Anybody watching the escalating battle across the
country over the Common Core State Standards and aligned standardized testing will hardly be surprised by a new national
poll which reveals a significant loss of support over the last year —
especially among teachers, whose approval rating dropped from 76 percent
in 2013 to only 46 percent in 2014. Overall support for the Core dropped
from 65 percent last year to 53 percent in 2014, with most of the defection
among Republicans.
The
annual poll was conducted by the
pro-school-reform journal Education Next and asked a nationally
representative sample of Americans about a variety of education issues, with
the results on the Common Core being the most dramatic. Here are some of
the results:
*Support for the Core dropped from 65 percent
in 2013 to 53 percent across the general population. When asked about the
notion of common national education standards without mentioning the Common
Core, support was at 68 percent.
*Along with the 30-percentage point drop in
approval by teachers, there was a huge jump in opposition, from 12 percent to
40 percent.
*Support among Republicans has dropped from 57
percent in 2013 to 43 percent this year, while Democratic support has barely
changed, from 64 percent to 63 percent in 2014.
In a sign of the changing school choice
landscape, 26 percent of adults living with school-age children have educated
at least one of their children in an alternative setting that was not a
traditional public school. Education Next is a magazine whose top
editors are supporters of modern school reform, including the Core. Its
editor-in-chief is Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard University’s Program
on Education Policy and Governance in the Graduate School of Education, and a
fellow at the Hoover Institute (which is housed at Stanford University) is
well-known for his support of school vouchers.
It is interesting to see how the article in
Education Next about the poll, co-written by Peterson and titled “No Common
Opinion on the Common Core,” characterizes the drop in Core support. It
notes that “opposition has been voiced both by conservative groups who fear
expanded federal control and by teachers unions worried about the consequences
for teacher evaluation.” While some conservative groups have opposed it
out of fears of a federal takeover of local education, teachers unions aren’t
actually worried about “the consequences of teacher evaluation” in a vacuum.
They are worried about the consequences of teacher evaluation based on the
results of controversial Common Core-aligned standardized tests and a method of evaluation that many experts
say is unfair. Furthermore, these are not the only two places from where
opposition to the Core has been building. Core opposition has come from
all ends of the political spectrum for a variety of different reasons including
questions about the funding, the developmental appropriateness of some of the
standards, the botched implementation of the standards in many states and the
quality of the aligned tests.
The article also says that “opinion with respect to the Common
Core has yet to coalesce,” and then kindly suggests to Core supporters that
they “probably need to clarify their intentions to the public if they are to
keep their support from slipping,” as if the opposition is based on a
particular set of misunderstandings. The report does indeed note that a majority
of those polls displayed three misunderstandings of the Core, but it is not
known if those are the only reasons that the majority opposes the Core.
In a post on the Education Next website on
Tuesday, Peterson made clear his thinking on the results:
Political polarization is making it
increasingly difficult to sustain support for policy undertakings that a
majority of the public supports. Narrow interest groups and small minorities
are twisting public opinion through slogans and rhetoric to which
sensation-mongering elements in the media are giving excessive attention. Such
is my conclusion after reviewing eight years of Education Next (Ednext)
polling on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Common Core State Standards
(CCSS).
As for opinion on the Core actually coalescing, don’t hold your
breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment