Summary
(Cho, Dion Hallfors, Iritani, and Hartman, 2009, pp.446-463) intend to bring out an evaluation on the eradication of drugs use among the youth in United States schools. This is in accordance with the efforts to reduce and prevent abuse of drugs that has been rampant for decades in the country. In the article, the U.S. Department of education had formed the Safe and Drug-Free Schools (SDFS) program to oversee to eliminate the use of drugs and violence among the American youths (Little, Pokhrel, Sussman, and Rohrbach, 2015, pp.80-89). This program targeted schools where most children could be reached out where it was enacted into the law of anti-drug abuse. However, nearly a decade later, violence became rampant amidst the existence of the SDFS program that was bearing fewer fruits to put the use of cocaine to a stop, which had led to increased violence that was declared a national concern by the department of education in the mid-1990s in the US.
Concisely, the government had reinstated the Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) to work jointly with the SDFS to root out the use of cocaine and other drugs such as tobacco and alcohol (Hyde and Shortell, 2012, pp.29-41). Additionally, the State Education Agencies (SEA) were responsible for funding the program and ensuring its effectiveness in implementation across all regions. However, the increased use of drugs spiked the scrutiny of these agencies and the program facilitators towards the achievement of the state goals on the use of the drugs among the youth. The lag in the operations led the Education Department (ED) to promulgate the principles of effectiveness rule in July 1998 that called upon the school districts to perform intensive evaluation and rational planning and mandated to hold back the funding to the agencies and the facilitators who objected to comply (Mundy, Kupczynski, Ellis, and Solgado, 2012, p.1). This opened a window for the authors to conduct an evaluation review on the legislation of drug prevention in the United States in this journal.
Evaluation is an essential aspect of program competition and implementation according to (Sanders, 2012, pp.345-379). In public administration, the authorities across the world have been reported to be sluggish in facilitating programs and for the benefits of the citizens due to lack of proper driving forces among the top officials. This has resulted in prolonged problems in the society such as drug abuse, moral decay, and the social injustices reported in some regions across the United States. Different scholars have tried to address these problems through top-down approaches in leadership by imposing strict rules and regulation to governing the citizens. However, (Cho et al., 2009, pp.446-463) recommends the approach of program evaluation and reviews as a way to bring sanity and efficiency in public administration.
Evaluation
In the authors’ evaluation, the principle of effectiveness rule demanded that the school districts should assess them to determine and establish the achievable goals and objectives through the implementation of the research-based prevention programs (Hawkins and Weis, 2017, pp.3-27). The effectiveness principle rule was later modified into the law through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 which intended to achieve the main goals that included, establishing violence- and drug-free learning environment, achievement in reading and mathematics, graduation for all enrolled students, English mastery, and recruitment of qualified students.
In the effort to achieve these goals, the transfer of funds was allowed into but not out of the programs including SDFS that was aimed to set up new learning and training facilities. This could allow flexibility among the district schools to combine the resources to address the social problems and challenges facing the students with drug prevention given the top priority (Noddings, 2015).
The authors empirical conduct the study through the question that seeks to answer how the federal policies affected the drug prevention plans, the impact of the funding programs using the evidence-based curriculum, and the relative importance of authorising the prevention activities by the department of education (Yanow and Schwart-Shea, 2015). The article theoretically hypothesises the transfer of funds from other drug prevention programs into SDFS practices with the implementation of the evidence-based curricula.
Additionally, the authors assume that large schools are likely to facilitate evidence-based curriculum due to the more funds allocated to them and stand a higher chance to hire knowledgeable staff on prevention on drug use and violence among the students (Michelson, Davenport, Dretzke, Barlow, and Day, 2013, pp.18-34). Concisely, there is an assumption that the state will prioritise the activities that would be proposed for prevention of the drug abuse by the agencies although the local authorities are perceived to be affected by the lack of funds, the complexity of the practices and the local mentality among the respective leaders.
These theories guide the authors to provide a unique assessment of the federal policy and the impacts on both the local and state on drug prevention decisions using the data from the two sources are discussed in the section below.
The authors sampled data from the surveys of SDFS states offices and the sample of school districts’ representatives as the secondary sources of data (Whiteside, Mills, and McCalman, 2012, pp.504-516). The first collection of data was conducted in 1999 by the school districts representatives who deployed the use of stratified probability sampling that excluded schools who had less than 20 students that were not useful to the study objectives. Moreover, the second data collection exercise was carried out in 2005, which targeted the schools that had been started in 1998-2002 and added to the initially collected data.
