And Evidence Suggests I'm The Man For The Job

I've stayed out of the Wisconsin union discussion for the same reason I never voted when I lived in Green Bay (or Chicago): It's their state and not mine. But a lot of my friends have been posting this as a status update lately:

"Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators (i.e. “teachers unions”) 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

Wisconsin ranked 2nd in 2010 in combined ACT/SAT.

(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/states/USCHARTsat.html)"

Which is I was tickled to find these two quotes in a book I'm reading about political doublespeak, "Aristotle and an Aardvark: Understanding Political Doublespeak Through Philosophy and Jokes", and thought I would share them for your personal enjoyment.

" 'The 10 states with the lowest per pupil spending including 4- North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee & Utah - in the top 10 states with the highest SAT scores. Only 1- Wisconsin -was among the 10 states with the highest SAT scores. New Jersey has the highest per pupil, an astonishing $10,561, which teachers' unions elsewhere try to use as a negotiating benchmark. New Jersey's rank regarding SAT scores? 39th. ...'

George Will, Washington Post, September 12th, 1993"

"In the Journal of Statistics Education, Deborah Lynn Guber points out that a crucial factor Mr. Will ignores in his analysis is participation rates: the percentage of students in each state who actually take the SAT. It turns out that in North Dakota, state colleges require the ACT rather than the SAT, so only 5% of North Dakota students take the SAT. It is fair to say that among that 5% are a large number of students who want to go to prestigious out-of-state schools (that do require the SAT) and who, because of their proven academic abilities, think they have a shot at it. In New Jersey, by comparison, 79 percent of students take the SAT- certainly a more representative cross-section of the entire population of high school graduates. So the SAT scores of the brightest ND students are being compared to the SAT scores of more typical NJ students."

I think the implication is pretty clear. We can definitely get non-union labor to do George Will's job.