The Center for American Progress recently released the results of a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey, claiming it showed that the “Goals of the Common Core [are] as American as apple pie, but misinformation remains widespread.” To get to a press release with that title, they also polled for the favorability of apple pie (74%), bacon (76%), baseball (63%), ice cream (83%), and kittens (60%). They asked whether respondents agreed that “we should raise our nation’s academic standards so the US. can be more competitive with other countries,” and 90% assented.
Shutterstock/
You could take the answer to that question to mean that Common Core is more American than apple pie, kittens, and the rest. We’d just take it to mean that Americans want their kids to be smarter and want their nation to do well. We can’t help wondering about the ten percent who do not want the U.S. to be more competitive with other countries. And given the prevalence of cat allergies and dietary restrictions, the results may not be all that surprising.
In any event, this was a mildly entertaining effort to use poll questions on kittens to promote the tired narrative that Americans would embrace the Common Core if only they weren’t so misinformed about it. But you can’t really get to that conclusion from the data. In fact, the poll tells us less about what Americans know about the Common Core than it does about the biases of Common Core’s advocates.
In the press release, CAP parrots a standard lament made by Common Core advocates: “Opponents of the Common Core have embarked on misinformation campaigns in order to create widespread confusion among voters or to score political points.” To show that voters are misinformed, CAP notes that “Although the Common Core State Standards were developed by educators in tandem with a bipartisan group of governors … a majority of registered voters think that the U.S. Department of Education or U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote the standards.” But the poll question failed to offer respondents a true answer. The options were “Arne Duncan,” “The Department of Education,” “Governors,” “Teachers,” “Someone Else,” or “Not Sure.” The real answer is “Someone Else” – namely, a collaboration of organizations including the Council of Chief State School Officers; Achieve, Inc.; and the National Governors Association. To answer either “Teachers” or “Governors” would be false. It’s a bit unfair to ding Americans for choosing the Department of Education when that’s probably the closest proxy for “private organizations you’ve never heard of.” It almost seems like CAP presented a trick question, and then used the answer to justify its pre-baked narrative.
CAP also notes that “72 percent of voters believe that standardized tests take up more time than they actually do. A recent CAP report showed that students spend, on average, 1.6 percent of instructional time or less taking tests.” But the question was more ambiguous than they’re making it out to be. The pollster asked, “What percentage of the school year do you think the average student spends on standardized tests.” If it were us answering the poll, we’d account for the time spent preparing for tests, not just taking them, and we’d join the majority of respondents who estimated between 2 and 10 percent. Especially given that people are more concerned about “teaching to the test” than instructional time spent taking tests, it again seems unfair to ding folks for answering the question they were asked.
The narrative advanced by Common Core proponents like CAP isn’t just that Americans aren’t well informed, but that the opposition is driven by a (Republican) misinformation campaign. The story goes that right-wing talk show hosts have tricked conservatives into viewing the standards as a vehicle for indoctrinating America’s children with liberal ideology. On this count, the poll results actually undercut their story. PPP asked whether the Common Core contained several politically fraught items, including sex education and climate science, and found no significant partisan difference in responses. In fact, independents were more likely than Democrats or Republicans to think the Common Core contained potentially objectionable content.
Republicans actually show more support for two CAP-identified “goals” of the Common Core. Seventy eight percent of Republicans, compared to 70% of Democrats, strongly agree that we should raise our academic standards. And 67% of Republicans strongly agree that “we should create a set of high quality standards or goals in English and math and let communities develop their own curriculum”—but only 39% of Democrats do. Based on that, you could accuse Republicans of not realizing that they should really like the Common Core because it leaves curriculum up to communities. You could also accuse Democrats of not realizing that they shouldn’t really like the Common Core because it leaves curriculum up to communities. We wouldn’t jump to either conclusion.
The poll does seem to have clear-cut data on one topic: kittens. It seems that Americans over 65 are twice as likely as young people to be unsure whether or not they like them. There is also a striking racial divide on the kitty question: Sixty-six percent of whites are in favor of kittens, whereas only 32% of African Americans are.
Now, putting that result forward on a public policy blog is a bit tongue-in-cheek. But to us, that seems to be the clearest answer that this poll provides. The attempt to use this poll to say that “the Common Core is as American as apple pie” ultimately says a lot more about the agenda of the advocates who commissioned this poll than it does about American public opinion.
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1LyE1tV
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment