Not a Snapshot of Public Opinion but an Album
2015; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 97; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Education Studies and Reforms
ResumoThe PDK/Gallup poll shows not only how Americans feel about their schools today but over the course of nearly 50 years. That is an important perspective. The question of what a student needs to learn and experience in school and how best to measure that learning is not the right question to ask at a dinner party. I know this from working in the education space for over two decades, and I say it with an equal measure of sarcasm and sincerity. While the American people agree on some very simple points about education, they tend to be all over the place and at times contradictory when it comes to the finer and more complicated details of public education. If you want to secure your friendships and your dinner party invitations, steer clear of such questions. You have been warned. A safer bet is to dig deep into the 47th Annual PDK/ Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. This year's poll reveals some of the opinions, frustrations, and anxieties of Americans and their views on education, especially pertaining to standardized testing, the Common Core, and a lack of financial support for local schools. This year's poll includes a larger number of Americans and for the first time can reliably report opinion results of specific demographic groups--blacks, Hispanics, whites--valuable information when one considers the nation's quickly changing demographics. Almost a half-century of polling data also allows the public to see some of the yearly results in the context of historical trend data. The questions related to testing especially benefit from this historical context. opinions change For example, in 1970, 75% of American surveyed said they wanted students in their local schools to take national tests so their educational achievement could be compared with students in other communities. Sounds like a pretty ringing endorsement for national testing requirements right? Fast forward 45 years, and we now have a majority of Americans and public school parents saying there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in their public schools. When given a set of options and asked to rank which is the best way to measure the effectiveness of public schools, testing came in dead last with just 14% of parents rating test scores as important. Despite this lack of confidence in testing, Americans are split on whether parents should have the right to excuse their child from taking a standardized test, and a majority of public school parents surveyed said they would not excuse their own child from such an exam. The lack of public support for testing is almost assuredly associated with a conflation of issues. The legacy of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with its rigorous testing requirements and dreaded Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) indicator, probably did more to turn off the public to testing than anything. For years, teachers and education leaders complained about how testing had become a tyranny, sucking away resources, narrowing the curriculum, and demoralizing an entire generation of educators. The fight to finally reauthorize NCLB has been long and hard, and the battlefield is littered with draft bills and federal waivers to free states (and districts) from NCLB's most unpopular requirements. The final stages of the reauthorization process are being played out now, and finding a compromise over federal testing requirements is once again a linchpin issue. The Obama administration's zeal for using standardized test scores as the basis for new teacher evaluation requirements in the Race to the Top grants and the NCLB waiver applications did not help improve things. These policies stoked the ire of a powerful and loud contingent of education leaders and gave way to the grassroots opt-out movement. Add to that the optics of powerful testing companies collecting student test data in an era where parents are increasingly concerned about student privacy. All of these factors have contributed to the public's unease with testing. …
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