New York State school districts: inaccurate, incomplete and biased sex-ed instruction

Many public school districts across New York State provide sex-ed instruction that is inaccurate, incomplete and biased, according to a report released by the New York Civil Liberties Union that analyzes sex-ed materials that have been used in 82 public school districts.

The report, Birds, Bees and Bias: How Absent Sex Ed Standards Fail New York’s Students, examines sex-ed materials used during the 2009-2010 and 2010-11 school years. The NYCLU sent freedom of information requests for the materials to 108 districts statewide; 26 provided too little information and were excluded from the study. New York City, which recently adopted a citywide sex-education mandate, was also excluded. The total number of students enrolled in the districts surveyed, about 543,000 students, represents about half the enrollment in the state’s schools, outside Among the NYCLU’s key findings:

• Lessons on reproductive anatomy and basic functions were often inaccurate and incomplete; pervasive factual limitations reflected gender stereotypes and heterocentric bias. For example, Nearly 2-in-3 districts excluded any mention or depiction of external female genitalia from anatomy lessons. One district defined the vagina as a “sperm deposit.”

• Moral overtones and shame-based messages regarding sexuality, abstinence, pregnancy and teen parenting strongly pervade instructional materials in all districts – and textbooks in wide use across New York State. These materials, unlike medically-accurate, opinion-neutral information, risk alienating students from otherwise valuable prevention lessons.

• Many students do not learn the full range of methods for preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. Too few school districts provide students with information about how to access local health resources or their right to confidential reproductive and sexual health care. For example, while 80 percent of the districts we studied taught students about condoms, only about 1-in-3 actually taught students how to use them.

• Most districts did not teach information about bullying (63 percent), and many did not teach about sexual harassment (42 percent), sexual assault or rape (28 percent).

• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) students are largely stigmatized or ignored entirely in health education classrooms. For example, more than half the school districts did not provide any instruction about sexual orientation.

• Persistent heterocentric bias dominates instruction about dating, relationships, marriage, sexuality, and vulnerability to sexual assault and dating violence. For example, one commonly used textbook addresses only “traditional marriage,” defined as “an emotional, spiritual, and legal commitment a man and woman make to one another.”

HIV instruction, required by state law since 1987, is the most consistently robust element of sex education in New York State; 93 percent of districts provided instruction about HIV/AIDS and how it is transmitted, but only 56 percent offered complete and scientifically accurate information.

New York State does not require general sexuality education, leaving vast gaps in skills, awareness and knowledge that risk great potential harm. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 44.5 percent of New York’s male high school students and 39.6 percent of female students are sexually active – but 1-in-3 sexually active boys report that they don’t use condoms, and about 8-in-10 sexually active girls say they don’t take birth control pills. According to the New York State Department of Health, about 1-in-3 of new sexually transmitted infections diagnosed in New York each year occurs among residents 19 and younger.

State health instruction guidelines published in 2005 specifically address sexuality and sexual health, but these guidelines are not binding on school districts, and do not recommend specific curricula or instructional materials. More rigorous national standards issued in 2012 are not binding on New York school districts or individual schools.

Among its recommendations, the NYCLU calls on the State Education Department to amend the Commissioner’s Regulations on health education to require comprehensive sexuality education in the public schools – or set rigorous, binding standards for voluntary sex-education curricula –to ensure that young people have the foundation, skills and knowledge to support a healthy and productive future.

New Yorkers widely support comprehensive sex ed. In a 2009 poll, 87 percent of New York voters said it was important that public schools provide sex education to students. A 2011 poll showed that more than three-fourths of New York voters favor teaching comprehensive sex education. Moreover, the nation’s leading medical, public health and education associations support it.

Related Pages:

Sex Ed Materials by District

2012 Vital Signs measures K-12 STEM learning state-by-state

A new set of reports from Change the Equation (CTEq) paints a wide-ranging and in-depth picture of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in each state and the District of Columbia. Vital Signs 2012 examines not only student performance but also access to educational opportunity and the amount of instructional support schools and teachers receive. The 51 state reports, which include data never available before, offer specific recommendations for each state to improve STEM teaching and learning in grades K-12.

At a time when job demand in most states exceeds job growth, CTEq has found that job openings nationwide in STEM fields outpace the number of qualified applicants two-to-one, challenging businesses looking to hire. Motivated by this challenge, CTEq’s coalition of companies created the richest and most extensive collection of STEM learning data assembled in one place to guide informed educational decision-making.

The reports have found, for example, that students are spending less time learning science in many states, several states set a very low standard for proficiency in eighth grade science, and many students don’t have access to rigorous STEM courses. For instance, according to newly analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, 25 percent of white students, 35 percent of black students, 29 percent of Hispanic students, 21 percent of Asian students, and 44 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native students attend schools that do not offer calculus.

In almost every state, children will get less time for science in elementary school than they did 15-20 years ago, and only six states have high school graduation requirements in math and science that specifically align with college entrance requirements. What’s more, only five of 37 participating states set the standard for proficiency in grade science at or above where the National Assessment of Educational Progress sets the bar, which means that a student labeled proficient in one state may be nowhere near proficient in another.

