• A large majority of districts indicate that students may or will be reported to law enforcement for incidents involving the possession or use (86 percent of districts) or sale or distribution (87 percent of districts) of alcohol or drugs.
• Other responses include principal-determined suspensions (98 percent of districts indicate that students may or will be subject to a principal-determined suspension for possession or use; 84 percent of districts indicate that students may or will be subject to a principal-determined suspension for sale or distribution), recommendation for an expulsion hearing (90 percent for possession or use; 94 percent for sale or distribution), placement in an alternative schooling program (80 percent for possession or use; 71 percent for sale or distribution), and parent conference or notification (85 percent for possession or use; 82 percent for sale or distribution).
• Nearly one-third of districts (30 percent) report having graduated sanctions for repeat offenses. For example, 15 percent of districts explicitly allow principals to increase the duration of a suspension for possession or use if it is the student’s second offense.

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 today by the Institute of Education Sciences.

Although illicit substance use among adolescents has declined over the past decade, it remains a concern. Under one approach to address this problem, students and their parents agree to students being tested for drugs (and in some cases, tobacco or alcohol) on a random basis as a condition of participation in athletic or other school-sponsored competitive extracurricular activities.

The study, The Effectiveness of Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing, examined 7 districts that 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. Because these were districts committed to adopting such programs and they were clustered in mostly Southern states, the study results cannot be generalized to all high schools nationally.

The evaluation involved more than 4,700 students and compares the substance use reported by those in "treatment" high schools randomly assigned to implement the drug testing program immediately (in the 2007–08 school year) with the substance use reported by students in "control" schools assigned to delay implementing the program for a year (until 2008–09).