Faced With Stubbornly High Teen Pregnancy Rates, Oklahoma Starts Expanding Comprehensive Sex Ed

[n2doc]

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER

This fall, Oklahoma’s second-largest city will begin a comprehensive pregnancy prevention initiative in its public schools. The Tulsa school board voted to approve the new sex ed program on Tuesday night.

Under the new program, three outside organizations — Youth Services of Tulsa, the Tulsa Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and the Tulsa City-County Health Department — will offer comprehensive sex ed courses to 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students at four different schools. The course is optional, and parents must give their consent in order for their children to participate. If the pilot program is successful, it will be expanded to other schools in the area, and the outside educators will eventually pass off the curriculum to public school teachers.

“We really view the teen pregnancy prevention program as a drop out prevention program. This is really going to help students stay in school, finish school, go onto college, get good jobs, make Tulsa a better place to live,” Kim Schutz, the director of the Tulsa Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, explained.

Oklahoma now has the fourth-highest teen birth rate in the country. In Tulsa specifically, some zip codes have teen birth rates that are more than double the national average. Although teen birth rates have been steadily declining over the past several years, some deeply red states aren’t experiencing as much success in this area — partly because they still lack adequate sexual education requirements. There aren’t any sex ed requirements for Oklahoma’s public schools, and the state currently leaves it up to each school district to decide what type of information they want to offer. There’s nothing to prevent schools from providing no information about birth control or STDs whatsoever, or from teaching inaccurate information about sexual health topics.

“I think ignoring the issue is something we don’t have the luxury of doing any longer,” Schutz noted.

more
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/04/2568921/oklahoma-sex-education/

[Vogon_Glory]

1. I Wonder How Long This Outbreak Of Good Sense Will Last

I wonder how long this outbreak of good sense will last. Oklahoma is now in the solid grip of the Tea-publican Party, and right-wingers are not only fond of the abstinence-only approach to sex education, but they also don't care as to how well it works. If this program so much as gives half-way accurate information about contraceptives--even in passing--I expect the anti-abortion fanatics and the "family values" crowd to fall over themselves to shut it down.

[FSogol]

2. Until election time when some extreme fringe RW clowns campaign against the poor fools

who tried to do something right.

[madokie]

3. I'm all for it

When I graduated in May of '66 10 of our 32 senior girls were pregnant or already had a baby. I'm sure that with sex ed that number would have been different.