In the week ending September 28, 2026, two separate sex-education audits reached the same verdict from different vantage points. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) released new state policy grades that gave ten states an F: Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Six earned an A: California, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington. In New York, the New York Civil Liberties Union published a curriculum review based on teaching materials requested from 50 rural, urban and suburban school districts. It found almost half deserved an F, with the materials graded on how well they covered consent, LGBTQ+ identities and sexual health.

Why It Matters

Sex education is the upstream pipeline for nearly every market Afterglow covers. Consumers who never learned basic anatomy, consent or contraception become adults who don't know what a pelvic floor trainer is for, can't tell body-safe silicone from jelly rubber, and are the first to fall for misinformation, which Afterglow has tracked in male sexual-health myths and the Gen Z "sex recession" data. The school-curriculum gap is a big reason sexual-wellness brands have become de facto adult educators through packaging, retail staff training and content marketing, and why ed-tech platforms such as OMGYes and Coral keep finding demand. These audits also show the policy map hardening. Ten F states, mostly in the same political geography as the age-verification and abstinence-funding push (including the federal abstinence overhaul a judge blocked in August), means brands selling into those states cannot assume customers know the basics. For investors, the persistent education gap is both a market risk (lower category literacy) and an opportunity (demand for direct-to-consumer education) that comes around every year.

SIECUS grades two things, whether a state requires sex ed and what the content must include. Ohio received a D on the requirement and an F on content, its second straight failing grade, according to the Ohio Capital Journal. Ohio law emphasises abstinence, requires schools to "emphasize adoption as an option to unintended pregnancies," and requires instruction on the "potential physical, psychological, emotional, and social side effects" of sex outside marriage. Because curriculum is set by the legislature, the state board of education cannot require health standards. "What young people are allowed to learn about their bodies is increasingly being determined by politics—not by what they need to be healthy and safe," SIECUS executive director Callie Simon said.

New York's problem is the reverse: no statewide comprehensive sexuality education standards at all. "Without the standards, schools could do pretty much whatever they want and call it sex education," NYCLU senior education strategist Aliyah Ansari told Spectrum News. She said more than a third of districts reviewed used outdated or misleading materials, some dating to the 1990s. Strategist Quinn Martha cited "stigmatizing and shame-based messaging around abstinence." Districts pushed back. Pioneer Central's superintendent called the "abstinence-only" label "factually incorrect." Olean City said the submitted materials no longer reflect its current curriculum, to which the NYCLU replied that districts are legally required to provide current, responsive records under FOIL. The NYCLU is pushing the Healthy and Safe Students Act, which would mandate comprehensive sex education statewide.

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Update — 2026-09-29

Initial entry — story first created.

Update — 2026-10-10

The legislative pipeline behind the grades. On October 9, 2026, K-12 Dive published figures from the advocacy group Sex Ed for Social Change that explain how state report cards keep getting worse. Between January and June 2026, legislators introduced 174 sex-ed bills, and 54% were restrictive in some way. Over the same period, Louisiana, Alabama, South Dakota and Wisconsin enacted anti-abortion curriculum laws and Alabama enacted abstinence-only instruction (see Just Say Later). The national baseline: 32 states plus D.C. require some sex education, but only five (California, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon and Washington) require it to be comprehensive. 38 states plus D.C. require abstinence to be stressed, and 15 of them teach abstinence only. The federal context hasn't changed either. HHS cancelled 53 of 66 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants, and a federal judge partly blocked the overhaul in August.

Ohio's local press also reported more detail on Ohio's second straight F from SIECUS (a D on requiring sex ed, an F on content requirements). The state audit found all but two districts compliant with Ohio's abstinence-stressing law.

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