that other
communities throughout the United States could do the same thing.

If the federal government will not provide us more money, why can we not
look at requiring some form of leveraging to participate in the program
to get that money? So I thought I would just throw that out there and
see how anyone else felt about it, but if the program is as good as we
have heard that it is, then let\'s use the program for seed money to
make the program grow. If the program is good, we will find the money
for it out there some way.

DR. JONES: I concur.

MS. DUDE: Well, I think, theoretically, that sounds like a great idea,
but, practically speaking, I think there would be a lot of school
systems that absolutely wouldn\'t come up with the money. So they
wouldn\'t even apply for the grants.

Speaking even at a university, and we have a statewide coalition of
other campuses, so we work with 12 State colleges, and I am telling you,
the administration just does not want to give money toward prevention
unless there is a student death or something horrible happens, and then
they react. Like somebody was talking yesterday about people are more
reactive than using prevention.

So I think in a perfect world, yes, that would be good, but if they had
to have matching funds and they had a \$15,000 grant, well, the school
system may not be able to come up with \$15,000.

DR. JONES: Well, but I don\'t think he is saying the school system, but
other community agencies, the Chamber of Commerce, universities,
Kiwanis, et cetera.

MS. DUDE: But what that is doing to ‑‑

DR. JONES: The Better Business Bureau.

MS. DUDE: Again, I think in a perfect world that is true, but you are
talking about somebody whose prevention is probably one-eighth of their
job title in that public school. They are now not only having to write
the grant, but they are having to meet with all these other people to
get them. I just think it is setting them up for a very, very difficult
situation.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Can I address that, Kim? I think that is all about
leadership. Then I would say if you have a problem at your university
with that, I would say shame on your president. I think that is the
responsibility of a superintendent.

I mean if you say that we will give you \$500,000 for a particular
program, and I get that call or we fill out that application, then I see
that as my personal responsibility to make sure that that community ‑‑
and I am not talking about just one area, what Tommy and what Russell
are talking about, but all of the foundations, all of the businesses,
all of the contractors ‑‑ we would get \$500,000; I mean we would break
our backs to get that \$500,000.

I am just going to use myself. I see that as my responsibility to match
that. I think that is about leadership, and I don\'t think it should be
the responsibility ‑‑ I heard what you said about one-eighth ‑‑ I don\'t
think that should be your responsibility. I think that is the leader\'s
responsibility.

MS. DUDE: But, in response, I would say you are absolutely right, but my
point is that leadership does not necessarily exist for probably a
pretty significant number of school districts out there.

If we require matching funds, I think that is going to eliminate a lot
of the school systems that really need this. You are talking about
leadership among a group ‑‑ I mean, obviously, you folks are
highly-selected people who are very passionate about this. Not everybody
has got the luxury of having a superintendent, a president, or a
principal who ‑‑ because they have so many other priorities.

It is not like they don\'t think it is important, but they have so many
other priorities, to suddenly have to come up with \$15,000 for matching
funds, I would be afraid that, if we mandated that, I would be afraid
that there would be a lot of school systems that would do without.

MS. TAFT: There is a difference between having the dollars in hand and
having in-kind contributions. If we could allow for in-kind
contributions, I think that most of the schools would make it already
because of how they partner in that work with people in the community to
get the supplies and the services that they need that they can\'t afford
to pay for.

DR. JONES: Yes, I just think it is very doable. I mean if people would
take their passion to the local Wal-Mart, to the local Target ‑‑ we have
done it and we have gotten thousands of dollars from our local
Wal-Marts. I mean it can be done.

I think it is all about empowerment, teaching people to market their
passion.

MS. DUDE: But one response, and I don\'t mean to debate, but just
speaking from experience, I spend most of my time trying to find money
as opposed to most of my time implementing the program, and I am
full-time doing what I do. There was a time when I wasn\'t full-time
doing what I am doing, and it took an inordinate amount of my time to
try to find it.

