Campaign To Drive Down Confidence In Public Schools A Success

The headline in the PDK/Gallup poll released yesterday was how much support Common Core has lost with both the general public and parents of children of school age.

But we shouldn't lose sight of these poll findings either:

The wide-ranging survey also showed that trust in the nation’s public school system has evaporated, as a consistent majority of Americans approve of charter schools that operate independently of state regulations.

...


Survey participants said that the top issue facing public schools is a lack of financial support, while concern about discipline issues or crime in schools is dropping.

Respondents also said that they placed more trust in their local school boards when it comes to educational policy issues than in the federal government. The survey showed the Obama administration influence waning as many Americans believe that the federal government should play a smaller role in public education.

On average, respondents said they thought highly of their neighborhood schools. But the poll showed that close to 80 percent of Americans disapprove of the nation’s public schools at large.

So the usual contradictory mess - Americans think highly of the public schools in their own communities but more than three-quarters disapprove of public schools at large.

How does this disconnect occur?

Well, if every time you turn on the TV you see television news and television programs that denigrate the quality of public schools and public school teachers and every time you open the newspaper or go on the Internet you see stories denigrating public schools and public school teachers and this occurs for, I dunno, say thirty+ years, kicking off with a Reagan administration report that declares the "nation at risk" because of the quality of the schools and continuing from there, I'd imagine you'd be convinced that the school system and the people working in it suck too.

And Americans seem to hold this belief even though, when many of these same Americans come into contact with actual public schools and public school teachers (i.e., the ones in their communities), they like and respect both.

Almost every institution in American life (e.g., government, the office of the president, the Congress, Wall Street, Big Business, churches, the press, media companies) has seen a sharp decrease in public esteem over the last thirty years, so in one sense, this huge disapproval rating for schools at large is just a part of that same devolution in public esteem for so many other American institutions and entities.

But on the other hand, it's also a consequence of the powerful and wealthy interests who have spent the last thirty years+ attacking public schools and public school teachers in the media.

The campaign to destroy public schools has been quite successful - at least when Americans think about the system as a whole.

As for their own schools, well, a lot of Americans still like those.

Therein lies the way to pushback on some of this.

Just as people tended to like Common Core when they heard about it in the abstract but hated it when they came in contact with it, people overwhelmingly disapprove of schools in the abstract but kinda like their own.

This is because experience changes perceptions and when people see what their own schools are dealing with, how their own teachers are performing, they see that the stories they hear about on the TV and in the news aren't true about their own schools and school teachers.

Now comes the trick of it - taking that experience and getting people to say, "Well, if that's true of the schools and teachers in my community, maybe it's true of school and teachers at large too?"

Hard to do when there's a well-funded, concerted effort to drive down the esteem people have for schools and teachers funded by some very wealthy business interests.

But this is I where think we must go if we want to see public education survive.

A Closer Look At The Polling On The Common Core

Neal McCluskey at Cato has done a great job of showing how much of the polling around the Common Core is problematic.

If you haven't read his posts, they are here, here and here.

Next time you see a poll purporting to show support for the Common Core, look to see what wording the pollsters used before they asked the questions around CCSS support.

When pollsters read the boilerplate from the Gates Foundation about how CCSS are a set of standards that states have voluntarily adopted that are going to help children compete in a globalized economy blah blah blah, of course people say "Yeah, I'm in favor of those!"

That's the kind of crap polling the CCSS-supporting Wall Street Journal does.

But when people are told that the Core Standards were devised by a small coterie of non-educators, financed by billions from rich philanthropists, promoted by the USDOE through carrots like RttT and sticks like NCLB waivers and designed to go along with national tests (which have been funded by the feds) and lifetime data tracking of children, the support is less than enthusiastic.

And with all that being said, the trajectory for CCSS support is still very, very negative:

Yesterday, I wrote about new survey results from the Friedman Foundation showing that the Common Core, if even close to fairly presented, has either negative, or thinly positive, levels of public support. But I posted that too soon; not long after I wrote it, two new polls came out showing even bigger trouble for the Core.

