SEATTLE (AP) - Nearly a third of Washington's school districts do not allow teachers to discuss condoms or any other form of contraception except for abstinence in their sex education classes, according to a new report paid for by a coalition working to reduce pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among teens.

Two hundred of Washington's 296 school districts responded to the survey for the Healthy Youth Alliance. Although all the districts reported teaching sex education and HIV/AIDS prevention from grades five to 12, what they teach varies widely and not every subject is taught every year.

The study found that most districts purchase their sex education materials and that most require the teachers who share this information to get special training or in some cases to be certified in health education.

Among the more curious findings of the study, districts with the most outdated teaching materials reported teaching sex education the most often at each grade level.

Almost all the districts reported being familiar with new voluntary sex education guidelines adopted by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in January 2005, and two-thirds of those districts said they changed their curricula to meet the new guidelines.

The new state guidelines outline medically and scientifically accurate sex education. Rep. Shay Schual-Berke, D-Normandy Park, introduced a bill Tuesday that would make medically accurate sex education mandatory in Washington schools that choose to teach sex education. HIV-AIDS education is mandatory in Washington, but general sex education is not.

The medical doctor turned legislator said she is optimistic about the bill's chances this legislative session, because leaders in both the House and Senate have said they would make its approval a priority.

Schual-Berke explained the importance of medically accurate sex education by talking about the impact when a teacher tells her students that condoms don't work, presumably because they want to discourage kids from being sexually active.

Instead, research has shown, the students are sexually active, but they don't use condoms because they think they don't work, Schual-Berke said.

"We are arming them with bad information that's leading them to make bad decisions. That's what needs to change and that's why we're proposing the bill," she said, after speaking at a news conference on Tuesday to announce the study, along with researcher Alison Peters and Judith Billings of the Governor's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Mary Myers of the School Nurses Organization of Washington, which is also part of the coalition, spoke afterward about why her organization is involved in the coalition.

"We passionately believe in teaching our students how to make healthy choices in life," said Myers, a registered nurse who is semi-retired after 25 years as a school nurse, but still working as a substitute teacher in the Highline School District.

Seventy percent of the districts surveyed said they stress abstinence in their curricula, but also include information about birth control and condom use to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Twenty percent teach abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy or stop the spread of disease.

Some districts specifically ban certain topics from their sex education classrooms. Teachers in 30 percent of the districts surveyed are not allowed to discuss condoms or contraception. Twenty-eight percent are banned from discussing abortion and 23 percent are not allowed to talk about homosexuality.