Virginia schools have better-than-average standardized test scores.  Virginia obviously doesn’t rank an abysmal 44th in the nation on SATs and ACTs, as supporters of Wisconsin government-employee unions keep falsely claiming. They’re making that claim up because Virginia bans collective bargaining by government employees, and Wisconsin, which currently mandates collective bargaining in government agencies, is considering proposals by its newly-elected conservative governor to bar such bargaining in areas like pensions, which frequently result in government costs being passed on to future generations.

In 2009, Virginia ranked in the middle of states on the ACT and SAT, and in 2010, it actually outranked Wisconsin on the ACT (12th vs. 17th in “average composite score“).   The reason it doesn’t rank higher on the SAT is because so many of its students take the test – including marginal students who wouldn’t even take them in another state.  (Wisconsin boasts a higher average SAT score than Virginia partly because only “four percent” of Wisconsin students took the SAT, compared to “67 percent” in Virginia.  Virginia’s lower average SAT score is a function of a larger pool, not dumb students or bad schools, as PolitiFact pointed out in debunking the false claim that Virginia ranks 44th .)