The first was a Rasmussen survey that revealed plummeting support for the Common Core effort among parents of school-aged children. Support dropped from 52 percent in November 2013 to just 34 percent in yesterday’s release. Opposition now outweighs support 47 percent to 34 percent. Assuming the question was unchanged between surveys, that is a huge drop.

The second survey was a University of Southern California poll of Golden State residents. The Core hasn’t been as controversial there as in many states–at least, there doesn’t seem to be a major groundswell to dump it–but it’s getting drubbed there, too. The USC research showed a marked increase in the percentage of Californians who claimed to know about the Core since the survey’s 2013 administration, and among those who reported knowing something only 38 percent had a positive feeling about the Core. Some 44 percent had negative impressions. Presented with pro- and anti-Core statements, a larger percentage of respondents–41 percent to 32 percent–agreed more with the negative statement. In 2013, the pro statement got the plurality, 36 percent to 25 percent.

Carol Burris wrote yesterday that you can stick a fork in the Common Core State Standards, they're done - and I think the polling is starting to bear that out.

It would be interesting to know what the support for CCSS would be if polls conducted by pro-CCSS outfits like the Wall Street Journal were on the up-and-up instead of serving as push polls for the wonders of Common Core.

The Public Trusts Teachers WAY MORE Than Cuomo, King, And Tisch To Do What's Right For Students

The Times-Union has extraordinary results from a Times-Union/Siena poll on education issues in today's paper - the public overwhelmingly support teachers over the governor, the Legislature, the Board of Regents, and NYSED Commissioner King to do what is right for students.

The poll was conducted by Siena and here's the question I want to look at closely today:

Now after thinking about education in New York these past few minutes, I'm going to read you the names of several individuals and groups involved in public education.  Tell me for each if you: completely trust them to do what is best for New York's students, somewhat trust them, only trust them a little, or do not trust them at all to do what is best for students.

Here is how those polled responded:

Andrew Cuomo:

Completely Trust - 9%
Somewhat Trust - 41%
Only Trust A Little - 17%
Do Not Trust At All - 30%

John King:

Completely Trust - 4%
Somewhat Trust - 39%
Only Trust A Little - 16%
Do Not Trust At All - 21%

Teachers Unions:

Completely Trust - 16%
Somewhat Trust - 41%
Only Trust A Little - 19%
Do Not Trust At All - 21%

Local School Board:

Completely Trust - 19%
Somewhat Trust - 52%
Only Trust A Little - 13%
Do Not Trust At All - 13%

Legislature:

Completely Trust - 4%
Somewhat Trust - 37%
Only Trust A Little - 24%
Do Not Trust At All - 32%

Board of Regents:

Completely Trust - 11%
Somewhat Trust - 48%
Only Trust A Little - 20%
Do Not Trust At All - 18%

Teachers in Local Schools:

Completely Trust - 40%
Somewhat Trust - 48%
Only Trust A Little - 7%
Do Not Trust At All - 4%

To put this into perspective, the public either completely or somewhat trusts teachers to do what is right for NY students by an 88%-11% margin, completely or somewhat trusts their local school boards to do what is right for NY students by a 71%-26% margin, completely or somewhat trusts Cuomo to do what is right for NY students by a 50%-47% margin, completely or somewhat trusts King to do what is right for NY students by a 43%-37% margin, completely or somewhat trusts the Regents 57%-37% and completely or somewhat trusts teachers unions to do what is right for students 57%-40%.

In short, teachers are the most trusted individual or group involved in education, the second most trusted group is the local school board.

Trailing WAY BEHIND these two groups are the Board of Regents and the teachers unions.

Trailing behind that is Governor Cuomo, with a 3% plurality of trust over distrust.

Even further under that is NYSED Commissioner John King (he also only has a slim plurality trusting him to do what's right for students but he's well under 50%.)

