Around 9 percent of eighth-graders surveyed by the council last fall said they had used alcohol within the previous 30 days. But the ratio climbed to around 25 percent when the question was asked of ninth-graders, according to the Partnership's poll, which was presented to school board members on Thursday.
Rates for binge drinking, marijuana use and cigarette smoking also rose significantly between eighth and ninth grade, the survey showed.
Judy Ekman, the Prevention Council's executive director, said the transition between middle school and high school has consistently presented a challenge to school officials, parents and substance abuse prevention experts.
Ekman said first-year
high school students are prone to overestimate their peers'
level of substance abuse and are more susceptible to peer
pressure from upperclassmen -- influences they had been
isolated from while in middle school.
"Their identity as a class, which has been strong throughout
middle school, can dribble away pretty quickly," Ekman said.
"They're thrown into
this entire four-year group of kids as opposed to living in
their own little world."
Officials began working to address the challenges in
transition from middle school to high school after the
Partnership's 2006 survey showed a similar trend.
The high school recently established a ninth-grade mentoring
program that places at-risk students with adult volunteers and
has also encouraged athletes to serve as role models for
younger students.
Saratoga Springs Superintendent Janice White said it may be
too soon to know if those initiatives are having an impact.
"I think we've still
got some work to do," she said. "But I think, over time, that
all of those things will have an effect. You just keep trying
different approaches until you see what works."
The 2008 survey, administered in October, also showed a vast
difference between the number of students who said they drank
alcohol and the number of parents who acknowledged their
children's behavior.
Of the parents surveyed, 34 percent said they believed their
children drank only occasionally, and less than 1 percent said
they believed alcohol abuse was a problem for their children.
But 15 percent of
ninth-graders and up to 40 percent of 12th-graders reported
having more than five drinks in a single sitting -- the
definition of binge drinking -- at least once during the month
prior to the survey.
Ekman said parents tend to believe their children mirror their
drinking habits, but youths often drink to get drunk, rather
than just drinking socially.
"They're thinking that their kids are going to a party to have
one beer, so everything is acceptable," Ekman said. "In
reality, the data indicates they are likely to be drinking
destructively."
Still, the study shows progress is being made.
The number of high school and middle school students who said
they drank, smoked marijuana or gambled, in most instances,
fell between 2006 and 2008.
Numbers from this
year compared with 2000, the first year the local study was
conducted, are down markedly -- a trend that mirrors declines
in the use of alcohol and drugs nationally.
The number of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders who said they
had used alcohol in their lifetimes has fallen 10 percent over
the last decade, to 35 percent in 2008, according to the
national Monitoring the Future Study.
Marijuana use has fallen from 36.5 percent in 1998 to 28
percent in 2008, the study also showed.
Ekman and White each said the community approach -- including
involvement by parents, police and school officials -- has
been the key to driving substance abuse down locally.
Several working groups have been formed to discuss the issue
within the last year, while town hall-style meetings and
drinking summits have also taken place.
"When everyone in a community concentrates on an issue, things change," Ekman said