Who'd have thought: Some parents want to do their jobs

Alaska will be left out of a large annual study on youth drug use because researchers weren't able to obtain high enough response rates. This year's results were statistically insignificant because not enough parents provided written consent for their children to be given surveys about drug use, as required by state law.

The Alaska Department of Education did not bother publishing results from the Alaska Youth Risk Behavior Survey, administered last spring, because the state response to the survey was less than 60 percent.

Voters in Alaska are known for their especially strong support for citizens' privacy rights, which is embodied by the Republican state legislator who wrote the 1999 law requiring parents to sign off on survey participation.

"We don't want schools, or anyone else, intruding into the privacy of homes without their parents' permission," said state Sen. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River.

It's simply not the government's right to know some things about children without their parents agreeing, Dyson said.

"I hold the old-fashioned view that the responsibility of raising kids lies with parents," Dyson said.

The state even spent extra money on trying to get more parents to send in the consent forms.

Pizza parties for 57 classrooms cost $5,000 to $7,000, an expense borne by the state interested in obtaining results from the state's largest school district, Kerosky said.

[snip]

Calling parents and asking them to sign forms had little effect.

"It didn't seem to make a big difference in our response rate," Stayrook said.

In light of the lackluster parental enthusiasm for the survey, you'd think Alaskans would also be reluctant to allow school officials to force their children into bathroom stalls and collect samples of their urine for the purposes of discerning drug use. That's why it's especially disappointing to see the Association of Alaska School Boards touting the ONDCP's federal grant money for drug testing in this July 2005 newsletter.

Drug testing is a huge impediment to family decision making, not to mention that it fails to reduce youth drug use. It's shameful that the federal government flushes Americans' hard-earned tax dollars down the toilet - literally - on testing teens' piss while doing nothing to actually prevent drug abuse. We know that strong open and honest relationships - particularly between teens and their families - are a crucial part of the effort to prevent drug abuse by young people. And schools stepping in and playing gotcha games with drug testing is wholly antithetical to that important aim.

Let's hope the Association of Alaska School Boards gets their act together and recognizes student drug testing for what it really is: bad for Alaskan families and contrary to the state's proud principles.