The one group that is more distrusted than trusted to do what is right for students is the Legislature.

This poll was conducted upstate and there is a lot more to dig into in coming days - including on CCSS, technology spending, parental involvement, testing and teacher evaluations.

But I felt it was important to get a post up today about this extraordinary poll that shows teachers are BY FAR the most trusted of individuals or groups to do what is right for NY students while Cuomo and King barely enjoy pluralities of trust over distrust and King is well under 50% in that trust.

Also, take note of the numbers teachers unions get in the poll - they're tied with the Regents in public esteem (though with slightly higher negatives.)

That's something to be thinking about going into the coming teacher tenure fight here in New York.

One final point I want to bring up here.

Merryl Tisch said a few years ago that the public widely dislikes teachers, but they would like them more once a teacher evaluation system was put into place to hold them accountable for student performance.

The Siena/Times-Union poll shows wide skepticism around Ms. Tisch's battery of reforms, including teacher evaluations, but the one thing it does NOT show skepticism in is the trust the public has for teachers.

Cuomo Slides In Popularity - And The Bigger Slide Is To Still To Come

The Post reports the state GOP thinks Cuomo is a little more vulnerable these days

Controversy over the gun-control law Cuomo pushed through the Legislature in January following the Newtown, Conn., school massacre helped drive the first-term Democrat’s job approval ratings from 74 percent last December to 55 percent last month in Quinnipiac University polls.

The latest survey found him losing in the New York suburbs and upstate to GOP Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in a hypothetical presidential run.

“The drop in Cuomo’s approval offers the chance for Republicans to seriously take him in this election,” said DC-based GOP political strategist Ron Bonjean, who previously served as a top aide to GOP leadership in the House and Senate. “It also has the potential of dragging Cuomo further into the political quicksand.”

The GOP believes Cuomo has begun making other politically exploitable missteps, including:

* Delaying a decision on whether to green-light the controversial, natural-gas drilling technique known as fracking, which has divided the state.

* Obtaining luxury seats for himself and top aides at the Buffalo Bills’ stadium in a deal to keep the state’s only NFL team from leaving.

* Cutting aid for the developmentally disabled and planning an election-year tax rebate for families while other taxes and fees increase.

Cuomo's former pal, Fred Dicker, writes in today's Post that Cuom faces a "lose-lose" on the fracking decision that is sure to further drive down his numbers:

Gov. Cuomo is paralyzed with indecision on “fracking’’ for natural gas because it’s a “lose-lose’’ situation where even Southern Tier residents who should benefit financially will be bitterly disappointed, a highly placed political source has told The Post.

Cuomo, who has dithered for more than two years on whether to OK the drilling process, which is used safely in nearly 30 other states, fears that his planned “toughest-in-the-nation” regulations and low natural-gas prices have combined to make it unlikely major gas companies would make the investments needed to develop new wells, the source said.

“His fear is that if he gives the go-ahead, nothing is going to happen, the gas companies won’t come in because of overregulation, and gas-price economics and the people [in the] Southern Tier will then say, ‘Look, Cuomo killed it another way.’

“Cuomo’s regulators plan to impose almost impossible restrictions, natural-gas prices are way down, and the governor knows that the less valuable ‘dry’ natural gas is in the [Southern Tier’s] Marcellus Shale, not the valuable ‘wet’ gas that the companies are going after now,’’ the source continued.

“The drilling decision is, and has been all along, about what the governor can gain from it, and right now, he doesn’t see himself gaining anything, whatever he does,’’ explained the source, who has strong ties to Cuomo’s campaign contributors.

After telling associates for nearly two years he believed natural-gas drilling could be conducted safely, Cuomo developed cold feet late last year in the wake of an increasingly aggressive “anti’’ movement led by environmental activists, including his former brother-in-law and uncle to his three daughters, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who say the process is dangerous.

Cuomo, who has publicly claimed for three years — from when he began running for governor — that the “science and not the politics” would guide his decision, now maintains that he’s merely awaiting a final recommendation from state Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah, supposedly expected within days.

