Maybe We’re Testing the Wrong People
The Educational Testing Service released a new poll about the No Child Left Behind Act. Both Education Week and Eduwonk examine it thoroughly, but they both bury the lede, in my book.
I know I’ve beaten this dead horse before, but the key finding of the poll is that most people know very little about NCLB, so the poll results are based on opinions given after the law has been described to them in a short paragraph – after more than five years of news coverage, research and debate!
We can blame ignorance and apathy on the schools, but at some point you have to ask where individual intellectual curiosity has gone. Maybe the best argument for NCLB is that we don’t want kids to grow up to become just like the people polled by ETS.
Here’s the depressing summary from ETS:
The Public Is Largely Uninformed About NCLB
A majority of the public (54%) remains unaware that Congress passed and
the President signed into law a major education bill. Of the 46% who do know it,
only 14% believe that major changes are under way as a result. This is critical
to understanding how the public approaches education reform.• Only 12% of the public claim to know a great deal about NCLB. An
additional 33% say they know a fair amount. That means about half of the
American public admits to knowing little (38%) or nothing at all (16%) about
this major legislative initiative.• Even when presented with four possible NCLB descriptions, less than
half (47%) of the public correctly associated NCLB with standards and testing.
It was almost exactly the same for parents of children in K-12 schools (49%).
Significant segments of the public associate NCLB with national testing for high
school graduation (12%) or school vouchers (8%).• A large segment (26%) associates NCLB with not leaving students
behind as they move from grade to grade at the end of the school year. They
think of “social promotion” when they hear the phrase “no child left
behind.”
June 25th, 2007 at 19:51
Hello, Mike.
We seem to be parallel-blogging on this one:
http://tinyurl.com/26duj4
I was dumbfounded by the statistics (the ones we parallel-quoted) but even more dumbfounded by the blithe conclusions drawn by the authors and funders of the report.
June 25th, 2007 at 20:06
Hi Nancy:
I once did a story about how many steps along the way a study can get something wrong. From the numbers to what the researchers say the numbers said, to what the executive summary says the researchers said, to what the press release says the executive summary said, to what the newspapers said about the press release.
The ETS survey added one: We asked people who never heard of something to express an opinion about it.
Here’s the embedded link to your blog post, Survey Says…, since I think this one has a broader implication than just what people think about NCLB.