The AstroTurf Lament: Common Core in Two 2014 Public Opinion Polls
In August 2014, both Education Next and Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup published public opinion polls on education and that included questions regarding the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
EdNext polled approximately 5,000 individuals, and PDK/Gallup, 1,000 individuals. (Some of EdNext‘s questions were asked in two versions, and the sample was split into two halves, or approximately 2,500 respondents.)
In the EdNext poll, 57 percent of the public stated that they had not ever heard of CCSS “before today.”
In the PDK/Gallup poll, respondents were asked how much they had heard about “the new national standards for teaching reading, writing, and math in grades K through 12, known as the Common Core State Standards.” Fifty-three percent reported hearing “only a little” (34 percent) or “nothing at all” (19 percent).
I read a comment in regard to these and other CCSS survey results by Michael Feuer of George Washington University in which Feuer states that “we are a nation that tends to prefer a slower approach to large change….”
What Feuer neglects to note is that CCSS “large change” came to the American schoolhouse (and then, to the American public) as a “top-down reform.”
Four years following CCSS’s official completion, the American public is still notably unaware and/or unfamiliar with CCSS because top-down-promoted change takes years to “trickle down” from the “controllers” to the “controlled.” (Indeed, all of this “top down” is supposed to “streamline” the messiness of democracy. If only we would just shut up and do as we are told….)
Cory Turner of NPR comments that CCSS has “an image problem” as noted in the PDK/Gallup finding that almost half of respondents indicated hearing of CCSS via TV, newspapers, and radio.
Such only serves to emphasize the “top down” direction of CCSS.
The public did not “think up” CCSS.
CCSS did not “emerge” from the classroom.
It is not the spontaneous creation of teachers in most states nationwide.
Here’s the reality: CCSS was conceived, organized, produced, monitored, and promoted by “the few,” the most obvious CCSS “top downers” being the two The AstroTurf Lament: Common Core in Two 2014 Public Opinion Polls | deutsch29: