One last post on the drug-testing controversy:
Jacob Sullum in Reason Online takes on the drug testing case (scroll down to see the two previous postings on this topic) points out that if the school has to test a student's urine to uncover the drug use, how bad off can that student be? To use testing buzzwords, assessment of drug abuse should be "performance assessment" (assessing a skill through a portfolio or a set of real-life performance situations that a test-taker assembles over time) and not "standardized testing" (a one-time test whose results may be reliable but may not provide as much information). If a student has a drug problem, a teacher should notice some change in the student's scholastic or interpersonal behavior.
Then again, a teacher who doesn't pay attention to this happening in a classroom certainly isn't going to catch signs of drug abuse, either.
Posted by kswygert at March 25, 2002 01:06 PM