Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Public schools in the District of Columbia are about to become the first in the nation to test students on their knowledge of human sexuality, contraception and drug use.
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that the 50-question exam will be given to students in grades 5, 8 and 10. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education says the test is needed because the city has some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy in the country. They’re hoping the test will help determine what students know about risky behavior.
“It paints a fuller picture,” said Brian Pick, deputy chief of curriculum and instruction for D.C. Public Schools to the Washington Post. “We don’t know as a system or as a city what knowledge kids have about these topics.”
The District’s problems are quite serious with nearly half of the city’s chlamydia and gonorrhea cases among residents between the ages of 15 and 19. Two-thirds of the cases were among people under the age of 24. Equally alarming is that three percent of all residents of the District over the age of 12 are infected with HIV or AIDS.
However, it remains to be seen if this test will be as disturbing to youth as one administered a year ago at the District’s Hardy Middle School that asked students questions such as “During your life, with how many people have you had sex (oral, vaginal, anal)?” and “How sure are you that you can correctly put a condom on yourself or your partner?” The very first question asks: “What is your gender?” The possible answers are male, female, transgender (M to F) and transgender (F to M). This might have been politically correct for the school, but it was certainly confusing to the child.
In fact, many of the students came home upset, such as one child whose parent claimed he hyperventilated.
According to the blog, Georgetown Dish, the test was administered by Metro TeenAIDS, a nonprofit aimed at educating children about HIV/AIDS. They sent an introductory letter to parents in 2009 announcing that their child would be part of a “program offered by DC Public Schools in partnership with Metro TeenAIDS and City Year DC called Making Proud Choices!”
The letter went on, “This program has been selected by DCPS for instruction to meet [health learning standards] for the middle school grades and is used in 7th and 8th health classes (sic) throughout DCPS.”
The program was not just for education, but for research, and said their child would be a “research subject” in a program that would gather information that “may make your child feel uncomfortable” or have “an emotional reaction.” The letter informed parents that they could have their child “opt-out” of the evaluation or the program itself.
The problem is that the letter wasn’t distributed to the parents until after the test was administered. And it was only after angry parents demanded a meeting with the school’s principal and other officials that they were given a copy of the actual test that had been administered to 7th graders.
Even more disturbing is that Metro TeenAIDS insisted that because of the potentially incriminating information being gathered from students, “The questionnaire is confidential — no one will be able to match your child with the answers that he/she provides.” However, when a parent demanded that her child’s test form be returned, officials were able to correctly identify the child’s test and return it to her.
One can only wonder why we’re spending all this time and money on tests that upset children and their parents while doing nothing about the underlying problem – rampant promiscuity among youth. And there’s only one logical way to prevent this – abstinence.
Schools could spend a fraction of the money spent on sex testing on a good abstinence-only program and reap twice as many benefits. Even if abstinence education can’t prevent every teen from engaging in premarital sex, many of these programs have been proven to at least delay the onset of sexual activity which cuts down on the number of partners a person has, thereby resulting in lower numbers of sexually transmitted diseases.
But our nation’s poorly performing public schools just can’t seem to put aside the liberal agendas that are running them into the ground – an unfortunate “choice” that is ultimately forcing our children to pay the price.
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