Success in life is about more than getting good grades in school, and too often, students living in poverty struggle to rise above their situation after they leave the classroom. That's why State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) proposed a "success sequence" bill to teach students three simple values that are nearly guaranteed to help them get ahead in life.
Orr recently joined "1819 News: The Podcast" to discuss education issues, including his bill, SB 289, which passed in May.
"My concern is, if you're a child and you're in the inner city or very rural area and you're in poverty today, how can we help you get out?" he said. "We talk about education or we talk about just doing the right thing, but if you're a child, what can you do? How can you see forward a pathway to get out of the poverty of the conditions that you're in? And the success sequence is very simple. It's research-based. It's been proven time and time again. It's three things. And this is what the kids will learn. It's finish high school, get a diploma, get a high school diploma, get a job. Doesn't matter if it's McDonald's, Burger King, whatever. But get out, get that diploma and get working, get busy, and then don't have children out of wedlock."
He continued, "They're attainable by a young person, a 17-year-old, an 18-year-old. I can see how to do these three things. And the research says, if you do these three things, if you graduate and you're coming out of a family in poverty, by the time you're 28 or 10 years later, you are 96% assured of not being in poverty. So, in other words, there's a 4% failure rate. "And how important it is to teach our young people values such as that, or a road map, if you will, of how to get out of poverty."
Orr said his bill "didn't get a lot of fanfare" as other bills did, but it's one he believes could have the most impact in helping the generations to come.
"A law like that will hopefully, God willing, change lives. And that, at the end of the day, gives me much more solace and gratification than helping in other areas where people maybe can get help through other means," he said. "But hopefully, the laws that we passed will help them. But these kids, in these very difficult, poor situations, they don't have a lot of help. And they certainly have a lot of distractions and a lot of things that can get them going down the wrong path."
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