5 states that deem collective bargaining illegal have the lowest ACT/SAT scores

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

South Carolina - 50th
North Carolina - 49th
Georgia - 48th
Texas - 47th
Virginia - 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. Let's keep it that way.

:kick:

....this is 2009 though

http://blog.bestandworststates.com/2009/08/25/state-sat-scores-2009.aspx

EDIT:

Here's 2010:

http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/2010-sat-scores-by-state

I'm not sure which year the stats I posted are for as they don't seem to exactly match either 2009 or 2010 exactly.

However, you can see that the five states without collective bargaining rights for teachers consistently have the lowest ACT/SAT scores while Wisconsin and other states have consistently higher scores. Wisconsin particularly has ranked #2 or #3 both years.

:hi:

:sarcasm:

so precious few students taking the test. In Iowa and Wisconsin, for instance, less then 5% take it. In MA, 86% take it. In Vermont, 66% take it.

Meaningless ranking.

The first comment explained the problem beautifully:

Did you notice that all the top ten states on that list are from the Northern Midwest? That's because the typical students in midwestern places like Iowa and Wisconsin don't take the SAT, they take the other admissions test (the ACT). The only kids in Iowa who take the SAT are the ones who plan to apply out of state, to Ivy league schools. Naturally, those kids score high.

Meanwhile, in places like Connecticut or Vermont or New Jersey or California, the ACT is not given, and everyone (including the morons) takes the SAT even if they only plan to go to community college.

This ranking almost entirely correlates with the percentage of the students who take the ACT versus the SAT, nothing more. It's horribly misleading.

collective bargaining.

The correlation is that states which support collective bargaining for their teachers have higher scores.

Is that irrelevant?

kids take - and the highest states are those where less than 10% of the kids take it. The only reason an Iowa kid would take the SAT is if he/she were applying to a university requiring it.

2nd of all the more students taking these tests, the wider the range of scores and very, very few students in Wisconsin in 1999 took the SATs- something like 3%, whereas in NJ, 70+ percent took it. Also, do we know whether the status of collective bargaining was the same 11 years ago?

Edit: apologies, it's a 2009 ranking, but my other point is still strong: Only 5% of Wisconsin students take the SATs. Compare that to 75% of New Hampshire students.

Wisconsin teachers deserve a raise if you look at their salary comfort rank. Failing to have collective bargaining has not kept costs down either; all the states with low test scores are ranked higher than Wisconsin on salaries compared to cost of living in each state.


http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state
The TeacherPortal Salary Comfort Score is a proprietary way to tell how far a teacher's salary will go in each state. We look at cost-of-living, average salaries, starting salaries, and more. Then we rank the states - the lower the number, the more "comfortable" your teacher's salary will be.

students take the SATs. The rankings are absurd.

We knew this forty years ago when I was getting my degree in the field.

Participation rates swamp the other factors when comparing among the states. In addition, even the same overall participation rate might have different demographics.

This is not a valid argument. A simplistic look at the data in support of a misleading claim.

While I have posted numerous times at DU on related topics, a simple web search should find an explanation at a level you might understand.