Some Academic Standards Drafted

Proposals on Health Education Include Same-Sex Topics

In one of its first acts as the education body responsible for setting academic standards for all city schools, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education released draft academic standards this week for world languages, physical education and health that include teaching same-sex education topics.

"These standards establish high expectations for all students. They detail the knowledge and skills that students need," according to an introduction to the documents.

Under the law granting Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) control of D.C. public school system, the D.C. State Board of Education was created to focus on "state-level" education issues, including the approval of academic standards.

The school system has new standards in English, math, science and social studies. The proposal for world languages, health and physical education represents the next phase of setting standards in academic subjects.

The proposed standards would affect students in every grade and in charter and traditional public schools. The standards were drafted with input from D.C. educators and parents. A public hearing will be held Nov. 28, and the standards are open for public comment until Nov. 30.

"We want the public to weigh in," said board President Robert C. Bobb.

State Superintendent Deborah A. Gist said the state board could vote next month on the standards.

"What this does is set an expectation for what all children should know and be able to do in these three areas," Gist said.

Among the standards proposed, the most controversial might become those on sex education. Students in fifth grade would learn how to resist pressure to become sexually active and about the kind of risky several behaviors that could result in HIV and AIDS.

According to research, some D.C. youths are sexually active by sixth grade, said Adam Tenner, executive director of Metro TeenAIDS. Tenner said he learned from Howard University researchers that 36 percent of boys in sixth grade said they had sex and that 8 percent of girls said they had sex by sixth grade. "Even if that's double what's really happening, the rates are really alarming, and the call to action to provide comprehensive sex education is now," Tenner said.

In eighth grade, students would learn about sexual orientation and be taught that "as people grow and develop they may begin to feel romantically and/or sexually attracted to people of a different gender and/or to people of the same gender," according to the proposed standards.

Citizens groups sued Montgomery County in 2005 over revisions to its sex education curriculum that included lessons on homosexuality and gender identity. A federal judge stopped the lessons, saying that they seemed to offer only one perspective on homosexuality, that it is a natural and morally correct lifestyle, to the exclusion of all others. The suburban school system began teaching the new curriculum for eighth- and 10th-graders this fall.

StandardsWork, a D.C.-based nonprofit education consulting company, worked under contract with school officials on the standards-setting process. The group also worked with the school system beginning in 2004 to create standards and some curriculum materials for English language arts, math, science and social studies. But no information was available yesterday on how much the company was paid for that.