Leaders of the nation's most widely used program to discourage drug use among schoolchildren have acknowledged that their strategy has not had sufficient effect and say they are developing a new approach to spreading their message.

The DARE program, whose acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, has grown so rapidly since its founding 18 years ago that it is now taught in 75 percent of school districts nationwide and in 54 other countries.

But with criticism of the program's effectiveness increasing, DARE officials and independent researchers have quietly worked for two years to develop a new curriculum and plan to introduce it in Washington today. Controlled studies of about 50,000 students will begin in six cities and their suburbs in the fall.

ABA ON ZERO TOLERANCE: "Zero tolerance" policies in schools can be unfair, some lawyers argue, because a student found with aspirin in his pocket can get suspended as quickly as one with marijuana.

Leaders of the 400,000-member American Bar Association probably will come out against such rules at the close of their winter meeting, even though some schools say lawyers were a big part of the reason for adopting zero tolerance policies.

Kansas puts evolution back into coursework

The Kansas Board of Education restored evolution to the state science curriculum Wednesday, 18 months after excising all references to the origin of man and the age of the Earth at the urging of conservative Christians.

The new science standards, adopted by a 7-3 vote, also require children to study plate tectonics and the big-bang theory, two topics the board had stricken from the curriculum in 1999 on the grounds that they, like evolution, were not true science because they could not be directly observed or measured.

In space . . .

SHUTTLE: Two astronauts ventured outside Wednesday on America's 100th spacewalk, wrapping up work on the international space station's new science laboratory and taking turns playing dead.

The space shuttle Atlantis spacewalkers, Thomas Jones and Robert Curbeam Jr., conducted NASA's "dead-guy test," an emergency drill for dragging an incapacitated astronaut to safety.

ASTEROID PROBE: The first spacecraft to land on an asteroid got a reprieve from a scheduled communications shutdown Wednesday and will stay in contact with Earth a little longer.

NASA officials said they decided to extend the mission of the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft by 10 days to allow more data to be collected from the 1,100-pound craft that unexpectedly survived touchdown on the asteroid Eros on Monday in remarkably good condition.

Also Wednesday . . .

CALDER MUSEUM: The family of sculptor Alexander Calder, known for his large-scale steel mobiles, chose Philadelphia, the late artist's birthplace, as the site of a $50-million museum dedicated to his work. Organizers hope to complete it by 2004.

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