This document presents prepared statements and witness testimonies from the first in a series of Congressional hearings regarding the reauthorization of the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act of 1986. The testimonies examine the progress made toward achieving the sixth of the national education goals which states, "By the year 2000 every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning." Opening statements were made by Representatives Owens, Barrett, Scott, Fawell, and Sawyer. continues to make general progress in its war against drugs, it still has a higher rate of illicit drug use than any other industrialized nation. Witnesses providing testimonies include: (1) Madeline Kunin, deputy secretary, U.S. Department of Education; (2) Eleanor Chelimsky, assistant comptroller general, Program Evaluation and Methodology, General Accounting Office; (3) Lloyd Johnston, program director of Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan; (4) Ronald Stephens, executive director, National School Safety Center, West Lake Village, California; (5) Henry Wood, chairman, National Drug Free Schools and Communities Steering Committee, Wilmington, Delaware; (6) Stephen Danish, professor and chair of the Psychology Department, director of Life Skills Center, Virginia Commonwealth University; and (7) William London, associate professor of Health Education, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. (NB)

Witnesses include: William Strauss, author and generational historian, McLean, VA; Denise C. Gottfredson, prof., dept. of criminology, Univ. of Maryland; James Alan Fox, dean, College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern Univ.; Paul F. Evans, Commissioner, Boston (MA) Police Dept.; Karen L. Bierman, dir., Fast Track Program, Penn State Univ.; Jan Kuhl, supervisor of School Counseling, Des Moines Independent School District, Des Moines, IA; Kenneth S. Trump, pres. and ceo, Nat. School Safety and Security Services, Cleveland, OH; and Robert Eagan, v.p. of Energy and Critical Infrastructure, Sandia National Labs.

With its signature "DARE to keep kids off drugs" slogan and iconic t-shirts, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was the most popular drug education program of the 1980s and 1990s. But behind the cultural phenomenon is the story of how DARE and other antidrug education programs brought the War on Drugs into schools and ensured that the velvet glove of antidrug education would be backed by the iron fist of rigorous policing and harsh sentencing. Max Felker-Kantor has assembled the first history of DARE, which began in Los Angeles in 1983 as a joint venture between the police department and the unified school district. By the mid-90s, it was taught in 75 percent of school districts across the United States. DARE received near-universal praise from parents, educators, police officers, and politicians and left an indelible stamp on many millennial memories. But the program had more nefarious ends, and Felker-Kantor complicates simplistic narratives of the War on Drugs. He shows how policing entered US schools and framed drug use as the result of personal responsibility, moral failure, and poor behavior deserving of punishment rather than something deeply rooted in state retrenchment, the abandonment of social service provisions, and structures of social and economic inequality.