Sixteen states were unable to supply critical information on how much they have to pay to educate students twice on the same content—once during K-12 and once after high school. These remediation costs need to be readily available and publicly reported and steps taken that ensure students are educated and equipped when they leave high school.

College- and career-ready standards in English and mathematics have ben adopted by all 50 states & DC

Achieve's seventh annual "Closing the Expectations Gap" report shows how all states are aligning those standards with policies to send clear signals to students about what it means to be academically prepared for college and careers after high school graduation. For the first time, the report also details not only states' policy progress on the college- and career-ready agenda but also their efforts to implement those policies since only faithful implementation can improve student achievement.

Achieve conducts an annual policy survey that asks all 50 states and the District of Columbia whether they have adopted standards, graduation requirements, assessments and accountability systems aligned to the expectations of two- and four-year colleges and employers. The national survey of state education leaders has measured the same areas of reform each year since the National Governors Association and Achieve co-sponsored the National Education Summit in 2005 and this year's survey reveals the following results:

* Standards: All 50 states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards aligned to the expectations of college and careers. 46 states and DC have adopted the Common Core State Standards, while four have state-developed CCR standards. By 2015-16, all English language arts and mathematics instruction should reflect CCR expectations.

* Graduation Requirements: Today, 23 states and the District of Columbia have adopted college- and career-ready graduation requirements that require all students to meet the full set of expectations defined in the CCSS. Hawaii, Iowa, and Washington raised their graduation requirements to the college- and career-ready level in 2011.

* Assessments: Today, 18 states administer college- and career-ready high school assessments capable of producing a readiness score that postsecondary institutions use to make placement decisions. Four new states - Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and Wyoming - joined this list in 2011 by adopting a policy to administer a college- and career-ready test to its high school students. It is expected that 44 states and the District of Columbia participating in one or both Race to the Top assessment consortia will meet this criteria when the next generation assessments are administered for the first time in 2014-2015.

* Accountability: A majority of states, 32, have now incorporated at least one of four accountability indicators that Achieve has identified as critical to promoting college and career readiness. As in last year's report, only Texas meets Achieve's criteria regarding the use of all indicators in its college- and career-ready accountability system. Additionally, four states - Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Kentucky - have included the use of multiple college- and career-ready indicators in their accountability systems in multiple ways.

Since last year, states have made important gains on the college- and career-ready agenda with all adopting college- and career-ready standards and additional states moving towards more accountability. Even as additional progress is made, states have further to go by turning their attention to the implementation of standards and related policies.

Cohen also pointed to the sharing of a common set of standards by 46 states and the District of Columbia that has produced unprecedented cross-state collaboration around common assessments and gauging the quality of instructional products. He went on to say, "The next few years will be challenging for the college- and career-ready agenda and we have to stay the course. States have made tremendous progress towards college and career readiness for all by communicating its importance within, but also by standing together. Because of this commitment by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, college and career readiness is an expectation of our students no matter where they live."

The SAT and high school grades contribute to predicting academic performance in college

Many college admissions teams use SAT scores along with other information, such as high school grades, in choosing their incoming freshman classes.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the SAT has been the subject of much scrutiny. Some researchers have asserted that the SAT isn’t a good predictor of academic performance in college once socioeconomic status (SES) – usually measured as a combination of parents’ education and family income – and high school grade point average are taken into account.

And some critics have argued that the SAT is fundamentally biased against students from low-SES backgrounds, acting as a barrier that prevents them from gaining admission to college.

“This was an eye catching claim,” says psychological scientist Paul Sackett of the University of Minnesota. “So we set out to obtain data to examine whether that claim really held up.”

Sackett and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota examined data from 143,606 students at 110 colleges and universities and contrasted their findings with data from the University of California system that had been studied in previous research.

Their findings are reported in a new article published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

They found that in all the datasets, both the SAT and high school grades contributed to predicting academic performance in college. And, contrary to previous research, taking parents’ education and family income into account had little effect on the relationship between SAT scores and college performance. These findings suggest that the SAT remains a useful indicator for college admissions decisions.

Moreover, Sackett and his colleagues found that the SES of students actually enrolled in college was very similar to the SES of students who were applying to college. When they examined the data more closely and looked at the entire applicant pool, they found that fewer low-SES students were entering the college admissions process.

Based on these findings, it seems that low-SES students are not underrepresented in colleges because low SAT scores prevent them from gaining admission, but rather because fewer low-SES students apply to college in the first place.

“We view this as broadly relevant,” says Sackett. “Entrance tests such as the SAT receive a great deal of public scrutiny and it is important for all involved—students, parents, college officials—that accurate information about how the test functions be available.”

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Does the Responsive Classroom approach improve student outcomes?

Researchers at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education have released preliminary results from their recently completed $2.9 million, three-year Responsive Classroom Efficacy Study funded by the US Department of Education's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. Their study addressed the questions: Does the Responsive Classroom approach improve student outcomes? If so, how and for whom?

