You can’t argue with “results-driven.” It’s a favorite phrase of certain partisans who run our state and have come to occupy high reaches in Washington.

Whether chaining public schools to the radiator of standardized testing or privatizing every thought and afterthought of government, they will rationalize it with: “Everything we do is results-driven.”

The other day our governor’s office was presented with data that showed Texas’ approaches to sex education and contraception don’t work at all. The response? Don’t bother us with results.

Actually, what Rick Perry’s office said is, “The governor’s office is satisfied with current law.”

This was in a Dallas Morning News story about how poorly Texas does in preventing teen pregnancies. It compared our state to California. Texas compares poorly.

Oh, yes. We talk a good game. But when it comes to doing something, policymakers shift into the one-dimensional. In the case of informing young people about sexuality, it’s in the form of “abstinence training.” In some Texas school districts, it’s the closest thing children will get to sex education.

‘Abstinence-only’ money machine

That’s because Congress pumps $113 million a year into federal abstinence programs. Texas schools imbibe heavily from this font. And the result? Texas is No. 1 in teen births.

True, Texas’ teen birth rate dropped 19 percent between 1991 and 2004. However, over that time the nation’s rate dropped by a third.

And California? Its rate dropped by 47 percent over the same period.

Why California as a reference point? For one, its economic and racial diversity is comparable to Texas’. So, no rationalizing slurs about minorities and immigrants.

Ah, but you must make a distinction between pregnancy rate and birth rate, Perry aide Allison Castle told the News. “Texas does not have the highest rate of teen pregnancy.”

Um, well. As the News’ Robert Garrett points out, Texas had the fifth-highest teen pregancy rate in the most current numbers (2000). That’s some brag. Texas has no numbers behind which to hide.

Our state policy is to make it as hard as possible for teens to obtain birth control. In California, as with other states that are learning from past mistakes, the effort is to make sure that teens have contraception if they need it. Abstinence is still the overriding theme of sex education in California, but it’s “abstinence-plus,” with information about contraception.

Additionally, California has opted for prevention first by making free contraceptives available to teens through community clinics and doctors’ offices. More and more states are considering making contraceptives available at school-based clinics.

But even progressive states like California are too reserved in stressing messages of protection and prevention should young people engage in premarital sex.

Results? Try Germany, France and the Netherlands. That latter, with its “double Dutch” campaign against pregnancy and AIDS, urges teens, if sexually active, to employ twice the prevention by using the birth-control pill or other women’s contraception and for the male to use a condom.

Western European nations enjoy far lower rates of teen pregnancy, STDs and abortions.

Back home in Texas, any such talk is to “condone premarital intercourse.”

But as is self-evident, too many teens ignore the abstinence talk. The News story contains an interesting quote from Janet Realini with the Bexar County Health Department: “In real life, abstinence fails sometimes.” We often hear from the abstinence-only forces about the fallibility of condoms. What about the fallibility of one-note solutions?

Maybe I have too-high expectations for our state government, as with its kinfolks in Washington’s executive branch. Long before Hurricane Katrina told us otherwise, it was clear that “results-driven” was just a line.