Since 1993, we have conducted an AIDS education program in local high schools. Two trained volunteer 1st and 2nd year medical students and an HIV infected speaker go into high school classrooms and speak to groups of 20-30 students. The medical students present a lecture covering factual information about HIV/AIDS and then the HIV infected individual discusses living with HIV infection. Each year, the program has addressed between 2,000 and 3,000 high school students. In order to determine program effectiveness, we administered standardized pre and post-test questionnaires to 327 high school students who participated in the program between December 1995 and January 1996. The questionnaire consisted of 31 questions selected to determine knowledge and attitudes about HIV. A total of 258 of 327 (79%) students completed the pre and post-test correctly and were included in the evaluation. The students tested were in 10th (23%), 11th (45%) and 12th (31%) grades, 51% were female and 82% were white. For the entire group, 42% answered all knowledge questions correctly on both the pre and post-test and 50% answered all attitude questions with a tolerant response on both pre and post-test. Although not statistically significant, 10th grade students had the lowest knowledge scores on the pretest (32% with all correct) and showed an improvement on the post-test (48% with all correct), whereas the 12th grade students had better scores on the pre-test compared to the post-test (47% vs 37% with all correct, respectively). Females scored significantly better than males on the knowledge questions and were more tolerant. Students who answered all questions with a tolerant response were more likely to answer all factual questions correctly compared to students with any not tolerant responses (50% vs 31%, respectively, p<.05). HIV education programs need ongoing evaluation to determine if they are having the desired impact on the students. We found that overall, the students knowledge base was good even before the teaching session and only in the youngest age group were we able to demonstrate a difference in the students knowledge after the program. (Funded by CNY Children's Health Fund)