But few close to Cuomo believe that’s the case. Many say that the governor — who has taken a radical turn to the political left since the start of the year — is being guided by political considerations alone.

A Cuomo spokesman denied that the governor was holding off on a decision for political reasons.

Of course Hamlet on the Hudson Jr. is holding up the fracking decision for political reasons.

Because whichever decision he makes, he stands to lose substantial support.

If he decides to go ahead with fracking, he loses support from liberals and environmentalists; if he decides to ban fracking in NY State for good, he makes his business cronies and Wall Street donors (not to mention Rupert Murdoch and Fred Dicker) very unhappy.

So unless Cuomo finds some magical way to thread the needle on the issue and never make a decision one way or the other, he stands to lose more support in the coming months and drop below that 50% range.

Couple that with the controversial sports stadium giveaway to the Bills, the gun law that has pissed off some former supporters, and his extension of taxes on his wealthy base in the latest budget and the ethically-challenged Cuomo has a whole bunch of trouble coming on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.

Make no mistake - liberals and environmentalists do not trust him on fracking any more than his business cronies and fracking proponents do.

Cuomo Drops To New Low In Latest Quinnipiac Poll

The Siena poll show him dropping to his lowest level of approval ever - now the Quinnipiac poll shows the same thing:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s approval rating continues to slide, but more than twice as many New York voters still approve of the job he’s doing than disapprove, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

 Quinnipiac University found Cuomo with a 55 percent approval rating, compared to 27 percent who said they do not approve of the job Cuomo’s done. That’s down from 59 percent who approved on Jan. 30, which dropped sharply from 74 percent in December after he ushered through new, stricter gun-control laws early this year.

Cuomo’s rating was hurt, in part, by a drop in Republican support, Quinnipiac found. Just 39 percent of GOP voters said they approve of Cuomo’s work, down from 44 percent in January and an all-time high of 69 percent in July. Cuomo is a Democrat.

“Gov. Andrew Cuomo built his envy-of-the-nation string of approval ratings on huge support from the other party—unheard of in today’s era of take-no-prisoners partisan politics,” Quinnipiac pollster Maurice Carroll said in a statement. “His first-in-the-nation move for gun control hurt Gov. Cuomo with Republicans and independent voters.”

He still has a pretty good approval rating at 55% of course, but let's see where that rating is after he's forced to make a decision on fracking in the state.

So far he has tried to avoid making that decision so as not alienate either the pro-frackers or the anti-frackers.

But Hamlet on the Hudson cannot delay the decision forever and once he makes it, it's hard to see how he doesn't drop below 50% approval one way or another.

Adrian Fenty Trails by 5 In Primary Race

From Political Wire:

A new Clarus poll in Washington, D.C. shows Vincent Gray (D) leading Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) in the Democratic mayoral primary, 41% to 36%.

Digging into the poll, Gray has a much better personal favorability rating than Fenty.

Gray has a higher favorability rating with blacks than whites while Fenty has a much higher favorability rating with whites.

Fenty's approval rating has risen from 41% to 49% since the last Clarus poll in December.

The favorability ratings of top officials in D.C. are also given.

Michelle Rhee has a 50% approval rating/35% disapproval rating.

Rhee, like her patron Fenty, does much better with white voters (79%) than black voters (28%.) Rhee's strongest support comes from white women (80%), her weakest support comes from black women (25%.)

A high white voter turnout seems to favor Fenty, high black turnout favors Gray.

Gray's lead is 3 points among all registered voters, 5 points among most likely voters.

The primary is September 14th.

Incumbents with approval ratings below 50% close to election time are generally in trouble, but Fenty's approval rating rising, the trend may mean more than the number.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about D.C. municipal politics to make a call either way, but it seems the primary hinges on turnout and demographics.

