The latest headline: teen births in the US are on the rise!
I’m going to spare you a diatribe on abstinence-only education—except to note that these figures confirm the abundant research showing that abstinence-only ed programs are almost comically ineffective.
No, the important thing to note here is this: here we are in 2010, and the latest teen birth data we’ve got is for 2006. That’s right, we had to wait for 3 full years, and then some, just to get some reliable numbers on a deeply important social indicator.
This, to me, is clear evidence that we’re simply not serious about teen birth rates. Sure, we do a lot of hand wringing about “babies having babies.” Yet we haven’t bothered to set up a system to monitor whether our efforts to delay teen childbearing are working. Look, teen births just aren’t that hard to track. But at the national level at least, we simply haven’t bothered to track them.
And as a result, we’ve got a 3-year delay on a lagging indicator of a failed social policy—and a lot of policymakers who are flying blind.
John Gear
I think you are too harsh and overstating the case against abstinence only sex-ed. For example, it’s nearly certain that few of the girls attending get pregnant DURING abstinence-only sex ed classes. So there’s that—they just need to extend that proven track record of success some more, preferably with generous federal grants.I am working on a imaginary-number-free math curriculum as well, and I am just going to market it to all the schools that use abstinence-only sex ed. Why? Well, first, you gotta go where the fish are. Districts with AOSE are clearly ready for some selective simplifications to make subjects more palatable. Second, what are the odds of causing a problem? With the high teen pregnancy rates in those districts, few of the kids will be taking much advanced math. Third, the AOSE districts clearly don’t bother with effectiveness research, so if I can sell it once, I’m gold forever.
Clark Williams-Derry
John –At first I cringed, thinking you were serious. But by your second sentence I just laughed out loud.
Oregon Michelle
Good comic relief.But on a serious note, every FERTILE teen needs to learn that, potentially, 1+1=3.
John Gear
FERTILE teen is, in the absence of documented medical evidence to the contrary, a dangerous redundancy. All teens are fertile must be the operating public health assumption.
SF
Teen pregnancy is a peculiarly imprecise measurement. An 18 year old married high school graduate can be a perfectly good parent. We need to be counting the unmarried high school dropouts who get pregnant and give birth.
Oregon Michelle
John Gear,Precisely. That’s why abstinence-only education fails the birth-CONTROL test. Abstinence-only is fighting a losing battle against a natural BIOLOGICAL drive at its PEAK. Teens deserve better education than that.SF,Excellent point. It’s important to separate out the willing vs. the unwilling teen pregnancies. Though, one wonders how many of the unmarried high school dropouts might also be choosing to get pregnant.