The Sexual Miseducation Of America

Right now in classrooms across the country, critical facts about birth control and sexuality are being withheld or distorted in shocking ways. And when it comes to reproductive health and intimate relationships, what you don’t know can hurt you… now and far into the future.

- Amelia Thompson-Deveavx

How We Did it

Last spring, Cosmopolitan launched an investigation to find out what exactly public school students are learning in abstinence-focused programs, which the Trump administration actively supports. To our knowledge, our project is the first comprehensive analysis of the scope, content, and fallout of such federally funded curricula since 2004, when a similar report was issued by California congressman Henry Waxman.

We first tracked the $90 million in federal dollars allotted for abstinence-only or “sexual risk avoidance” education programs in 2017 (detailed 2018 info was not available at press time) and followed that cash to 329 agencies and organizations in 37 states. Figuring out who got what and which curricula they used took hundreds of calls and e-mails to state officials.

Next, we reviewed versions of the top eight programs being paid for by the federal government. We also obtained editions of five others, including two recommended by Ascend, a leading sexual-risk-avoidance group. Finally, we enlisted researchers and sexual-education experts to help us analyze each curriculum and assess its potential impact on teens and adults.

We crunched all existing numbers to ID the most popular federally funded abstinence-focused programs in America. Then we got a hold of the curricula themselves with the help of former students and advocacy groups. We also bought some lesson plans and received courtesy copies from publishers.

What Andrea Krakovsky remembers most about her first time is the panic attack that followed. She was 17, lying in bed with her 20-year-old boyfriend, Ben*—a restaurant cook she’d met through friends—in the basement of his parents’ house. After weeks of discussion, they’d finally had sex.