Giving Compass' Take:

• Laura Fay at The 74 discusses the number of states that have mandated sexual education classes for students, and the content within these courses. 

• What policy changes must be made to ensure that more states can provide comprehensive sexual health information to students? 

• Read more about how states are teaching sex education. 

Sex education is getting more attention in the wake of the #MeToo movement, particularly the need to teach students about consent.

What students learn about sex and sexuality during school varies widely from state to state and even from classroom to classroom. But this spring lawmakers in a handful of states are trying to pass bills to update their sex education policies to help students become more informed and better prepared to make good decisions.

Just 24 states mandate sex education in schools. Of those, only 10 require that it be medically accurate. Only nine require that it include consent.

One college professor in New Jersey estimates that 90 percent of her students arrive on campus poorly prepared and uninformed about their sexual health. Only 1 in 10 come having had “decent sex education,” said Eva Goldfarb, professor of public health at Montclair State University.

Goldfarb said her students are at risk for a range of social and health problems because of what they didn’t learn in sex education.

“They come really having a lot more physical experience than knowledge or understanding” about sex and sexuality, she said. That leaves them at risk not only for issues such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, she added, but also for “things we don’t talk about that are just as important as those things, like not-good relationships, not-good sex.”

“Sex education still remains a real patchwork with really big variability not only from state to state but also district building down to the classroom level,” said Nora Gelperin, director of sexuality education and training at Advocates for Youth, an organization that pushes for “honest sex education” that covers “sex, sexuality, relationships, contraception and condoms, and how to protect yourself and plan your future.”

Read the full article about sex education by Laura Fay at The 74.