“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
— Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

 

That sums up some of what is happening in the debate over cutting state spending in Wisconsin.  Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted a commentary about the claim made by Wisconsin union supporters that Virginia, a state that bans collective bargaining in state agencies, ranks 44th in the nation in ACT/SAT scores, as opposed to Wisconsin’s ranking 13th. That is simply not true.  In 2010, Virginia ranked 12th and Winconsin ranked 17th.  Virginia bans the forcing of workers to pay union dues and prohibits collective bargaining with government employee unions.  The claim is being made in order to further the idea that strong unions provide good schools with good results.  There is, in fact, no evidence to support that claim–there may be evidence to the contrary.

 

The claim being made about Virginia ranking 44th has made its way into various news outlets–it is on the website of The Economist, and the writer of the article at the Washington Examiner commented that he expected to see the statistic cited in newspapers in the near future.

 

Unfortunately, when it comes to news reporting, we have reached the point in America where the word of the day is ‘buyer beware.’