Saturday, April 15, 2006
Blatant Misrepresentation
An editorial in the Hutchinson News, "Abstinence Expert Labels Real Success as a Failure," says it all about the Kansas Board of Education's recent discussion of abstinence only education:
Members of the State Board of Education heard testimony Tuesday from Sandy Pickert, executive director of the Abstinence Educators Association in Wichita.
Pickert claimed that Kansas public schools offered two decades of sex education "to no avail."
What a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
Births to Kansas girls between the ages of 15 and 19 decreased by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2003, according to data collected by Kids Count, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the birth rate stood at 56 per 1,000 girls in the 15-to-19 age group.
By 2003, it dropped to 41 per 1,000.
Yet Pickert considers sex education ineffective.
Again, what a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
Members of the State Board of Education heard testimony Tuesday from Sandy Pickert, executive director of the Abstinence Educators Association in Wichita.
Pickert claimed that Kansas public schools offered two decades of sex education "to no avail."
What a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
Births to Kansas girls between the ages of 15 and 19 decreased by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2003, according to data collected by Kids Count, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the birth rate stood at 56 per 1,000 girls in the 15-to-19 age group.
By 2003, it dropped to 41 per 1,000.
Yet Pickert considers sex education ineffective.
Again, what a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
