AUSTIN, Texas — Some Texas students will have a new sex education curriculum this school year. Contraception, STD prevention, and healthy relationships are all approved topics for seventh- and eighth-graders. However, they’re told the only full-proof method to prevent pregnancy and disease is abstinence.
The State Board of Education voted on the new guidance in 2020. It had not been updated in over two decades. Texas public schools are not required to teach sex education, and parents must give their child permission to take it.
“No parent should feel that they’re subjecting their child to education standards that they don’t agree with,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, the senior policy adviser with Texas Values.
Castle said parents can review the school’s curriculum and then decide whether their student can attend the class. If they don’t enroll their student, Castle said it’s “imperative” that they have conversations with their children. Evelyn Delgado, the CEO of Healthy Futures of Texas, agrees.
“Don’t leave it to, you know, social media to educate your child,” Delgado said. “Leave it to a trained professional who has medically accurate information that can provide that information to your child.”
Delgado said students will learn about sex if they’re not being educated in school or at home. She said busy or absent parents might miss a form to enroll their child in a sex education course. She wants the Texas legislature to consider changing it back to an opt-out system, so the school could automatically enroll middle schoolers into the class.
“I do worry about those young people that won’t get this information that they really need,” Delgado said.
Texas has the ninth highest teen birth rate in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). That’s because of every 1,000 females aged 15 to 19, more than 22 have a child. Delgado said Texas also has the second highest rate of repeat teen births.
“While they can succeed with one or two children, or more, it makes it much more difficult for them to complete their education and to be successful,” Delgado said.
The sex education curriculum in Texas still emphasizes abstinence. Castle calls it a “sexual risk avoidance model.”
“I think that the goal is to teach kids the healthiest modes of operating their lives as possible,” Castle said. “So it’s important that kids not just learn about waiting to engage in sexual activity, but it’s also teaching them about the risk as well.”
In Texas, health education is required in middle school, but not high school.
“If they don’t get this information during middle school years, they may not get it at all if they don’t elect to take a health course in high school,” Delgado said. “And hence, the reason that we see college students still not having the information is because they may not have gotten it in the past in middle school or high school, and now they’re in college.”
Delgado said, based on self-reported data, at least 63% of teens are sexually active before their senior year of high school.
“That’s a lot of students to be sexually active and not have any knowledge of how pregnancy happens, how to protect themselves, how to access what they need, how to talk to their parents,” Delgado said.
In the future, Delgado wants to work with school districts to design sex education curriculums. She said, if a district is open to it, the lessons could include things like consent and information specific to the LGBTQ community.
Castle said schools should stick solely to the subject set out by the State Board of Education. She also supports giving parents more control of their child’s education. Gov. Greg Abbott has called this the Parental Bill of Rights.
“I’m very happy that our governor is interested in protecting parents’ rights,” Castle said. “I think parents have the ultimate right to be involved in their child’s education, and to have a say, and to have knowledge of what their children are learning in school. I think parents believe parents’ rights are pretty much understood on a general basis. So if we can enact any type of law to just strengthen what we already know, I think that’ll be imperative in the next legislative session.”