So I am just saying the nice part about a grant is that often you write
the grant, you turn it in, and you implement the grant. The in-kind
helps. That would help a lot because you could probably rationalize that
a chunk of my time, my office space, and my paper, my copier, and all of
that, is in-kind.

I am just saying I feel I just want to be the voice for the small
prevention program out there in a small town, in a small school. They
may not even have a Wal-Mart, or that this person, this is one fraction
of their time. They may be the full-time counselor. They may be a
teacher. They may be a variety of different ‑‑ they are wearing all
these hats, and then on top of this, they are suddenly supposed to go
out there and find money from all these places in what could be not the
most supportive environment.

I guarantee you, if they have a student death, they will have plenty of
leadership behind them, but if there isn\'t something horrible like that
happening, I just have too often witnessed the poor person who just
can\'t get help from anybody. So we are asking them to do just one more
thing.

MS. TAFT: Maybe that is another thing we need to include in our
back-to-basics package. There was a time when every Drug-Free School was
required to have a community advisory committee that would be the
perfect vehicle for getting that local match in one way or another. That
was taken out under, I think, No Child Left Behind, but it might be
something that we could recommend would be put back in or reward
community schools who did that in some way.

Because research in Ohio has shown that those schools that still have
that advisory committee in place or are closely connected with a
community coalition get much better results in their schools than those
schools that are not connected to the community in some way.

MS. JACKSON: I just wanted to say some of us have kept and maintained
with the principles of effectiveness from Drug-Free Schools all the way
through to be changed to Safe and Drug-Free Schools. I would like to
ditto ‑‑ and I\'m not sure, the lady here down on the end, what her name
is.

But my State is primarily rural more than it is urban. I live in the
heart of Alaska, Fairbanks. We received our first Wal-Mart two years
ago.

So when we talk about Wal-Mart and many of the other stores, they don\'t
exist. So finding matching funds, I think the in-kind money is really
pretty much already there, but to find the matching funds for many of
our villages and our rural communities would really push people out of
the water.

More than 50 percent of my districts in our State of Alaska actually
receive Title IV funding. The district that received the least amount of
money was \$78, and I am really not sure what they did was \$78. But,
again, it ranged from that end of the continuum to over \$600,000 last
year. So there is quite a variety.

The urban areas were able to tap in perhaps and receive the matching,
but I would hate to see any of the smaller districts not have any type
of funding to at least accomplish one of the core elements that are
found under Title IV. If they are doing nothing more than providing an
opportunity for parents to come into the schools and have potlatches and
be a part of and understand the need for parental or grandparent
involvement, those things are needed.

Again, I am not sure how we evaluate those things, but is the little bit
of money and accomplishing one thing better than getting no money and
accomplishing nothing? Well, okay, that\'s fine.

DR. JONES: She is looking directly at me. So can I respond to that?

Yes, it is about empowering people. I mean so you go to that Wal-Mart,
even though it has only been there ‑‑ you know, you go to that Wal‑Mart,
whatever. We\'ve got to empower people. People have got to do what they
can do.

I think the matching idea is an excellent one because you can do a whole
lot more with \$164 than you can \$78.

MS. JACKSON: It is just living, though, and living off the land, you are
not going to get it.

MS. TAFT: But you\'ve got those people. I mean if you valued volunteer
time, you could meet your match in ‑‑

DR. JONES: Exactly. Yes, it can be done. Yes, it can be done. People
have to be empowered.

MR. MODZELESKI: If I could just give you a couple of minutes about our
experience with match, our experience with match has not been good. I
think it reflects what Montean and Kim have said.

Now there is a way to get there without asking for the financial match.
That is, basically, maybe asking, as we do in the Safe Schools, Healthy
Students, and others, for the partnerships. So rather than require the
money, which is, by the way, very difficult to get in a lot of parts of
the country, what every town has are businesses. They have public
health. They have mental health. They have so forth and so on.