Theoretical perspective
The article uses the data collected in the second wave from the respondent districts, which was reported to have a response rate of 84 per cent. The data was collected using questionnaires that were filled by the experts knowledgeable about the use and prevention of the drugs and the SDFS coordinators offered as web and emailed surveys and the telephone interviews (McGuirk and O’Neill, 2016). Using these techniques led to consequences, for instance, some respondents did not fill the web questionnaires. During such incidences, the article articulates that those who did not give responses were sent the questions via their email. Consequently, those who did not reply to the emails were interviewed through the phone calls. These arose due to lack of the prior awareness of the respondents as lamented by (Englander, 2012, pp.13-25) according to research ethics.
Conclusion
The authors’ initiative was to evaluate how the drug abuse perceptions and practices have respondent to the SDFS changes of policy. The results indicate that barely a third of the public school districts complied the evidence-based curriculum of 2005 despite the seven years given by the federal government. The article further acknowledges that more than 20% of the schools that were funded by the SDFS were more likely to implement the evidence-based policies than those who had not been supported as acknowledged by (Fernandes-Alcantara, 2015). Additionally, the large districts were reported to have higher chances to implement the curricula more than the small schools. The findings also indicate that the state was more likely to endorse the prioritised activities than the local districts due to the considerable disparities that are reported to exist between the state and the local authorities.
The drug testing prevention strategy was prioritised by both the education department and the National Drug Control Policy despite the local agencies granting a low priority because of the controversial complexities associated with prevention of the drug use controls using the evidence-based curricula (Meier, 2016). These factors put together to reflect a minimal influence of the No Child Left Behind policies on drug prevention practices due to funding as the main barrier. The focus on funding large districts and neglecting the local district schools brings the sense of segregation among the communities thus resulting in negligence and laxity in fighting the abuse of drugs in some regions.
These results can be useful in helping the education department to re-focus on the local district schools. Additionally, the results can be vital in directing the department on the weaknesses observed in state schools over the prevention of drug abuse in addressing the issue in the local districts. This is in line with the recommendations given by the author that calls for prioritizing all the schools without the sense of discrimination. Additionally, the author recommends that sampling of the data to be done on middle schools rather than the school districts that result to the overrepresentation of the larger regions that could be a potential limitation during program implementation (Denscombe, 2014).
Research method
Process evaluation is the concept of determining the factors that could lead to successful completion and implementation or those that could hinder the success of a program (Reyes, Elizondo-omana, Garza, and Guzman, 2014, pp.24-58). In the evaluation review, the authors identify the shortcomings in the funding processes as a significant setback in the implementation of the SDFS program of drug prevention among the youths in the US. Furthermore, both the qualitative and the quantitative research methods are vital for evaluation of the program. The qualitative approach could be used in the collection of the non-numerical data while the quantitative approach could be utilised in numerical data such as the disbursement of the funds among the district schools (Savin-Baden and Maggi, 2013). Consequently, the dependent and independent variables could be established to determine the relationships between the qualitative and the quantitative data such as the impacts of more funding to the implementation of the evidence-based curricula of drug prevention among different district schools in the US.
Furthermore, an educational cost benefit analysis (CBA) technique can be used to review the study where the funding from the state can be perceived as an investment among the youth. The variants such as the funds allocated to different district schools can be measured against the advantages that would be brought by the achievement or the results of rooting out the use of drugs among the students across the Nation. Some of the benefits that could be reaped out of the funding programs are reduced violence and an improved learning environment for the students due to no drug abuse. Additionally, the cost-effective analysis technique could be combined with the CBA to evaluate the learning progress among the district schools. The technique would utilize the variants such as the teacher-learner relationship and the overall student behaviour in during in class to facilitate the no child left behind initiative acknowledged in the article (Cho et al., 2009, pp. 446-463).
References
Cho, H., Dion Hallfors, D., Iritani, B. J., & Hartman, S. (2009). The influence of ‘‘no child left behind’’legislation on drug prevention in US schools. Evaluation Review, 33(5), 446-463.
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Fernandes-Alcantara, A. L. (2015). Vulnerable Youth: Federal mentoring programs and issues.
Hawkins, J. D., & Weis, J. G. (2017). The social development model: An integrated approach to delinquency prevention. In Developmental and Life-course Criminological Theories (pp. 3-27). Routledge.
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McGuirk, P. M., & O’Neill, P. (2016). Using questionnaires in qualitative human geography.
Meier, K. J. (2016). The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol and Public Policy: Drugs, Alcohol and Public Policy. Routledge.
Michelson, D., Davenport, C., Dretzke, J., Barlow, J., & Day, C. (2013). Do evidence-based interventions work when tested in the “real world?” A systematic review and meta-analysis of parent management training for the treatment of child disruptive behavior. Clinical child and family psychology review, 16(1), 18-34.
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