In 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed the Healthy Youth Act. This new law went into effect September 2008, and provides a framework for those public schools that choose to offer sexual health education. If a school district chooses to offer sexual health education, the curriculum must adhere to a set of guidelines that include comprehensive, age-appropriate and medically accurate information. These Guidelines for Sexual Health Information and Disease Prevention were created in 2005 by the Washington Department of Health (DOH) and OSPI.

The Healthy Youth Act does not mandate a particular curriculum—this is left to the discretion of the school district. For more information on this law, please visit the law & policy page.

To help assist schools in reaching compliance with the law, OSPI created a curriculum assessment tool that districts can use to ensure their curricula are in consistent with the 2005 Guidelines for Sexual Health Information and Disease Prevention.

To view curricula that have already been reviewed by OSPI, please see the 2009 Sex Education Curriculum Review Report and the 2008 Sex Education Curriculum Review Report. Please note: be sure to look at both reports because reviewers looked at different curricula in each year. Also, reviewers looked at updated versions of the same curricula, so please be aware of the curricula's publish date.

The Washington Department of Health (DOH) have reviewed curricula for medical accuracy.

School districts are strongly encouraged to submit their current curricula to the DOH to be reviewed for medical accuracy. Curricula may be submitted to:

Washington State Department of Health
Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Coordinator
PO Box 47880
Olympia, WA 98504-7880
fax: (360) 586-7868