So you are getting to the same point, but you get to it a little bit
differently. It is a lot easier for me to go to a mental health provider
or a health provider or to the Chamber of Commerce and say, \"Help us.\"
It may result in money, but it also may result in people. It may result
in services, or whatever the case may be.

So that may be another way you want to take a look at it rather than
just the money side, rather than just in-kind, new services.

MR. LEDBETTER: Kim commented that she spends most of her time trying to
find money. What can I say? I spend a lot of time. I won\'t say most of
it, but I spend a lot of time trying to find money.

But I am just a principal. I am not an expert at all of these things we
have been talking about. I describe myself as a change agent. I mean
that is the nature of my job. That is what I do. I am a change agent. I
try to change the way teachers think, change the way students think.

I think that we are at a point that we will have to change the way we
view this program. I think that we are going to have to do something.

Anytime anyone offers me some money and they say, \"If you can match
it,\" I\'ll find it. I\'ll find it. If it is important to me, I will
find it. If it is not important to me, then I will not.

There may be superintendents that think that this program is not
important. Well, if this program is not important, then those are the
places that are skewing the statistics away from what this program is
about.

Whatever is important to me on a daily basis, I will accomplish that.
Some days when I come in the door, I will have a list of things that I
want to accomplish that day, and I may not get one of them done that day
because other things jump to the top of the list.

But if it is important to us, if the program is important to us, we can
find ways to match the money. I don\'t know if it is in-kind type of
services, partnerships, whatever. But I can assure you that if you
offered me \$200,000 today if I could find the money to match it, I
would find the money someplace. I would find it.

I might have to work at it to do it, but I would find it because that is
200,000 free dollars that I am getting along with the money that I have
raised. That gives me \$400,000, and I can create a pretty nice program.

Now it may be that in some of those outlying areas, it may be that some
of those state legislatures have to get involved and they have to
provide some money. I don\'t know. But I still believe that we could
expand the program; we could get more people involved in the program if
we put some requirement on it.

The committees, the advisory committees, they would be great, but we
need to build some partnerships. That is the one thing that has come out
all the way through this discussion yesterday, is that we need to build
some partnerships.

In these places where they have built good partnerships, they have very
successful programs. In those places that have no partnerships, I wonder
about the success of the programs there.

MS. SOLBERG: Kim, I can really identify with you because I have been
there. I have experienced that over and over.

But I would like to talk about a statistic that I am now experiencing.
One of my programs is the Drug-Free Communities Program. It requires a
\$100,000 match for \$100,000. We have grantees in rural communities ‑‑
we have many grantees in Alaska ‑‑ in every type of community.

What we found was in the beginning the match was all in-kind. Volunteers
are now ‑‑ what? ‑‑ \$40 an hour. So volunteers galore, desks,
computers, et cetera.

What we are finding is, as the partnership develops and as the coalition
matures, we are seeing that match decrease in in-kind and increase in
dollars because they are changing. You know, Safe and Drug-Free Schools
not only changes the school, it changes the environment that the school
operates in. It changes the community.

As the community begins to understand the value of what is going on in
the school, more money comes into the community. It might be a simple
fundraiser that the Safe and Drug-Free Coordinators hold, you know, a
donut sale in school. But that money begins to build.

As people see the results ‑‑ and this is why our results are so
important. Where does money come? Money follows people that are
successful. When they see outcomes from the programs, money begins to
build.

In Alaska, maybe State legislators could be involved or the power
companies or the oil, for heaven\'s sake. I mean think big. Go after the
big guys.

But, statistically, I can document that the Drug-Free Communities
Program has morphed into, as the coalitions mature, programs with dollar
matches rather than in-kind matches. But I sympathize with you because I
have been there.

One other point that we have to consider that I think is essential,
addiction is everywhere. It is in schools. Why doesn\'t a principal
favor this program? Because somebody may uncover what he is doing or
she.

