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.

7% Of FOX 5 NY On Air Personalities Have Been Accused Or Convicted Of Sex Crimes In Past Four Years (UPDATED - 2:00 PM)

I posted earlier about former Fox 5 NY reporter Charles Leaf getting sentenced to 26 years in prison on child molestation charges.

In the post, I wondered about the following:

Why isn't Campbell Brown screaming about the Leaf case and wondering aloud how many other Fox News employees are pedophiles?

Now Leaf is the only convicted pedophile that I know of at Rupert Murdoch's FOX News and and FOX affiliates, but he is not the only accused sex criminal at the company.

Let's not forget Ray Kelly's son, Greg, a FOX 5 anchor who was accused of rape, though police and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance declined to file charges against him.

The NY Times wrote up the story on Greg Kelly this way:

Manhattan prosecutors have decided not to file rape charges against a son of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly after a two-week investigation of a woman’s accusation that he had attacked her late last year inside the Lower Manhattan law office where she worked, prosecutors said in a letter on Tuesday. 

The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., concluded its inquiry into the accusation leveled against Mr. Kelly’s son Greg Kelly, a local television anchor, concluding that “the facts established during our investigation do not fit the definition of sexual assault crimes,” according to a brief letter to Mr. Kelly’s lawyer, Andrew M. Lankler. “Therefore, no criminal charges are appropriate.” 

...

The accusations came to light after the woman, who is in her late 20s or early 30s and whose name was not released, walked into the 13th Precinct station house on Jan. 24. She told the police that she had met Mr. Kelly, 43, on the street and had gone for drinks with him at the South Street Seaport a few days later, on Oct. 8. Afterward, she said, they returned to her office and he raped her. 

Police detectives initially interviewed the woman in the hours after she walked into the station house last month, law enforcement officials said at the time. But within hours, the Police Department had turned the investigation over to Mr. Vance’s office because of the conflict presented by the department’s looking into a sexual assault accusation against the commissioner’s son, who from the outset denied the accusations through Mr. Lankler. 

After the allegations became public, Mr. Kelly, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves, took a leave from his position as an anchor of “Good Day New York” on the Fox station WNYW (Channel 5). 

OK, so here we have two FOX 5 on air employees accused of sex crimes in the last four years, one of whom was convicted on charges, the other not charged.

The FOX 5 NY news site lists 28 current on air personalities - including Greg Kelly, who still has his job despite the rape accusation.

2 out of 28 is 7% - which means 7% of the on air personalities at FOX 5 NY have been accused or convicted of sex crimes in the past four years.

Let's imagine that 7% of teachers working in NYCDOE schools were accused or convicted of sex crimes in the past four years (that would be about 5,600 teachers.)

How do you think Rupert Murdoch's FOX 5 NY affiliate would handle that story?

How would Murdoch's tabloids, the NY Post or the Wall Street Journal, handle that story?

What would frequent FOX News guest Campbell Brown say about those kinds of statistics?

And yet, here we have 7% of the on air personalities at FOX 5 NY accused or convicted of sex crimes in the last four years, one of whom has been imprisoned for child molestation, and we get silence from the FOXies over the sleaze at their station.

Silence too from professional teacher troll Campbell Brown.

It's amazing when you think about, really, because similar statistics for teachers would send both the FOXies and professional teacher trolls like Brown apoplectic about the dangers of teachers, but the reality is, you're far more endangered by FOX 5 NY on air personalities than you are by teachers.

And yeah, I know I'm stretching the Kelly sex crime thing and stretching the stats too - there have been more than 28 on air FOX 5 NY personalities in the past four years.

But this is just the kind of "stretching" that Murdoch media entities engage in when smearing teachers and the teaching profession. 

And the point I want to make in this post still stands regardless - you're far more endangered by FOX 5 NY on air personalities than NYC teachers.

The statistics bear this out.

UPDATED - 2:00 PM: The Daily News reports Greg Kelly is as sleazy as ever:

There is a time and a place for most things — but admiring your co-worker's body live on TV is neither of those.

An excited Greg Kelly could not contain his enthusiasm when colleague Anna Gilligan reported live from the newly renovated Action Park in New Jersey in a bikini.

Gilligan was there to show how the park had been transformed.

But if she thought the hardest part of her broadcast was going on one of the rides and then swimming live on TV, she was wrong.

After getting out of the water, a self-conscious Gilligan, who admitted it was "scary" that she had to strip to a two-piece on air, was subjected to some awkward comments from Kelly.

As she started the Tarzan ride, Kelly exclaimed: "Wow! here she goes, in a two-piece!"
 
And he couldn't contain himself.

As Gilligan climbs out of the water, he tells her: "First of all, nice bathing suit."

