Associated Press Propaganda: What the AP Survey Really Shows

Mercedes Schneider digs into the details of this recent poll and finds, not surprisingly, that the questions skew the results by providing a favorable view of the topic ahead of the question, and by constructing responses options that encourage a certain result. Meanwhile, reports and press releases seem uninterested in some other findings from the survey, results showing that parents “believe their children are receiving a better education than they did from excellent-yet-underpaid teachers who care about their students.”

deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

On August 17, 2013, the Associated Press (AP) announced that a survey they conducted in June and July 2013 found that not only do parents really like standardized tests– they approve of the high-stakes usage of such tests and believe that the number of standardized tests administered is “about right”:

Often criticized as too prescriptive and all-consuming, standardized tests have support among parents, who view them as a useful way to measure both students’ and schools’ performances, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.Most parents also say their own children are given about the right number of standardized tests, according to the AP-NORC poll.

The release of this propaganda is certainly strategic timing given the recent New York debacle of Mayor Bloomberg’s aligning Common Core assessments to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and flunking most New York schoolchildren by design.

It is also interesting…

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