It is a fact that we must consider. It is not only children who use
drugs. Adults use drugs. Adults drink.

When we are looking at ways to reprogram this, we have to consider
addiction as a powerful enemy and consider that when we reformulate. I
think that addiction is one of the reasons that you experience what you
are.

DR. WECHSLER: It is very impressive when you have a \$100,000 grant and
matching fund brings it up to \$200,000. But what I am hearing is a lot
of the districts are getting \$1,000 from this program. You get a
matching to that and, wow, you are up to \$2,000, which is probably
where the program was when OMB concluded the funds were spread too
thinly to support quality interventions.

So matching is powerful in the context of your program. I don\'t know
how powerful it is in the context of this program. Again, we need to
come up to it.

Now the local people, and Montean just did, said there is an incredible
value to having \$1500 in that district. That is a very valid point. OMB
and the researchers are strongly disagreeing. We need to figure out
where we stand.

MS. TAFT: In Ohio, we did a study that found that those schools who got
the least amount of money had the most amount of local match and were
really getting better numbers than those schools that had a large amount
of money and didn\'t have to go out and collaborate with outside
players.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Bearing in mind ‑‑ and this is, I think, an excellent
discussion because this is what our challenge is, that it cannot and
must not be same-old/same-old. So if we just take the concept and talk
about matching, and then bearing in mind what our two colleagues said, I
think that could be taken into account by some of the other things that
were said, like in-kind. So those things can be figured out.

But I think Howell really touched on something that, as we know we have
to create ‑‑ one thing, the \$310 million becomes whatever that matches;
it could become \$400 million. If it was a complete match, it would be
\$620 million, but you could figure that out.

But the point is it magnifies the amount of money that is available. It
involves those that need it most, however that involvement is worked
out.

Then let me get back, just to close this, to the political point:
Congress is going to be voting on this. Congress loves to have
involvement with companies, corporations. This is the kind of thing I
think that we have to think about putting in there as a recommendation
to the Secretary. It can be pushed and pulled, but to take to Congress.
So that when they see that, they would be inclined to go for something.

These are the kinds of things, the ideas, I think, that need to be
fleshed out. So I applaud you. This was a positive discussion.

I\'m sorry, Shep.

DR. KELLAM: I want to try to enlarge on the delivery system issue and
the partnerships and the funding because I think that we are on focus.
Dave, you are right that what a school is about and what the delivery
system is all about is what we need to somehow come up and be inventive
about.

I want to make a comment about the nature of partnerships. It is kind of
glib to say let\'s get the old Interagency Service Council together at
the community level and we will all have coffee once a month.

Partnerships have a lot depending on how they are structured, how they
define their mission, what is the mutual self-interest of the
participants. The partnership that I think is most missing probably
worldwide, and certainly in the U.S., is the partnership that brings
research to practice.

The NIH has recognized that. Most of the federal government has now
recognized that. The problem is how you do that.

I would like to make the illustration that, for example, in the current
grants we have from NIDA that Belinda is actually Program Officer for,
the co-PI on the grants is the superintendent, the CEO of the Baltimore
City Public School System, the co-principal investigator. With me and
our team of researchers, there is a core team involving us, but also the
core team involves people in charge of curriculum and instruction and
other aspects of the school district.

By the way, speaking of the developmental epidemiology, which Hope
referred to earlier, the two most important predictors of violence and
drug abuse are school failure and aggressive, disruptive behavior as
early as first grade. In fact, the prevention issue has been for 35
years, since we learned that, can you influence early aggressive,
disruptive behavior and/or learning in first grade and reduce the
prevalence of drug abuse and anti-social personality disorder? The
answer is yes, and dramatically.

However, it doesn\'t work for girls and it only works at the higher end
of high-risk first-graders as they grow old, because, apparently, their
alienation continues and they are the folks that cause us a lot of
trouble and themselves.

