and that is what your study is aimed at doing, of course, is trying to give us a better feel for what will work and what we should sponsor and what we can do and what we can't.

What is being done about the shortage of teachers?

Mr. LUKE. Well, the construct of the program here in Cleveland is a volunteer program: That is, as teachers volunteer, the district is about the business of trying to harness the resources to get those teachers trained. There does appear to be a shortage of funding, as well as teachers coming forward at this point, and I think the position at both Hamilton and Cleveland is that as more funds become available they will make a concerted effort to get those teachers trained, but there is a shortage right now in Cleveland. Again, it is a volunteer-basis kind of a program.

Chairman GLENN. We seem to have a trend of less use now over the past couple of years. Have you charted that or been given any information on that?

Mr. LUKE. I am not sure I follow the question.

Chairman GLENN. There are indications that the use of drugs is going downhill a little bit.

Mr. LUKE. No, we have not attempted to chart that at this point in time.

Chairman GLENN. How are we going to evaluate that? One of the things you indicated in your statement is that there is a biennial effectiveness evaluation required, and yet we do not quite know how to make that evaluation. Do you have any comments on that, you or any of the other people with you?

Mr. LUKE. Right. I think that is one of the areas that we and the Board of Education and others involved in this endeavor are going to have to spend some time to try to get-how to really evaluate the effectiveness of this program, and I guess initially the observation of the three components. One is increase in knowledge level: Just how much more do the kids know about drugs and alcohol? Two is have their attitudes changed for today, and, three, has their behavior changed with respect to those drugs, and somehow we are going to have to construct instruments and surveys to try and capture that over time.

Chairman GLENN. These programs were privately developed, commercially developed, as you indicated. Did they also commercially evaluate these programs as to what is effective and what isn't?

Mr. LUKE. Today I don't think we have seen any formal evaluations on these programs on the part of the government or the private sector that I am aware of. Deborah, is that correct?

MS. EISENBERG. That is correct.

Chairman GLENN. We are sort of flying blind on these things the way it looks. We have big programs out there that are commercially developed and have not been evaluated, and we don't know quite how to evaluate them anyway. Is that basically it?

Mr. LUKE. There are some surveys here in Cleveland, general attitudinal types of surveys on the part of students and teachers as to what they think about these programs in terms of strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of longitudinal effectiveness questions, we haven't seen those addressed at all at this point.

Chairman GLENN. Cleveland has this program called "MEOLOGY", which is sort of a term, as I gather, that covers a number of different programs sort of to give our young people a feeling of self-esteem and worth and so on and maybe pride so they don't get hooked on this stuff, so they have enough pride in themselves and plans for the future and career plans and so on where they don't get caught up in this, because they know the dangers involved and they just take a little personal pride in themselves. Did you have a chance to really look at that and evaluate that?

Mr. LUKE. Again, in terms of each individual package and component, we haven't independently reviewed any of those segments. Chairman GLENN. I hope those can be reviewed sometime, because I think when the Central Intermediate School I was at yesterday, one of the programs they have got there, we talked to some of the people involved with that. It seems to me something like that has to be done. It has just got to be.

There is one approach that some people have taken, in fact, I believe Mr. Bennett indicated a preference in one of his speeches a short time ago-at least it was interpreted that way-that get tough, law enforcement, lock them up, that approach.

Now, that may be the approach for adults or for drug traffickers or dealers or something like that, but to apply that attitude across the board I don't think you accomplish a whole lot by taking a young person in intermediate or high school and taking that kind of a tough approach. They have other means and concerns that are bothering them, perhaps, and this ME-OLOGY approach, taking a little pride in yourself and determining your own future to me is a far more direct approach than just locking people up at a young age.

On the other hand, you cannot put up with crimes and you cannot just say because they are only 15 or 16 years old, why, we should ignore what they are doing if it is really bad behavior.

