The Road to Recovery: New Schools Offer an Educational Alternative to Addicted Teens

Nationally, more than two million students meet the generally accepted criteria for specialty treatment for drug or alcohol abuse or addiction. Each year, fewer than 200,000 of these students receive the treatment they need. But what happens when a high school student with a drug or alcohol addiction gets out of treatment? Seventy-five to 80 percent of teenagers relapse within the first year following treatment. Many will be offered their previous drug of choice on their first day back in school.

To help support sobriety and prevent relapse, a new type of school has sprung up to offer students a continuum of post-treatment care. They are called recovery schools, and Peabody College's Andrew Finch has been studying them. Currently, there are about 30 recovery schools in 10 states. "Recovery schools are not treatment centers, but they support treatment gains," says Finch, assistant clinical professor of human and organizational development. "These schools benefit recovering students by enabling them to test increasing levels of responsibility and leadership gradually."

Secondary students in recovery schools, sometimes known as sober schools, face a number of common issues following treatment. These include working a recovery program and balancing that with school or remediation; continuing problems dealing with impulsivity; coping with co-occurring mental health problems, ADD, depression or anxiety; cross-addictions like gambling, sex or eating disorders; developing basic living skills; and becoming accountable and responsible.

As one of the founders of a recovery school in Nashville, Finch has close-up experience with these issues. In 1996, he helped establish Community High School under the auspices of Nashville's Oasis Center. As a school counselor who earned his master's degree at Peabody, he and the school's teaching principal largely designed a program typically enrolling 20-25 students. When Oasis's startup grant ran out, the school went independent. From 2003 to 2006, Finch served as director.

His involvement with establishing and running an independent high school led Finch to return to Peabody as a doctoral student in educational leadership and policy. "Robert Crowson, Steve Heyneman and Claire Smrekar," professors in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations, "were incredible assets to me," he says. Finch's dissertation dealt with recovery schools.

In 2002, Finch was contacted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The agency was interested in the phenomena of recovery schools and wanted to learn more about them. They offered to host a meeting if he would do the legwork in identifying them. One outcome was the establishment of the Association of Recovery Schools, with Finch as its executive director. He plans to transition out of the position as the association builds its board of directors and begins raising funds.

Along with Paul Moberg, a professor at the University Wisconsin-Madison, Finch is trying to flesh out the picture of recovery schools. In 2005, the two received a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to do a descriptive study of recovery schools in locations across the U.S.