State Standards
The District of Columbia provides Health Education Standards for students in grades K-12. “Safety Skills,” “Human Body and Personal Health,” and “Disease Prevention” are three of the six learning categories. STIs, HIV, unintended pregnancy, abstinence, and contraception are all discussed. In 2016, the state standards were updated to ensure students learn how to “differentiate between gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and sex assigned at birth/biological sex,” as well as to understand 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.” In 2017, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education published the Sexual Health Curriculum Review to guide educators in providing sex education.
State Profiles provided by SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. For more information regarding your state’s sex ed policy, visit https://siecus.org/state_profile/district-of-columbia-state-profile/