Overview
- Senate Bill 156 passed 24–9 on a party-line vote and now moves to the Ohio House for consideration, with Republican Sen. Al Cutrona as sponsor.
- The bill would direct the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to create a grades 6–12 model curriculum on graduating, working full time, and marrying before having children, and would tie completion to graduation.
- Backers say teaching the sequence offers students a roadmap to break cycles of poverty and provides a positive intervention.
- Research cited in coverage finds that finishing school, full-time work, and marriage correlate with lower poverty but that the order matters little, and Brookings data show weaker outcomes for Black Americans who follow the steps compared with whites.
- Critics argue the mandate shifts responsibility for poverty onto children and diverts focus from public school funding, voucher expansion, and other structural issues.