She ignores the remark, but Kelly's co-host Rosanna Scotto warns him to "stay appropriate."
He does not heed the advice and continues with his cringey remarks.

When Gilligan says she is about to go and put some clothes on, Kelly tells her "Hold on a second, no, not so fast Anna."

He then stutters to find a question to keep the presenter on air and receives another telling off from Scotto who even slaps him on the arm and tells him to "be nice and stop milking this shot."

Even then, he does not pick up on the clues and continues with the awkwardness.

The camera operator even gets involved by sparing Gilligan's blushed and cutting to a shot of the pool rather than the presenter in her two-piece.

When it goes back to the Fox 5 studio, a suitably embarrassed Kelly tells Scotto, "don't be so frowning at me."

Former Marine Kelly, the son of NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, was cleared of a rape allegation back in 2012 and thanked Scotto then for her support.

He has been hosting the breakfast program since 2008.

Greg Kelly, keeping it classy as always.

Same goes for FOX 5 NY - great idea to put the female reporter in a bathing suit so that Greg Kelly could ogle her publicly on air.

Surprised These Poll Numbers Aren't Worse

A new Quinnipiac poll shows Mayor de Blasio under water in job performance:

Less than half of New York City voters approve of the job Mayor de Blasio is doing in his first three months in office, a mediocre rating that is well below his NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and City Controller Scott Stringer, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

Forty-five percent of voters said they approved of de Blasio's job performance, with 34 percent saying they disapprove, the poll found. Another 20 percent said they didn't know enough to form an opinion or didn't want to answer.

It's similar to results in a Marist poll out earlier this month, which found only 39 percent of voters thought he was doing a "good" or "excellent" job. A Quinnipiac poll from January had de Blasio with a 53-13 percent approval rating.

Hizzoner's latest numbers are much lower than ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg had at this point in his tenure. A Quinnipiac poll from March 27 2002 showed then-rookie Mayor Bloomberg with a 62 percent approval rating. Sixteen percent disapproved of Bloomberg in that poll.

A January Quinnipiac poll taken right after de Blasio was inaugurated found with a 53-13 approval rating, eight points above his current ranking.

Given that the attacks against de Blasio have been relentless and well-funded, from the Murdoch papers ginning up a snow controversy back in January, the attacks over "Forkgate" (when de Blasio ate pizza with a fork), "speedgate" (when the papers reported de Blasio's mayoral motorcade sped through the city a day after he pushed for new safety rules regarding speeding) and of course the infamous (and phony) "war against charters" that Eva Moskowitz and corporate media outlets claim he is waging, I'm quite frankly surprised he's not in the 30's in job performance approval.

And notice the Quinnipiac people putting the Bloomberg approval in there to stick it to de Blasio even more.

Two things to say here:

First, Bloomberg didn't have the media and charter school assaults de Blasio has taken since he was inaugurated, so the Bloomberg numbers don't mean all that much to me (especially since his fellow media moguls at the Times, Post, Journal and News all took it easy on him for most of his three terms - unlike what they've given de Blasio in his first few months in office.)

Second, there is still plenty of time for de Blasio to turn this around - but he must get better about handling the media, heading off controversies before they start, or, if that fails, putting them to rest after one media cycle.

He can't get beaten up too many more times before the meme that he is a failure as a mayor gets baked in.

If you missed it, Blake Zeff had a very good piece on where de Blasio should go from here at Capital NY.

Gothamist Still Mocking Upper East Side

By saying they're right in their allegations, Bill de Blasio has given the Murdoch Street Post a victory in the "Socialist Mayor Plays PayBack With God-Fearing Upper East Side Capitalists" meme that emerged yesterday after the Murdoch outlets decided to manufacture a news story to make de Blasio look incompetent and inept with the snow removal on the Upper East Side

This was the not first time a Murdoch outlet tried to make de Blasio look inept over snow removal.

The Wall Street Journal tried it last time with a front cover photo purporting to show unplowed Manhattan streets as the press covered de Blasio shoveling the side walk outside his own house - again looking to get the meme out that Socialist de Blasio just couldn't handle the snow removal effectively.

As I posted in the afternoon, the Daily News, New York Magazine and Gothamist all mocked the Post and the Upper East Side whiners yesterday before de Blasio made the whole thing moot by agreeing with the Post that more could have been done with the UES snow removal.

But that hasn't stopped Gothamist from continuing to mock the UES:

The mewls from the tiny, snowed-in Stradevariuses emanating from the Upper East Side have reached the sensitive ears of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has just released a statement acknowledging his abject failure to properly plow the streets frequented by the city's precious Tax Base. "While the overall storm response across the city was well-executed, after inspecting the area and listening to concerns from residents earlier today," de Blasio says, removing David Koch's right sock and slowly, yet firmly, massaging his foot with tea tree oil, "I determined more could have been done to serve the Upper East Side."

