Drug Testing High School Athletes
Students involved in extracurricular activities and subject to in school drug testing reported less substance use than comparable students in high schools without drug testing, according to a new evaluation released by the Institute of Education Sciences. Although the use of illicit substances among high school students has declined over the past decade, it still remains an issue. One approach to fixing this problem is for students and their families to agree to allow their high school athlete to be tested for drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. This would be done on a random basis as a condition of participating in sports, clubs, or other extracurricular activities.
The experiment, The Effectiveness of Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing, tested seven school districts. The schools were awarded grants in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, to implement mandatory, random drug testing programs in their 36 high schools. The districts volunteered to be in the program and were spread across seven states. These states …show more content…
The goal of the drug testing program was to reduce student substance use in three forms. The first method just simply discourages those who do use. The next way was detecting substance use, and the last approach watched the effects on students influenced by their peers. Students were surveyed before and after the program began. They were questioned about their participation in school activities, their attitudes about school and knowledge of school policy, their attitudes about substance use and awareness of drug testing, and their report of substance use in the past month, in the past six months and their lifetime. Researchers focused mostly on students who participated in activities that would make them the subject of the random drug testing, but also the examined impacts on other
Students involved in extracurricular activities and subject to in school drug testing reported less substance use than comparable students in high schools without drug testing, according to a new evaluation released by the Institute of Education Sciences. Although the use of illicit substances among high school students has declined over the past decade, it still remains an issue. One approach to fixing this problem is for students and their families to agree to allow their high school athlete to be tested for drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. This would be done on a random basis as a condition of participating in sports, clubs, or other extracurricular activities.
The experiment, The Effectiveness of Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing, tested seven school districts. The schools were awarded grants in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, to implement mandatory, random drug testing programs in their 36 high schools. The districts volunteered to be in the program and were spread across seven states. These states …show more content…
The goal of the drug testing program was to reduce student substance use in three forms. The first method just simply discourages those who do use. The next way was detecting substance use, and the last approach watched the effects on students influenced by their peers. Students were surveyed before and after the program began. They were questioned about their participation in school activities, their attitudes about school and knowledge of school policy, their attitudes about substance use and awareness of drug testing, and their report of substance use in the past month, in the past six months and their lifetime. Researchers focused mostly on students who participated in activities that would make them the subject of the random drug testing, but also the examined impacts on other