Too Good for Drugs

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 5 claims (3 for, 2 against) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description

Too Good for Drugs is a classroom-delivered K–8 drug-prevention and character-education curriculum developed by the Mendez Foundation, with scripted lessons, role-play, cooperative activities, and skill-building exercises.

Components

• Too Good for Drugs K-8 curriculum: scripted classroom lessons with role-play, cooperative learning, and skill-building exercises: Too Good for Drugs is a classroom-delivered drug prevention and character education program for elementary and middle school students, consisting of "10 lessons at each grade level lasting 30–45 minutes per lesson." All lessons are scripted and taught by trained teachers or off-site program instructors. Instruction centers on "interactive learning and skill-building exercises," with students engaging "in role-play and cooperative learning games" and applying skills to different contexts. Core values such as respect for self and others, empathic responding, and responsibility are integrated into lessons, and optional parental and community involvement components (parent newsletters, interacti (What Works Clearinghouse (2006))

Claims

• Too Good for Drugs shows no discernible effects on student knowledge, attitudes, and values across two randomized controlled trials [-W]
• Too Good for Drugs has potentially positive effects on student behavior, with a WWC-computed domain average effect size of 0.25 that is not statistically significant [+W]
• At end of program, the largest Too Good for Drugs effect was on teacher-rated prosocial behaviors (effect size 0.52), not statistically significant after WWC correction [+W]
• Author-reported statistically significant program effects did not remain significant after WWC corrections for clustering and multiple comparisons [-W]
• In the RCT, the average effect across knowledge, attitudes, and values outcomes was substantively important (0.35) but not statistically significant, with several individual outcomes null [+W]

Related Products and Programmes

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Key Sources

• What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education. (2006). WWC Intervention Report: Too Good for Drugs. https://www.mendezfoundation.org

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	too-good-for-drugs
title	Too Good for Drugs
description	Too Good for Drugs is a classroom-delivered K–8 drug-prevention and character-education curriculum developed by the Mendez Foundation, with scripted lessons, role-play, cooperative activities, and skill-building exercises.
status	review
moved_from	element/too-good-for-drugs-k8-curriculum
product_kind	curriculum
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — what-works-clearinghouse-2006

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