For the first time, Minnesota has K-12 health standards. Here’s what to know
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Minnesota had no statewide K-12 academic standards for health, leaving local school districts to determine how students were taught topics including nutrition, human development and drug abuse and prevention. That changed Tuesday when a Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings judge approved the state’s first K-12 health standards.
The standards could go into effect as early as the 2028-29 school year. Here’s what you need to know.
Initially denied, MDE asks for reconsideration
In July, Minnesota Chief Administrative Judge Jessica Palmer-Denig denied the proposed standards. She said the Minnesota Department of Education did not give adequate notice to state lawmakers or provide the public information about the costs of implementing the new standards.
According to Meg Bartlett-Chase, who serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Honest Sex Ed Minnesota and has a PhD in education policy, MDE sent a request for reconsideration and resubmission on Sept. 21 saying students would greatly benefit from the standards.
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On Tuesday afternoon, the judge accepted MDE’s amendments and approved the health standards.
What are the new standards and how will they be implemented?
The standards apply to students in grades K-12 and focus on topics like mental and emotional health, human growth and development, child abuse prevention, nutrition, sexual health, media literacy and drug and alcohol abuse and prevention.
The standards include grade-specific benchmarks and were created by a committee composed of parents, the public, teachers, students and other community members.
Benchmarks include describing how emotions influence behavior and how to manage them in healthy ways or identifying how STIs are transmitted and how they can be treated.
Bartlett-Chase said the goal of Honest Sex Ed Minnesota is to make sure health educators feel supported with the new expectations.
Parents are allowed to opt their children out of the course if they make reasonable arrangements for alternative instruction, and districts can still select the curriculum that best fits their community.
Advocates say passage is a turning point for Minnesota
Ahead of the standards being passed, Minnesota was one of only two states in the country without statewide health standards in schools, said Bartlett-Chase.
When it comes to sexual health education, the national nonprofit sex education group SIECUS gives Minnesota an overall grade of “C,” up from an “F” in 2024. DFL lawmakers have worked to broaden health standards for years, but past efforts have failed.
Rep. Sydney Jordan, DFL-Minneapolis, introduced two bills in previous years on comprehensive sexual health education that lacked support from other members and fell short.
Minnesota House Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, previously said she wanted health standards left up to local control, citing concerns about comprehensive sexual health education. She introduced a bill in 2024 to repeal future standards, but it did not make it out of committee.
While she told MPR News she worries the standards will be a “burden” on K-12 educators, she introduced a bill during the 2026 legislative session to prevent sexual grooming of children. It passed after she worked with Hannah Lo Presto, who shared her story with MPR News about surviving what a police investigation described as a “pattern of predatory grooming” by a former high school teacher.
Rasana Mamdani was 16 when she started working on the committee; she is now a freshman at college in North Carolina. She said when she got the email Tuesday that the standards passed, it felt like a chapter of her life closing, but for a good reason.
“I’m super, super proud of the standards that we created,” she said. “That payoff just makes me feel like I’ve been doing something meaningful with my life for the last four years, and it feels really good to know that I left Minnesota in a better place than I found it.”
Bartlett-Chase said the passage is a big step in supporting Minnesota youth.
“This is a huge moment; we had very little consistency around sex education or health education in Minnesota. I’m really seeing this decision as an exciting step forward and an opportunity for us to truly invest in our communities,” she said.
