Giving Compass' Take: 

• The author explains the difficulty in finding which programs work best when teaching sex education. Researchers say that there are so many factors that involved when teaching the subject that there is no "one size fits all solution" for comprehensive sex education. 

• How can educators help each other to create and share tailored programs by region and school that address the specific goals of sex education classes?

• Read about the different ways that states are able to teach sex ed. 

Debates over how (and even whether) sex ed should be taught in schools have raged for more than a century, with no end in sight. Those debates are fought on both scientific and cultural grounds — they’re about what works to prevent teen pregnancies and STDs and what’s appropriate for American kids to be taught in school, and at what age they should learn it.

The latter questions are important — and also outside the scope of science. They’re rooted in values, not evidence. We can answer the more concrete questions, though. What do we know works about sex ed? And what does it mean for something to “work” in the first place?

Hundreds of studies on sex ed and teen pregnancy prevention programs have been conducted, and what they show is that teaching kids about sex doesn’t make them start breeding like rabbits. Instead, it may prod them to delay having sex.

Cora Collette Breuner, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s committee on adolescence. Bruener is the lead author on an AAP clinical report on sexuality education for children and adolescents that advocates “developmentally appropriate and evidence-based education about human sexuality and sexual reproduction.” She said the challenge is that “there are so many variables that go into when and how someone is going to have sex” — such as social norms among peer groups — and these variables can differ among various populations and communities.

Those are the broad lessons. Where it gets messy is when you try to tease out which programs work best. There’s no one-size-fits-all way to deliver sex ed. But researchers are closing in on some of the essential components.

Read the full article about how to teach sex education by Christie Aschwanden at FiveThirtyEight