Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll claiming that a majority of Americans are in favor of Common Core has been found to contain several serious flaws that make it a completely worthless barometer of the public’s sentiments about the controversial curriculum.

Tom Blumer of Newsbusters is reporting on the poll which contained questions that were “clearly designed to elicit majority support for [Common Core] and to then mislead the public into believing that the opposition is a noisy, anti-Obama minority which should be ignored.”

For instance, the Wall Street Journal trumpeted a subheading about the poll which read: Respondents Side with Him (Obama) on . . . Education and NBC went so far as to say the poll proves that Common Core opponents are a minority who are trying to stop an education initiative that the majority of Americans favor. In fact, as Blumer reports, NBC made the poll results look as though opposition was primarily political in nature with most of it coming from Tea Party Republicans.

However, party affiliation had nothing to do with it. A closer look into the methodology behind the poll shows that the answers had much more to do with how well informed respondents were about Common Core.

For instance, one question asked respondents if they had heard about Common Core. Only 22 percent said that they had heard a lot about it. Another 47 percent heard nothing at all and 30 percent only heard a little about it. This means that 77 percent of respondents polled knew little or nothing about Common Core.

Knowing this, most people would wonder who cares about the opinion of people who don’t even know what Common Core is? Well, the poll tried to “fix” this reaction with its next question which parrots the “party line” about what Common Core supposedly is.

“Just to make sure that everyone has the same information let me describe the Common Core standards in a bit more detail,” the question read. “The Common Core standards are a new set of education standards for English and math that have been set to internationally competitive levels and would be used in every state for students in grades K through 12. Based on this information, do you support or oppose the adoption and implementation of the Common Core standards in your state? (IF SUPPORT/OPPOSE, ASK) And, do you STRONGLY (support/oppose) or just SOMEWHAT (support/oppose) this?”

Astonishingly, even after this white-washed description of Common Core, only 27 percent strongly supported it.

“The fact that the pollsters only got to 59 percent support with a group that is almost 80 percent under-informed or uninformed is stunning,” Blumer comments. “That tells me that they got almost no support from the 22 percent who say they have read and heard ‘a lot’ about Common Core.”

Naturally, the published poll didn’t break down the support within the informed, partially informed and uninformed groups because “doing so would have diluted its propaganda value,” Blumer writes.

“The NBC/WSJ poll has a lot in ‘common’ with Common Core,” he concludes. “Each paints a shiny veneer of consensus and support onto an enterprise which is fundamentally deceptive and dishonest at its, well, core.”

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