Graduate from high school, get a job, and get married before having kids. To many, this prescription seems uncontroversial, even like common sense. Data shows that the vast majority of those who follow this path, which has been dubbed the “success sequence,” avoid poverty in later life. As a result, some proponents, many of them conservatives, argue schools should teach students about how successful this sequence is before they enter adulthood. In the rarified quarters of academia and think tanks, that argument has been contested, from both the right and the left, saying the success sequence is more about conservative cultural beliefs than a path out of poverty.

Of course, the prospect of teaching the success sequence to students should be grounded less in the opinions of the think tank set and more so on the opinions of the American public. With that intent, I gauged support for teaching the success sequence among a nationally representative sample of adults and parents, and the takeaways were clear: The success sequence is uncommonly popular.

AEI’s August 2021 American Perspectives Survey asked respondents whether they favored or opposed “teaching students that young people who get at least a high school degree, have a job, and get married — before having children — are more likely to be financially secure and to avoid poverty in later life.” Using this data, I broke down public support for teaching the success sequence by numerous categories, from race and gender, to education and politics. Across all the categories I examined, the vast majority of Americans strongly or somewhat favored teaching the success sequence.

Despite broad support, division along expected lines was
evident across political parties and ideology. Conservatives showed the
strongest support for teaching the success sequence, with 85 percent either
somewhat or strongly favoring it, followed by moderates (76 percent). With 70
percent support, liberals were the least supportive. This 15 percent net difference
is further reflected in strong support, which over half of conservatives held (53
percent), compared to 30 percent of liberals (a 23 percentage point gap). Self-identified
political partisans showed similar patterns. These expected divisions should
not be dismissed, but they are small next to overwhelming support for teaching
the success sequence, held by seven out of 10 people in the least supportive
category.

It may be intuitive that conservatives favor teaching the
success sequence, but what about those who didn’t follow it? Those who didn’t
follow the concrete prescriptions in the sequence may be uneasy about teaching students
to take a different course than their own. Thankfully, the data can identify some
of these respondents, those who never graduated high school, unmarried parents,
and those currently employed (though not in sequence). I describe these
respondents as non-adherents, and despite
their potential alienation from the norms in the success sequence, their support
for teaching it to students is still strong.

Adults without high school diplomas showed overwhelming support (73 percent), as did those currently unemployed (74 percent). Among these groups, unmarried parents had the weakest support, but even their support was still roughly twice the proportion opposed. Combined into a single group of non-adherents, 72 percent supported teaching the success sequence, not far below the 79 percent of all other adults.

Beyond gauging support for teaching the success sequence, American Perspectives Survey data also provide some insight as to why proponents keep up the pressure to do so. It shows 46 percent of success sequence adherents had household incomes over $100,000. Among non-adherents, the portion was just 22 percent. On the other end of the scale, nearly half (49 percent) of non-adherents had incomes below $50,000, compared to just 21 percent of adherents.

Teaching students the success sequence is overwhelmingly popular among Americans generally, and parents of school-aged children specifically. The controversy one might see among academics and the think tank set doesn’t seem to garner traction among the general public, or even among the subgroups where we might expect support to be soft, even among those who have deviated from it. As debates over what should be taught in schools continue across the nation, along with disagreements over who should have a say in those debates, it’s important to realize that popular support for teaching the success sequence is strong, as strong as the evidence that shows it is a path out of poverty.

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