Illinois Mandates Comprehensive Sex Education in Schools

An education should prepare students to engage in a meaningful, productive way with the world. While academic achievement takes center-stage in our approach to this education, we often fail to provide adequate support for social development. In the United States, this failure extends to the pursuit of healthy social relationships. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asserts that “schools play a critical role in…helping [young people] establish lifelong healthy behaviors.” A mandatory and comprehensive sex education curriculum makes public education more robust by shining a light on social skills and personal wellbeing.

In February 2021, the 102 Illinois General Assembly introduced a bill reforming sex education in Illinois schools. After successful votes in both the House and Senate chambers, Governor Pritzker signed the bill into law on Aug. 20, 2021. The Keeping Youth Safe and Healthy Act (Senate Bill 0818) calls for reformed curricula that provide personal health and safety education from kindergarten through fifth Grade and comprehensive sexual health education from sixth through 12^th grade. The bill requires that these curricula be set in alignment with the National Sex Education Standards. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), one of the key partners in the development of the national standards, asserts that these standards provide comprehensive sex education that is “science-based, medically accurate and complete, and age, developmentally and culturally appropriate.”

Not all states mandate sex education, and only thirteen states require that it be medically accurate. Senate Bill 0818 attempts to ensure that students in Illinois are provided with a sex education explicitly developed by health educators and policy experts. Research shows that comprehensive sex education is associated with improved student attainment, a decrease in sexual abuse and bullying, delayed sexual initiation, healthier relationships, a decrease in sexual health disparities amongst LGBTQ students, and reduced rates of teen pregnancies and sexual transmitted infections (STIs). Moreover, the CDC frames the interaction between health education and academic achievement as a virtuous cycle, where improved outcomes decrease the chance of risky behaviors, and students who engage in less risky behaviors, in turn, perform better academically.

While Illinois has not previously mandated sex education in schools, SIECUS shows that it has required schools to offer health education that provides some information on healthy relationships and medically accurate information on abstinence. Senate Bill 0818 departs from the previous provision of sex education in four main ways: it mandates sex education; it reforms sex education such that it is in alignment with national standards; it requires sex education to be provided from Kindergarten onwards; it is inclusive of many gender and sexual identities. The reforms are also abstinence-based, rather than abstinence-stressed, meaning that there is less emphasis on abstinence. Further, the reformed standards specify topics that go beyond the traditional themes of sexual intercourse, STIs, contraception, and pregnancy. The new standards detail topics for social relationships at large, including personal health and safety, healthy relationships, effective communication, and gender identity and expression. Individual school districts have the freedom to design curricula and instructional tools, including partnerships with organizations for lesson delivery, as per school and community considerations, so long as standards are used as a guideline for development.

With Governor Pritzker’s signature, Illinois becomes the first state to adopt the second edition of the National Sex Education Standards. The Illinois State Board of Education will have a year to adopt the National Sex Education Standards for Illinois, in time for a rollout for sixth through 12th grades in 2022. The bill’s challenges present themselves largely in implementation. School districts will need to adjust schedules to include additional instructional hours, devise a curriculum, and allocate adequate resources towards its delivery, which should include teacher training. Illinois may also face difficulty convincing wary parents to keep their kids in their schools’ sex education classes, as parents do have the choice to opt their children out. Overcoming this second obstacle may require significant action at the community and school district levels, perhaps in the form of parent/community dialogues, workshops, and general engagement sessions to increase familiarity with and awareness of the curriculum. Fault lines will likely also persist across school districts. The state government and Illinois State Board of Education will need to prepare to provide support to schools that may already face resource and staffing constraints, as well as monitor the content and delivery across districts. Finally, it is critical that the Illinois State Board of Education engages nonprofits and local organizations to create a network of support for school districts as they design and begin implementing their revised health education syllabi.

With its improved sex education standards, Illinois takes a necessary step for students’ social, emotional, and physical well-being, but it is the next few years of implementation that will reveal its true value – or watch it become another flashpoint in the body politic.