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2 Polls Span 2 Poles On Testing In Schools
NPR | 8/25/15

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Why Do Two Good Polls Get Different Results?
Education Next blog | 8/25/2015

Does the American public support annual testing or think there’s too much testing, or both?

NPR’s Anya Kamenetz digs into the results of two big public opinion polls on education policy, one released Aug. 17 by EdNext and one released Aug. 24 by Gallup/PDK, and finds that the answer, indeed, is “both.”

Kamenetz explains

Both of these polls are large, representative national samples. And their results on other questions, like whether you approve of your local school, are nearly identical. Therefore, it’s likely that the mystery can be solved by looking closely at the phrasing of these specific questions on testing.

In Why Do Two Good Polls Get Different Results? Education Next’s Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West take a close look at the phrasing of questions in both polls on the opt-out movement, Common Core, charter schools, and vouchers to better understand what the public really thinks.

A number of others have also looked closely at the results of the two polls:

Polls Reveal Nuanced Views on K-12 by Corey Mitchell

National Education Polls Tell Two Stories, Impact on Elections Tough to Gauge by Mikhail Zinshteyn

Does the Public Support Common Core: Depends How You Ask by Peter Cunningham

How Do People Feel About School Vouchers? Depends How They’re Asked by Travis Pillow

– Education Next