Mr. LUKE. I would think, Mr. Chairman, there would be a number of experts in the field that would support you on that very point, that education is effective, along with intervention activities as well as building confidence and self-esteem within the kids themselves so they can, in fact, deal with the peer pressure and peer influence that they are bombarded with daily.

Chairman GLENN. From what you have looked at so far, do you favor keeping this on a district-decision level; in other words, the money that is provided for these programs, each district be permitted to use the money for the best program for their particular district?

Mr. LUKE. I don't know whether we are far enough along to take a definitive position with respect to that. However, I think we are far enough along to say that based on what we have seen, what districts have tried to do is structure programs that are germane to their individual needs, and I think that is why we see the Hamilton versus the Cleveland school districts.

The same with respect to the targeting of funds which have been recognized in the Governor's program that depending on what school district you are in, what the geography is, what your history is with respect to drugs and drug use, it is just different kinds of approaches. So I think our response today would be to maintain

some flexibility in allowing communities to address the issues based on their perceived needs.

Chairman GLENN. If we have any one program that works everywhere no matter what the local environment may be, I would sure like to know about it. If you are working in the field and making assessments on it, I would like to know that, too. But I would think it is best left up to each district. I think an area such as I was in in Central Intermediate yesterday may have a completely different societal pattern and support groups within the community and family as an average in that district compared to, say, Hamilton down by Cincinnati might be a completely different type of structure and something else would be better in that particular area.

So, OK, we are going to have to move along here. The rest of you have been very silent. Do you have any comments, Ms. Eisenberg? Ms. EISENBERG. Yes. Based on our discussions with sixth graders, we learned that what seems to have impressed them most from the drug education program is learning about the harmful effects of alcohol and drugs. This has also been shown by other studies, particularly a recent study in the Minneapolis public schools which showed that teaching young children about the harmful effects of drugs is effective, especially for low-risk students. The more highrisk students, the ones that are likely to take drugs or are, in fact, using drugs, it has been found that counseling-type activities and support groups work better with them.

Chairman GLENN. Mr. Coughenour, do you have any comments? Mr. COUGHENOUR. NO.

Chairman GLENN. Mr. Gillespie.

Mr. GILLESPIE. No.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you very much. We will look forward to a more full report in the summertime and looking in that more in the future and thank you for being here this morning.

Mr. LUKE. It has been our pleasure, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman GLENN. Some of our second panel have yet to arrive. When Mr. Stringer comes back in-he is Chief of Special Programs of the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and Coordinator of the Governor's High-Risk Youth Initiative-we will have him proceed with his testimony.

Mayor Mike White is supposed to be around, but I understand he will not be here until about a quarter till eleven.

[Brief pause.]

Chairman GLENN. OK, we are all assembled here. We have had a little delay in getting some of our people in here this morning, so we appreciate your willingness to come down and testify this morning, all of you. And first we will have a statement by Mr. Mike Stringer, Chief of Special Programs, Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and Coordinator of the Governor's High-Risk Youth Initiative. And then Debra Curlee, Task Force on Violent Crime, and she is accompanied by Billie Osborne, Kevin Goins, Katrina Gorham, Anna Penna, Maurice Powers and Nathaniel Washington, and they are all people who are participating in one or more of the in-school programs, and we particularly want to talk to them this morning to find out what is working and what isn't.

First we will start off with Mike Stringer.

TESTIMONY OF MIKE STRINGER, OHIO DEPARTMENT OF ALCOHOL AND DRUG ADDICTION SERVICES, COORDINATOR, GOVERNOR'S HIGH-RISK YOUTH INITIATIVE

Mr. STRINGER. I am going to be very brief, because I really think it is very important in this issue to listen to the young people and what they are saying. But just by way of background, from 1953 to 1970 I was Director of the Governor's Office of Criminal Justice Services and was responsible for one of the largest jail construction programs in the country. At the same time I sat on the Governor's Overcrowding Committee, and my staff staffed that committee, and we all knew the fact that although Ohio was building a half billion dollars' worth of prisons, we were never going to catch up with that population.

