Lawmaker seeks health education rules
Rules would be same as for science, math and other subjects.
Despite facing COLUMBUS — some of the highest rates of drug overdose deaths, infant mortality and obesity, Ohio is the only state without standards for health education.
And health is the only subject required for a high school diploma that lacks state guidelines for what students should be taught. Some want that to change. Legislation by Rep. Beth Liston, a Dublin Democrat and a practicing physician, would require the state to create standards for what knowledge and skills students in kindergarten through 12th grade need to be healthy. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate.
“We face so many challenges,” Liston said, pointing to rising rates of suicides and tobacco use among teens.
“Some schools are doing an amazing job; others could use help.”
Ohio, school officials said, has never had health education standards.
In the 1990s when officials at the state Board of Education talked about creating standards, the General Assembly, concerned about how abortion and sex would be addressed, forbid them from doing so without legislative approval. Neither the board nor the state Department of Education has tried since. Instead, legislators over the years have directed school districts to teach students about certain topics, an approach that critics say undermines local control of curriculum.
For example, Ohio law requires that students be taught about venereal disease, stressing that abstinence is “the only protection that is 100% effective against unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and the sexual transmission of a virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”
Schools also must provide lessons on tobacco and drug use, nutrition and violence prevention, including sex trafficking and child abuse.
State law also requires that each student complete a semester of health classes to graduate.
Under Liston’s House Bill 165, the state Board of Education would have to adopt health education standards developed by the American Association for Health Education or create its own based on the national standards.
Among the national standards: “Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media and other factors on health behaviors,” and “students will demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors to avoid or reduce health risks.”
Local districts would have the option of using the standards as a framework for what students are taught. They are not mandated, and districts choose their own curriculum. Liston said that without standards, “we don’t have specific skills identified to help guide school districts, so (students) may not get all the health information they need to make (healthy) choices.”
The Department of Education, which is tasked with developing education standards, declined to comment on the proposal.