"More could have been done to serve the Upper East Side." Feel better, Muffie?

A commenter adds:

Come on Bill, don't give these fucks the time of day. You did fine. Some streets were plowed before others, but by all accounts the city is pretty much up and running as normal.

As a dad you should know, NEVER give in to a toddler when he whines. He'll just do it louder next time.

That's exactly right - now that the Murdoch people got what they wanted out of yesterday's stories, they'll continue to manufacture and disseminate various stories that will all add up to one meme - de Blasio is incompetent, inept and over his head as mayor.

That was the point with the WSJ photo during the last snow storm.

That was the point with yesterday's Post stories.

The Murdoch papers have an agenda and de Blasio, foolishly, just helped them propagate it.

Carrying Water For The Common Core

In a Wall Street Journal article that purports to cover New Jersey Governor Chris Christie taking on members of his own party over their opposition to the Common Core standards, Lisa Fleischer writes the following (emphasis added):

There is growing resistance to the standards, including from some prominent Republicans, in part because they are worried about eventually losing state control over standards, or because of academic misgivings. Opponents at times incorrectly say the standards are required by the federal government or that it will take power out of teacher’s hands.

The statement "opponents at times incorrectly say the standards are required by the federal government" is a disingenuous one because it relies on reductionism and semantics to make opponents of the Core seem out of touch or dishonest in their opposition.

While it is true that the federal government did not mandate the Common Core standards and did not force states to adopt them, the Obama administration has used both the Race to the Top stimulus money as a carrot and the NCLB waivers as a stick to compel states to adopt the Core.

States were not forced to accept the RttT money offered by the feds, of course, but by tying the stimulus money to adopting the Core, the feds made CCSS adoption very, very attractive to lots of cash-starved states during the recession.

In the case of the NCLB waivers, as more and more states saw the majority of their schools come up against the unreachable NCLB mandates and be declared "failing schools," they were forced to seek out mandate "relief" from the USDOE in the form of NCLB waivers.

Rather controversially ( since, as Rick Hess has pointed out, the Secretary of Education doesn't actually have this kind of power), Arne Duncan required states to adopt Common Core or some other college and career-ready standards, as well as teacher evaluations tied to tests tied to the standards, in order to receive a waiver from the NCLB mandates.

Here is the language Duncan used to explain what states would be required to do in order to receive a waiver:

 "States must adopt and have a plan to implement college and career-ready standards. They must also create comprehensive systems of teacher and principal development, evaluation and support that include factors beyond test scores, such as principal observation, peer review, student work, or parent and student feedback...they must set new performance targets for improving student achievement and closing achievement gaps. They also must have accountability systems that recognize and reward high-performing schools and those that are making significant gains."

Fleischer isn't exactly wrong to say states weren't forced to adopt Common Core by the feds, but she fails to give the whole context and show how the feds have made it very, very likely that states would have to adopt the standards if they wanted either stimulus money or relief from the onerous NCLB mandates.


In addition, the statement that "opponents at times incorrectly say the standards...will take power out of teacher’s hands" is also disingenuous at best, water-carrying at worse.

While it is true that the feds do not mandate what teachers cover in their classrooms, by compelling states to adopt the Common Core standards, by mandating states to give "assessments" tied to those standards, and by issuing the requirement that teachers be evaluated using test scores from tests tied to the standards in order to receive a NCLB waiver, the feds are, in effect, taking power from teachers (and local school districts and even states, for that matter) and enforcing a one-size fits all curricula and teaching method all across the land.

In short, the feds are forcing teachers to emphasize in their daily lessons whatever is being tested on these Common Core "assessments" because their evaluations and jobs are directly tied to the scores from these "assessments."

In a very real way, that is diminishing the power of teachers in individual classrooms with mandates made from afar.

To write that it is incorrect for opponents to say that Common Core will take power away from teachers again fails to give the entire complexity and context of the issue and winds up misleading readers into thinking that those wacky Common Core opponents are off the wall once again.

The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Common Core-promoting/for profit education technology company-owning Rupert Murdoch, though I can't imagine Lisa Fleischer would ever allow the bottom line of the company she works for to color how she writes her articles.

Still, when you notice some of the statements Fleischer makes here independent of anything Christie says about the Common Core, you have to wonder if she's carrying water for the Common Core as much as Christie is.

Collusion Between Murdoch, Thatcher And The London Police: Strikerbreaker Edition

How did Rupert Murdoch and his merry hacksters at News International (the British edition of News Corporation) get so close with the London police?

It goes back to the strikebreaking war Murdoch waged with the help of Margaret Thatcher and the cops back in the eighties:

The investigation of News Corp is not, as Murdoch claims, about "paying cops for news tips": it is about systemic corruption. The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police at the time, Sue Akers, explained early last year: "The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials. Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists."

