{"id":348690,"date":"2026-09-16T21:50:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T21:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348690\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T21:50:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T21:50:22","slug":"canter-in-the-new-york-post-blue-states-with-strong-teachers-unions-have-lower-student-literacy-levels-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348690\/","title":{"rendered":"Canter in The New York Post: Blue states with strong teachers\u2019 unions have lower student literacy levels: study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[\u2026]<\/p>\n<p>The assessment was conducted by the PPI\u2019s Director of Education Policy, Rachel Canter, who spent nearly two decades in Mississippi advocating for systemic reforms, which transformed the state\u2019s students from having among the lowest literacy rates in the nation to having some of the highest<\/p>\n<p>And Canter\u2019s study\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/09\/08\/us-news\/furious-parents-give-us-schools-a-big-fat-f-as-approval-plunges-dramatically\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/09\/08\/us-news\/furious-parents-give-us-schools-a-big-fat-f-as-approval-plunges-dramatically\/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789658366287000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3R2YumMcR2dl69jkd7wWTu\">found one overwhelming and shocking<\/a>\u00a0throughline \u2014 the stronger the state\u2019s teachers\u2019 union the worse its student literacy scores were, results which did not exclusively follow party lines but strongly trended that way and often to the detriment of Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDemocrats, however, don\u2019t often ask me how to replicate Mississippi\u2019s success,\u201d Canter said. \u201cThey ask if it\u2019s possible at all, given the power of teachers\u2019 unions in their home states.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One reason for the disparity, Canter argued, is that states where teacher unions have a strong grip are slower to enact better programs.<\/p>\n<p>She looked at 18 literacy policies recommended by ExcelinEd and found Democratic states had undertaken nine of them on average, while Republican and swing states had adopted an average of 13.5.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStates dominated by Democrats have been slower to embrace similar reforms,\u201d Canter said. \u201cOrganized labor might explain some of this gap.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Canter\u2019s successes were a meteoric transformation of Mississippi\u2019s students \u2014 in 2013 the state had some of the worst test scores for middle and elementary students in the country, but by 2024 they had climbed to seventh in literacy and 13th in math.<\/p>\n<p>[\u2026]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/09\/15\/us-news\/blue-states-with-strong-teachers-unions-have-lower-student-literacy-levels-study-shows\/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_medium=social\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read more in The New York Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[\u2026] The assessment was conducted by the PPI\u2019s Director of Education Policy, Rachel Canter, who spent nearly two&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-348690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}