Bobby Ann Starnes, the author of this article, grew up with portraits of two important people displayed prominently in her home, Jesus, and John L. Lewis. Lewis, a giant among American leaders in the first half of the twentieth century, sent hundreds of organizers to help create some of the nation's leading labor unions, including the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Communication Workers of America (CWA), United Mine Workers of America, and many other important labor organizations that continue to speak in behalf of America's workers. Starnes' father always told her it was Lewis who had saved his life one day when an explosion ocurred trapping him in a collapsed coal mine. The thing Starnes was able to take from her childhood experiences with unions was that unions do no flourish on infertile ground. Had miners had safe working conditions, job security, and appropriate pay, they would have had no interest in union-organizing rhetoric. The unions would have died on the vine. Remembering the same principal to be true during the National Education Association's difficult transition from a professional organization to its current role as a labor union, Starnes recalls that there were reasons for that change, just as there were reasons for her father's boyhood struggles to join a labor union. Starnes disagrees with a sound bite from President Bush claiming that we must end teachers' unions' stranglehold if we are going to have successful schools, and further suggests that there is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to the state of schools today. She lays a portion of the blame at the Federal Government's door step begining with the government's unrealistic and unfunded mandates. This article suggests that there are reasons to believe that unions are linked to student achievement. To ignore that link makes little sense. Perhaps a better idea would be to consider how it can be better understood.