The simple answer is, "Yes, Responsive Classroom practices lead to teacher improvement and student gains." Here are the specifics:

1. Improved Student Achievement: Teachers' use of Responsive Classroom practices predicts gains in student math and reading achievement. The association between Responsive Classroom practices and achievement are equally strong for children eligible for free/reduced price lunch and those not eligible. For math achievement, the association appears to be larger for students who are initially low achieving than for others.
2. Improved Teacher-Student Interactions: Teachers' increased use of Responsive Classroom practices leads to classrooms that are more emotionally supportive and organized.
3. Higher Quality Instruction in Mathematics: Training in the Responsive Classroom approach leads teachers to provide more skillful standards-based mathematics instruction.
4. Importance of Support for Teachers: Teachers are more likely to use Responsive Classroom practices when they have the administration's buy-in, when they receive coaching, and when they have social support in trying the practices.

These results confirm that the Responsive Classroom approach can be a crucial component not only in improving the learning environment in the nation's elementary schools but also in closing the achievement gap in schools and districts throughout the country.

Earlier this month, Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman, principal investigator and associate professor at the Curry School of Education, presented these preliminary findings in a webinar that is now available for viewing on YouTube. The webinar addresses the ways that the Responsive Classroom approach relates to classroom quality and children's social and academic outcomes. It also uses key research findings to address the process of successful implementation in elementary schools and ways to maximize teachers' use of the approach.

The Responsive Classroom approach is a nationally recognized, research-backed approach to elementary education that increases academic achievement, decreases problem behaviors, improves social skills, and leads to more high-quality instruction. The Responsive Classroom Efficacy Study is a randomized controlled trial designed as a three-year longitudinal study. The study involved 24 elementary schools in a large district in a mid-Atlantic state. Data were gathered over three consecutive school years (2008-11), following over 2,900 children and their 350 teachers from grades three through five. The study put special emphasis on looking at the extent to which the Responsive Classroom approach relates to classroom quality during mathematics instruction and, ultimately, children's math achievement.

About Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc. and the Responsive Classroom® approach
Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc. (NEFC), a not-for-profit organization, was established in 1981 by elementary school educators who envisioned a way of teaching that would bring together academic and social learning throughout the school day. That way of teaching, called the Responsive Classroom approach, is now being used in schools across the country. It is one of the "Select SEL" programs identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL, 2003). For more information, visit www.responsiveclassroom.org.

Writing 2011 Results

This report presents results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2011 writing assessment, the first large-scale computer-based assessment in writing. The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2011 is designed to provide information about the writing skills of students through the completion of computer-based tasks. In 2011, the study was administered to students at grades 8 and 12 as part of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

National results for representative samples of students at grades 8 and 12 are reported as average scale scores and as percentages of students performing at three achievement levels: Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. Additional results are reported based on students’ demographic characteristics, educational experiences, and the frequency of engaging in actions available to them in word-processing software. The assessment tasks reflected writing situations common to both academic and workplace settings and asked students to write for several purposes and communicate to different audiences. The results are presented along with sample tasks and student responses. The Technical Notes provide information on NAEP samples and school and student participation rates. The new computer-based writing assessment does not allow us to report trend results. Future NAEP writing assessment results will be compared to the 2011 results.

Twenty-four percent of students at both grades 8 and 12 performed at the Proficient level in writing in 2011. Fifty-four percent of eighth-graders and 52 percent of twelfth-graders performed at the Basic level. Three percent of eighth- and twelfth-graders performed at the Advanced level. At grade 8, average writing scores were higher for Asian students than for other racial/ethnic groups. At grade 12, average writing scores were higher for White students, Asian students, and students of two or more races than for Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native students. At both grades, female students scored higher than male students.

Key findings from Writing 2011 include:

At grade 8, average writing scores were
• higher for Asian students than for other racial/ethnic groups;
• higher for female students than for male students; and
• higher for students attending schools in suburban locations than for students in cities, towns, and rural locations.

At grade 12, average writing scores were
• higher for White students, Asian students, and students of two or more races than for Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native students;
• higher for female students than for male students; and
• higher for students in suburban schools than for students in cities and rural locations.

Click here to find complete 2011 results for the nation, as well as findings from the student, teacher, and school surveys. Download the print report and find additional resources and information from the Writing website.

NAEP is a product of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Institute of Education Sciences, part of the U.S. Department of Education. The National Assessment Governing Board sets policy for NAEP.

The Impact of College Quality on College Completion Rates

In Massachusetts high school students with test scores above multiple thresholds were granted tuition waivers at in-state public colleges of lower quality than the average alternative available to such students.

This study found:

First, students are remarkably willing to forego college quality for relatively small amounts of money.

Second, choosing a lower quality college significantly lowers on-time completion rates.

For the marginal student, enrolling at an in-state public college lowered the probability of graduating on time by more than 40%. The low completion rates of scholarship users imply the program had little impact on the in-state production of college degrees.