Union: Student With Non-Union Teachers ‘Among the Worst’ On Tests — Mich Lower Than Them All

Michigan Capitol Confidential ^ | 10/13/2012 | Jarrett Skorup

[MichCapCon]

The group supporting Proposal 2, the collective bargaining ballot initiative, lists on its website five states that outlaw public employee collective bargaining for teachers and says those states perform "among the worst in the nation" on standardized test scores.

The problem? Michigan scores lower than all five of those states on the most widely-taken standardized test.

On the "Get the Facts" page (under "Race to the Bottom"), the group "Protect Working Families" (previously "Protect Our Jobs") writes: "In the five states where collective bargaining for teachers is not allowed (South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia), ACT and SAT scores are among the worst in the nation." There is no citation for this information, but according to the group administering the test, Michigan performs worse than those five states on the ACT.

For 2012, the average ACT scores for the five states listed, and Michigan plus their national rank are:

Virginia: 22.4 — 12th in the nation North Carolina: 21.9 — 22nd in the nation Texas: 20.8 — 32nd in the nation Georgia: 20.7 — 33rd in the nation South Carolina: 20.2 — 43rd in the nation Michigan: 20.1 — 44th in the nation One reason Michigan scores so low: 100 percent of high school students take the ACT. Meanwhile, Texas (39 percent), South Carolina (57 percent), Georgia (52 percent), Virginia (25 percent) and North Carolina (20 percent) have a lower percentage of students taking the ACT.

But of the 9 states that test all students in the ACT, Michigan ranks 6th.

Michigan performs better on the SAT than the ACT, but only 5 percent of students in the state took that test. And according to data from The College Board, which administers the test, most of the Michigan students who took the SAT were planning on attending highly selective schools.

Education experts say this small of a sample makes it difficult to make a comparison with other states.

"The typical student in Michigan who is taking the SAT is planning on attending or at least applying to a highly selective college," said Michael Van Beek, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. "This obviously skews the state's average score upward and makes comparisons across states more difficult.

"There are a multitude of factors that contribute to a state’s average SAT or ACT score, including participation rates, average student poverty level, average parental educational attainment and more," he said. "Trying to compare states based on just one variable like Proposal 2's proponents are doing is misleading and irresponsible.”

Texas (58 percent), North Carolina (67 percent), Virginia (71 percent), South Carolina (70 percent) and Georgia (80 percent) all have a much higher percentage of students taking the SAT. The number of students taking the SAT are as follows:

Texas: 172,082 Georgia: 73,187 North Carolina: 63,271 Virginia: 61,655 South Carolina: 26,777 Michigan: 4,833 So while Michigan has a higher average SAT scores than these states, the state tests between five and 35 times fewer students than these other states.

According to The College Board, 16.4 percent of Michigan students send their SAT scores to Harvard, 11.8 percent to Princeton, 11 percent to Cornell, 10.7 percent to Stanford and 10.7 percent to Yale. Sixty percent of the students are from homes with family incomes over $80,000 per year — far higher than the states the Proposal 2 supporters attempt to make a comparison with. This suggests that students who take the SAT in Michigan are high-performing with aspirations of an Ivy League education.

During the debate over collective bargaining in Wisconsin earlier this year, a similar claim by the Democratic Party of the state regarding Wisconsin test scores and the above five states was made. Melissa Baldauff, the party's research director, wrote to the left-leaning "fact check" site PolitiFact to say that "after further investigation, we determined that the data was not the most up-to-date. Accordingly, we have removed the post from our Facebook page."

PolitiFact rated the suggestion that public employee collective bargaining for teachers correlated to higher test scores as "false."

[CharlesWayneCT]

If you search Google for “State SAT ranking”, you find some guy did a chart for 1999. He felt compelled recently to add a comment that people are idiots for using his chart in these arguments (the Wisconsin teachers used this same argument).

In fact, Virginia does very well in the ACT test, and well in the SAT test. I can’t speak for other states.

[crusty old prospector]

Half the students taking the test in Texas no habla ingles.