Unemployment To Get Worse, GDP Revised Downward, But Obama Says RttT Is The Most Important Thing He Can Do

President Accountability seems to live in a Bush-like bubble these days:

President Obama gave a speech to the Urban League convention in which he joked about the Jersey Shore’s Snooki and also said the following: “Now, over the past 18 months ... I think the single most important thing we’ve done is to launch an initiative called Race to the Top.”

Have you got that?

The single most important initiative the Obama administration has been involved in has been to dangle a one time cash payment to cash-starved states that forces them to fire teachers, close schools, tie teacher pay and evaluations to test scores and add new standardized tests to every subject at every grade level.

This initiative was so important, in fact, that if Congress took just $500,000 million from the $4.3 billion and used it to keep teachers employed across the country, he would veto any bill that contained that provision.

That's how important RttT is to President Accountability.

Meanwhile in the real world not inhabited by Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Mayor Moneybags, Whitney Tilson, Rahm Emanuel or President Accountability, thousands of teachers are being let go by states out of cash and tying teacher jobs to test scores is NOT the most important thing ever.

In the real world, the economy has slowed considerably and unemployment is expected to ratchet back up to close to 10%.

I mean, things are BAD.

At least for those of us who don't lunch with the beautiful people at $30,000 a plate fundraisers, things are bad.

Unfortunately Obama doesn't seem to get out too much beyond his chosen circle of advisers and basketball buddies like Arne Ducan, so it's clear he really doesn't know what's going on.

I wonder what would help wake him up?

Perhaps a look at the news?

There is no more disputing it: the economic recovery in the United States has indeed slowed.

The nation’s economy has been growing for a year, with few new jobs to show for it. Now, with growth at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, and federal stimulus measures fading, the jobs outlook appears even more discouraging.

“Given how weak the labor market is, how long we’ve been without real growth, the rest of this year is probably still going to feel like a recession,” said Prajakta Bhide, a research analyst for the United States economy at Roubini Global Economics. “It’s still positive growth — rather than contraction — but it’s going to be very, very protracted.”

A Commerce Department report on Friday showed that the economy had grown at a faster pace earlier in the recovery, expanding at an annual rate of 5 percent at the end of 2009 and 3.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010. Consumer spending, however, was weaker than initially believed.

Many economists are forecasting a further slowdown in the second half of the year, perhaps around an annual rate of 1.5 percent. That is largely because businesses have refilled the stockroom shelves that they had whittled down during the financial crisis, meaning there will not be much need for additional inventory orders.

Fiscal stimulus policies are also expiring, which may further drag on growth. And individual stimulus programs like expanded unemployment benefits have faced huge political battles each time they have come up for extension in Congress.

The approaching mid-term elections may further entrench the political stalemate after Congress returns from its August recess. As a result, pressure will probably increase on the Federal Reserve to use its tools to prevent a double-dip. Recent reports from Fed officials suggest the central bank has become increasingly worried about where the economy is headed.

People are losing their jobs, the long-term unemployed cannot get work, people are losing their homes despite (or perhaps because of) the Obama administration's HAMP program, Obamavilles are starting to sprout up across the country, and President Accountability tells us at a speech he gave in between an appearance on The View and two $30,000 a plate fundraisers that RttT is going to make sure more teachers are fired and schools are closed, so all is well.

Simply amazing.

More and more, I see Obama's resemblance to Bush.

Stubborn, arrogant, not terribly informed about much, refuses to change course once he has decided on something, only listens to the cronies around him, and is taking the country down the road to ruin.

Judging by his poll numbers, which are now nearing Bush territory, others are seeing the resemblance too.

And even while Obama publicly mocks polls, he has been spending much more money on them that Bush did.

Clearly he is worried.

The only problem is, he doesn't seem to be too worried about the economy, the job situation, the foreclosure crisis, the state of the war in Afghanistan or all those teachers he's getting fired.

Nope, the only thing that seems to worry him is that he might end up a one term president.

I do have to say, a one term Obama presidency WOULD be change I could believe in.