Sex Education
Florida News
Florida Officials Pressure Schools to Roll Back Sex Ed Lessons on Contraception and Consent
Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons
Associated Press Sept. 23, 2024
Tennessee Lawmakers Pass Bill to Require Anti-Abortion Group Video, or Comparable, in Public Schools
Tennessee would become the latest state to require public school students to watch a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group, or something comparable, under legislation heading to Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s desk
Associated Press April 4, 2024
Georgia Senators Again Push Conservative Aims for Schools
Georgia’s Republican state senators are making another attempt to impose a conservative stamp on the state’s public schools
Associated Press March 26, 2024
A Nebraska Bill to Subject Librarians to Charges for Giving 'Obscene Material' to Children Fails
A bill that would have held school librarians and teachers criminally responsible for providing “obscene material” to Nebraska students in grades K-12 failed to advance Wednesday in the Legislature
Associated Press March 20, 2024
Georgia Lawmakers Support Immigration Crackdown, Religious Liberty Protections at Deadline
Georgia lawmakers pushed through dozens of bills before a key deadline Thursday,
Associated Press Feb. 29, 2024
Sex Ed Classes in Some States May Soon Watch a Fetal Development Video From an Anti-Abortion Group
An animated fetus that develops over the course of a three-minute video has become a new front in state-level abortion politics
Associated Press Feb. 22, 2024
Georgia GOP Senators Seek to Ban Sexually Explicit Books From School Libraries, Reduce Sex Education
Republican senators in Georgia want to cull sexually explicit books from schools, ban sex education for younger students, display the Ten Commandments in classrooms and allow religious chaplains to counsel teachers and students
Associated Press Feb. 21, 2024
How Dominican Women Fight Child Marriage and Teen Pregnancy While Facing Total Abortion Bans
The Dominican Republic is one of four Latin American countries criminalizing abortion without exceptions
Associated Press Jan. 2, 2024
Editorial Roundup: Missouri
Associated Press Oct. 17, 2023
Sex Education Classes Often Don't Include LGBTQ+ Students. New Restrictions Could Make It Worse
Many LGBTQ+ students say they have not felt represented in sex education classes
Associated Press Oct. 7, 2023
America 2024
Stricter state laws are chipping away at sex education in K-12 schools
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DES MOINES, Iowa — A dozen state or county agencies have parted ways with tens of thousands of dollars in federal grants meant to help monitor teenagers’ sexual behaviors and try to lower rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases .
The actions reflect a shift in many states that is further complicating and polarizing sex education in K-12 schools as some Republican-led legislatures more strictly regulate when and what students learn about their bodies. The new laws are part of a broad push to fortify “ parents’ rights ” and strike LGBTQ+ content from the classroom, core themes that have flooded the campaign for the GOP presidential nomination .
Experts are concerned students won’t reliably learn about adolescence, safe sexual activity or relationship violence, topics they say are especially important since sexually transmitted diseases rose after the pandemic and access to abortion is increasingly restricted.
Anne-Marie Amies Oelschlager, a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, said a trained, trusted adult is critical for young people to get good information versus other, less trustworthy sources like social media.
“When we stop talking about these things or ... try to push things under the rug, we just increase risk,” she said.
World & Nation
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Oct. 14, 2023
Fewer teens are sexually active , a 2021 government survey showed, but federal data that year also suggest teens and young adults made up half of all people with STDs. For the youngest generations, the language about sex is evolving .
This year, lawmakers passed bans on teaching human sexuality before fourth grade in Indiana and sexual reproduction or sexual intercourse before fifth grade in Arkansas . In Kentucky, educators can’t teach sexuality or sexually transmitted diseases before sixth grade , and parents must provide consent for older students. A handful of states require parents to opt in to instruction instead of opting out.
In Florida, materials about reproductive health, human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases for any grade must be approved by state officials. A letter from the state agency indicates curriculum was due for review by the end of September.
Advocates for comprehensive sex education say the restrictions in early education may prevent kids from getting age-appropriate foundational knowledge that they build on each year, said Alison Macklin, director of policy and advocacy at the progressive sex education organization SIECUS.
