2/3 of Illinois Public Schools Provide Comprehensive Sex Education

A study of sex education in Illinois public schools found that one out of three teachers did not meet a very forgiving definition of comprehensive instruction, researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center report in the February 2008 issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Only 65 percent of teachers who responded to the survey covered the four basic topics required to be rated "comprehensive:" abstinence until marriage or older, HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and contraception. When the researchers added a widely recommended fifth topic-where to get condoms, birth control and health related services—only 42 percent of sex education teachers passed the comprehensiveness test.

The survey also found that 30 percent of the State's sex-education teachers had never received sex-education training, well above the national average of 18 percent. Although most teachers with training reported that they felt, "very comfortable" teaching adolescents about sex, only 56 percent of those who lacked such training said they felt as comfortable.

"For this study, we set the bar for comprehensiveness fairly low relative to what most medical and public health organizations recommend," said senior author Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and medicine at the University of Chicago, "and one out of three programs failed to clear it."

"Our children learn many of the skills they need to be healthy citizens and to take responsibility for their own health in school," she said. "That should include information about sexual aspects of health. Physicians who care for adolescents need to know what students are, or are not learning, in school in order to fill gaps caused by deficits in program content, quality and teacher training."

Previous studies showed that nearly two-thirds of 12th graders have engaged in sexual intercourse, and that accurate knowledge can delay sexual debut and increase the use of condoms or other forms of contraception when adolescents do become sexually active.

"Most parents support school-based sex education and teens regard it as an important source of information," Lindau said, "yet we found that several important health topics and skills are omitted, more often than not, from most Illinois public school sex-education criteria."

"Uninformed teens often become uninformed young adults," said second author Adjoa S. Tetteh, research assistant and a college peer sex educator. "Working with college students, I have witnessed this firsthand. Many students come to college with years of sexual experience, but are learning, for the first time, about effective ways to prevent STIs and unintended pregnancy."

The researchers used data collected by NORC, a survey research firm. NORC mailed self-administered questionnaires to 335 sex education teachers from 201 public middle and high schools in 112 Illinois school districts in the 2003-04 school year. Sixty-two percent of the teachers, representing 91 percent of schools, responded.