Executive Summary: The Case for Comprehensive Sex Education in Arizona Schools, Summaries of English Literature

Download Executive Summary: The Case for Comprehensive Sex Education in Arizona Schools and more Summaries English Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Written Assignment 3: Executive Summary (25 points) Due in D2L Dropbox at 11:59 the day before your final presentation; bring 1 printed copy to class the day of your presentation An executive summary is one of the most important components of any report or paper that you will write “in the real world.” Often stakeholders and/or key decision makers do not have the time to read a lengthy document or, in your case, listen to a final policy speech. Executive summaries are written literally for an executive, key decision maker or stakeholder. An example of an executive summary of a good policy speech is below. The executive summary should include the major details of your policy speech beginning with your thesis statement. Following this, you should write a brief encapsulation of your status quo, need for change, your plan and the advantages of the plan. End the summary with a phrase that illustrates your recommendation that will make it easy for your audience to remember. In ‘the real world,’ executive summaries are no longer than 10% of the original document. For this assignment, your executive summary should be NO LONGER than 1 page. You still must follow APA in-text citation rules and include a reference page. Feel free to be creative and include pictures or develop a creative format. Use your space effectively! Think of this as the one tool necessary for another person/organization to either implement or advocate for your plan. Executive Summary - Why Arizona Must Teach Comprehensive Sex Education in Public Schools In an industrialized nation, no one should get pregnant or become a parent before they are ready for all the responsibilities children bring. However, this is not occurring in the United States. The United States has a teen pregnancy that is three times higher than that of other industrialized nations (NPR Staff, 2012). Arizona has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the United States (Rough, 2009) so clearly its policy of teaching abstinence-only sex education in public schools is not preventing teenagers from having sex or getting pregnant. Because teen pregnancy has many consequences and costs, Arizona must look at the need to prevent teen pregnancy, then look at a plan of teaching comprehensive sex education in public schools, and finally look at the advantages to teaching comprehensive sex education. Status Quo/Need Arizona has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation with approximately 62 births for every 1,000 females ages 15-19 (Rough, 2009). Arizona currently mandates that if public schools choose to teach sex education, the education must be abstinence-only (Innes, 2010). However, research has found that states that teach abstinence-only have higher rates of teen pregnancy than states that teach comprehensive sex education (ScienceDaily, 2011). Also, 45% of female and 52% of male high school students in Arizona have reported being sexually active (Eaton et al., 2010), so abstinence-only education is clearly not stopping teens from having sex. Teen pregnancy has consequences. Teens who were not in poverty before becoming pregnant are more likely to fall into poverty after becoming teen parents and teens who were in poverty before getting pregnant have a harder time getting out of poverty after becoming teen parents (NPR Staff, 2012). Children of teen parents are more likely to be teen parents themselves, drop out of high school, or be incarcerated at some point during adolescence (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2011). Stephanie Hernandez, a Chandler, Arizona teenage mother, understands the difficulty of being a teen parent, "Everything is so much harder with a baby. It's harder to go to school; it's hard to just hang out with your friends. Everything is a process" (Rough, 2009). Teen pregnancy also costs taxpayers money. In 2008, teen pregnancy cost Arizona approximately $303 million (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2011). Plan The plan is to implement a policy of teaching comprehensive sex education in public schools in Arizona. Students would still be told that abstinence is the only 100% effective way of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, but they would also be given medically accurate information about how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Advantage The advantages of this plan are that Arizona already has the money to fund the teaching of comprehensive sex education from a grant from the Personal Responsibility Education Program (SIECUS, 2012) and that by teaching comprehensive sex education Arizona will be able to lower its rate of teen pregnancy and mitigate the consequences and costs that come along with teen pregnancy. In conclusion, Arizona needs to begin teaching comprehensive sex education in public schools instead of abstinence-only in order to lower its rate of teen pregnancy, and in doing so mitigate the consequences and costs that come along with teen pregnancy.