“You were never going to teach a first-grader a trigonometry lesson, right?” she said. “But they have to have foundational knowledge in first grade to be able to get to that in high school.”
“Sex education is exactly the same,” Macklin continued, suggesting young people aren’t prepared for puberty if they haven’t already learned “foundational things like correct terminology for body parts.”
Puberty for girls begins from ages 8 to 13 and typically two years later for boys. To comply with the new law in Kentucky, for example, the state’s education agency advised schools to eliminate fifth-grade lessons on puberty and reproductive body parts.
The consensus was sex education in elementary school “wasn’t necessary or appropriate in any context,” said David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a Christian organization in Kentucky that advocated for the law.
Many parents disagree with the boundaries around what is considered age appropriate by sex ed advocates, he said, particularly when it comes to gender identity and “the idea that biological sex is not an immutable characteristic.”
The law “sets a base level of protection for parents to be able to be the ones that can review the curriculum and make a decision as to whether that’s something they’d like their child to participate in,” Walls said.
There is federal guidance for developing evidence-based and age-appropriate sexual health curricula, but state laws and local implementation run the gamut.
Twenty-eight states require sex education, and 35 require HIV education, according to tracking by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Most states require any instruction on sex or disease prevention to include abstinence, and most states allow parents to opt out.
While many states have curtailed sex education, others have codified comprehensive and inclusive standards. Massachusetts, for example, recently announced new sexual health education guidelines, which were last updated in 1999.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services award millions of dollars for programs designed, in part, to track teen behavior and teach abstinence and contraception with the goal of creating safe environments and preventing pregnancy and diseases.
Idaho’s Division of Public Health said it no longer administered the HHS grant for personal responsibility education programs, or PREP, as of July 1 after lawmakers did not approve the spending during the legislative session.
New Hampshire withdrew from PREP funding after a five-member Republican-led council that approves contracts repeatedly blocked funding in 2022. However, PREP funding doesn’t necessarily disappear if a state’s officials reject it; instead, it can be awarded directly to local organizations, which is now the case in New Hampshire.
A different grant is provided by the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health for a biennial youth survey. Since March 2022, six states have discontinued the agreement to conduct the survey: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa and South Carolina. Some of those states also have new laws restricting schools’ ability to administer surveys.
Four Florida counties encompassing parts of the Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville and Miami metro areas also withdrew from another CDC grant to expand student health resources and education.
The CDC will “always promote the best available science,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the agency’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. The agency said it is committed to collecting data revealing youth health challenges and recommending evidence-based programs addressing them.
Ethier said there is always a “disconnect” between their recommendations and state and local policies, but she is less focused on any given health class “than the whole school environment.”
“I worry any time educators don’t feel able to thoughtfully answer young people’s questions,” Ethier said.
Teenagers’ curiosity drives Teen Health Mississippi, a organization that trains educators and offers supplemental programs for parents and teens.
About a quarter of the state’s counties work with the nonprofit and the state’s health agency to implement an “abstinence-plus” program, an option schools have to teach about contraception in addition to the now-permanent requirement to teach abstinence.
Hope Crenshaw, the organization’s director, said low percentage of counties suggests “a lot of young people aren’t getting that information and many of them are getting it based on their ZIP Code.”
“Young people want information to protect themselves,” Crenshaw said.
Kayla Smith is among them. The 18-year-old freshman at the University of Mississippi volunteered to be a youth advocate with Teen Health Mississippi, engaging her peers and answering their questions.
The topic of sex in Mississippi is “taboo,” Smith said. She remembers just one optional day of sex education in middle school.
“I wanted to learn information about healthy relationships, contraceptive options,” she said. Instead, she believes abstinence-only curriculum is “withholding information about those important details that can help people make safe and informed health choices.”
Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
More to Read
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Feb. 28, 2024
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Feb. 26, 2024
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Sex Education’s Shortcomings Leave Students ‘in the Dark’
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School nurses, psychologists, counselors, and other health workers give low marks to their district or school’s sex education curriculum, a new national survey shows.