That population 10 years ago was under 10,000. It is now 30,000. In 5 years it will be 40,000, perhaps.

The answer to all this, I learned, my experience is there isn't any one answer, no quick fix, no easy solution, no silver bullet. There is no one-dimensional response to the problem we are facing. In fact, the complexity is echoed in the Drug-Free Schools Act we have identified the children of high risk for drug and alcohol abuse are poor, delinquent, dropouts, abused children, a whole range of problems.

That led me 2 years ago to leave my position and form a demonstration project with the U.S. Justice Department, Office of Juvenile Delinquency and Prevention to try in Ohio to bring together those major State departments that have some relationship to those problems identified in the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, Education, Mental Health Directors and try and work with selected communities to target our services in Ohio on the high-risk population.

I have learned a few things, and I want to touch on them, because it is a prelude to what we are going to hear from the young people.

If we are involved in a war on drugs, we should know the terrain. I think the comment of the first speaker was that the terrain is different in each community. We need to form a united front with our social service agencies, a united front between our schools and our communities and a united front at the Federal and State level among the agencies that fund and regulate our social service systems.

We have got to develop a strategy, a strategy based on the lives of young people in their communities. We have got to redeploy our existing resources in our social service systems to realize those strategies. We have got to commit new funds where we don't have the resources. We have got to recognize the fact that my program name, which I rather casually picked, "High-Risk Youth," is a misnomer. The kids are at high risk. The legislation doesn't say they are high-risk, the legislation says they are at risk for all these rea

sons.

We are at high risk for tolerating, ignoring the conditions in our communities in which 25 percent of our children grow up poor and at risk of involvement in drugs, at risk of not realizing their own potential. So we have got to organize ourselves to put into their

lives more adults who can act as role models, more activities and experiences in which they can learn the importance and the value of their self, in which they can gain a view of a positive future and they have supports towards achieving that future. We, lastly, must recognize the resource the young people themselves represent, probably the critical resource.

In 1980 a few blocks from here I saw a team of young men living in a housing project, some delinquents, all rough and growing up in the same neighborhood you were in yesterday. Those young men took an apartment in public housing, it was vacant for 3 years, filled with dirt of different varieties, destroyed, vandalized. They cleaned it out, they put up new wallboard, they laid new floor, they hung new windows and new doors and a place that was vacant for 3 years has been occupied for the past 5 or 6-the last I heard of it it was 3 years, occupied by a family. A group of men and women like the ones here today, initially of Cleveland, were capable of restoring a derelict into a home for a family.

There are great resources in these young people. We have got to help them express their ability, their dreams and achieve their future, because our future is tied up very closely with their ability to escape the conditions which you saw yesterday.

Just in closing, in Central High School area, sad to say, but unless we change them, half of the young people we saw yesterday will not graduate. A significant number will become parents. Violence of the young men you saw yesterday will be the chief cause of death before they are 35.

We are at risk, and we have got to listen very carefully to get some clues from these young people as to the kind of strategy to take place.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you, Mike.

Debra Curlee. Debra, you have a statement, I believe.

TESTIMONY OF DEBRA CURLEE, FEDERATION FOR COMMUNITY PLANNING 1

1

Ms. CURLEE. Yes. Thank you. As Co-director of the Federation for Community Planning Youth Action Project, which is designed to meet the complex needs of today's youth. We are taking a holistic approach. Drug abuse and misuse, teen pregnancy, early child-bearing, dropout, juvenile crime and youth gang, youth unemployment are all symptoms of a broader community problem.

When youth do not have significant support and encouragement, they are more likely to set goals or plans for the future that are not the goals and plans that we would like for them to set as a society. The results may be any or all of the above that will destroy their young lives.

We must refocus our efforts into what I would like to call holistic prevention. What I mean by "holistic prevention" is that we cannot solve one problem of youth without looking at all the problems that they have. One youth does not have just a drug problem or just a juvenile delinquency problem, it is usually two or more of those involved.

1 See p. 169 for Ms. Curlee's prepared statement.