Abstract
The No Child Left Behind Act mandates the implementation of evidence-based drug prevention curricula in the nation’s schools. The purpose of this paper is to estimate changes in the prevalence of such curricula from 2005 to 2008. We surveyed school staff in a nationally representative sample of schools with middle school grades. Using a web-based approach to data collection that we supplemented by telephone calls, we secured data from 1892 schools for a response rate of 78.2%. We estimate that the prevalence of evidence-based drug prevention curricula rose from 42.6% in 2005 to 46.9% in 2008, and that the prevalence of schools that used these curricula most frequently increased from 22.7% to 25.9% over this period. In addition, the proportion of schools using locally developed curricula also rose, from 17.6% to 28.1%. This study suggests the success of efforts by the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools to increase the prevalence of evidence-based curricula, as well as the need to continue to track the prevalence of these curricula in response to any reductions in the Office’s fiscal support for evidence-based drug prevention curricula in the nation’s schools.
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This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA016669). We continue to be quite thankful to MSI for their expert handling of our data collection efforts. We are grateful to the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools for their letter of support for our data collection efforts. We also are grateful to Sharon Fowler for her unparalleled bibliographic help.
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Ringwalt, C., Vincus, A.A., Hanley, S. et al. The Prevalence of Evidence-based Drug Use Prevention Curricula in U.S. Middle Schools in 2008. Prev Sci 12, 63–69 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-010-0184-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-010-0184-3