The partnership is all about getting inside the vision of a school
district on the part of a research group, understanding the mission of a
school district, and then working to help them accomplish that mission,
and doing what we can to bring to bear the research that has been done,
so that it is informing how they can actually realize the mission.

We are part of the master plan in Baltimore City Public Schools, what we
do, and current research. As the five years of this third generation of
work has progressed, the school district is now picking up \$350,000 to
\$400,000 a year of the intervention budget and, in fact, integrating
that into their own budget because we are trying to figure out how to go
from this research-based funding to community-based funding,
school-district-based funding.

So when we are talking about partnerships, we are talking about a
reorienting of what NIH review committees consider, and they should
never consider prevention research grants without a partnership. It has
to be part of what research grants are all about.

If you don\'t have the access to institutions and understand the vision
of the institution, then the relevance of the research is suspect. That
is not true at the molecular level, but it is amazingly true at almost
all of the levels of research.

The least-taught aspect of graduate education in any of the human
services is how to make partnerships. It is just not taught.

You know, you send people at the most senior level in to work out a
partnership with a school district. They come in with a snake oil that
they try to impose on an otherwise overwhelmed district mission.

So what we need to do is to understand that the opportunity here is to
take a really broad-based make the school better, including achievement
and the related issues of behavior, mastery, sense of self-esteem, and
the rest, and move the research into the service of that mission.

How do you do it? You don\'t increase the line budget of Safe and
Drug-Free Schools because that ain\'t in the cards anyway.

What we want to do is to say, look, form partnerships with NIDA; make
this, in fact, a way of ‑‑ part of the package is that when you get a
research group tied in with a local school district or local entities,
you then go and get research money because you are stronger and can
compete for it in Education or in NIH or in most places, in Justice. So
you sell the package.

It is important that you get in-kind and contributions at the local
level. But at the federal level, it helps restructure the science.

Ultimately, the cry for evaluation is not going to go away and probably
shouldn\'t. It doesn\'t mean you have to evaluate every damn thing you
do, like how many men\'s rooms you have in the building or something.

What you do have to do, together with the people who run these
institutions like school districts, is to figure out what the highest
priorities are and what they really need to learn more about how to do.

Classroom behavior, management, by the way, has resonated with a lot of
people in the education business. It just isn\'t there. That is one of
the great generators of all the problems we are trying to solve.

So I would say that the focus is on partnerships.

I did want to mention quickly, and I won\'t go into the details, but we
are now investing in information systems that are worth their weight in
gold. These assessment systems that are now statewide, and particularly
the ones that have individual identifiers, so you can follow kids over
time and not just the size of the problem over time, they are incredibly
important for sampling frames to understand progress.

Not everything is a randomized trial. If you could show progress from
the randomized trial stage to the stage of rollout, and even do
wait-list kinds of designs, where in fact every school district doesn\'t
have to get the snake oil next year ‑‑ they can\'t anyway because you do
not have the training, and so on. So you stagger the rollout stages.

In fact, you can see whether this is rolling out with more effectiveness
than that at each stage. You have some schools getting it and some
don\'t. You can stratify the sampling.

By the way, one of the things that is interesting about the assessment
systems is that some of the school districts don\'t even have
assessment. They can\'t follow kids over time from one school to
another. Anne Arundel County, No. 1, right around the corner, they
can\'t tell whether a kid is in the school district or not if they
change schools.

So a lot of the byproducts of all this are you do get information
systems that can, in fact, be used to deliver. That integration of
assessment systems with delivery for mentoring and monitoring, for
example, the progress within schools is incredibly important, and
progress from programs.

So it is a big thing we are talking about, but it is really a matter of
pulling pieces into a coherent picture. I think that we have an
opportunity to do an incredibly important thing.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Student Program began to do that, as you know,
Bill. The whole community base-building, it is not like stage one
hasn\'t been informative. By the way, that was the first time federal
programs had cut across Justice, Mental Health, and Education.