One of the decisive moments consolidating Murdoch's relationship to the Metropolitan police was the use of police as armed strikebreakers in the 86-87 Wapping dispute. Margaret Thatcher herself had assured Murdoch that the police would be at his disposal, and their collusion in breaking the strike required an operation costing £14m.

As the Guardian journalist Nick Davies pointed out, this was never simply a matter of criminality. It was always about power. The networks of collusion, bribery and complicity that began to be established in the Thatcher era are beginning to be unravelled.

Murdoch has been pretty skilled at avoiding accountability for helping to set up and support these networks of collusion, bribery, and complicity.

I'm under no illusion that he won't find a way to skate accountability now.

Somebody in the comments wrote the following:

Murdoch is the classic 19th century tycoon. No ethics, no sense of responsibility, no concern for anyone outside of his family and very small circle of personal friends.

His mission has always been to become the richest and most powerful SOB possible. Part of that goal is to bring the world back to the 19th century, when government encouraged that behavior, rather than trying to control it.

That is an excellent description of Murdoch and indeed, a pretty apt description of the world he has helped to usher in.

Think the collusion between FOX and the GOP.

Think the collusion between the NY Post/Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and Klein.

For Rupert Murdoch, it is all about collusion and systematic corruption mean to enrich and empower himself and his coterie.

Joel Klein Spews B.S. In Murdoch Street Journal

The b.s. in this Joel Klein-penned piece in the Murdoch Street Journal is pretty thick.

Klein obviously feels the need to defend himself and his tenure at the DOE.

Plummeting test scores and an achievement gap larger than before he ran the system despite hundreds of closed schools and four system-wide reorganizations doesn't give him such a stellar track record as chancellor.

So he uses this column in the newspaper to accuse everybody who is opposed to some or all of his reforms of being part of the "status quo" and champions his "turning the system upside down" to run it "like a business."

He applauds all the accountability, incentives, and competition he has added to the system and says that "poorly-structured, nonaccountable delivery systems cost a fortune and don't work."

He says small class sizes and curriculum don't matter much in education - only teacher quality does.

He defends his emphasis on charter school creation over traditional school support.

And he attacks the way the school system continues to run, saying that one teacher in front of a class of 20-30 students is "obsolete" and more innovative computerized and individual instruction is the wave of the future.

He points to the Harlem Success Academy as the model for a good school, saying that it proves that a students' economic background does not limit their potential in school in any way.

Over the next few days, I think it behooves the folks who opposed Klein's reforms and initiatives to respond to the propaganda and excuses Klein lays out in this Murdoch Street Journal piece.

I plan on doing several posts to push back against this Klein propaganda in detail.

What say you out there in the blogosphere? What points do you think are most important to push back on?

Murdoch Post/WSJ and Cathie Black

Have you noticed how the Murdoch media outlets - the Post and the Wall Street Journal - aren't covering the media blackout that is Cathie Black?

The NYCDOE is keeping her school visitation schedule a secret and they STILL won't let her talk to the press (except for that time they allowed her to talk to Cindy Adams - a gossip columnist at the Murdoch Post.)

Can you imagine if Obama or somebody Murdoch doesn't like tried to pull this stuff at the USDOE?

It's illuminating how Murdoch is a big "accountability" guy for others (especially teachers), but when it comes to his own employees - like FOX 5 reporters accused of horrific crimes - or people he backs - like Chancellor Cathie with an "i" Black - he's not so big on accountability at all.

It seems accountability is ONLY for the little people (i.e., the people who do not drink cucumber martinis with Mayor Bloomberg at Upper East Side soirees or work for Rupert Murdoch.)

Questions of the Day

Do you think the editorial writers at the Times will read the news section of the paper and discover that the Bloomberg/Klein "Education Miracle" is actually a fraudulent mirage and that both Bloomberg and Klein knew this pre-2009 even as they were ratcheting up the mayor's campaigns for re-election and the renewal of mayoral control of the school system by touting the fraudulent test scores?

Seriously.

Because so far, whenever I see editorial pieces about education or the NYC school system at the Times, it's always about what a great job Bloomberg and Klein have done, progress has still been made despite the fraudulent test scores and other instances of Klein-metic, etc.

It's like the Times editorial writers live in an alternate reality devoid of actual facts and just swallow hole whatever p.r. crap emanates from Tweed and Bloomberg LP, er, City Hall.

The same can be said for the editorial writers at the News, Post, and Murdoch Street Journal.

While I'm at it, do you think that the editors at the Kaplan Test Prep/Washington Post, led by Fred "The Iraq War Was A Fine Idea And I Still Stand By That" Hiatt will read the Times piece and think twice before they give Klein a platform to spew horseshit?

Nahhh....