While topics like puberty and anatomy and physiology are commonly taught, less than 40 percent of school health workers said students in their district learned about consent, interpersonal violence, and contraceptives, the survey by the EdWeek Research Center found. Information on LGBTQ+ issues or gender identity and expression are also rarely included in the curriculum. And a sizable number of K-12 school health workers say their school doesn’t teach sex education at all.
“I really do feel like our public schools are failing kids when it comes to sex education,” said Nora Gelperin, the director of sex education and training at Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that works for adolescent sexual and reproductive health.
The survey results, Gelperin said, indicated that students are being left “in the dark.”
The EdWeek Research Center surveyed 3,480 school health workers in March. The sample included about 2,300 school nurses, 350 social workers, 245 school psychologists, and 120 health or sex education directors, among other health-related job titles.
When asked how they would rate the ability of their district or school’s sex ed. curriculum to provide students with the information they need to know, nearly 1 in 5 school health workers said their district or school didn’t teach sex ed. at all. Another 19 percent called the sex ed. curriculum “completely” or “somewhat” inadequate.
About a quarter said the curriculum did a “very adequate” or “excellent” job at informing students.
In general, teachers don’t have enough training on how to deliver comprehensive sex education, Gelperin said. But another, more immediate challenge is that sex education is caught up in political and cultural debates, she said.
“Unfortunately, I think sometimes adults over-censor themselves—they’re so worried about the pushback,” Gelperin said. “It’s really to the detriment of the students.”
In open-ended survey results, several school health workers said they want their school to have a more robust sex ed. curriculum than it has, but they’re stymied by district policies and fear of public backlash.
“Teaching health, especially sex ed., is very challenging these days, primarily for fear of parental interference or criticism,” one health worker said.
What school health workers say is included in the curriculum
When school health workers were asked what topics were included in their school or district’s sex ed. curriculum, most said puberty (71 percent) and anatomy and physiology (60 percent).
Those topics are generally considered safe and non-controversial, Gelperin said. (Still, she added, she wishes puberty was taught across the board since it’s “not optional” for children: “It’s really helpful to know what’s going on with your body.”)
But other topics that experts say are important for a comprehensive sex education curriculum—like consent, interpersonal relationships, and information about both contraceptives and abstinence—are included even less, the survey results show.
All of these topics are included in the National Sex Education Standards , which advocate for a sequential approach to building knowledge and skills from kindergarten to 12th grade. According to a 2016 federal survey, 41 percent of districts in the United States have adopted a version of the standards, which were last updated in 2020.
The standards have been criticized by some conservative parent activists and commentators for their advocacy of frank conversations about sex and sexuality, particularly related to LGBTQ+ identity.
Sex education can start in elementary grades, experts say
The school health workers surveyed work in all grades, and several of the ones who work in elementary schools pointed to the age of their students as reasons for not including some of these topics in the curriculum—or not having sex education at all.
But Gelperin, who was among the writers of the National Sex Education Standards, said the foundation for these topics can be introduced as early as kindergarten, in age-appropriate ways.
Young children should be taught that they can have personal boundaries and how to communicate those boundaries to others, she said. Learning to ask permission before borrowing another child’s toy is an example of consent.
The National Sex Education Standards say that by the end of 2nd grade, students should be able to define consent and bodily autonomy. The standards also say that 2nd graders should be able to identify situations that might be uncomfortable or dangerous, like bullying or child sexual abuse, as well as identify trusted adults who they can talk to about those situations.
“You can’t expect kids to make healthy decisions if you leave them in the dark,” Gelperin said.
The survey results indicate that abstinence is taught more frequently than information on contraceptives. Ideally, schools should talk about both options and give young people the “full and complete picture,” Gelperin said.
“Abstinence is always going to be the healthiest decision for young people,” she said, but many will still decide to have sex. “They need to know how to protect themselves and their partners.”
When school health workers were asked what topics they think should be included in the sex ed. curriculum that are not currently addressed, information on contraceptives topped the list, tied with interpersonal relationships and dating. Information about sexually transmitted diseases, testing for those diseases, and treatment closely followed.