I was struck by the fact that we have now got information that is
helping America\'s youth. Eleven departments contributed to that
information system on what works. All kinds of things are going on which
are exemplaries of where we have got to go next.

I think we ought to be taking the initiative. You know, Safe and
Drug-Free Schools, yes, we have been through stage one. We have had lots
of experiences, pioneering experiences. Point out the pioneering
experiences and say, \"Where in the hell do we go from here?\" It is
going to involve other folks, folks. It is not just Safe and Drug-Free
Schools in isolation. I think that we\'ve got something to say.

MS. DUDE: Well, you touch on something that I have been thinking about.
I don\'t know if it is appropriate for this Committee or not. But is
there any way we could make recommendations as far as teacher
preparedness, things like classroom management, creating a safe
classroom ‑‑

DR. KELLAM: Sure.

MS. DUDE: ‑‑ detection, intervention, referral of at-risk students or
even some of the basic information about alcohol and other drugs?

Because we wouldn\'t expect a math teacher to teach history. Yet, we are
expecting people who, I\'m thinking, have never been taught anything
about prevention to implement a prevention program in their local
school. It seems like we have all these ‑‑ I don\'t know.

It just seems like, if we are making recommendations to the Department
of Education, they could make a requirement or a recommendation to the
teacher preparedness education departments throughout the country that
are preparing our college students to become teachers or administrators
or counselors. It seems to me there could be some coursework that would
teach them how to do that.

MS. SOLBERG: Could we not recommend an integrated curriculum for
prevention? I mean research is showing that is what really makes the
difference.

MS. PRICE: The Department of Education is prohibited of doing anything
on curriculum. It is a state issue. We are prohibited.

MS. SOLBERG: But is this group prohibited from possibly collecting the
data that shows the importance of integrated curriculum?

MS. PRICE: No. Honestly, I think that the Advisory Committee, I think
that would be in the long-term report. You know, the findings and
recommendations of this Committee are very useful. There are parameters
around which the Department functions. Curriculum, hands-off ‑‑ that is
a state issue and local issue ‑‑ is one element.

But if there is information regarding that that the Advisory Committee
thinks is significant, it is certainly appropriate for the Advisory
Committee to give their findings and recommendations to the Secretary on
that.

I have a couple of questions I want to ask. They are really
stirring-the-pot questions. I am asking them because I want us ‑‑ you
know, maybe we can address them a little bit, but in this next week or
two weeks, as we are putting all this in there, these are things that
need to be addressed. We have talked a little bit about it, but it is
like the elephant in the middle of the room; we haven\'t clearly
articulated it.

When I look at the three issues regarding the initial PART that was done
and the failure of the program ‑‑ I hate to say failure, but the lacking
in the program ‑‑ one is funds are spread too thinly to support quality
interventions. Since then, funds have gotten less. We haven\'t had an
increase in funds. We have had a decrease, basically, every year in
funds.

So considering the shrinking dollar, I have a question of, is it
appropriate that every LEA gets dollars? Now Tommy\'s suggestion, and
then we added some other levels to that suggestion, of requiring
matching or a part that the LEA would have to give to get funds, that
means some LEAs aren\'t getting funds. But I do think that, as we
approach this, that that clearly needs to be addressed.

Would I desire for every LEA to be able to have some funds in my world,
if I were Santa Claus and handing out the dollars? I would give
everybody some money. But I am not Santa Claus. Well, I have the office,
so I guess we do hand out the dollars.

But they are just questions, and I am not trying to answer the questions
when I ask them. I am just trying to throw them out so that we address
this.

Is the 20 percent to the state/80 percent to the LEA, is that something
that we want to continue? Do we want to give all the money to the state
and have them distribute all of it down to the LEAs? Is there a reason
why we have the 20 percent for the Governors\' program?

