Since NEA is at war, it is only fitting that the organization should draw up threat maps.
By my count, that leaves only seven states without a threat (Colorado, Wyoming, Hawaii, Kentucky, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia) and most of those have already hobbled unions.
With this much ground to defend, NEA must learn the maxim of Sun Tzu: “If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.”
Did you notice many of the right to work states have some of the worst education systems in the country?
Did you notice that it was that way for generations before there was such a thing as “right to work?”
Did you notice that since those laws came into being many of those states, especially in the south, have steadily improved their education systems, while education in the collective bargaining states has remained stagnant or declined?
And did you notice that many of the collective bargaining states have the worst fiscal problems?
Um…You mention that Colorado is one of the states with no threats…your map has Colorado with two threats including the one directly above the paragraph stating it has none. Perhaps you meant Wyoming. It has no threats and is not listed. Maybe someone should revisit their geography class, – but it was probably taught by a union teacher which would explain this error.
Anyway, I LOVE this. As a California teacher who experiences the unions rape my paychecks every month I just wish that Cali had more “threats”.
Also,
That was my error, Allen, now corrected. Although in my case it was poor eyesight and not poor geography.
I’d like to see these superimposed with the achievement/opportunity gap and low graduation rate states maps.
To equate the presence (or lack of) a strong union with strong educational performance is wrong. There are so many factors that go into creating good schools that it is almost impossible to isolate just this one.
Generally the southern states perform poorly. Are right-to-work laws to blame? How then to explain relatively good performance of schools in the Dakotas? The truth is that many other factors such as poverty, family structure, local culture, and staff stability have far more to do with success of a school. All the other variables would have to be controlled before union effect could be identified.
I’m strongly anti-union myself, but I get annoyed with both sides for linking unions to school performance. I would prefer that the focus be turned to those things to which the union is demonstrably linked.
[...] Against the Taxpayer Posted on April 5, 2011 by Jane Jamison| Leave a commentFrom Mike Antonucci at “Intercepts” blog, which is described as “A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ [...]
[...] can they stop the tidal wave? As we see in two other Antonucci posts, threat maps and under-reported stories, the scope and intensity may indeed overwhelm [...]