Bad Polling Leads to Bad Policy

Bad polling leads to bad public policy, and this story is a prime example of how a poorly worded question can lead to massively skewed results.

Opposition is especially high among people most familiar with the law, according to a survey of 1,010 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.

Controversy about the law has grown in recent months as Congress begins the debate on whether to reauthorize the measure that President Bush has touted is one of the most important achievements of his administration.

But dissent against reauthorization has developed within his own party. Fifty-two Republican House members and five GOP senators are calling for a repeal of the law in favor of a more flexible system of achievement standards to be negotiated between the Department of Education and individual states.

Participants in the poll were told that No Child Left Behind "requires states to test elementary students to determine if schools do a good job teaching. Critics say the law forces teachers to teach to a particular test. From everything you've heard, do you think the No Child Left Behind Act has been good for public schools or not good?"

Only about a third said they think the law has had a positive influence on public education while slightly less than half said it has had a negative impact and a fifth were undecided. (emphasis added)

Note the phrase "teach to the test," which is a buzz phrase that has been bandied about by opponents of NCLB since its inception. Of course, if you say teachers are teaching to the test, people are going to object to the concept.

NCLB has many features that would test far differently if asked. For example, if you asked people about whether having a "highly qualified teacher" in every classroom is a good thing, you would probably get close to 90 or 95 percent saying yes that is a good thing. Or if you asked whether schools should report scores for all groups, not just school wide, you get positive response. Finally, if you asked whether people believe their should be options for parents and students in failing schools to go somewhere else, you get different results.

The question prompt is so toally loaded as to be laugable. A far better question would be to lop of the first couple of sentences and simply ask: "From everything you've heard, do you think the No Child Left Behind Act has been good for public schools or not good?" But such a question does not satisfy the policy aims of the group contracting for the poll and we don't know who that is, all we know is that the poll was conducted by Scripps Howard and Ohio University, but not who commissioned the poll.