[ilovesarah2012]

Are results broken down by race?

[Yosemitest]

Union teachers can't compete with HOME SCHOOLERS.
Read A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling

Reports


Click here or on graph for Excel Workbook.
Note that Baseline is at 19.5, not zero (0).

1997 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 1,926 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.5. [959,301 students took the test in all, averaging 21.0.] [0.20% homeschoolers]

1998 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 2,610 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.8. [995,039 students took the test in all, averaging 21.0.] [0.26% homeschoolers]

1999 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 3,257 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.7. [1,019,053 students took the test in all, averaging 21.0.] [0.32% homeschoolers]

2000 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 4,593 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.8. [1,065,138 students took the test in all, averaging 21.0.] [0.43% homeschoolers]

2001 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 5,379 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.7. [1,069,772 students took the test in all, averaging 21.0.] [0.50% homeschoolers]

2002 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 6,185 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.5. [1,116,082 students took the test in all, averaging 20.8.] [0.55% homeschoolers]

2003 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 7,225 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.5. [1,175,059 students took the test in all, averaging 20.8.] [0.61% homeschoolers]

2004 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! 7,858 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.6. [1,171,460 students took the test in all, averaging 20.9.] [0.67% homeschoolers]

2005 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2005, 8,075 homeschoolers average composite score (from bottom of page) was 22.5. [1,186,251 students took the test in all, averaging 20.9.] [0.68% homeschoolers]

2006 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2006, 9,117 homeschoolers average composite score was 22.4. [1,206,455 students took the test in all, averaging 21.1.] [0.76% homeschoolers].

2007 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2007, 10,072 students who list themselves as homeschooled took the test, and their average composite score was 22.3. [1,300,599 students took the test in all, averaging 21.2.] [0.77% homeschoolers].

2008 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2008, 11,195 students who list themselves as homeschooled took the test, and their average composite score was 22.4. [1,420,000 students took the test in all, averaging 21.1.] [0.78% homeschoolers].

2009 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2009, 11,535 students who list themselves as homeschooled took the test, and their average composite score was 22.5. [1,480,469 students took the test in all, averaging 21.1.] [0.78% homeschoolers].

2010 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2010, 12,230 students who list themselves as homeschooled took the test, and their average composite score was 22.6. [1,568,835 students took the test in all, averaging 21.0.] [0.78% homeschoolers].

2011 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2011, 12,731 students who list themselves as homeschooled took the test, and their average composite score was 22.6. [1,623,112 students took the test in all, averaging 21.1.] [0.78% homeschoolers].

2012 ACT High School Profile Report
Check out this National Data! For the graduating class of 2012, 13,647 students who list themselves as homeschooled took the test, and their average composite score was 22.6. [1,666,017 students took the test in all, averaging 21.1.] [0.82% homeschoolers].

I again caution you that the designation that someone is home-schooled is self-reported, and that we have no way of knowing how long they have been home-schooled. There may be many students who home-school until they get to high school, and these would not be included. Similarly, students who list themselves as home-schooled may have been so for only a year, and these would be included.

[donna]

I thought the union teachers believed that teaching to the test was a bad thing.

Now it’s a good thing?

[cripplecreek]

LOL idiots.

If anyone wants to be added to the Michigan Cap Con ping list, let me know.

[Mad Dawgg]

I can tell you in our town we have the public school AND The Catholic School (grades K-8th)

The Catholic School grades blow away the Public School Grades and then when the Catholic School Kids go to the High School then end up finishing in the top academic rankings and have taking the Valedictorian and The Salutatorian spots for over 30 years running.

And here is the kicker. Of course the Catholic School is non-union BUT the Public School spends on average almost 10K a year per student(way more if you include building costs), while the catholic school spends a little more than half that (about $5,400) YET every classroom has a computer per student AND its all networked to the teacher's Smartboard. But the Public High School has only a single computer lab with about 30 computers, and (this is the part I love the most /sarc) Public High School students are banned from bringing their own laptops to school because its not fair to those that don't have them.