I’ve long thought family structure deserves far more attention in making sense of educational outcomes. While race and poverty always feature prominently in such analyses, conservatives argue that much of the story may be the difference between single-parent and two-parent households. Well, my AEI colleague Ian Rowe, a long-time champion of the “success sequence” and the importance of marriage, recently published an eye-opening look on the effects of household structure. Ian is a veteran educator who served for a decade as CEO of Public Prep, a network of charter schools in New York City, and co-founded Vertex Partnership Academies, an IB high school serving low-income students in the Bronx. Before that, his career included stops at the White House and the Gates Foundation. Here’s what Ian had to say.
—Rick
Rick: Ian, you recently released a report analyzing the impact of family structure on student outcomes. What did you find?
Ian: My AEI colleague Brad Wilcox and I analyzed data on about 51,000 children, from birth to 17, from the National Survey of Children’s Health. Controlling for race, poverty, parental education, sex, and age, we isolated the effect of family structure on student outcomes. We compared kids in “intact” families, where the biological or adoptive parents are married, with their peers in “nonintact households,” which includes being raised by stepparents, cohabiting partners, single parents, or in foster or kinship care. The gaps were striking. Kids in nonintact families were 13% less likely to earn A’s and B’s, 47% more likely to have their parents contacted about behavioral or learning problems at school, and more than twice as likely to be depressed. In fact, family structure predicted these outcomes more strongly than race or poverty did.
Rick: What do you think is behind these results?
Ian: Our data can’t pinpoint the cause; we can only establish correlation. Two-parent homes seem to offer kids unique benefits. The 1966 Coleman Report found that family background shaped student achievement. As Chester Finn, a former assistant secretary of education, once observed, a student who faithfully attends school from kindergarten through 12th grade will, by 18, have spent just 9% of his life there. What happens at home matters enormously.
Rick: What got you focused on questions of family structure?
Ian: For nearly two decades, I founded and led charter schools serving thousands of low-income kids in the Bronx and Manhattan. Every morning, it was clear that kids from stable families were more ready to learn than their peers. That may seem obvious. Yet, analyses of student outcomes routinely focus on the “usual suspects” of race, class, and gender while overlooking family structure. That needs to change.
Rick: You’ve urged that the National Assessment of Educational Progress include family structure in its reporting. What do you have in mind?
Ian: NAEP collects data on students’ race, ethnicity, sex, poverty, and family structure. But only the latter doesn’t appear in the official nation’s report card. That leaves policymakers, educators, and parents in the dark about one of the strongest predictors of academic success. NAEP should start reporting it, as should every federal report on child outcomes.
Rick: What do you say to those worried that discussing family structure is an attempt to shame single parents?
Ian: As someone who has run schools in neighborhoods where the majority of babies are born outside of marriage, I know there are many examples of heroic single parents. I also know people sometimes end up in these situations through domestic violence, abandonment, or the death of a partner. It’s not about shaming single parents. The goal is to provide the public with a clearer picture of how family structure—alongside race, class, and other factors—influences children’s health, academic success, and economic security.
Rick: Nikole Hannah-Jones recently sparked a debate when she wrote that she regrets sending her daughter to a “segregated, low-income” elementary school in Brooklyn. As someone who’s well-acquainted with New York City schooling, what did you make of the furor?
Ian: What’s been overlooked by some commentators is that when Hannah-Jones originally announced that decision back in 2016, she acknowledged that she and her husband “would be able to make up for Najya anything the school was lacking.” That was the truth hiding in plain sight. Their daughter’s biggest advantage was a stable, married, two-parent home with the time, money, and connections to push school leaders when things fell short. And that’s what they did. They advocated for her and ultimately helped her get into a selective public high school. If anything, the story underscores the importance of family structure.
Rick: You’ve been a vocal proponent of teaching the “success sequence” in high school. What’s that entail and what kind of reception have you received?
Ian: The success sequence has three steps: Finish high school, get a full-time job, and marry before having kids. It’s a term that was popularized by the Brookings Institution scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill. A 2022 study found that 97% of millennials who followed the success sequence were not poor as adults. The term is not without its critics. Plenty of self-anointed gatekeepers object to teaching it in schools. But I’ve found that single parents are often its strongest supporters because they want to help their children choose a different path.
Rick: A few years ago, you launched the FREE Initiative to cultivate youth agency and you recently released a new curriculum. What is that all about?
Ian: Students who don’t have the privilege of growing up in a two-parent household aren’t destined for failure. In decades of working with young people, I’ve seen many who broke the cycle of poverty, and I’ve found that they tend to share a sense of agency, a belief that they can shape their own lives. But that doesn’t come from simply pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s built on what I call the four FREE pillars: family, religion, education, and entrepreneurship. This summer, we released the “Agency Curriculum” to help students build that agency. Over the past year, our AEI team worked with public, private, and parochial educators to develop and pilot 30 lessons for teachers, homeschoolers, parents, clergy, and community leaders.
Rick: You run Vertex Partnership Academies in the Bronx, where the school motto is, “There are no victims in our school, only architects of their own lives.” Why that message?
Ian: Too often, young people are told that their race, sex, or class makes them victims. At Vertex, we teach students to reject that narrative. The school is organized around the cardinal virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom, which build the habits and agency young people need to overcome life’s obstacles.
Rick: If you’ve one tip for education leaders seeking to foster student agency, what is it?
Ian: School leaders must recognize that educating students is moral formation. If we aren’t intentional about the values we teach, the void will be filled by social media or other influences. Whether it’s the cardinal virtues or another moral framework, choose deliberately. Don’t abdicate the duty to form whole human beings.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
