Current Barriers to Sex Education Implementation

Reduced federal funding for abstinence-only programs is a step in the right direction.  However, advocates had hoped that these funds would be eliminated entirely.  Further, making funding for evidence-based teen pregnancy, HIV and STI prevention available does not guarantee that high quality comprehensive sex education will be implemented in schools across the United States.  Barriers to implementation and institutionalization continue to exist:

• Many states continue to have state policies that promote, endorse, and/or codify the teaching of abstinence-only programs in public schools.

• Reinstatement of Title V provides a financial disincentive for these states to improve their policies. States with abstinence-only policies or those with neutral policies and conservative governors are apt to continue accepting federal abstinence-only funds.

• Abstinence-only “educators” offer an easy solution for schools. They come in at no cost and take care of the "sex education" class--sometimes in only one or two session assemblies.

• TPPI funding must be re-appropriated each year. Further, the initiative explicitly supports evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. While these programs are based in sex education, most are not holistic or comprehensive. They tend to be short and focused only on behavior change related to teen pregnancy prevention. They are not programs that posit sexuality as a positive and healthy part of being human. 

• Currently, sex education is not a tested subject. In this era of standardized testing, schools focus most if not all of their attention on tested subjects. They have little time for untested subjects such as health education or sex education.

• There is little pre-service or in-service training for those that teach sex education in public schools. Most classroom sex educators are health and physical education teachers who receive little preparation either on the content or the pedagogy of sex education.

• There is no system of accountability to ensure that sex education is of high quality or that it gets institutionalized at the school level.