We’ve talked about the “Success Sequence” before.
But this week, Center for Christian Virtue is celebrating getting it into Ohio education curriculum. So let’s talk about what students are actually being told — and the worldview behind it.
The Success Sequence says the path to avoiding poverty is:
-Graduate high school.
-Get a full-time job.
-Get married before having children.
The first two are easy to understand as educational and economic goals. But marriage is different.
Marriage is not a neutral benchmark for whether someone has lived successfully. And “marriage before children” is not simply financial advice. It is a moral prescription about sex, family structure, and the order in which people are supposed to build their lives.
And look at who helped push it. 👀
Center for Christian Virtue is an explicitly Christian political organization that advocates for a biblical vision of marriage, sex, and family. Now it is celebrating a policy that puts that same preferred family structure into Ohio public-school instruction as one of the steps to avoiding poverty and achieving “success.”
That should set off alarms. ⏰
Public schools should not be in the business of teaching children that one particular family structure represents the correct sequence for a successful life — especially when the organization lobbying for that message is simultaneously fighting to advance its religious definition of marriage and family through public policy.
Now think about the kids actually sitting in Ohio classrooms.
-Kids being raised by single parents.
-Kids whose parents divorced.
-Kids born to unmarried parents.
-Kids being raised by grandparents or other relatives.
-Kids in blended families.
-Kids whose parents work constantly and are still struggling.
-Kids with disabilities whose lives may never follow a neat school → full-time job → marriage → children timeline.
THOSE CHILDREN ARE NOT HYPOTHETICAL.
They are already in Ohio public schools.
And poverty is not simply the result of people doing life in the “wrong” order.
Housing costs matter. Wages matter. Childcare matters. Healthcare matters. Disability matters. Access to opportunity matters. Bad luck matters. 👏🏻 That’s why this deserves far more scrutiny than a tidy three-step slogan designed to make a moral judgment about poverty and family structure look like neutral common sense.
🚨ESPECIALLY when the organization celebrating the policy win is Center for Christian Virtue, a Christian political advocacy organization that has spent years trying to shape public policy around its preferred vision of family, sexuality, religion and education.
CCV is celebrating this as a victory.
Parents should understand exactly what was won — and which children may be made to feel like their families are the cautionary example. 🚧
What people are saying:
- Facebook User: They don’t want White kids, “feeling bad about themselves”when they’re taught true history, but they’ll teach this and not care one little bit about the feelings of kids from non-traditional families.
- Facebook User: It looks like Alabama starts teaching the “success sequence” this year. It’s ALMOST like these state laws aren’t about the individual states at all, but about a national conservative agenda.
Alabama public school students will soon learn anti-poverty ‘success sequence’
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User thank you for sharing this!!
- Facebook User: This passed? It is a ludicrously simplistic world view!
- Facebook User: My biggest issue with this is that it’s talking points with no actual *tools*. For instance, it’s my understanding that the state of Ohio has no uniform mandated sex ed, which is nuts. If the goal is actually that people have children only after establishing stability, the actual tools for that include robust sex education that includes information on all types of contraceptives, affordable access to contraception, and abortion access. But needless to say, the CCV doesn’t want *those* things. They don’t want to actually enable people to make choices via comprehensive info and support, they want to make a proclamation and then be judgy about the people who either can’t or don’t abide by it.
- Facebook User: I made sure to add this to my kids paperwork, since they asked!
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User FANTASTIC IDEA! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
- Facebook User: Facebook User I am going to add – My child will not be solicited for religious instruction or beliefs on school property. Any instance of this will result in legal action.
- Facebook User: Facebook User oooo good idea 💡
- Facebook User: Facebook User parents need to make it clear the line- if ANYTHING is happening on school property it is a violation of Zorach.
- Facebook User: The American Enterprise Institute is involved with this bunch????
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User they sure are!
- Facebook User: Facebook User who are they?
- Facebook User: The religious right are purposefully ruining the Ohio school system. Those of us who have to actually live here are going to suffer the consequences.
- Facebook User: Facebook User we fight back. We have the constitution on our side.
- Facebook User: Facebook User As if Ohio public schools weren’t already a steaming pile of excrement.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User did you graduate from them?
- Facebook User: Secular Education Association Thank heaven, no.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User then how would you know? Keep driving the algorithm though!
- Facebook User: Secular Education Association I’ve gone over your test scores. You’re graduating too many kids lacking basic literacy/numeracy skills.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User That’s a criticism of outcomes, not an argument against public education. Public schools educate everyone who walks through the door—including students with disabilities, students learning English, students experiencing poverty, and students who arrive years behind grade level. If you want better literacy and numeracy outcomes, advocate for adequately funding and supporting the schools responsible for teaching all of them.
- Facebook User: Facebook User you’re wrong. We have awesome educators who work extremely hard. Our elected officials are the real sh*t show in this state.
- Facebook User: It seems like “get married” opens a whole can of worms the conservatives pretend they don’t want kids discussing at school.
- Facebook User: Oh you stupid idiot,
As someone who has worked in the inner city for years,
The success sequence STILL works for so-called kids in the ghettos when they actually follow it, over their peers who don’t. Stop glorifying victimhood. Circumstances can be overcome, and the success sequence is one of the few things actually proven.You know what has no correlation in stats? That more money to schools actually mean kids in that funded school district. The actual correlation is parental involvement – higher parental involvement in a poor district results in more success than more funded districts with low parental involvement.
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