We need to think that through and have some ‑‑ we need to have
thoughtfully thought through the issue, are funds being spread too
thinly? If that is the case, how can we make that better? If matching is
it, I think that is great. But, again, as Howell said, a \$1500 program
now gets \$3,000. Still, is that an appropriate amount of money?

As Hope said, in Ohio, clearly, there are states that get small amounts
of money ‑‑ I mean LEAs that get small amounts of money that have good
programs that have made a difference in kids\' lives. Is that true in
all the other LEAs across the country that are getting a small amount of
dollars? Unfortunately, it is not. That is one of the problems of the
program.

We have a lot of great information about specific LEAs and states that
are implementing programs, and we can talk about it. But in evaluating
the federal program as a whole, every LEA, every state, all of them are
compiled in that. That is where we have the question of, is this an
effective program overall? So we have got to keep all those approaches
to it as we are developing it.

Quite honestly, I am not trying to say we shouldn\'t fund the Governors.
I am just saying this is the nature of our beast that we are working
with, and what is the best initial proposal we can say ‑‑ or not
proposal, but what are our best thoughts on this?

It might just be a list of questions. But what are our best thoughts on
this in making this the best it can be?

Is that helpful?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Was that rhetorical?

MS. PRICE: That was just rhetorical.

CHAIRMAN LONG: The only reason I ask that, we are down to our last four
minutes. But I think you bring up a good point. That gets right to the
heart of it, as we have with a lot of these things.

Is there some mechanism that we can use ‑‑ and, again, because we are
really up against a wall with time, all of us, and with the September
8th. As these minutes have ticked by, I keep thinking September 8th,
September 8th.

Is there a way to have some of these things ‑‑ like you just brought up
one with the issue with 20/80, and so forth; that was just one of the
items ‑‑ whether it is a yes, no, or a Leikert scale, or however you
want to do it, so that you can get some immediate feedback from the
Committee members to help with some of that, and then from that we could
have some discussion?

Because now we aren\'t going to be back together again. That really
concerns me. Is there just some way that we could get that out by email?
Catherine is shaking her head yes. By email and then compile those
answers, maybe just four or five questions.

As you were talking, I was just writing some things down. Yes or no,
Committee, does success go beyond curriculum? Yes. There might be one or
two who would say, \"I don\'t think so.\"

I am just using that as an example. \"Does success go beyond
curriculum?\" Yes. \"Should we recognize the inherent problems with
evaluation, and should we set up a collaborative evaluation? Yes or
no?\" Yes. And then worry about how we are going to do it.

But I think we have got to come to some, we have got to have some
mechanism to start getting these ideas out. So if that makes sense, and
you really triggered that when you brought that up ‑‑ would that be
okay, to compile a list of some of the ‑‑ as I said, I have got quite a
few questions here. We can talk back and forth, and then perhaps get
those out to get some feedback from the Committee in preparation for
that telephone call.

I\'m sorry, Shep.

DR. KELLAM: Yes, I was going to suggest that. Like I\'ve got a list
here, too, of things from my weird perspective to look at.

CHAIRMAN LONG: You aren\'t on the list, Shep.

(Laughter.)

No, I\'m sorry.

DR. KELLAM: Right. But, anyway, if we could somehow send you a list, and
you\'ve got a list, and get Jim, is it, whoever, Bill, yes, the
wonderful writer. Well, anyway, whoever is going to compile this, we can
have a two-way, 36-hour interaction to create a list that is maybe a
little more pointed.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Who would you like that to go to?

MS. PRICE: A really good source for it to go to is Catherine because she
has everybody\'s email, everybody\'s everything, and it is her job as
Executive; she gets to do that.

DR. KELLAM: I\'m sorry.

MS. PRICE: No, no, no.

DR. KELLAM: You can imagine the kind of administrator I am.

(Laughter.)

CHAIRMAN LONG: Howell?

DR. WECHSLER: I think whoever put together this list of questions that
the panelists were asked to address did a great job. Hopefully, we would
come back ‑‑ and we heard sometimes contrasting viewpoints. Certainly,
the program people differed from the research people, and the OMB tended
to side with the research people.

