DeWine Signs 'Success Sequence' Bill

Yesterday (June 7), Ohio Governor, Mike DeWine, signed 13 bills into law.

You can find summaries of these bills on the Ohio Governor’s website.

Mainly, these bills were leftovers from legislation that Ohio lawmakers pushed through in June before a legislative break that’s expected to continue until after the November election.

One of the bills is currently receiving a lot of media attention: Senate Bill 276. This bill started as an uncontroversial plan addressing licenses for school psychologists coming to Ohio who hold licenses in six other states. But it started generating political heat when a rider, called “Success Sequence” was added last month.

The Success Sequence requires the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to review and maintain a new curriculum, which will be taught starting in sixth grade. On the surface, the curriculum is meant to be a simple, 3-step framework for reducing poverty rates and increasing the likelihood of upward economic mobility. Legally, Ohio public schools must convey to students that the following 3 steps have been statistically proven to improve the likelihood of achieving economic stability:

1. Education: Students should aim to complete at least a high school education.

2. Employment: Students should aim to obtain full-time employment in their 20s.

3. Family: Students should wait until marriage before having children.

The left side of the political spectrum is, of course, outraged by Step 3.  

Ohio Representative Sean Brennan (Democrat – 14^th District), a former high school teacher, asserts that there are many factors that keep people in poverty, and schools must be honest about causation versus correlation. He says, “We must recognize that marriage alone does not guarantee stability, especially when it is undermined by economic and social hurdles."

Of course, this is thinly-disguised double-speak for the political left’s outrage over the possibility of recognizing the institution of marriage as fundamental building block of a stable society.

The political right is equally unable to make a compelling case, choosing to lean on uncited statistics (a.k.a. blind trust of "experts") for the justification for State-mandated morality instruction.

Ohio Representative Sarah Arthur Fowler (Republican – 99^th District) says, "Young people are statistically far less likely to live in poverty when they complete high school, work full time, and marry before having children . . . This gives young people tools to make informed decisions about education, work, family and their future stability."

In baseball, we’d call this situation a pickle. We’re stuck between two unfavorable outcomes, with a narrow window of escape.

Is the Success Sequence’s 3-step framework sensible? Probably.

Should the State legally mandate the Success Sequence? Probably not.

What are your thoughts?

– TOP

So you are aware:

• Indiana, Tennessee and Utah have passed similar legislation, and it's also been proposed in five other states.

• You can learn more about the Success Sequence Program on their website, where it is described as a “series of character-based workbooks and digital courses designed to teach youth the 3-step optimal pathway for future success with a clear emphasis on the objective benefits of reserving all sexual activity and childbearing for marriage.”

• The Success Sequence Program was developed by the Illinois-based Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership (A&M), whose website describes its mission as a “a movement that inspires hope for a healthy future marriage. The Success Sequence Program model, originally rooted in research from institutions like the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is designed to drastically reduce youth poverty rates and increase the likelihood of upward economic mobility, with a clear emphasis on the objective benefits of reserving all sexual activity and childbearing for marriage.”