“In a town with high teen pregnancy, we don’t have a formal sex ed. class,” one school health worker said in an open-ended response to the survey. “I believe if students are more aware of their bodies and how they operate, they can make better decisions about sex. However, community and some staff believe we’d only be encouraging students to have sex, when that is not the case. If they are going to have sex, they will; but at least they will be better informed.”
Said another: “Abstinence isn’t a realistic goal for everyone, but safety, consent, and preparation are.”
School health workers aren’t sure about the inclusion of LGBTQ+ issues
Only a quarter of school health workers said their school or district’s sex ed. curriculum included information on gender identity and expression and LGBTQ+ issues. About a third of survey respondents then selected that as an area that they think should be included.
These findings show a degree of ambivalence among health workers about how to teach about LGBTQ+ identities, as the topic continues to rise in current political discourse.
In general, most school health workers—about two-thirds—said they don’t think any topics should be excluded from their district or school’s sex ed. curriculum.
But among those who support excluding some topics, 23 percent said information on gender identity and expression and LGBTQ+ issues should not be part of the curriculum. That’s the highest selected topic by far—the second-most common topic school health workers marked for exclusion from the curriculum was information on pregnancy, prenatal care, and childbirth, with only 4 percent selecting that option.
“I really believe this is a current moment of time and not a true reflection” of school health workers, Galperin said, referring to the fear of parental pushback and the wave of legislation that seeks to restrict teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity.
She added that the school health workers she works with are invested in protecting LGBTQ+ youth, who are among the most vulnerable students. (Research shows that LGBTQ+ teens report higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation than their peers.)
But there could be other reasons, too. The survey results indicate that more than 40 percent of K-12 school health workers have not received any professional development on working with LGBTQ+ students . And open-ended survey responses show that some school health workers are uncomfortable discussing the topic. Several said those discussions should be primarily between the parent and the child.
“We need to equip and help educate parents to do their job of raising their own children rather than usurp their authority and try to change their values and beliefs in regards to sex education, gender identity, and other controversial topics that [are] in conflict with religious beliefs,” one school health worker wrote.
Experts say that it’s important for all students to learn definitions and terms related to gender identity and expression and sexual orientation. The National Sex Education Standards say that by the end of 5th grade, for instance, students should be able to explain that gender expression and gender identity exist along a spectrum, as well as be able to describe gender-role stereotypes and their potential impact.
“You have to provide material that engages all of the kids that you’re serving,” said Elijah Oyenuga, the program coordinator for the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at Fenway Health, a medical center in Boston. “It’s also a space that can give language and knowledge to a lot of youth that might be still searching for that language about their own identities that they may not have had before.”
LGBTQ+ issues can also be incorporated into other topics that school health workers deem necessary to include in the sex ed. curriculum, like relationships and STD testing and treatment, said Darrell Sampson, the executive director of student services for the Arlington, Va., school system.
“Some of those are applicable to anyone, but there are nuances, perhaps, or greater risk factors for some of those things in terms of LGBTQ students, so why wouldn’t we want them—anyone—to have that same level of information so that they have the right information to then make healthy choices for themselves through adolescence and into adulthood?” he said.
Explore the Series
‘It's So Overwhelming’: School nurses, psychologists, and other health workers have a rapidly growing workload that has prompted some to consider quitting, according to a new national survey .
Supporting LGBTQ+ Students: School-based health workers say they’d benefit from more PD on working with LGBTQ+ students. See the exclusive survey data .
Sex Education’s Shortcomings: See how school health workers rate their district or school's sex education curriculum in new survey results.
Curbing Students’ Substance Abuse: Most school health workers report seeing an increase in the number of students using marijuana or vaping products .
Naloxone in Schools: Learn why this district equips its high school students with the opioid-reversing drug .
Condoms and Contraceptives for Teens: A new national survey shows that sexual and reproductive health services are mostly unavailable in schools .
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
Lauraine Langreo, Staff Writer contributed to this article. Coverage of race, opportunity, and equity is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.
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