I think we have to come to conclusions on these specific questions. They
are great questions.

CHAIRMAN LONG: We now have 30 seconds.

MS. TAFT: I would like to put in a plug for the universality of the
distribution of funds for Safe and Drug-Free Schools in some manner,
because we know that addiction is a universal problem. Everyone is at
risk. It doesn\'t matter what your socioeconomic background is.

There was new research that shows that every drink that a young person
takes costs the nation \$3, and our young people are drinking a lot. So
that comes up to \$62 billion a year.

We also know that the younger a person starts to drink, the more lasting
the negative consequences.

Since everybody is at risk, I don\'t know how I am going to say that
Tommy\'s school is the one that we cut out because we don\'t have enough
money to go around.

I know that research has been halted in the longitudinal women\'s study
because they found, and with other medical studies, because they found
that they couldn\'t afford not to give the antidote to everyone.

How can we say that we are going to give prevention antidotes to some
schools and not to other schools and be ethical about it? I just don\'t
think we can do that.

So I hope that we will think about rewarding people for doing the kinds
of programs that we know are successful and build it on a positive scale
and promote more schools for using their money effectively, instead of
eliminating a whole hunk of kids that are just as much at risk as every
other hunk of kids.

MS. PRICE: I am asking this kind of as a devil\'s advocate, because I
have a lot of thoughts, as I sit at my desk, about this program all the
time. I think the universal need, I couldn\'t agree more with you. I
think it is there.

I also wonder ‑‑ and, clearly, we had people who are implementing good
programs here talking about the good programs. I wish it were true that
across the board that were the case, and it is not.

MS. TAFT: We could promote it.

MS. PRICE: We can promote it. But my question is ‑‑ I mean, we talked
about the cost of the child having a drink of alcohol. The cost to the
program, if we give dollars to an LEA that doesn\'t use them, kind of
dwindles them, the dollar value there, when they could go to another
school district that is implementing a program and using it. I have
frustrations at times about when the dollars are kind of sent out there
and we have to kind of beg and plead with people to actually get them to
use those dollars, and they kind of get sat on.

So I would like to see as many LEAs as possible get dollars, but maybe
to have something like the matching, or whatever ‑‑

MS. TAFT: You could structure it a lot of different ways and come up
with the same result.

MS. PRICE: Yes.

MS. TAFT: But I just don\'t think you can ethically say this kid in this
school doesn\'t count, so we\'re not going to give them any money.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry, I am going to bring this to a close. It is
11:30 and I see some of you starting to push your chairs away as you
head for those airports.

I have just a closing comment, and then where we go next. I think to
address what you just said, Hope, we all agree with that. That is the
difficulty in these discussions. It is difficult.

The other part of it is there is, as we know, the pie that Debbie drew.
I was thinking about Tommy and really everybody, Michael, sitting around
this table make those difficult budget decisions every day, and it deals
with programs and children. Sometimes it is almost gut-wrenching just to
make those decisions about what children will not receive in the way of
services. So that is the difficulty of the discussion of this Committee.

But to that point, and just the mundane first, we will have that call on
the 5th. Then it will be ready on the 8th.

But for you, I hope we step back when we have meetings like this. The
dynamics of this group and how it was going right and left, and how it
coalesced, I thought was really something to watch and be a part of. I
think sometimes we miss that when we are so close to the microphones and
we are involved.

But the other part, and I said this to the panel, one of the panels
yesterday, the fact the passion showed, but they were like an elementary
school compared to the passion that I saw displayed with this group, and
that is why you are sitting at this table.

So you are deeply appreciated. The trick now will be to put all this
together and come out with some great recommendations.

So thank you very much.

MR. PIMENTEL: I like that one of the last people that spoke here was
\"Hope\". Read between the lines, folks.

(Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the proceedings were adjourned.)