Astroturfed Union Talking Points On Collective Bargaining And ACT Scores
On my Facebook page, a well-meaning connection dropped this little nugget into his comment stream.Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Their ranking on ACT/SAT scores:
South Carolina - 50th
North Carolina - 49th
Georgia - 48th
Texas - 47th
Virginia - 44th
Wisconsin is currently ranked 2nd. Welcome to the race to the bottom.
It's an interesting piece, because it's all over the internet in a Google Search. There is no citation for the piece, and the comments are left mostly byanonymous users at hundreds of newssites and comment sections covering the union strike in Wisconsin.
This is astroturf at its finest. A low-paid intern or first year employee cutting and pasting a talking point into comment sections as they register, too lazy to change it up, and too rushed to bother creating real profiles to post from.
The tipoff for me was the use of educators. The use of the word "educators" instead of teachers is a code word meant to make you think of the word educate, which is so much sexier than teaching.
The problem is the "statistic," no matter where it came from, is bunk. Focusing on the students who took the ACT/SAT doesn't cover the whole educational picture. It covers those most likely to graduate across a state (knowing full well that school districts within a state, and even a city, vary wildly). It doesn't touch on dropout rates at all.
Let's look at those dropout rates by county, instead of by state, and see what we get. Here is a list from 2006 in USA TODAY.
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