Here's one more verse in a song we've been singing for a while now: Public records tell us lots of useful things, and not always stuff like who got arrested this weekend or how much money the city council is spending on trips out of town.

As we've previously said, public records tell us whether our kids' softball coach is in trouble with school leadership, whether your school system has been shorting kids on the amount of lettuce in the Caesar salad, and whether our high school's star coach is applying for a coaching job elsewhere.

So here's one more to add to the list: Public records can tell us what our kids' school system is teaching in sex ed class.

That's how the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group that aims to counter the influence of the religious right, put the state's public records law to use. In a report issued this past week, TFN rolled out the results of a two-year survey of sex ed teaching materials in nearly 1,000 Texas school districts.

Their findings, as summarized by the Star-Telegram:

The overwhelming majority of Texas schools use scare tactics and spread myths in place of teaching basic sex and health information that students can use to protect themselves and others, according to a report released today by watchdog group Texas Freedom Network.

TFN’s two-year study of education materials from 990 Texas school districts showed that about 94 percent of public schools use abstinence-only programs that usually pass moral judgments while either downplaying or ignoring contraception and health screenings.

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